Patrick arrived at the woods and hoped to God this wasn’t going to take all day. He’d had to stop off at a chemist to buy some insect repellent. There was no way he was going to stand there and get eaten to death by midges. He nodded at the PCSOs who were on scene guard and carried on walking to where they’d found the body. This was a first for him – he’d never seen a full set of skeletal remains, so at least it should be interesting. It made a change from the blood and gore that he usually had to deal with. He wondered if Lucy realised that she had done him a favour by giving him this case to run; breaking him in gently was very kind of her. There were two CSIs here already: a man slightly older than him and two much younger men. They were all hovering around in white suits. If he had to guess he’d say this was the anthropology team. He’d never worked with anthropologists, either. It was usually a pathologist on the scene, but the removal of the skeleton from its burial site and dealing with old human remains didn’t fall under the pathologists’ remit. The older man walked over to him and held out his hand.

‘Dr Chris Corkill. Is Lucy coming?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid she’s tied up. There have been a couple of serious incidents. I’m Patrick Baker and I’ll be the DI for this job. How are you getting on?’

‘Surprisingly well; the body isn’t in too deep. A couple of hours and we should be good to go.’

Patrick walked towards the tent.

‘There’re spare suits in my case, if you’ve forgotten yours.’

He paused. Damn. He bloody hated those white paper-sauna suits. He was hoping to take a quick peek, then pass the anthropologist his contact card before disappearing back to the station until there was something tangible he could work with.

‘Thanks, that’s great. I’ve left mine in the car.’

He looked for an extra-large size and ripped the bag open, then stepped into the suit, zipped it up and grabbed a couple of pairs of gloves from the box. He didn’t have the proper shoe protectors so he slipped on a pair of shoe covers and headed towards the tent. All three of the team were kneeling on the floor working over the body. Patrick felt his heart skip a beat; he didn’t know how he’d feel about seeing a corpse that had been buried for so long. Chris looked up at him.

‘It’s okay, you can come closer. I don’t think she’ll mind – in fact, I’m pretty sure she’s relieved that she’s been found.’

‘How do you know it’s a she?’

‘By the pelvic area – females have a larger subpubic angle than us males. It’s indicative of the female body’s child-bearing requirements, which males obviously don’t share. There’s also an area around the middle of the pelvic bone that’s larger in females. We can tell that our victim hasn’t given birth because there are no scars of parturition on the pelvis.’

Patrick nodded, trying to look as if he’d understood everything that he’d just been told. ‘What about her age?’

‘I can give you a rough estimate. Judging by the size of the bones I’d say this was a young woman between the ages of twelve and twenty. I can’t give you any better than that at the moment. But a forensic odontologist can provide a more accurate estimate of the age of persons under fourteen years, as well as confirming ID, as long as there are dental records. After the age of fourteen they rely on the wear patterns on the teeth. The older a person is, the more wear they show, especially if they have fillings or receding gums. They can narrow down an adult’s age to a five-year window with x-rays.’

‘Wow – pretty clever stuff, this forensics.’

‘It’s just a science, but one that is going to help whoever she is finally get reunited with her family. She hasn’t seen them for a very long time and it’s nice that we can help to rectify that.’

Patrick stared down at the skeleton, wondering how on earth he was going to find the woman’s killer. He’d never admit to Lucy that he didn’t have a clue what to do. For a start, he didn’t have one ounce of the tenacity that she did. She’d love it if he said he couldn’t manage, but he’d never dealt with a cold case of this nature. He’d rather be handling the cases of the two dead bodies that were up in the mortuary. Dealing with the here and now was more his area of expertise. He would pass the enquiries on to Browning, whom Lucy had said would help him – hopefully he would solve the case, whilst Patrick sat back and did as little as possible.