"The case was never closed though, Father," said Robbins. "This is important."

"This is unheard of! You'll burn for it," Lilley warned them. "All of you. 'Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest; this shall be the portion of their cup.' Psalm One Verse Six."

Beth had heard the commotion but was crouching by the gravestone itself, reading the inscription there.

MATTHEW KEVIN DALEY

Devoted son, husband, and father.

Taken from us early.

Sleep well, Angel.

There were a couple of stems from long dead flowers that had been left there possibly weeks or even months ago. When Robbins returned from his encounter with Lilley, chewing more of his tablets, he gave the order for the exhumation to begin. Beth stepped back to allow the police to start digging. It took them the best part of two hours to reach the coffin, though even then it was only because of their numbers.

She watched as the men in white suits fed straps under the coffin, signaling for it to be lifted out slowly and carefully. Like a huge wooden baby, it was cradled back down again to the earth.

"Are you sure about this, about being here?" said Robbins, now at the side of her. "It's not going to be pleasant."

"Steve, I'm a Doctor for Christ's sake. And I'm a big girl."

Robbins gave the order for the coffin to be opened, which the men did, again with the utmost professionalism, care, and respect. Beth and Robbins drew closer as the final nail was removed and the lid heaved off.

~

Irene Daley lay in bed, unable to move.

She knew what they were doing that morning. Father Lilley had broken the news to her as gently as he could. They'd obtained an order to exhume Matthew, earthly laws obviously carrying more weight than religious ones. She'd run the gamut of emotions then: surprise, fear, anger, resentment. But hadn't there been something else at the back of her mind, a little voice telling her that at least they'd know for sure when it was done? At least she'd be able to get the picture of that person out of her head, the man who'd sat in Matthew's chair, who'd looked around his old bedroom and found the forgotten toy car in the wardrobe. The man who'd told her that his father----no, Matthew's father----would have believed him.

Irene's eyes were dry that morning. There were no more tears left. In the past two days she'd cried so much she thought her eyeballs would simply float out of her head. But now, on the morning they were digging up her son's coffin, and opening it, she found she couldn't cry at all. She felt numb; she might as well have been in that coffin herself.

Yet as the hands on the clock next to her bed reached midday, Irene did feel something. At that precise moment she knew the lid was being taken off... and she knew what they would find inside.

She knew more positively than she had ever known anything in her life.

That was when she started crying again.

~

"So what happens now?"

"I honestly wish I knew," Robbins, still clearly stunned, told Beth.

"We need to talk to him again."

"We?"

"We," she repeated.

Robbins rubbed the back of his neck. "Heavens knows what I'm going to tell my bosses. This is growing way beyond a simple cold case now."

"I think it was before." She tentatively placed a hand on his shoulder. "You did the right thing, Steve."

"I doubt the priest back there sees it that way. Did you know we're all going to burn in Hell for this, Beth?"

"Been there, bought the t-shirt."

"None of this makes any sense."

"No it doesn't."

They began walking away from the grave again, back towards the church. Robbins marched past Valentine and Lilley without meeting their gaze. Neither Robbins nor Beth spoke again until they reached the police cars parked on the road. Then one of the women police officers there----Adams, Beth had heard him call her----took Robbins to one side. Beth shifted her weight from one foot to the other and waited as the WPC whispered something to him.

"What?" she heard Robbins say, raising his voice. "He can't be... Well how did...?" Robbins listened some more, then shook his head violently.

Beth rushed over, but waited until Robbins had dismissed the junior officer before asking what had happened.

"He's gone," the detective told her bluntly.

"What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean, Beth, he's fucking gone!"

She recoiled as if slapped.

"'I'm sorry," he said, but his voice was still hard.

"I don't understand... how can he just be gone?"

"One of the duty officers found Wilson in there, sitting in the corner of the cell. They can't get much sense out of him, he's talking nonsense."

"Didn't anyone see anything?"

"Apparently not. And there's nothing on the bloody CCTV cameras either." Robbins broke away from her and started towards his car.

"Wait a minute, where are you going?"

"Where do you think? Back to the station, I'm going to try and work out where our boy is... before anything else happens."

Chapter Seven

Jason loved dinner hour.

All morning long he'd been stuck in a fusty classroom working first on math problems, then looking at a book where the principal character traveled back in time to visit some of the most famous historical events, like the Roman era and the middle ages when knights battled it out with big swords. Jason didn't want to readabout such things. He wanted to be in the sunshine, acting them out, just like he would be in the holidays.

So, after a dinner of what was supposed to be some sort of stew, followed by a dessert that was part sponge, part custard, and part something else he hadn't been able to distinguish, Jason had raced out onto the playground attached to the small school, swinging his imaginary sword and chopping away at an imaginary black knight. A surge of boys and girls came behind him, breaking off into smaller fragments: some going into corners to trade cards from the latest Japanese cartoon series; some kicking around a small tennis ball on the floor; some playing chase; others simply racing around and around, screaming at the top of their voices, as if trying to release all the energy that had been building for the last few hours.

Jason had now dispatched his evil opponent and was looking for any dragons to tackle----although, as his teacher Miss Bellamy had tried to drive home to them all that morning, dragons didn't strictly exist during that era. Didn't exist at all, in actual fact.

"What about St. George?" asked one little girl near the front, Mary Hodgkins.

"Ah, well, the tale of St. George and the dragon is what we call a fable, children. Like Sleeping Beauty. In this case the dragon just represents a form of evil."

"Did they have talking lions in the middle ages, Miss?" asked Leon Keogh.

She'd sighed wearily. "No Leon, it wasn't Narnia. This was real."

But Jason, like Leon, wasn't too fond of the real. Real was boring, and dragons breathed fire and had scales and were, when all was said and done, pretty damned cool. In his imagination, he found the dragon he'd been looking for: a bright red one that flapped its wings on approach and was guarding a cave full of treasure. He ran at the beast, swinging his sword left and right, dodging the fire that came his way. And running straight into the path of one of the school helpers, Mrs. Shaw, a woman who could, in her own way, also lay claim to the title of dragon.