Anna got back to her ground-floor flat in Horfield after stopping off with a neighbour to pick up Lexi. The arrangement was easy and very convenient. Having a dog and walking it on the common brought Anna into contact with a whole community of like-minded people. One of them, a retired teacher by the name of Maggie, lived four doors down with her Labrador, Bruce, who’d made an instant connection with Lexi. On seeing Anna rushing back one evening desperate to walk the dog, Maggie offered to dog-sit on an ad hoc basis, which turned into every ad hoc weekday. Anna could not believe her luck and jumped at the chance. Lexi thrived on it and Maggie, a bluff and no-nonsense spinster, treated Lexi like her own child. The words ‘Want to go to Maggie’s?’ triggered an instant pricking up of the ears and a look of absolute approval from the dog.

By eight thirty, after a shower and a heated-up bean casserole she’d made the week before, Anna was feeling a lot better and significantly warmer than she had done most of the day. A dense cold had seeped into her core in that forsaken burial ground adjacent to the railway line, and she suspected not all of it due to the sub-zero temperatures. It was as if the horror of whatever crimes had been committed there hung over the sheltered spot like a malign cloud.

She sat at the kitchen table, half a glass of Riesling at her elbow, Lexi stretched out in her basket, while Fleetwood Mac from her dad’s vinyl collection played in the background. She checked her private phone for messages. One from Ben telling her he’d seen two cases of frostbitten fingers in people sleeping rough on the streets and asking her to remind him not to eat burned sausages ever again, and a couple from her sister, Kate, with photographs of her kids dressed in enough layers to get them to the South Pole and back.

And one more. This time from her mother. Never a big message sender, a WhatsApp from Sian Gwynne was noteworthy in itself. Anna and Kate had dragged their mother into the digital age with a gift of a simple, pared-down smartphone. Despite initial stubborn resistance, Sian was now able to send and receive images and emails as well as video calls. Even so, spontaneous texts were unusual, certainly with Anna as the recipient. Whatever warmth Sian had towards her children was generally reserved for Kate and her amazing family. Anna’s relationship with her mother, in contrast, was one of polite tolerance. The message read, ‘I hope your Christmas scarf is coming in handy in this cold weather. Looking forward to seeing you and Ben on the weekend.’

Anna sent a thumbs-up emoji in reply, but no words, telling herself as she texted not to analyse the subtext and failing. The reminder of the Christmas present was irritating, the reference to Ben even more so. Much to Anna’s annoyance, Ben had immediately met with her mother’s approval because he was male, and a doctor to boot. Sian Gwynne’s vitriolic criticism of Anna’s lifestyle choices found a great deal of ammunition in the fact that she was a detective – what sort of a career is that for an intelligent woman with a good degree? – and seemingly incapable of maintaining any kind of long-term relationship. But Anna knew, too, that the reason she found this so incredibly annoying said a lot more about her relationship with her mother than it did about Ben; a mere pawn in a pathetic psychological game.

She sipped her wine and put her phone on the table, dragging her thoughts away from her mother and back to the morning’s search of the railway.

Shaw had seemed genuinely surprised the cadaver dog had scented a second possible corpse, and that bothered Anna a great deal. It wasn’t that Shaw had the monopoly on buried bodies, but it meant he might not know as much as he said he did. She shook her head. This was a dangerous and unrewarding game to play. They weren’t even sure if it was a body yet. But her intuition, a tool she’d learned in previous investigations to ignore at her own peril, was kicking in. Whatever awaited her in the cold earth between the woods and the river, it would not be pleasant. By ten thirty she was in bed and doing an impression of a foetus, relishing the warmth and wishing Ben was there as a human hot water bottle next to her.

She dreamed of desolate places and cold winds and of things moving beneath the ground. They had no faces or shapes, but they writhed in torment as above them someone disturbed the earth. She was there in the damp darkness with them, waiting for the light to break through. Waiting for a hand or a shovel to rupture their peace. And when it did, the scream erupting from the chambers oozed out of the earth like a black ghost.

---

Her work phone rang at 6.25 a.m., five minutes before she needed to get up, but twenty minutes after she’d woken. She recognised the voice as belonging to Chris Bradley, the crime scene manager.

‘Sorry to wake you, ma’am, but you said you wanted to know.’

‘I do,’ Anna said, and sat up, wiping sleep from her eyes.

‘It’s a jackpot. We have two confirmed sets of remains. Both undoubtedly human.’

‘Sounds like you’re going to be busy, then.’

‘You and me both, ma’am.’

She killed the call, threw on as many layers as she could get hold of and took Lexi out into the frozen street. The dog was happy enough to trot up and down the fifty yards Anna walked, relieving itself at a couple of lamp-posts. Anna wore gloves but in the pocket of her anorak had both a can of PAVA spray and an ASP telescopic baton. She carried them automatically, as commonplace to her as a watch or a purse. A couple of years before Shaw had entered her life, she’d have laughed at anyone paranoid enough to want to carry defensive weapons when walking their dog. But Anna wasn’t anyone. No one had ever attacked her on this quiet street, but she’d been attacked once in a wood not too far from where she was now, all thanks to Shaw and his machinations. And the common, only a few yards away, could be a dark and dangerous place. As such, wariness of her surroundings was simply a question of being prepared for the next time.

---

It was still dark at seven thirty when Anna pulled into the crime scene she’d left yesterday afternoon. Lights were set up and the perimeter walled off by interlocking fencing. A separate cordon was in place for vehicles. There was only one way in and out, and a red-nosed uniformed constable watched her approach. She didn’t know him and, having shown her warrant card, he took her details and noted them on the clipboard in his hand. This was the scene log, a record of everyone who would now attend and their reason for being there. It served as a stark reminder to Anna of how things could change in just a few hours. Three tents were set up and Anna made for the largest along a taped-off pathway. Inside, some foldable chairs and tables were dotted with equipment and an array of thermos flasks and plastic cups. A man in fetching white Tyvek waved to her: Chris Bradley, a rangy man in his mid-forties with thinning hair, and the designated crime scene manager.

‘Morning,’ he said, his voice croaky and dry-sounding.

‘You’ve not had any sleep?’

‘I’m off in an hour. Time enough to show you what we have.’ He pointed towards a pile of packaged scene suits and overshoes. Anna dressed and followed Bradley out across the stoned ground towards a smaller tent. Bright halogen lamps illuminated a pit some four feet deep at the bottom of which was an array of exposed bones. They weren’t the first she’d ever seen and, mercifully at this stage of decomposition, there was no flesh clinging to them and the smell was of cold earth and mould, not the cloying stench of decay. The bones were in disarray. The ribs canted, the long bones of the legs bent, the arms still half buried. Yellow-tipped markers and paper measuring tape lay next to some of the limb bones, waiting for photographs. But it was what lay in front of the ribs that drew Anna’s attention. A white shape, domed, mostly still buried in the earth.

‘What’s that?’ Anna asked.

Bradley looked at her and nodded. ‘Exactly what you think it is.’

Anna frowned and looked towards the top of the ribcage, to a space where there should have been a head but where there was nothing. Her eyes jerked back to the dome. ‘Is that the skull?’

Bradley nodded. ‘It is. And there’s no way it would have moved there through migration or vermin activity. This corpse was decapitated, and the head placed next to, or possibly on, the chest at the time of interment.’

‘It would not have become detached on its own?’

‘Gupta doesn’t think so. Something about a crushed vertebra.’

Anna swallowed and tried to work out why the head would have become separated from a body. The experts would probably have an explanation, but it made for a grim few seconds of imaginings. She already knew that Gupta was the Home Office pathologist on this case and he would take great delight in providing a theory, she was sure.

Discipline brought her mind back to the here and now; she needed to know if there was anything solid at all to go on so her squad could get moving.

‘Clothes?’

‘Cotton-based products would all be gone in sixteen years. But there are remains of synthetic fibres – trainers most likely. But we have a belt buckle and what is likely a plastic wallet.’

Anna perked up. ‘And?’

‘Quite a bit of clay here, ma’am. Very damp. They’ve taken it to the lab without opening it. Hopefully we’ll have something by the end of the morning.’

Anna nodded and followed Bradley out to the second smaller tent. In this one, the pit was shallower but in an earlier stage of investigation – some of the skull and the upper torso only exposed.

‘At least this one has its head in the right place,’ Bradley said.

‘Is that a ring on the finger?’ Anna pointed to a metallic band on the left fourth digit.

‘Looks like it.’

A ring might mean a female but it was premature to assume anything yet. She turned to Bradley. ‘So what’s the plan?’

‘We’d hope to get the bodies out by this afternoon. We could be lucky and find something here like we did with the first. Otherwise, identification will be the usual: we’ll get ages and sex from the bones and then check against missing persons. Gupta took one look at the remains and knew there wasn’t much for him.’

‘OK, so my best bet is with the lab back at HQ and this wallet?’

Bradley nodded. ‘They’re already on it. Hopefully we’ll have the contents open and inspected by nine. Gupta’s contacted the unit at South Wales for an archaeologist and an anthropologist.’

‘We need both?’

‘Depends on what we find. Trouble is, once we find it, we don’t want to be waiting. Better we have them on-site. Superintendent Rainsford wanted bells and whistles.’

‘Can I have some images of the site as is?’

‘I’ll see to it.’

She thanked Bradley and walked out of the tent. The sun was now up but wouldn’t reach this stretch of railway for hours, if at all, though Anna could see golden light caressing the tops of some of the taller trees on the rise. She picked her way across to the edge of the storage area and stared up at the black posts marking the perimeter of Ryegrove Hospital, pulled out her phone and dialled Holder.

‘Justin, go straight to the labs and find out what you can about the wallet taken from one of the bodies last night.’

‘It is bodies, then?’ Holder said.

‘Yes. Two. Bradley says the lab is already working on it. There’s a briefing at nine. I need that information.’

‘On my way, ma’am.’