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material via phone or PDA. Results on DNA or fingerprints would be texted to him if or when they were identified.
    Despite the high-tech equipment, this would be a slow, laborious job. A body left above ground could be scattered over a wide area. Wild animals tended to attack the soft tissue first, especially for winter food – fingers, toes, cheeks and lips. Once defleshed, the skeleton was liable to be broken up. Larger animals went after the marrow from the long bones and smaller creatures would drag bits down holes.
    An initial search of the area under the tree had revealed nothing. Rhona was now concentrating on the pile of branches where Emma claimed she’d found the skull.
    The brushwood had definitely been there for a considerable amount of time. It was partly rotten and woven together with dark green moss and pale lichen. There was an opening near the right-hand side, as if someone or something had disturbed it. Rhona called Roy over and asked for a 3D recording before she started to dismantle it.
    Roy Hunter was a former DCI who’d discovered that golf and sailing weren’t enough to occupy him in his retirement. A keen interest in computers had resulted in the creation of Return 2 Scene, the kind of investigative software only a serious police professional could have developed. He was also an old friend of Rhona’s, having been in charge of forensic support services for a decade.
    ‘How come you look younger every time we meet?’ Rhona laughed.
    ‘There is life after retirement.’
    ‘But you’re still working.’
    ‘Yeah, but I’m my own boss.’
    ‘Maybe I should try that?’
    ‘I can get you plenty of work if you do.’
    Rhona acknowledged Roy’s offer with a smile, then knelt by the rotting branches. ‘The kid says she found the skull in here. I need a full recording before I take it apart.’
    ‘No problem.’
    Rhona stood aside while the camera captured the structure from all angles. When she was satisfied they had enough footage, she called McNab over.
    ‘The tent will have to be low to get under the tree,’ he said.
    ‘I can cope.’
    Once the tent was up, Rhona set to work. Inside the blue cocoon she felt at ease. On jobs like this time passed by unnoticed. Patience was essential. If there were remains, it was important they weren’t disturbed.
    In the confined space, shielded from the elements, Rhona could smell the pungent aromas of wet wood, earth and rotting vegetation. It was a pleasant scent with nothing sinister about it, even though this place could turn out to be someone’s grave.
    Lying alongside it, Rhona directed her torch into the hole. The structure appeared to be supported by the crumbling remains of a thicker log. Below lay the detritus left by decay. Among it, the concentrated beam picked out what looked like fragments of bone.
    Rhona began to grid the structure. When taken apart and recorded correctly, the heap would reveal a great deal about what had happened in this wood since the body had been dumped here. Each layer would tell its own story. Mosses, grass seeds and species of tree would indicate how the mound had been constructed over time. It might also reveal traces of the person who had dumped the body in the first place.
    She carefully began to remove branches, taking before and after photographs from all angles. Rhona liked this sort of work. She loved the quiet, concentrated attention to detail. It was like opening a multi-wrapped present, each layer as interesting and enticing as the last.
    The only sound in the tent was her breath against the mask. The wind had dropped, and in the shelter of the trees there was no movement of air.
    She was at the lower layers now. More heavily rotted, their underlying sides thick with moss, they crumbled under her touch, forcing wood ants to abandon their honeycomb of passages to run over her latex gloves.
    Rhona switched to trowelling, sieving each portion of wood mulch for smaller items before bagging it for further