Anna picked Lexi up from Maggie a little after six thirty that evening and took her into the park. The clouds had cleared to leave a starlit sky, and frost was already glittering on the pavement. While Lexi sniffed at the same trees she always sniffed at, Anna phoned Ben. His shift started at seven. This was a good time to catch him.

‘Hi, you on the way in?’

‘I am. How are you?’

‘Cold. But Lexi needed to get out.’

‘How was your day? Productive?’

‘Progressively weird.’

‘Looking forward to hearing all about it.’

Anna smiled at the in-joke. They shared an unwritten rule. Neither of them talked about work when they were together. Not usually.

‘Gritters are out,’ Ben said. ‘They’re forecasting some isolated showers and black ice.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Orthopaedics will be busy. Let’s just hope it’ll be slips and falls and not traffic accidents. The one good thing is that it’s Saturday tomorrow, there’ll be no morning commute. Who knows? We may be in luck.’

‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed. What do you fancy tomorrow night? Indian? Or there’s that fusion place we could try on Figgie Street.’

‘I’m easy.’

‘I know. Why do you think I keep inviting you over?’

‘You should know better than to distract a person while he’s driving.’

‘I’m cold and I need to think warm thoughts.’

‘Happy to provide those free of charge.’

Lexi saw an oncoming boxer called Rimi and bounded over to say hello. Anna caught the eye of Rimi’s owner. She seemed untroubled by the exuberant display, so Anna kept talking to Ben.

‘I have one favour to ask. Sunday, you’ll be delighted to know I’ve been excused of my lunch commitments, so I wondered if you fancied a trip to Talgarth, weather permitting?’

‘That’s the place your mother talked about. Where your great-aunt was hospitalised?’

One of the many things she liked about Ben was that he was an excellent listener.

‘Yes. I don’t know why, but having it mentioned has triggered all sorts of strange memories. I need to lay that ghost to rest.’ She didn’t add how her visits to Ryegrove had stirred up those vague recollections even more.

‘OK. We know Lexi loves a road trip.’

‘Shouldn’t take more than an hour and a half to get there.’

‘Good. Right, I’m at the hospital. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Hope it’s a quiet night for you.’

‘It’s Friday. It won’t be.’

Anna ended the call. Ben didn’t have to do night shifts, but the pay was good and he could pick and choose where and when. He’d be the senior emergency doctor there this evening. She also knew he relished the challenge.

Lexi and Rimi had spotted a pug and were giving it the olfactory once-over in very unladylike ways. Anna called Lexi back and headed for the flat, some leftover pasta and a glass of wine. She went to bed early and tried not to think about Colin Norcott.

---

On Saturday morning, Anna took Lexi to Leigh Woods. Ben had been right about the weather. It had rained briefly just before dawn and the roads were slick in places. Anna took her time and stayed off the smaller streets. Leigh Woods wasn’t one of their usual haunts, and an excited Lexi found the new range of smells fascinating. But Anna had not gone simply to offer Lexi new ground to explore. Once they’d finished walking, Anna drove the extra few miles to the crime scene. If she’d judged Keaton correctly, she had a feeling he’d still be working the site. Seeing his black VW Golf in the parking area brought a satisfied smile to her lips. Lexi, nicely tired from her walk, was happy to flop on the back seat while Anna sought out the forensic archaeologist. The tents were empty, but on a hunch, Anna walked to where she could look across to Ryegrove’s fence. It paid off. Across the scrubby divide, someone in a white Tyvek suit was hunched over, inspecting the ground. She hailed Keaton. He walked back so he could be within shouting distance.

‘Ah, Inspector Gwynne. Your timing is spectacular. Walk north for forty yards and you’ll come to a slight depression. Follow it down to where it crosses a ditch. You’ll have to scramble under the chain link where it’s at its lowest. I’ve put some boards down. Once you’re over, follow your nose.’

She did as instructed and found herself in an overgrown patch of clumped rushes and fern and briar. The faintest line of a path led upwards. In summer, she surmised, none of this would have been visible. She emerged twenty yards from where she’d seen Keaton. He was waiting for her.

‘Did you make that path?’ she asked.

‘I did not. It’s old and unused, but this time of year you can see what it once was.’

‘Animal origin?’

Keaton shook his head. ‘Doubt it. What would make a path like that? No sheep here. No cattle either. Deer might. Badgers too. But I’ve yet to meet a badger who can pull up a buried and anchored chain-link fence.’

Anna liked Keaton’s dry sense of humour. It was an acquired taste, but experts who knew their stuff could get away with sarcasm so long as it wasn’t targeted at her. And she sensed nothing of that with Keaton.

‘I, however, got a wet foot the first time I tried the ditch,’ he added.

‘Sorry about that.’

‘Don’t be, it was worth it. Come on.’

Anna caught Keaton’s grin. It was still five degrees below freezing. The sun, low in the south, would not reach this spot for hours yet. The cold, she realised, was locking up Keaton’s facial muscles.

‘How long have you been out here?’

‘First light. I found the path late yesterday afternoon. Didn’t want to attempt following it in the dark. I came back early.’

They’d reached the fence. It stood above them, seventeen feet tall. Imposing and impenetrable. Keaton read Anna’s thoughts.

‘Looks solid, doesn’t it?’ He pointed to concrete footings where the posts were buried and at ground level where the bottom edge of the fence sat, firmly fixed with metal staples. ‘They used machines for this. Small diggers, I suspect.’

‘No gaps then?’

‘None. But you don’t always need gaps to get through barriers.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Follow me.’ Keaton walked around the edge of the fence to where it started to curve up and away. Above her now, trees were visible beyond in the little copse at the edge of Ryegrove’s grounds. ‘They had to reinforce the bank here.’ Anna followed his finger to a point where large grey stones sat in a flat triangle as part of the canted bank. ‘Notice anything peculiar?’

Anna had gloves on, but the cold was seeping in and making the tips of her fingers ache. She scanned the bank twice before she saw it. Nothing much other than a slight outward bulge in the edge of the stoned area. A bulge where the stones looked smaller.

Keaton grinned when he saw her point. ‘Exactly. Smaller stones in an outward extension of the edge there.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Come and have a look.’

Keaton stepped over the rough ground to where he’d been working. Some stones had been removed from the top of the slight bulge and lay in a pile on the ground. A black plastic pipe, nine inches in diameter, protruded from the stones. Keaton handed Anna a long stick and pointed to the pipe. ‘Go on, give it a poke.’

Anna did, surprised by how far in the stick went, almost two feet before she met with a solid resistance that resonated when the stick struck it.

‘What’s that?’

‘I’d say it was some sort of wooden barrier.’

‘As in?’

‘As in a cover.’

‘Why would you want a cov—’

Realisation stopped her from finishing the sentence. Keaton was grinning like a child.

Anna said, ‘It’s bloody tunnel.’

‘Yep. That’s what my money’s on, too. The pipe is a dummy.’

Anna gave a little yelp before saying, ‘This is fantastic, Dermot.’

Keaton, despite the cold, was grinning. ‘We need to get some proper excavating equipment down here. We’ll remove the stones manually, but in case we need to dig into the bank, we ought to have some oomph to hand. It may be just an abandoned drain, but then why put a pipe there?’

‘Is that what made you suspicious?’

‘Drainage pipes aren’t unusual, but there’d have been a lot of concrete around when they were building the fence, so why not set it properly?’

Anna nodded. Why indeed?

‘And there’s more.’ Keaton started walking to his right, to the remains of a rusting, barbed-wire fence. Grass had grown around the bottom strand, and in a couple of places the posts had rotted. ‘That’s the original perimeter fence for the sanatorium, where they kept the polio and TB cases before it became university property.’ He stepped around a piece of solidified concrete spill and pointed to the ground and a faint line in the vegetation.

‘Another path?’ Anna said.

‘Exactly.’

‘Wow, Christmas and birthday rolled into one. I’ll talk to the CSM, make sure we extend the crime scene perimeter on this side.’ Anna peered beyond the rusting barbed wire to the renovated university buildings beyond. When she turned back, Keaton was watching her. His lips were a dirty aubergine colour from the cold.

‘What?’ she said.

‘I was only wondering what made you think there might be something here?’

It was a good question. From here, below the fence, they were looking up at the point where someone inside Ryegrove could stand and see the railway.

‘Everything seems to come back to this spot. There had to be something here.’

‘Intuition?’

Anna nodded. ‘Gift or curse, you can take your pick.’

---

Ben arrived at six thirty on Saturday night. He’d slept but not enough. Anna knew a Friday-night shift wiped him out for a good twenty-four hours so they ate early. The fusion menu turned out to be a little heavy on the spices, but since they both loved hot food, the surprise was a pleasant one. By nine thirty, they were back in the flat with this season’s Scandi thriller on the box. But Ben’s lids had drooped, and he’d finally thrown in the towel after jerking awake from momentarily drifting off the second time in ten minutes.

‘Sorry,’ he’d croaked.

‘Hey, don’t apologise.’ Anna kissed him gently on the cheek. ‘Go to bed. I’ll wait until they set fire to another tramp in the name of entertainment and then I’ll join you.’

Lexi looked up from her basket as Ben stood up, her tail thumping gently. Ben went over and ruffled the fur on her head before retiring. Anna stayed until the end of the episode and then climbed into bed, tired after her early start, relishing the warmth Ben brought and the smell of his aftershave. He was a neat sleeper and having him in her bed was no hardship. By tomorrow morning he’d be refreshed and then… who knew what might happen?

But in truth she did. A nice thought to go to sleep to.