‘What about my funeral?’ Fahy asked, as Boyd corralled the mourners and Father Joe with the undertakers on the far side of the hearse.

Lottie squared up to him. ‘Mr Fahy, it’s not your funeral, it’s Mrs Green’s, and I want you and your colleague to join the family over there until I can get a cordon in place.’

‘We have to bury her,’ he said.

‘And you will. But not right now. I have a strong suspicion that there’s a body in that grave that shouldn’t be there, so I’m asking you to move away.’

‘Right so.’ He grabbed his colleague by the sleeve and took out his phone. ‘I’m calling my supervisor about this.’

‘You can call whoever you like, just stay out of my crime scene.’

Once she was alone, Lottie stared down into the darkness. Protruding from a thin layer of soil were pink-varnished toenails.

---

An hour later, the serenity of Ragmullin cemetery was lacerated by a hive of action and noise. Mrs Lorraine Green’s coffin had been returned to the hearse and her family members had been whisked away by the undertakers. Much as Lottie would have liked to, she didn’t speak to Father Joe, but she registered his sad smile with an inclination of her head.

Eventually the crime-scene tape was in place and the main gate was closed and guarded. A line of spectators perched on the high wall as the scene of crime officers erected a tent over the gaping grave.

‘Jim McGlynn is on his way,’ Boyd said.

‘He’ll be delighted to see the pair of us.’

Boyd pulled at his chin, his eyes concerned. ‘You think it’s her? Our missing woman?’

‘There’s someone down there and it’s not a corpse that’s been interred for fifteen years. So, it’s possible.’ She looked over at the gawkers sitting on the wall. ‘We need to speak with Bridie McWard again, plus Fahy and his colleague.’

‘Where did they go?’

She pointed to the row of pine trees to her left, where Fahy stood smoking a cigarette. He was flanked by Detectives Larry Kirby and Maria Lynch. As Lottie neared them, Fahy sucked in hard and blew out a stream of smoke.

‘I need you down at the station to make a statement,’ she said.

‘I saw nothing. And I did nothing either, before you go accusing me. Dug the grave on Monday and put the laths on it this morning. I saw only clay down there.’

‘We need a formal statement. You’re sure you didn’t notice anything suspicious over the last few days?’

‘I told you already. I didn’t see anything.’ He lit another cigarette. The smell made Lottie’s empty stomach queasy.

‘What’s your name?’ She directed her question to the plump young man with a bad case of acne standing in Fahy’s shadow.

‘I only started here today. I’m on a scheme.’

‘What is your name? Are you deaf?’ Lottie said. His teeth were yellow and his skin wan.

‘I wear a hearing aid. Deaf in one ear.’ He pointed to his right ear. ‘But I forgot to put it in today.’

‘Sorry.’ Lottie positioned herself to talk into his good ear.

‘His name is John Gilbey,’ Kirby said, his bushy hair standing up on his head and the zip on his jacket straining across his large girth. Lynch lounged against the wall, pale-faced. Her fair hair, usually tied up in a ponytail, streamed about her shoulders.

‘You have to go to the station,’ Lottie told Gilbey. ‘It’s a formality. Nothing to worry about.’ She instructed Kirby to take the two men with him.

Lynch said, ‘What do you want me to do, boss?’

‘Make yourself useful. Help uniforms with the cordon at the front gate.’

As Lynch stomped off up the hill, a silver station wagon rumbled down the slope, slowed and stopped. The driver leaned out of the window.

‘Well, if it isn’t Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis. Disrupting my morning as usual.’

‘Jesus, McGlynn. I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on.’ Lottie smirked. She’d only ever seen the head of the SOCO team in his white protective gear, hood up and mask in place. Two green eyes. That was all she knew about him. Now she could put a face to the ensemble. His craggy features told her he was aged about sixty. And he was in a foul humour, though that was nothing new.

‘I’d recognise you in a blackout,’ he said, mouth downturned. ‘What have you dug up for me this time?’

‘Not exactly dug up, though if it wasn’t for a bad case of curiosity, I think she would have been interred forever.’

‘And you know what curiosity did to the cat, don’t you?’ McGlynn let the window back up and continued down to the scene.

‘Contrary arse,’ Lottie said.

---

Within fifteen minutes, McGlynn had his team in place. They lowered a ladder into the grave, and he climbed to the bottom and stood to one side as pebbles and clay cascaded around him.

‘A thin layer of clay and dirt,’ he said, hunching down. He used a short-handled, long-bristled brush to carefully sweep it away, working slowly, until a foot emerged from the blackness. Toes painted in a fluorescent pink varnish. The chalky flesh looked paper thin. Brushing away the clay on the opposite side, McGlynn leaned backwards as another foot appeared.

‘Can you move up to the area where a head should be?’ Lottie was impatient to find out the identity of the buried person.

McGlynn continued his methodical work without reply. As he uncovered the leg, Lottie saw that it was broken, the bone sticking out.

‘Tibia open shaft fracture is my initial observation,’ McGlynn said. ‘Broken through the skin. That’s the shin bone. Signs of maggots. No flies. Not been down here long. It’s been cold, with no rain, so a day, maybe two at the most.’

Lottie knelt down on the protective covering at the edge of the hole and leaned over further, praying for him to hurry up.

A second leg appeared, and as more of the body was revealed, it became evident that it was definitely a female, and that she was naked.

‘No other visible wounds so far,’ he muttered.

Eventually the face and hair appeared, and Lottie drew in a breath. McGlynn glanced up, emeralds dancing above the white mask. ‘You see what I see, Inspector?’

‘She was suffocated with the clay?’

‘Even though the layer is thin, I don’t think she covered herself with it. Inform the state pathologist that she is needed here.’

‘I’ve already phoned her,’ Boyd said. ‘She should be here soon.’

Lottie stared down at the victim’s mouth, full of clay, and the dirt-encrusted auburn hair.

‘Who was the last person you saw?’ she asked the lifeless body of Elizabeth Byrne.