The evening sky was grey-blue. Not quite daylight and not yet night. Dusk. It’d be fully dark soon. February was being a stubbornly cold month, with very little hint of spring appearing. Lottie zipped up her hoodie and then her jacket. The wrought-iron gates were wide open to allow the forensic vehicles entry to the cemetery. Crime-scene tape hung limply across the space, guarded by two uniformed officers.

They signed in and entered the grounds. Lottie stopped to view the caretaker’s office, dark and lifeless in the shadow of the trees.

‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ Boyd said.

‘Beginning to freeze. Look at that lot. Fahy mentioned illegal dumping.’ Lottie scanned the heaving mass of black bags sitting on top of a yellow skip. ‘They look like they’re moving.’ Then she spied the vermin boxes around the house. Ugh!

Boyd said, ‘See there. Sacks scattered on the ground. People must drive up outside and hurl their rubbish over the wall.’

‘The council need to put up more cameras,’ she said. ‘Have we got the surveillance footage yet?’

‘Kirby’s looking after it.’

‘Good,’ Lottie started down the slope, which was glistening silver with the evening frost. A series of halogen lights on tripods illuminated the forensic tent and cast spectral shadows on the headstones surrounding it. A colony of SOCOs were working systematically, like ants, sifting through the clay and dirt.

She walked towards the wall that backed onto the traveller site. ‘How high do you think this is?’

‘Must be nine or ten feet.’

‘And Bridie’s house is just beyond it. She says she heard a scream after three on Tuesday morning. Will you go back up there and scream?’ She indicated the direction they’d come from. ‘I’ll see if I can hear it.’

‘You’re having me on?’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Then I’ll stand here while you go and scream.’

‘Maybe I should warn Bridie first.’

‘Maybe you should warn the banshee that you intend to take her place.’

‘Boyd, I need to confirm one way or the other if someone’s screams could be heard the other side of the wall.’

‘There are flaws to your plan. Say, if you stand right under the wall, you can be sure you’d be heard.’

Lottie swung her flashlight around the headstones, silently admitting that it had been a half-thought-out plan. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Bridie really had heard the woman’s screams. Travellers were renowned for their insights and vision. And if Bridie had heard Elizabeth Byrne screaming, it could tie down time of death.

She went over to the SOCOs. McGlynn was on his knees in the bottom of the grave, brushing and scraping where the body had lain. He looked up.

‘Before you even ask,’ he said, ‘I haven’t found much for you to work with. Just flakes of skin, clay, dirt and stones.’

‘Blood?’ Lottie ventured, peering over the edge.

‘Some. It’ll be analysed.’

Lottie recalled the spot of blood she’d found on the stone from the neighbouring grave. She’d follow it up in the morning.

‘If he covered her with clay, did he use his hands?’ she asked.

‘How would I know that?’ McGlynn said.

Lottie turned to Boyd. ‘We need to examine all the tools used around here.’

McGlynn’s voice rose from the grave. ‘I’ve taken care of that. You’ll have the results as soon as I have them. I’m assuming you took the two workers’ DNA and fingerprints.’

‘Of course,’ she said, hoping Kirby had done his job properly.

‘Good.’

‘The entire area has been fingertip-searched,’ Boyd said. ‘When will your work be finished here?’

McGlynn glanced up, his eyes dancing with green fire above his white mouth mask. ‘It will be finished when it’s finished.’

Lottie looked over at the rows of headstones, misshapen humps on the landscape. The vastness of the resting place for the dead chilled her.

‘I don’t think this is what the killer intended,’ she said. ‘It’s more than likely the girl escaped from him and he followed. But why were they here in the first place? Were they having sex and it got too rough, or he was raping her and she fled? Where did they come from? He had to have a car, so where was it parked?’

Boyd said, ‘We’ve been assuming this is the work of a man, but it could just as easily have been a woman.’

‘True,’ Lottie conceded. ‘The victim was naked, so that implies something sexual. Hopefully the post-mortem will tell us more about that. And something might show up on the CCTV footage. If it was an accident, why not try to get her out, or call 999? Was the intention all along to kill her? I can’t get my head around it. And so far, we haven’t one clue. That’s unthinkable.’

‘Wait for the post-mortem. And the results from McGlynn.’

The embankment to their right lit up with the lights of the Sligo to Dublin train. A horn screeched into the evening air and the inky sky brightened in a V from the light.

‘I’ve to pick up Grace,’ Boyd said, and headed up the hill.

Checking the time, Lottie said, ‘You’ve less than fifteen minutes if you want to catch the train coming in from Dublin.’

It was almost dark, and in the cone of light cast by her torch, she noticed crystals of frost on the plastic heads of imitation flowers. White granite sparkled and a blackbird cawed from a branch above her head. She tried to keep up with Boyd’s long strides.

When they reached the gate, she looked over at the old office. ‘We need to search in there.’

‘Once SOCOs finish on site, they can move up here.’

‘Did you see that?’ She pulled Boyd’s sleeve.

‘Only thing I saw was a big fat rat crawling out of one of those bags over there.’

‘Oh Jesus, let’s get out of here.’

They hurried to the car. As Boyd reversed and turned it, Lottie said, ‘I hope to God the camera recorded something.’

Boyd said, ‘Apart from the front wall, the cemetery is wide open on three sides. The railway tracks at the end plus the traveller site; the old folk’s home to one side and a housing estate on the other. Easy access.’

‘Nursing home.’

‘What?’

‘Old folk’s home is not a PC term.’

She stared over at the nursing home. A newly built block with floor-to-roof windows facing out over the cemetery. Behind it she could make out the roof of the older building, with its copper roof turned green. Why hadn’t anyone heard or seen anything? Why was Elizabeth in the cemetery? Where did she go when she got off the train? If they could figure that out, they might get a direction to follow. But at the moment, they were getting nowhere.

Boyd pulled the car onto the road with a grunt. Lottie was relieved when they sped away from the place of death.