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morning’s rainfall. They both knew that if it was earlier in the year, in the high summer, the air in the tent would be nearly unbreathable. Dr D’Acre stood on the lip of the neatly excavated hole and peered into it. She saw, perhaps four feet below the surface of the field, two skeletons, human, adult, both lying on their side as if gently facing each other. Even their arms seemed to be interlinked.
    ‘Adult human,’ Dr D’Acre observed, ‘one male and one female. They are highly likely to be white European, although there is a possibility that they could be Asian. They are definitely not Afro-Caribbean. It’s quite a deep grave. Unlawful disposals are usually in much shallower pits, in my experience anyway.’
    ‘And in mine,’ Hennessey growled. ‘Somebody had time to dig this hole.’
    ‘I can’t tell at a glance how long they have been buried,’ Dr D’Acre continued, ‘but I see no flesh or internal organs, so quite some time, and no bits of non-degradable items of clothing either, such as zip fasteners or wooden toggles. So they may have been naked when buried.’
    ‘We think they were buried thirty years ago.’
    ‘You can be as sure as that?’ Louise D’Acre glanced at Hennessey.
    ‘Yes, we can,’ Hennessey replied, and he then related the tale told by Cyrus Middleton and Tony Allerton.
    ‘That’s an interesting story.’ Louise D’Acre glanced at the skeletons. ‘It definitely marks the time of burial . . . thirty years ago this month. A story to dine out on and taking thirty years to come forward . . . but having said that I can understand the way memories are buried by the mind and only surface much later, often only when the person concerned is able to deal with it.’ She paused. ‘You know I once read an account of an incident in the United States, wherein a young girl, when aged about five years old, witnessed her father murder her friend and bury the body. She blocked the whole incident from her conscious mind, but some twenty years later the memory surfaced and she clearly felt that she owed more to her friend and her friend’s family than she did to her father, and she was able to take the police to the precise location where the little girl had been buried.’
    ‘As our two witnesses did.’
    ‘Indeed,’ Louise D’Acre continued, ‘and he spent his retirement as a permanent guest of the state. Well, I’ll collect my tool kit and start to earn my crust.’
    ‘Yes, ma’am.’
    ‘And there’s more beneath those two, you say?’ Dr D’Acre snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
    ‘So we believe, ma’am,’ Hennessey replied. ‘The G.P.R. “looks” into the ground at a forty-five degree angle and thus provides a three-dimensional image, and there does indeed seem to be something else beneath the upper two skeletons.’
    ‘Well . . .’ Dr D’Acre prepared to gently lower herself into the grave. ‘Let’s see what we find.’
    ‘I’ll leave Webster and Ventnor here with you, plus the constables. I’ll ask them to avail themselves to you, ma’am.’ Hennessey made to leave the tent.
    ‘That would be appreciated. Thank you, Chief Inspector.’ Dr D’Acre lowered herself into the hole, taking care not to put any weight on to any part of either skeleton.
    ‘I have a notion to pay a visit,’ Hennessey added.
    ‘Oh?’ Louise D’Acre looked up at him from the grave.
    ‘Yes . . . I have.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘Just a notion that I and Sergeant Yellich should pay a courtesy call to the landowner. I mean, I wouldn’t want the police to dig up my back lawn without paying a call on me.’
    ‘Well a field is hardly a back lawn.’ Dr D’Acre knelt and began to scrape away soil from the head of one of the skeletons. ‘But I know what you mean.’
    ‘It’s just a courtesy call really,’ George Hennessey explained in a soft, calm and what he hoped was a reassuring tone of voice to the man who answered the door to himself and Yellich. ‘I am Detective Chief Inspector