As she walked across to speak to Dr Hewson, Beth was working out the questions she would need to ask and preparing them into the right order. She knew the scarring on her face would draw his eye and then there would probably be the mini-stare followed by an embarrassed look away.

At first, such encounters had bothered her, and made her want to run away to a safe place, such as the sanctity of her bedroom, or maybe a shack on a deserted beach where the nearest she was to danger was reading one of her books on serial killers, but as the years had passed, she’d grown accustomed to the ritual. Now she used people’s reactions to her scar as a way to judge their character. She lived with the scar and she’d come to terms with it; how others dealt with it spoke more about them than anything else.

Dr Hewson looked out from the boot of his car when she spoke his name. He straightened to his full height and looked up at her. ‘Let me guess, Dowdy O’Dowd has sent you over to ask me about time of death, cause of death and a dozen other stupid questions that can’t be answered until I have done a post-mortem.’

While Beth didn’t care for the way that Hewson had given her DI a moniker that was overtly sexist, she didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the pathologist at their first meeting.

‘Actually DI O’Dowd asked me to find out if you had any preliminary thoughts. She never mentioned time or cause of death.’ Her words were something of a lie as she knew that’s exactly what O’Dowd had wanted to know, but to Beth it wasn’t so much about being truthful, as salvaging an already bad situation. ‘She spoke highly of you and said you’re the best pathologist in Cumbria.’

Hewson raised a bushy grey eyebrow. ‘Nice try, lass, but your flannel isn’t going to wash with me. Thanks to cutbacks, there are only three pathologists for the whole of Cumbria.’ A finger jabbed at his chest. ‘One doddery old fool whose hands shake like buggery, a raw recruit who’s so wet behind the ears it’s a wonder she doesn’t have gills… and me. And I’ve had so many run-ins with Dowdy over the years, I reckon I’d still make third place on her list despite the lack of credible competition.’

Beth licked her lips and kept her face neutral. It was obvious that the DI and Hewson had some sort of running feud, but while she didn’t want to be drawn into the no man’s land between them, she still needed to come away with some information from the pathologist.

Some officers might use charm and try to flirt in this situation, but that wasn’t her way. To Beth, her mind was a far better weapon than her femininity. Instead she tried a different tack. ‘Right. You don’t like her and she doesn’t like you. So I guess she’s thrown me to the wolves by asking me to see what you know. I suppose you have two choices then: you can return her compliment to me, by telling me nothing and sending me back there to get a roasting from her, or, you can give me what you know at the moment, taking the higher moral ground and putting the case first.’

Beth let her gaze wander across the wallheads where the skeleton of the house was now backed by a deep royal blue as the sky darkened. For the first time that day, she noticed the strong earthy smell of the countryside. Somewhere in the trees an owl hooted loud enough to be heard over the generators powering the CSI team’s lights.

The sound ought to have been reassuring, a return to normalcy. It wasn’t though; instead it added a layer of spookiness to the atmosphere. Beth stuffed a hand into her jacket and wound her fingers around the handcuffs, collapsible baton and pepper spray she always carried. The action worked; it gave her the calmness she needed and pulled her away from macabre thoughts. The case was bad enough to deal with, without her adding unnecessary layers of horror.

Hewson took a puff on his e-cigarette and released a sizeable cloud of fumes that drifted past Beth. She caught a fleeting whiff of raspberry until the smoke dissipated on the wind. To her, raspberry was all wrong for a man of Hewson’s intensity. It reminded her of the fruity lip balms she had grown out of using more than a decade ago.

She pushed his idiosyncrasies from her mind and fixed him with what she hoped was a patient but enquiring look. ‘So what’s it going to be? Which is most important, helping me catch whoever left that poor man in there?’ Beth pointed to the area of the house where the victim was being examined by members of the CSI team. ‘Or you scoring a couple of points against O’Dowd?’

The beginnings of a grin were twisted away from Hewson’s lips as he opened his mouth to speak. ‘You’re good, lass. I’ll give you that. There’s not a lot I can give you until I get that poor bugger back to the lab though. He’s mid-forties; in good physical shape for his age; there’s significant burning around the mouth, which is interesting; and of course the wings attached to his shoulder blades.’ He raised a hand to forestall Beth’s comment. ‘But you’ll have seen all that for yourself. My early impression is that the wings were attached pre-mortem.’

Beth had guessed as much about the wings herself. Each shoulder blade had a rivulet or two of dried blood running downwards across the exposed bone.

‘What else did you discover? Or rather, what preliminary assumptions can be made?’

‘Good question.’ Hewson tilted his head as he looked at her. ‘Before I answer you, I’d like to know what you thought of the injuries to the lower part of our victim’s body?’

Beth closed her eyes and pictured the man in his final stance as she spoke. ‘The man’s genitalia were missing, but they didn’t look to have been cut off. Could it be that a fox, or some other animal, had stood on its hind legs to get an easy meal, as there were scratches on the man’s legs, and what appeared to be bite marks and tearing on the remains of his scrotum?’

‘Very possibly. What else?’

‘His hands also looked to have been chewed on as each was missing fingers and had stumps, but again,’ Beth winced at the memory, ‘there were no clean cuts.’

‘At least you’re not blind.’ Another cloud of raspberry vapour enveloped Beth as Hewson pushed the boot lid down with a metallic thud and leaned against it. ‘I found a number of larvae nestling in the exposed eye sockets, and while there was some discolouration of the flesh, that’s more to do with exposure to the elements than any rough treatment.’

‘So you’re saying that, apart from what happened to him here, he wasn’t mistreated?’

‘I am indeed. He wasn’t beaten or tortured in any other way.’

‘The eyes: were they removed by the killer or eaten by an animal?’

‘Pecked out by a bird most likely. Soon after death would be my guess. The animal world doesn’t show any manners when it comes to a free meal.’

The larvae were a clue to the length of time the body had been a corpse. Once a person died, insects, maggots and other creatures were drawn to it for a free meal. Some would lay eggs in the body as soon as they happened upon it. By studying the stages of development of larvae and pupae, pathologists could make informed guesses as to how long a corpse had been in situ.

‘You mentioned larvae, what are they telling you – from what you’ve seen of them?’

This time Hewson’s grin was allowed to blossom. ‘You are good, DC…?’

‘Young.’ Beth held out a hand. ‘Beth, if you prefer.’

‘So, Beth, you’re young by name and nature, yet you’re not youthful. You’re a serious beggar, aren’t you? Driven. Probably something to do with that scar on your face.’ Hewson tilted his head back and appraised the scar in a way that only a doctor could. ‘I’d say that you picked that up about four years ago. Would I be right?’

Beth nodded rather than risk speaking and having her voice betray her amazement at Hewson’s perception.

They may come less often now, but she still had occasional flashbacks and nightmares about the night her life had suffered irrevocable changes.

A night out with friends had been going well when a fight erupted. Beth and a friend had been trapped against a wall as two men traded punches.

A beer bottle had been smashed and thrust forward. Its intended target had swung an arm to deflect the blow. The attacker had put such force into his swing, the arm holding the bottle continued its arc until the jagged edges of the bottle made contact with Beth’s cheek.

The plastic surgeon who’d tried to repair her face was competent, but nothing more.

She’d had no justice for her injury or disfigurement. As soon as they’d seen the blood gushing from her face, both fighters had charged from the bar and legged it down the road. Neither had been identified, let alone arrested or charged.

She didn’t blame the intended target as much as the man who’d held the bottle. He’d been the one who had tried to wound and injure. In her more reflective moments, she recognised that any person would have done what the intended target did and deflected that bottle away from their face, and that it was nothing more than bad luck that had caused the broken bottle to connect with her cheek. But then, she reasoned, it had also been the intended target who’d thrown the first punch. And, as the person who started the fight, there was no way he was entirely blameless.

It didn’t matter how much she reflected or used objective analysis on the moment her looks were stolen from her, justice was still awaiting an introduction to the man who’d held the bottle.

Even now, years later, she found herself scanning crowds looking for the one clue she had as to the identity of the men who were fighting. The man who’d deflected the arm holding the bottle had two lipstick kisses tattooed onto the left side of his neck. One was scarlet and the other pink. Part of her didn’t expect to ever see him again, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t keep looking.

Beth looked at Hewson, returned the frank appraisal he’d given her. ‘The larvae. I’m not going to hold you to what you tell me without a full examination of them, but can you give me a ballpark number based on your best guess?’

‘Judging from their development, they’ve been on the body four, maybe five days, so you’re looking at the body being placed in situ between four and six days ago.’ His eyes gave a mischievous flash. ‘If Dowdy had asked me that question, I’d have told her between a day and a month.’

‘I’m sure you would. Just as I’m sure she would have questioned your parentage if you had.’ Beth gave a tiny smile to show that, while there was no malice to her words, she was just as serious as the doctor. ‘Anyway, what about where the victim’s arms were cable-tied to the horizontal bar? Were there any wounds caused by him fighting to free himself?’

Hewson cast his eyes to the sky. ‘Yes actually, there were. Not significant though, more like he was uncomfortable and was trying to wriggle into a less painful position. They certainly didn’t tie in with him exerting all of his strength into the action.’

‘And finally, his fingers, was there enough of one to get a print?’

‘I assume so; one of the CSI team dealt with that. Otherwise we have teeth.’ The doctor pulled open the driver’s door. ‘Good luck with your investigation. I’d say I’m looking forward to working with you again, but that would mean some other poor bugger would probably have to die a horrible death, and perhaps it’s tempting fate to wish for that. But I dare say I’ll see you at the post-mortem anyway.’

Beth watched him pull away with her mind tumbling. The pathologist was a shrewd operator, and he’d not only passed his judgement on her – with the way his eyes had twinkled from time to time, she was sure he’d been on the point of flirting with her. Not in any kind of serious way that suggested he wanted to sleep with her, just enough to let her know that he’d enjoyed her company.

She pushed those thoughts away and focussed on the information he’d given her. The wings had been attached while the victim was still alive. He’d also been alive when fixed to the post.

A question leapt into Beth’s mind and she turned on her heel and strode back towards the house instead of returning to O’Dowd and the rest of the FMIT team.

She used her torch to illuminate the timber hoardings that screened off the un-refurbished part of the house where the body had been left.

The hoardings had been painted a pastel green, and one sheet had been removed to allow the various police teams to access the area where the victim was found. Beth scanned the others until she found what she was looking for. The screws holding the plywood sheets in place had all been painted over. Except on the sheet nearest the cellar. The screw heads on that sheet had traces of paint on them, but they showed signs of scuffing that told Beth they’d been unscrewed after they’d been painted.

It was how the killer had got his victim into the cellar.

Armed with this knowledge she trudged off to speak to O’Dowd. The CSI team would have to claim the sheet of plywood in case there were fingerprints on it, and they’d have to check with whoever installed it and the house’s owner in case it was one of them who’d removed the panel rather than the killer.

After everything she’d just learned or surmised, there was a lot for her to think about and there would be a mountain of paperwork to complete once they all got back to Carleton Hall. At least she hadn’t made any plans for this evening.

With no boyfriend on the scene, there wasn’t anyone who’d be aggrieved at her working into the night. The only person it would affect was Beth, and so far as she was concerned, losing a few hours of sleep was a tiny price to pay for bringing a killer to justice.