Waters smiled as this went back and forth, but he was watching Tom Greene. The detective inspector was the most methodical and possibly the hardest-working person he had ever encountered, but he also understood how to manage people. The banter was something he was allowing because this was a team of individuals, of characters who could sometimes clash – better to let that happen openly and in playful ways now and then. There was still plenty to learn from DI Greene.

  At the right moment he brought them back to the business in hand – Freeman was still on the same phone call. Waters had the impression she was talking to a fellow officer. Greene said, ‘As you are aware, several lines of forensics are underway in this one and that’s going to involve waiting. We don’t know what will come back first, so be prepared to drop whatever it is you’re working on and to head off in another direction. In the meantime, we’ll be looking at the following: first – did any of the missing persons’ work twenty years ago find anything that might be worth considering again? If there were any might-be’s or could-have-been’s, we need to identify them and eliminate them. Second, and this is a new line, did anyone from the local area disappear at the time? Temporarily or permanently? If so, maybe that was our perpetrator, or maybe there was another victim never found or never associated with the first body. Maybe any such disappearance was a coincidence, but we should eliminate that as well. Third, the DCI wants us to take a closer look at what was happening on the Wissingham estate at the time. You all know by now there was some sort of pop festival – there had been for several years prior to the one in question. The SIO on the second inquiry went further into this than the first one but still didn’t get very far, or so it seems. I believe that’s who the boss is on the phone with as I speak.’

  Greene looked over at Freeman, who had been following the briefing as well as conversing with someone; she nodded and held up two fingers to indicate how many more minutes she expected to be. Greene said to the rest of them, ‘Looking back now, it seems obvious the young woman you’ve christened Rose was at that festival but nothing was ever found to prove it. If she went there alone and if she didn’t make any new friends, I suppose that could explain it. But we need to track down whoever organised the festival and speak to them. We need to find people who were there and see if we can jog some twenty-year-old memories. None of this will be easy.’

  Freeman had finished the call and was writing onto a notepad – there was a pause while they waited for her. There was even more to learn from her than from her second-in-command but Waters was not entirely sure yet what it was. Authority is an abstract noun, an invisible thing, but somehow we know when we are in its presence. He had tried to analyse it a number of times, tried to put together the people who had it and see if he could identify the common factors. The results of doing so were not clear-cut at all. Freeman had authority, and so did Tom Greene but for different reasons – Greene’s mastery of detail and procedure meant that you soon learned to do exactly as he said or look stupid, and that’s having authority, when people do exactly as you say. Freeman was different – he’d heard it said she had been lucky in her cases, that her success rate was down to that, but he disagreed. She had a relentless tenacity, of the sort that – so he had read somewhere – makes the rabbit, even the white ones presumably, freeze when the stoat is in pursuit: they become too terrified to run away. There was undoubtedly something intimidating about her, even when she liked you. Smith had authority. That seemed to go without saying but it was different again to Freeman’s. He was funny, unpredictable and inclined to get into trouble with the senior management, but Smith also made you believe this job mattered, that making the selfish people pay was a good thing, morally the right thing to be doing with your life. Once a team believed that, there could be an overwhelming sense of purpose. Alison Reeve – yes, in a quiet and decent way. Even Detective Sergeant John Wilson had authority, if only because you knew he would be having a word out in the yard where there were no witnesses if you didn’t do as you were effing well told… Detective Chief Superintendent Allen? No. Assistant Chief Constable Devine? No. So it isn’t about the rank you have achieved, not about stripes or stars.

  Freeman was talking before she reached the table. ‘That was former Detective Inspector Luke Hallam. I left a message over the weekend and he just got back to me. He was SIO on the second investigation which took place a year after the body was found. One thing I didn’t know until just now was that he had suggested exhuming the body…’

  There were some surprised looks exchanged at that piece of news.

  Freeman continued, ‘Yes. I told him he’d been lucky it was turned down. I said it’s a nightmare and I’m never doing another one.’

  Greene said, ‘Did he say why it was refused, ma’am?’

  ‘Just insufficient grounds. Who knows? Anyway, Hallam seems all right. Some SIOs are resentful when you ask them about their failures but he’s willing to help. For what it’s worth, I think he did a pretty decent job, considering they had nothing new to go on.’

  Denise Sterling had a pencil raised, and Freeman nodded her in. Sterling said, ‘They held a public appeal. Did that produce anything at all?’

  Freeman said, ‘No. It was only local TV and radio but the lack of response made Hallam think Rose wasn’t from anywhere nearby. The festival on the estate was the obvious line to follow and he did chase it up. But the people who attended it had all gone days before the body was discovered. Finding any of them more than a year later was never going to be easy. And we’re attempting it twenty years later.’

  There was a pause while that sank in, though no one here, Waters thought, would have underestimated the challenges of an investigation like this one. Serena was making a pattern of pencil dots on the pad in front of her, frowning as she did so – she was going to ask a question or make a point soon.

  Freeman continued, ‘Hallam had a couple of suggestions for us, one of which is this. When we make the appeal, we go down the same line as him – we ask for information that might be related to the unexplained death of a young woman on the Wissingham estate. Tom, had you spotted that? I didn’t.’

  Greene said, ‘It’s in an email I sent to you this morning, ma’am. I noticed it over the weekend.’

  She held up one wrist and smacked it with the fingers of her other hand. Denise said, ‘Unexplained death? What’s unexplained about being strangled with a piece of cord that someone tied a noose in?’

  Freeman glanced at Greene again before she answered – ‘OK. We know someone else was present, the other injuries tell us that. But those other injuries were not the cause of death. We also know that people put cords and things around each other’s necks for reasons other than intending to kill them. I’m hoping at this point I don’t need to go into detail this early on a Monday morning… Good. Hallam’s point was and still is this. The first investigation immediately called it murder. That’s how they went public with it. Anyone with a suspicion about a friend or a family member then has a difficult choice to make because we all know murder’s as serious as it gets. Would such a person have felt more inclined to speak up if it hadn’t been labelled a murder from the off? It’s possible. Luke Hallam isn’t the first officer to suggest a softly, softly approach when you appeal for information on serious crimes. I think he’s right, so we’re going with an unexplained death. Let’s face it. If we can’t get people in front of us to talk to, it’s probably going to remain unexplained.’

  It was impossible to argue with her logic on this one. Greene made a note of it and Serena said, ‘Ma’am? Thinking about why someone might have a rope put around their necks other than to do them in…’

  There was an ‘Hello, here we go!’ from Clive Betts, for which he received a short-arm punch from Denise Sterling – when it came to Betts, she was not averse to following the John Wilson methods of man-management. Serena nodded her appreciation of the intervention and said, ‘If it was kinky sex, forensics ought to have found something, but they didn’t, did they? We know she’d had intercourse but there was no evidence of anything out of the ordinary. When we were riding around the Wissingham estate, Chris, Sergeant Waters that is, mentioned something about rituals. Ritual killing?’

  Freeman looked in his direction and Waters said, ‘That gets a mention in the first investigation, ma’am, but I haven’t followed it up. It was never an active line of inquiry, as far as I can see.’

  The DCI checked with Greene, who nodded and said, ‘A detective constable put it forward as a possibility. As Chris says, it never grew legs.’

  Freeman said, ‘Yes, I saw that as well. Do we have a name for this detective constable?’

  Greene said, ‘Kelly, ma’am, if my memory serves me correctly.’

  ‘And do we know where this DC Kelly is now? Does the name ring any bells?’

  She looked about but the answer was no. She spent a few seconds frowning, her jaw working slightly as she nibbled the inside of her cheek unconsciously – this was not a moment to say any more.

  ‘OK. Was he just speculating or did he base that on something he’d seen or heard? Let’s see if we can locate him. At this rate we could have a reunion as well as a re-investigation. He’s probably on the Costa del Sol.’

  Clive offered to go in person if that was needed, and was informed by another team member that you have to do some actual work before you get a holiday.

  Freeman had decided the briefing was over. She said, ‘Tom has warned you about the wait for forensics. We haven’t worked with these particular people from the university before but if they run true to form it will be weeks, if not months. In the meantime let’s go over what we can and make sure we get the maximum out of the appeal. I’m getting three calls a day from the leading man asking to see a script. Tom will hand out this morning’s jobs. Let’s get to it – it’s inevitable now that a proper live one, by which I mean a dead one, will shortly turn up.’

  Waters’ team was given the task of looking into the Wissingham estate and what was taking place there twenty years ago almost to the week. It was Serena who pointed out that although they had met Jim Goodrum and walked through Spring Covert, he had never mentioned anything about a pop festival taking place days before he discovered the girl’s body. Was that a little odd?

  The three of them talked it through and concluded that the thing to do was to call Jim and ask him – if he didn’t know much about it himself, he might be able to give them the names of others who should. They also needed more information about whoever owned the estate at that time, so this conversation might progress two lines of inquiry simultaneously. Waters made the call on the landline, enabling John Murray and Serena to listen in on earpieces.

  Didn’t have a lot to do with it, thank the Lord, said Jim. Just a load of druggies dressed up in daft clothes. Sometimes he’d find them wandering about in the woods where they weren’t supposed to be. One time a bearded bloke in a dress started giving him grief about rearing pheasants so they could be shot. Asked him if he didn’t realise that all life was sacred…‘I told him,’ said Jim, ‘that I didn’t know about that. What I did know was that if ’e interfered with my rearing pens like ’e said he was going to, ’e was goin’ to get a full load of number six shot up ’is sacred arse. I expect ’e got the message. No one touched them birds, anyway.’

  Looking up, Waters could see that Murray was delighted with their new acquaintance, much as Smith himself would have been. Serena had written down a question which she passed to Waters – he nodded and asked it: ‘Jim, was there anyone working on the estate at the time who had more contact with the people at the festival?’

  Yes, there was. George Saberton was the head gardener, and they gave him plenty of grief. ‘When I says head gardener, it were only ’im and a couple of part-time lads from the village. The place were on the slide by then… But they used to pitch tents and do Lord knows what wherever they felt like it, especially in that last year. Nearly sent old George round the bend. ’E had some run-ins with ’em.’

  As far as he knew, George Saberton was still alive – at least, Jim had heard nothing to the contrary. He moved into Swaffham when he retired but that must be a good ten years ago.

  Waters asked next for any more information Jim could give them about the family who owned Wissingham during those years. Inevitably, they were then treated to a short history of the estate, beginning with Jim’s arrival there as a mere stripling some sixty years ago. The Cranwiches owned it then and always had done as far as he was concerned. They were an old family who knew what was what, and Wissingham had been run properly in those days – Jim Goodrum obviously thought it had never been run ‘properly’ since they had to sell it to pay death duties. It had changed hands more than once after that but at the time he found that young woman’s body, the Leadsoms had owned it for a few years. ‘London money,’ said Jim, ‘Bankers’, delivered in the same tones as he might have said ‘Pirates’ or ‘Bank robbers’.

  Murray was making the notes, and so Waters pressed on – who was the head of the Leadsom family? ‘The ’ead of it?,’ Jim said, ‘well, I don’t rightly know. But it were my namesake who had the money – James Leadsom. He was goin’ to do this and that, big plans. ’E moved his family down, wife and a couple of small kids but it didn’t last more’n a year or two before they was headin’ back to London most of the time. You ’ave to be born to it, see?’

  Waters said, ‘But this was who owned the estate the year you discovered the body, Jim?’

  ‘Yes, tha’s right. In fact, it were later that same year they put it up for sale.’

  Waters knew even before he looked up that John Murray would have a particular expression on his face now, but he looked up and acknowledged it anyway. To Jim he said, ‘I’m asking a lot now but can you remember whether the Leadsoms were staying at the hall that summer, Jim? Were they around during the pop festival?’

  Jim said, ‘Young man – I can’t rightly say. To be honest, I ’ad as little to do with ’em as I could. People comin’ and goin’ at all hours, parties and pop festivals? Not my scene, as they say. Clive Brand, ’e could’ve told you more about that but e’s dead… Now George Saberton, I know ’e ’ad run-ins about the damage to the lawns and gardens, so ’e might know. You need to speak to George.’

  Serena had found three Sabertons listed in the phone directory for the area, all with Swaffham addresses. These days this doesn’t mean as much as it used to, for several reasons – more people opt for ex-directory, and more and more people have given up landlines altogether, using only mobile phones. Others restrict the numbers that are allowed to call, barring everyone but family members and known businesses. Still, you have to begin somewhere.

  The first person to answer put the phone down three times – only on the fourth attempt was Serena able to convince the woman that she was not a nuisance caller. After that, the woman would not stop speaking – she had only become a Saberton by marriage and she was in the process of undoing that awful mistake but no, her soon-to-be ex-husband had never mentioned anyone called George. But if this George was a criminal, well, she wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were related because her husband…

  The second call was answered by a boy. On a Monday he ought to have been at school by the sound of him but Serena decided not to go there. The boy thought one of his grandads was named George but he wasn’t completely sure of it. He hadn’t seen him for ages. Why not, asked Serena, and the boy told her his mum hated his grandad and they never spoke. Serena said, ‘Is your mum there?’ and the boy said, ‘No. She’s at work.’ Treading carefully, she established that even though the boy’s mum hated this possible George, he was in fact her father-in-law. She said, ‘Does your grandad live in Swaffham?’ The boy thought he still did, and then he said again that he hadn’t seen him in ages.

  The sadness of it all took her unawares. Two calls, two little heaps of family wreckage. What were the odds? She had a lump in her throat thinking about that boy but everyone else was busy, and no one had noticed. This job can get you down sometimes.

  The third call was answered by a woman. She sounded harassed, on her way to somewhere and almost certainly driving. Serena quickly established that this person’s father’s name was George, and yes, he used to work on the Wissingham estate. She gave Waters a thumbs up and said to the woman, ‘I’d like to speak to him, if that’s possible. He’s not in any bother. It would just be as a potential witness in a case. We-’

  ‘Sorry, love, I’m way behind this morning. I got five lunches to do in an hour now. You what?’

  Serena explained again – the woman was a carer of some sort, looking after the lost, lonely and forgotten, on the minimum wage. There was the sound of her parking a car before she said, ‘Far as I’m concerned you can talk to him, course you can. He’d probably enjoy it. He likes a natter. But I expect you’d have to make an appointment. I can give you the number of the care home…’

  Serena Butler closed her eyes for a moment – when she opened them, both Waters and Murray were watching her, and waiting. She took the name and number, thanking the woman, apologising for delaying her, and then, as an afterthought, she said, ‘Can I just ask? Does George have a grandson living in Swaffham?’

  ‘He does, love. How d’you know that?’

  She explained about one of the earlier calls she’d made, and the woman said, ‘That’s Danny, my brother’s kid. After they split up there was a row about the maintenance. She turned out to be a right selfish cow.’ A pause and then, ‘And Danny’s at home? He should be in school. I’m going to have to call Kevin now and tell him the police know Danny’s not in school…’