Lucy, who was on the phone mid-conversation with the victim’s son, Andrew Benson, paused to watch as Browning appeared at the top of the stairs carrying a huge bouquet of flowers. Every single person on the second floor also stopped what they were doing to watch him. Her heart began to race when she realised he was heading towards her office; she knew full well who had sent them. She ended the call.

Two days ago a similar bouquet had been delivered by a florist to her home address. She’d refused the flowers and told the poor woman, who looked mortified, to drop them off at the hospice. It wasn’t that she didn’t like them; it was the fact that they were from Stephen that she objected to. It was obvious that after their last conversation he hadn’t taken her seriously, she wasn’t interested.

Unfortunately for Lucy, Stephen was, and he had left countless voicemails and text messages for her. She was now on the verge of telling him that if he continued pursuing her, she would get an officer to pay him a visit to warn him off.

As Browning neared her open office door she could see that he was grinning, and everyone was watching Lucy to see what her reaction would be. He stood in the doorway, smiling at her.

‘Get in and shut the bloody door now. What are you doing?’

Her reaction wiped the smile off his beaming face.

‘I thought you’d be thrilled – someone actually likes you enough to send you a bunch of expensive flowers.’

‘It’s complicated. Who are they from?’

She stood up and crossed the room, not really expecting him to know where they’d come from.

‘Well they ain’t off me, and I’m glad that I didn’t waste my money on them if that’s your response.’

‘I wouldn’t be angry with you – not that you have a reason to buy me flowers. Fuck, this is so unnecessary.’

He stood there shaking his head as she tore open the card and read what she already knew. She said his name through gritted teeth. ‘Stephen.’

‘Look, boss, it’s nothing to do with me. Don’t shoot the messenger. They were dropped off at the front desk and Brenda asked me to give them to you.’

He passed the bouquet to her and stalked out of her office. She noticed him shaking his head at the others, who were still watching. Simultaneously, they all looked back down at their computers and carried on as if nothing had happened. Lucy chucked the flowers straight into the bin, where they could stay until the cleaner came in and decided what she wanted to do with them. Her hands were clenched so tight that the knuckles had turned white.

She went straight over to the major incident room across the hallway, where she found Mattie sitting at a desk typing away, head bent. ‘I’ve just been going through Melanie Benson’s post-mortem report.’

‘Did you find anything we missed?’

She shook her head. ‘Not really. She had no defence wounds. He must have really meant to do some damage when he smashed her skull the first time. She would have been so disorientated and the alcohol in her system wouldn’t have helped.’

‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t. It thins your blood. She would have bled out quicker.’

‘Her son has just been on the phone – he wants to know if we’ve found her killer.’

Mattie looked at Lucy and shook his head. ‘Did you tell him this isn’t an episode of Criminal Minds?’

She sat down on the corner of a desk. ‘It’s not looking very hopeful, is it? This is the third day and we don’t have much.’

Mattie decided not to answer that question. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. There had been no CCTV footage, apart from inside the bar area of The Ball and Chain, which showed a very loud, flirty Melanie Benson getting drunker and drunker until she’d tried to punch the barmaid, who’d then thrown her out. There was also an external CCTV camera, which was pointing the opposite way and didn’t work. She’d left the pub on her own so whoever her killer was had picked her up outside or on her walk home. It had been raining heavily and Lucy had no doubt that the amount of alcohol Melanie had consumed had a lot to do with her poor judgement.

Someone had picked Melanie up and driven her to Strawberry Fields. Every taxi driver in the town who had worked that night had been interviewed, their criminal records checked in case one of them had slipped through the net when they’d applied for their taxi licence. Nothing had come back; there were no logs of a taxi being called from Melanie’s phone. Her records had been checked, and the last phone call she’d made had been a jumble of numbers that resembled one of the taxi firms. She hadn’t got through.

‘Somebody picked her up and took her to the playing fields. Have all the constabulary and local ANPR cameras along the route been checked?’

‘Yes, Lucy, twice. All the cars that drove past them that night have been run through the PNC and the owners interviewed.’

She stared at Melanie Benson’s photograph; there had to be something. ‘Has every flat, house and shop in the local area been asked if their cars have dashcams, to see if they’ve caught anything?’

Mattie nodded. Lucy’s phone began to ring and she tugged it from her pocket. ‘DI Harwin.’

There was a pause as whoever was on the other end relayed their message.

‘Tape off the area, start a scene log. I’m on my way.’ She ended the call. ‘Some workmen have found a skeleton in the woods behind the old asylum.’

Mattie stood up, relieved that Lucy’s interrogation had been momentarily suspended even though his heart felt heavy at the thought of another body.

Lucy drove in one of the brand-new, white, unmarked cars that had a built-in satnav and touchscreen radio, which was a complete novelty. Mattie had spent ten minutes playing with the radio until Lucy had growled under her breath at him to pack it in. He’d put his hands down, sitting on them to stop them from straying back towards it.

They reached the woods and the car began to bump along the rough, stony path until it reached the police van at the other end. There were a few dog walkers around, but not many, and whoever the first responding officer was had done a pretty good job of clearing the area. They made their way to the footpath, then followed it into the woods until they reached a clearing to one side where a small digger truck was parked up. A tall man in a pair of orange overalls and a white hard hat was leaning against it, a cigarette in one hand, his phone in the other. It was clamped to his ear and Lucy could hear him swearing and muttering to whoever was on the other end as she approached. A uniformed officer strode towards them, pointing at a mound of soil in front of the digger.

‘I think it’s real and I’m pretty sure it’s human, although I’m not one hundred per cent. It’s been here a very long time if it is.’

Lucy walked across to peer into the exposed hole beside the mound of soil. She could see that the soil covered parts of a ribcage and a spinal column. She bent down to take a closer look. Mattie did the same. Reaching out with a gloved hand, she pressed her finger against a rib to make sure it wasn’t some rubber Halloween prop that had been buried out here for a joke. It wasn’t spongy; in fact it was hard. Standing up again, she put her hands on her hips.

‘We need a pathologist, an archaeologist and a forensic anthropologist. I want CSI here now. Until we know for definite that it isn’t, we’re treating this as a crime scene.’

‘Whoever that is has been here a while.’

‘Yes, Mattie, it looks that way.’

‘How come no one has ever found it before?’

She shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. I think the recent heavy rain and the fact that there’s a mini digger clearing the area for new paths could have something to do with it.’

Mattie looked at the bright yellow machinery. ‘I suppose that would have a lot to do with it.’

‘Have we got any outstanding missing persons cases that you can think of?’

He shook his head. She could only think of one man whose body had never turned up since she’d joined the police, and that was fourteen years ago. There were the regular cases of teenagers who only went missing because they’d been grounded by their parents or carers. Then there were the suicidal mispers who, fortunately, were usually found before it was too late. There were some bodies that turned up months after they’d gone missing. Usually by a dog walker or someone out for a leisurely stroll along one of the many beaches or woods surrounding Brooklyn Bay.

She closed her eyes, trying to think of anyone she’d forgotten about, and couldn’t. Forgetting wasn’t something that Lucy did often; she remembered every murder and serious case that she’d worked on. Sometimes she wished that she could forget – lying in bed at 4 a.m. remembering what state of decomposition some victims had been found in didn’t really do much to help with her sleep pattern. She looked at her watch; she had no idea how long it would take to assemble the relevant professionals. At a guess she would say a couple of hours, maybe longer.

‘If CSI put a tent up it will preserve the immediate scene while we decide what we’re going to do and wait for everyone to turn up.’

She was talking to herself because Mattie was already questioning the driver of the digger, who was now sitting on a tree stump, head bent, staring at the ground in front of him. Lucy approached them, grabbing Mattie by the elbow.

‘Have you radioed for more patrols? This whole area is going to have to be sealed off – we can’t have every dog walker in a five-mile radius trampling through the crime scene.’

‘They’re on the way, boss.’

As if by magic, she heard the sound of approaching sirens, and they waited for the small army of black and luminous yellow to descend on the woods like a swarm of angry wasps.