To his huge relief, just as he was contemplating the hedge-and-ditch boundary of the field and wondering how the devil to get over it, a squad car roared up the A11 on blues and twos, followed swiftly by an ambulance, ditto.

  ‘Here!’ he roared, with what breath he had left after the clumsy traverse of the stubble field. ‘Here!’ He waved his torch vigorously, and a welcome shout from the paramedics was the response. With two paramedics and a couple of uniformed police to help, Greg relinquished his role as criminal prop with enthusiasm and pulled his radio out.

  ‘Jim. Jill,’ he said with scant adherence to radio protocol. ‘Geldard here. Have you got anyone over to the tow truck?’

  ‘Just got here,’ was Jim’s reply. ‘The fire commander wouldn’t let us through straight away, but the wind’s just changed again and he let me and one of the forensic team through, with strict instructions to do a quick and dirty lift of whatever we can find and get out again until later in the day. I’ve got Al Thorpe with me.’

  ‘Anything of interest?’ asked Greg. ‘I’ve arrested Nick Waters on suspicion of arson, but I’m a bit short of proof at present.’

  ‘We picked up a petrol can near the farmyard, which may or may not have his fingerprints on it. Just had a quick look in the back of the cab and there’s an interesting collection of wine bottles and bits of fabric which look very like the makings of Molotov cocktails.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ said Greg. ‘Do as the fire chief said and get out of there as quick as you can.’ He would have said more, but was interrupted by one of the paramedics tapping him on the arm and signalling the need to get away from the flames. ‘See you back at the farmyard,’ said Greg and rang off, turning to the green-uniformed woman behind him. ‘Tasha’ was the name on her uniform jacket.

  ‘Something I think you need to know,’ said Tasha. ‘Our casualty is claiming that you broke his ankle by hitting him with a baton.’

  ‘He what?’ asked Greg stupidly, then as his brain caught up with his ears he flushed with rage. ‘Well, the dirty, ungrateful little…’ Luckily, words failed him at that point. ‘I should have left him to roast,’ he growled. ‘I didn’t even have a baton with me. Just a taser, which I didn’t use, as it happens. Wish I had!’

  ‘Doesn’t look like that sort of injury to me,’ agreed Tasha. ‘Looks like the sort of break you get when you trap your foot in a hole and fall over. But I’m not an expert. The doctors will obviously need a look. But I thought you should know.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Greg. ‘Which hospital are you taking him to?’

  ‘West Suffolk in Bury St Edmunds,’ she replied. ‘We’re being redirected there because of the disruption caused by the fire.’ Greg looked round him at the two uniformed officers in attendance.

  ‘You,’ he said, pointing. ‘I need this prisoner escorted. One of you travel in the ambulance and stay with him until relieved. The other drop me back at the farm then follow to the hospital.’

  They nodded, and, ‘Yes, sir,’ said the elder of the two. He came up to Greg while the younger constable followed Tasha into the back of the ambulance. ‘I heard what she said,’ he remarked, nodding at Tasha. ‘Forgive me asking, sir, but did you have your body cam on?’

  ‘I… What? I … yes, I did,’ said Greg with a rush of relief. ‘For a miracle! I put it on with the stab vest.’

  ‘Then I suggest you keep it safe and hand it in soonest,’ advised the senior constable. ‘I’ve been on the receiving end of this sort of complaint. It’s no fun.’

  ‘So’ve I,’ said Greg, recalling a certain incident during his time in the Met. ‘But it’s been a while. Thank you.’

  42

  7 August - Midday

  It was much later than predicted before the forensic team were permitted full access to the farmyard and its surroundings. Jill watched them begin their painstaking fingertip search, then decided to sign off with Ned and head for the office. She’d phoned through the details of the tow truck to Bill and was keen to check in with Greg. However, by the time she arrived at the incident room, he was already closeted with Margaret.

  ‘I suppose fire makes a change from water,’ was Margaret’s greeting, in reference to a couple of close shaves Greg had had with Norfolk’s premier element. ‘But what’s this about a complaint?’

  Greg sighed and picked up the very welcome mug of black coffee before making a response. ‘It’s not a complaint as yet, but it probably will be, the ungrateful little scrote. I wish I’d tasered him in the balls now,’ he said. ‘That’d have given him something to complain about! As it was, I probably saved his useless life. I wasn’t going to leave him to burn. I was determined to get him to court.’

  ‘Has it got legs?’ asked Margaret, referring to the complaint, not the scrote.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ said Greg round another slurp of coffee. ‘As luck would have it, I had my body camera on. I’ve already had a look at it and sent you a copy. It’s dark and there’s a lot of movement, but it clearly shows Waters falling before I catch up with him. It also shows me threatening him with a taser, which I didn’t have to use, then handcuffing him and hauling him to his feet.’

  ‘So what do you think happened? How did he break his ankle?’

  ‘He fell,’ said Greg succinctly. ‘He was running over a stubble field in the dark and he fell. It could as easily have been me. Lucky it wasn’t, as I doubt the nasty little toerag would have come back for me. The paramedic said it looked like the sort of break you get if you put your foot in a hole and then fall. I haven’t heard from Ned’s team yet as they’re busy with the farmyard and the truck, but I’m sure they’ll be taking a look.’

  ‘OK, we’ll see what the doctor has to say,’ said Margaret. ‘If she agrees with the paramedic then I doubt this will go anywhere. What about the evidence against Waters?’

  ‘Still coming in,’ replied Greg. ‘But we’ve got a probable witness placing him at the scene, walking away as the fire started. We’ll be doing a photo lineup later to see if he picks Waters out. We’ve got a tow truck belonging to his brother that’s covered with his fingerprints and stuffed full of what appear to be Molotov cocktails in the making.’

  ‘Anything tying him directly to the farmyard?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘That’s what we’re waiting for. I’ve also got the team revisiting ANPR and other footage to see if we can place that truck at any of the other arson sites.’

  ‘OK. That’s the arson case. What about the Mirren children?’

  ‘They’re safe in a foster placement, as you know. I take it you’re up to speed on the other developments there. Specifically, Ms Hamilton’s claims about murder and mayhem?’ When Margaret nodded he went on. ‘We’re using ground-penetrating radar to check for the body of her son, which Ms Hamilton claims she buried in the back garden after he was killed by her mother. The GPR team got held up yesterday, so they only headed over to Ormesby this morning. I’m waiting on a report from them.’

  ‘When is Ms Hamilton due in court?’

  ‘Monday, on the unlawful imprisonment charge. I was holding off on the murder charge while we investigate her story.’

  ‘OK. That’s good. Greg, get yourself home now. No—’ She held up her hand as he started to object. ‘I know there’s a lot to do, but you need to be fresh to do it, otherwise you’ll be making mistakes.’

  ‘The whole team’s tired,’ objected Greg. ‘I can’t just swan off and leave them to it.’

  ‘They didn’t all spend the night dragging an injured arsonist across a ploughed field with a forest fire chasing you,’ said Margaret. ‘You’re to go home now, and I don’t want you back until tomorrow morning. That’s an order. Jim Henning can take over for now, and if you take my advice, you’ll send Jill Hayes home as well. Then Jim and others in the team can take a break tomorrow. Rotate them on and off,’ she advised.

  Greg nodded his agreement. ‘A stubble field,’ he corrected. ‘OK. Will do. Thanks,’ he said. And took himself off to the incident room.

  He found Jill on the phone to Bill, and a yawning Steve scrutinising video footage from the farm security cameras.

  ‘OK, it’s been an interesting night and a good result so far,’ said Greg. ‘But we’ve got a long haul before we can be sure we’ve got convictions in the bag. Jill, go home until tomorrow. Steve, sorry, I need you to stay at work today but you take tomorrow off. Jenny too. Jill will give you your instructions for the rest of the day. I’m just going to hand over to Jim, and I’ll see you in the morning – those not on leave.’

  He headed for Jim’s cubbyhole en route to his car.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jim,’ he said. ‘Margaret’s ordered me home and she’s not listening to argument.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jim. ‘Quite right too. I’ll keep an eye on things. Anything in particular you want me to do?’

  ‘I think we can leave Ms Hamilton to stew until we have more data from Ormesby,’ said Greg. ‘In the meantime, I think the priority is putting together a detailed picture of what Nick Waters was up to last night: when, where and with what. I know I can leave that to you and Ned. If we could do a telephone handover in the morning, that would be great. And you have tomorrow off. I’ll see you on Sunday.’

  ***

  Over in Ormesby, the GPR team were not having a good day. On top of the traffic delays, they had struggled to get the kit up and working, and when it did deign to show some life, they had trouble with the calibration. Eventually they got started in the area of the back garden that Joanne Hamilton had indicated, and rapidly got a positive signal.

  ‘Things are looking up,’ muttered Brad the operator. He looked round at the two with spades and the accompanying camera man. ‘I suggest you dig here, but go careful. It’s not very far down. And I think a tent would be a good idea,’ he added, glancing round at neighbours peering through the hedge.

  A further delay ensued as a pale blue tent was erected over the site, and the constable on the gate began to be troubled by nosy parkers.

  ‘We’re just pursuing our enquiries,’ he maintained stolidly to everyone who asked, but in a quieter moment got on his radio to Control. ‘I think we need more feet on the ground,’ he recommended. ‘Interest is growing, and I guess the media will be here soon.’ He didn’t know it but at least one representative of the media had already been and gone. An Eastern Daily Press reporter lived in the village and had no objection to reporting something more exciting than planning disputes and village fetes.

  Brad hung around to see how accurate his prediction had been, then wandered off as the spades, followed by trowels and brushes, rapidly exposed a small skeletal shape wrapped in fabric. The mouldering remains of a book lay by its chest.

  Happy that he’d been right and knowing from experience that the next few hours would involve the boring, to him, slow processes of removal from the ground, Brad wandered off with his equipment, idly running it over the remainder of the garden to, as he said later, ‘check that was the lot’.

  In the side garden near the diesel tank that fuelled the central heating system, he paused and checked the readings. He checked the calibration. Twice. Then he went round to the blue tent and stuck his head in.

  ‘We need another tent,’ he announced.

  His colleagues looked up from where they were painstakingly brushing soil from the wrapped skeleton before them. ‘We’re just waiting for the doc,’ one of them replied, then took in what he’d said. ‘You mean?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Brad. ‘Found another.’

  43

  7 August 2020 – afternoon

  Jim hesitated with his thumb over Greg’s contact details for some time, then put his phone down.

  No. Whatever and whomever it is, the possible, or even probable, body has been in the ground for a long time. It won’t make a lot of difference if Greg is told in the morning, rather than woken from whatever rest he is getting this afternoon.

  He rang Ned and got a message saying that Ned too was now on leave until Monday, and giving an alternative number in case of emergency. Jim rang it and found himself talking to Ned’s number two, Yvonne Berry: a slender woman of around fifty whom Jim didn’t know very well, as she normally covered the lower profile cases. She didn’t sound too put out at finding herself in the hot seat.

  ‘Meet you there,’ she said crisply. ‘Be about forty-five minutes.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jim. ‘I’ll go straight there as soon as I’ve told the Chief Super and organised some extra help for crowd control. Once this gets out, we’re going to be number two on the news schedules.’

  ‘I take it you mean after the Covid death stats,’ she said.

  ‘Something like that,’ agreed Jim.

  He decided that this news justified a face-to-face with Margaret and poked his head round her door. She was packing her briefcase as he did so, and looked round, startled.

  ‘Hi, Jim,’ she said. ‘I was just off. Anything I need to know?’

  ‘’Fraid so,’ he said. He didn’t mince his words. ‘The GPR team have found a third body at the bungalow in Ormesby.’

  ‘God’s sake,’ exclaimed Margaret, sitting down with a thump. ‘Don’t tell me she’s a serial killer.’

  ‘Too soon to say,’ said Jim. ‘But unless Ormesby is the site of a lost medieval battleground or a plague pit, it seems possible.’

  ‘I hope to God they’ve finished looking,’ replied Margaret. ‘Heaven help us if they find any more!’

  ‘I’m on my way there to check on exactly what is going on,’ said Jim. ‘But I think we’ll need extra support for crowd control when this gets out. And if Forensics put up any more blue tents it’s going to look like the day after Glastonbury. That’s bound to attract attention.’

  ‘OK,’ said Margaret. ‘I’ll organise that for you.’ She picked her phone up. ‘Does Greg know?’

  ‘Not yet,’ replied Jim. ‘I was going to leave him in peace until the morning.’

  ‘Good call,’ said Margaret. ‘He’ll be mad as hell when he finds out, but he needs the break. If he gets bent out of shape about it, put him on to me.’

  ***

  By the time Jim reached ground zero in Ormesby, the third blue tent was up and the excavating team were at work therein. The pathologist had taken over in Tent 2, and a mortuary van was parked in the drive. Additional officers from Yarmouth had beaten Jim to it, and yards of tape were already in situ across the road, completely blocking it to through traffic. Indignant, but intrigued, residents were obliged to go the long way round to get to their own drives, and the resulting additional flow past the Spar shop in North Road was causing major traffic jams.

  Jim waved to a familiar face on the traffic barrier. ‘Sergeant Briscoe, good to see you again,’ he said out of his car window.

  The sergeant bent down to reply. ‘Likewise,’ he said. ‘Even if you are causing trouble in my patch again, sir.’

  ‘Sorry about that. How’s Constable Drake?’ said Jim cheerily, referring to the officer with an impressive turn of speed last seen chasing miscreants in Great Yarmouth.

  ‘Over there,’ said Sergeant Briscoe, pointing with one hand and raising the tape for Jim to drive under with the other. ‘Bugger! Here come the first of the vultures,’ he added, seeing a van marked ‘Look East’, pull up in the road behind him.

  ‘Carry on, Sergeant,’ said Jim. ‘And don’t be too rude to our media colleagues.’

  Once on the property, Jim decided his order of priorities had better be first the doc, second Ms Berry and then the over-active, over-achieving GPR team.

  The pathologist, Dr Paisley, was just emerging from Tent 2 as he arrived at its entrance, pulling her gloves off and loosening her plastic coveralls at the neck as she did so.

  ‘Phew,’ she said. ‘Next time you decide to uncover mass murder, can you try to do it in the winter? It’s hot as hell in there.’ She nodded over her shoulder. ‘I imagine you want to know whether that’s Ms Hamilton’s son, as she claimed. Well, I can’t confirm it definitively until we have a DNA analysis, but the remains are consistent with her claims. They are the bones of a young male, and they’ve probably been in the ground for around two years. There’s been some dental work on the teeth, so dental records are a possibility. The mortuary team will take him back now, and I’ll be off as well. The excavation in Tent 3 isn’t ready for me yet.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor,’ said Jim. ‘I’ll keep you posted on their progress.’ She nodded a thank you and farewell and headed for her car, ignoring the shouted questions from the end of the road. Jim went looking for Yvonne Berry.

  He found her managing operations in the bungalow, issuing crisp instructions and advising her team of four. She turned as Jim approached.

  ‘I’ve got two more in Tent 3 with the GPR team,’ she said. ‘But I wanted to consult you about something.’

  ‘The extent of our operations in here?’ Jim had been anticipating the question.

  ‘Yes. The radar hasn’t turned up anything else in the garden, but I think they should check in here and in the garage. It should at least pick up any dodgy-looking voids.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Jim, making a mental note he’d better warn Margaret in case there were budgetary implications.

  ‘Also,’ went on Yvonne, ‘I think we should carry out a Level 4 search.’

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Jim.

  ‘Levels 1–3 are our normal searches. You know, Level 1 – eyes only – followed by minimal disturbance at Level 2 – things we can find without moving much – then the more intrusive level, where we empty drawers, turn mattresses over, etc. We’d normally stop there, but with three bodies found on this property already, I’d like you to authorise what I’d call a Level 4, which is still more invasive, and might result in some damage to property – walls and floors and so on.’