‘And you could see her face, you said. So she was lying on her back?’

  ‘No. On her side – her right side but she was sort of slumped a bit. I reckon she’d been there a few days, I said it at the time. Like I told you, I was a keeper mostly in them days. You gets used to how things… You know, the process? And it were hot that year, like I said to you.’

  That seemed to be it. The young man turned and gave Jim a smile that was part sympathy, part gratitude – and he said, ‘If she was lying on her side, Mr Goodrum, were her legs straight or bent at the knee?’

  It wasn’t easy to hide your surprise at a question like that, but it was easy enough to answer – he only had to close his eyes to see it.

  ‘Bent right up. She were in the… What do they call it? The something position, like a baby.’

  ‘The foetal position?’

  ‘Tha’s it. Like a kid sleepin’. Sort of made it worse. If you get what I mean… She weren’t no age, see.’

  After that, they went back through Spring Covert to the car they’d parked on the other side of the wood. Jim got into the rear seat and they took him home. The girl got out as well as the young man, and she opened the car door for Jim – it’s the twisting that’s awkward when your hips are going. He said thank you to her, and then all three of them were standing at his garden gate. She said it was a pretty place to live, charming was the word, and Jim said it was all right, not as tidy as it used to be, that’s all. When he told them it wasn’t his but still part of the estate, she seemed surprised. He said, ‘They’re letting me stay on ’til I snuffs it – easier’n getting me out. And I still do odd jobs most days. June always said they’ll find me cold up in the woods with a saw or a shovel in me ’ands.’

  That was an innocent enough thing to say normally, but of course it struck them all as awkward after where they’d been and what they’d been talking about. After a second or two, the man said, ‘One more thing, Mr Goodrum. I meant to ask you this earlier. I’ve got a map on my phone which shows ancient earthworks in the area. Are there some close to where we’ve been this morning? It’s just something I’m personally interested in.’

  Jim snorted as if the question was a little ridiculous and said, ‘Close to where we were? I should say so – about fifty yard away there’s one o’ them mounds in the Covert. There’s lumps and bumps all over the estate, and I’ll bet your map don’t show ’em all. There’s been archologists over the years. They come and measure ’em sometimes. Never been no digging that I knows of. The old boss wouldn’t ’ave it. Then there’s the Drovers, that’s ancient history as well. The place is riddled with it…’

  The man said it was fascinating, and he looked as if he was serious. Then he reached into a pocket, took out a piece of card and handed it to Jim. He said, ‘Thank you very much for your time, Mr Goodrum. As I said earlier, we are looking into the matter again. Someone might be in touch with more questions, but this is all for now. You can always say you’ve spoken to us this morning – this is Detective Constable Butler and I’m Detective Sergeant Waters. We’re both from Kings Lake Central police station.’

  Chapter Three

  Waters studied the map on the satnav screen for a few moments before he pulled away from Jim Goodrum’s cottage. At first the track was mostly grass but after a short distance it became more solid. They reached the upside-down Y of the junction they had turned right at about an hour ago; from here the other road led up a slight hill towards Wissingham Hall. There was a curving avenue of old lime trees in blossom, and the house itself could be glimpsed through them as they headed away from it towards the public road.

  He heard the sniff before Serena said, ‘Very nice…’

  Nothing else was needed. Detective Constable Butler’s politics sometimes seemed a little at odds with the need to enforce the laws of the land, but as far as her sergeant was concerned, she had never let the fact interfere with the way she did her job. At the T junction he took the left turn, signposted to Stone Warren.

  Serena said, ‘You’ve seen more of the files on this one than me. I assume they had a close look at Mr Goodrum?’

  Waters was focusing on the road though there was no traffic at all – he was obviously looking for something in particular. As he drove, he said, ‘Yes, they did. He has his own entry on the list of possibilities but he never made it to being a person of interest.’

  ‘And what about this time? Will we be looking at him again?’

  Waters took a right-hand bend slowly, still with one eye on the screen as the map kept their vehicle in the centre and the world rolled by beneath it. He said, ‘If we get that far, yes. Everyone will be back on the list. A lot depends on an order for exhumation, and according to the DI that’s not a given. It’s quite a process.’

  Serena gave a short laugh as she said, ‘If it was down to the vicar of St Mary’s, it would be a pretty short process. He wasn’t happy!’

  Visiting the Reverend Gray of St Mary’s, Stone Warren, had been Detective Inspector Tom Greene’s idea; he thought it might help smooth the way towards getting the exhumation order quickly if the local vicar – and the man who had buried the girl almost twenty years ago – was on board. Greene had sent his most diplomatic officer, DS Chris Waters, but to no avail; Gregory Gray had said immediately that the young woman’s body should be left to rest in peace, and nothing they said had dissuaded him from that view.

  Serena said, ‘One of those old-fashioned Assume Nothing, Believe No One, Check Everything sort of detectives might wonder whether the vicar has a reason for keeping the body buried in his churchyard.’

  It was Waters’ turn to laugh – ‘If this does go live, we’ll be as short of leads as they were last time, probably shorter, but that’s a bit of a stretch! I think the Reverend Gray has more confidence in his faith than he does in modern forensic science, that’s all.’

  After the next tight bend, Waters could see what he’d been looking for – there was a passing place on the left-hand side of the road, and he pulled into it and stopped the car. A hedge of sorts separated the verge from the land beyond but it had gaps, and through them one could see two fields that sloped gradually up towards a wood at the top of the hill. The nearest had a crop of feed beans just coming into flower, and the next field was a strip of luminous chrome yellow across the landscape – oilseed rape in full bloom. Waters pressed buttons and the two front windows of the car wound down.

  Serena said, ‘That stuff gives me chronic hay fever.’

  Waters took out his phone and opened a map, enlarging it with finger and thumb until he had what he wanted – then he glanced out of the passenger window a couple of times and back at his phone screen, making sure before he said, ‘The wood you can see at the top is Spring Covert. We were standing quite close to this side of it, just a few yards from the edge of the field.’

  Serena stared at the map he was showing her. She said, ‘If you’re planning another visit from this direction, boss, for health and safety reasons I should stay in the vehicle. With the windows closed.’

  The “boss” was one of her occasional acknowledgements that Waters was her superior officer; she didn’t like to overdo this aspect of their relationship but these days would admit that although she had considered his promotion somewhat premature at the time, he had sort of proved himself on a couple of occasions since it took place.

  He said, as if she hadn’t spoken a word, ‘One question has to be, how did she get into the wood? Did she walk there before someone strangled her? If she was attacked somewhere else, someone carried her into the wood. From here? That would take a seriously strong individual or at least two people. And even then, it’s a long, long way.’

  Serena took a look out of the car. Jim Goodrum had said it was hundreds of yards and he was right. She said, still looking, ‘Someone might have driven through the estate at night and got closer than we did today.’

  Waters said, ‘Past Jim’s cottage? There was a Labrador in a run behind his place, and I’ll bet there always has been. If Jim didn’t hear a vehicle in the night, the dog would have done. And you’d need to know the place intimately to find your way up there – to know about the track we were on today.’

  She considered it before she said, ‘Maybe the perpetrator did.’

  Often he seemed to be ignoring what you said but he wasn’t, and hours, even days later, Waters would refer to an idea you’d put forward and forgotten about; he was back at the map on his phone, and then he opened the car door and got out. Serena’s face fell a little – she wasn’t joking about the hay fever.

  From outside the car, he said, ‘Can you see the boundary between the two fields? It’s not clearly visible from here but that’s the Drovers Way Jim Goodrum was talking about. Nobody knows how old it is. It runs back into the mists of time…’

  Serena sighed and climbed out of the car. When Waters looked at her, she was holding a tissue over the lower part of her face. He said, ‘Have you got a nosebleed?’

  ‘No! I told you earlier, it’s that bloody yellow stuff. As far as my nasal cavities are concerned, rape is too good a word for it.’

  For a moment or two Waters seemed vaguely taken aback by this outburst, and then he said, ‘It’s closer to Spring Covert than the track by Jim Goodrum’s or this road – could whoever brought her here have used it?’

  Serena stared across the fields towards the wood.

  ‘Well, probably, with the right sort of vehicle. I’m assuming it’s just a muddy track but maybe in the summer it’s driveable.’

  He nodded as if she had made a valid point but she wasn’t at all surprised when Waters said, ‘Just one problem with that idea – there’s a gate across the Drovers Way where it crosses this road, a short way back. Didn’t you notice it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A proper metal gate with locks on it. On the other hand, it doesn’t look twenty years old or anywhere near it. So maybe, twenty years ago, someone could have driven along there and got pretty close to Spring Covert.’

  Serena said in very measured tones, ‘Jim Goodrum would know the answer to that. We could go back and ask him…’

  A shake of the head from Waters – ‘No, sorry, we don’t have time for that now.’

  He could be annoying at times but Waters wasn’t quite the most infuriating detective sergeant she had ever worked with; that special honour was reserved for someone who provoked at an entirely different level.

  He said, ‘Somewhere in one of these two fields they found the remains of a tumulus. It’s on my app.’

  Serena did her best to look interested and said, ‘Really? I suppose that’s a different sort of cold case, though.’

  He said, ‘Jim was right – the entire area is full of ancient earthworks and tracks.’

  She said, ‘I suppose having a degree in History would be very handy if we were investigating those.’

  Waters had moved around the car and stepped up onto the verge, trying to gain another inch or two as he peered across the fields. He said, ‘There was a detective constable on the first investigation who raised it, more than once, but it was never developed as a line of investigation.’

  Serena was holding back the first sneeze as she said, ‘It? What was “it”?’

  Waters said, ‘A link between her death and this landscape. The possible significance of where she was found.’

  She couldn’t speak now, and so Serena just stared up at him in mute appeal. Waters finally turned, stepped down and said, with all the patience in the world, ‘It could have been a ritual killing.’

  From the corner of the table she liked to use as an alternative to the desk in her private office, Detective Chief Inspector Cara Freeman could see that Chris Waters and Serena Butler had returned – they were in conversation with her DI, Tom Greene. She was curious as to what they’d found out there in the sticks but this phone call was necessary – the county’s Coroner had agreed in principle to an exhumation and the required documentation had been sent over to his office yesterday afternoon, but now she needed something in return. Without the Coroner’s official say-so, they could not make the application to the Ministry of Justice for an order of exhumation. Whilst she could accept that it should not be easy to dig up long-buried bodies, or even newly-buried ones, the amount of bureaucracy involved in doing so was unbelievable.

  The other members of her squad who were present in the office were gathering around Tom’s desk – an unofficial briefing was probably underway. She knew that if she were to take a week’s leave with no notice, on her return she would hardly notice any difference; work would have proceeded efficiently and without fuss under Greene’s management. Some DCIs might have found this threatening but Freeman was comfortable with it – Greene had been her first appointment to the new murder squad she formed almost a year ago. In one sense, the squad had then been built around the two of them; if an officer could meet with her DI’s approval whilst fitting in with her own sometimes unconventional approaches to investigation and people management, that officer was probably worth a go.

  The voice on the other end of the line was explaining another reason for the delay – the Coroner was sitting today. Freeman considered saying it – well, tell him to get off his backside and…– but she had learned those lessons on the way up. It only meant that somewhere he was presiding over an investigation into another death, and was not available to sign forms. Another death. It’s a little-known fact that almost seven hundred people in the United Kingdom die every day – a couple of good-sized plane-loads. Most do not require the services of their local Coroner, and even fewer, it seems, require the attention of their local murder squad. In principle she recognised that this is a good thing, but you would have thought one or two more would have done so since the squad was formed. Discussing the shortage of clients one day, Tom had suggested it might be because the potential perpetrators had heard who would be leading any investigations and, as a result, they had decided not to kill anyone after all. It was a back-handed sort of compliment.

  Her contact had gone away to see if the Coroner might be able to sign the papers electronically later in the day. You see, the only reason they’d got involved in cold cases in the first place was the lack of violent or unexpected deaths in North Norfolk. A few weeks ago, in her regular meeting with Commander Harry Alexander, two things had been pointed out: one, that the first anniversary of the squad’s formation was approaching, and therefore its first annual review would soon take place, and two, that if the squad had no active investigation underway, there were some unsolved ones to consider. Harry’s meaning had been plain enough – busy would be a good look when the top brass are debating whether this new squad should continue in its present form. On the morning following that meeting, Greene’s inbox began to fill up with attachments relating to cold cases. A couple of them, John Murray had said, looked not so much cold as more like things you find at the bottom of your freezer after a very long time – barely recognisable, a bit iffy to say the least.

  The voice was back. Freeman listened and then said, ‘He will? That’s excellent. Please pass on my thanks – DCI Cara Freeman. Thank you for your help, too.’

  She opened her laptop. There was a red light blinking in the top right corner, telling her it was about to expire through a lack of charge. No investigation would be needed in this case – the lead kept falling out. With her left hand she held it in place until the lightning symbol appeared, and with her right she managed to open the calendar. There was another reason they were in a hurry in this particular cold case. The woman’s body had been discovered on the 25th of June, and the twentieth anniversary of that was just over three weeks away. When you intend to make an appeal to the public, anniversaries are the ideal time – there is plenty of anecdotal evidence supporting that idea. Funny how decades and even half-decades have that added significance – last year had been the nineteenth anniversary and that wouldn’t have mattered at all.

  Someone would be facing the cameras and appearing on the local news. Detective Chief Superintendent Allen was the obvious choice; he complained about it every time even though everyone knew he loved the attention. But there was a problem. The relationship between herself and Allen was a difficult one. He was her superior officer – and the only one at Kings Lake Central – and because Alison Reeve had never been replaced since she joined The Samaritans, the other detectives at the station, led by DI Simon Terek, were still technically under her command. Freeman had to pause for just a moment and reflect – Alison really did join The Samaritans. Obviously a close encounter with lymphoma is going to make you ask yourself some questions but how had that become the answer to any of them? Someone had said there was also a man involved. Every cloud, then… But anyway, this resulted in Terek reporting to her on non-squad cases, for which Allen held final responsibility. Murder squad cases, however, were more problematical – they were often county-wide and Commander Alexander had never relinquished control of them. The fact that Cara was one of his own protégés added another degree of complication to it all. She could take the press briefing herself but thought she always came over as small and cross – so the camera does lie sometimes because she wasn’t always cross. And the alternative, she told herself as she watched Greene and tried to work out what he was saying, was to come over as big and happy…

  She gave up trying to work it out and went over to Greene’s desk. He was saying, ‘… get yourselves familiar with the basic numbers involved. They haven’t changed much over time, and they’ll be no different to those we were looking at when Roxanne Prescott was still a missing person. What’s unusual here, obviously, is that we’ve never discovered who she was. The identity of this young woman remains entirely unknown.’

  Greene pointed to a thick, red folder on his desk and continued, ‘By the time the original investigation began to wind down, they had followed up three hundred and four reports of missing women from across the country and a number from Europe. As far as I can tell from this file, a decent job was done of eliminating those reported missing from being the woman in the woods – whoever gets to study the press releases and media stories will come across that phrase.