‘No reason they’d be looking in the first place,’ Thorne said. ‘People assumed she’d drowned, that she’d probably killed herself. So, beyond a cursory check, no reason to be looking for a body at all.’

They had been inching closer to the cave entrance as they’d talked. Now the three of them stood at the opening, peering into the blackness. Though the sky had darkened somewhat, there was still plenty of light, but little of it seemed able to reach inside. Thorne took out his mobile and turned on the Flashlight app. Holland did the same.

Thorne looked at Howell. ‘You OK?’

‘Not great with confined spaces, tell you the truth.’ She rubbed the back of a hand across her forehead, adjusted her cap. ‘Bit of a bugger bearing in mind what I do for a living.’

‘Yeah, must be,’ Holland said.

‘I tend to pass on the cellar jobs,’ she said. She shook her head. ‘Costing me a small fortune, because so many people hide bodies in cellars.’

‘Do you want to wait here?’ Thorne asked.

‘No, I’ll be fine.’ She kicked a small rock out of the way. ‘If she’s in there, it’ll be my job to go in and bring her out, won’t it? So no point putting it off.’

Holland said, ‘I’m a bit of a girl when it comes to mice. Not mad keen on spiders come to that.’

‘I’m fine with creepy-crawlies,’ Howell said. ‘God, I’d really be in trouble if I wasn’t.’

Thorne considered telling Howell about his own issues with heights and water, but thought better of it with Holland listening. Holland was someone he trusted, broadly, but that wouldn’t count for much when tongues got loose after a beer or two. These things could get around an incident room faster than pubic lice in a brothel.

He said, ‘Everybody’s got something, haven’t they?’

Thorne led the way, with Howell sticking close behind him. Though water had gathered in small pools just outside the entrance, the cave was largely dry inside. The floor sloped upwards slightly and they crouched instinctively as they moved further away from the daylight, Thorne shining his light on to a floor of compacted sand and small rocks while Holland checked the walls in case there were any smaller hollows or fissures running off to the side. It went back no more than twenty feet before narrowing and turning sharply to the left, but it quickly became clear that the cave contained nothing beyond a small colony of crabs, dried seaweed and cracked shells.

Thorne turned around and pushed past Holland towards the entrance.

‘Next one?’

‘Lead on,’ Howell said.

Fifteen minutes later, they emerged disappointed from the third cave within fifty feet of the spot where they had reached the bottom of the drop. Holland pointed ahead to where the shoreline curved out of sight. ‘Might be some more round there,’ he said.

Thorne shook his head. ‘I can’t see him taking her that far.’ He kicked out at some weed and swore a lot less poetically than Howell. ‘I was sure she’d be in one of them.’

Howell sat down on a large rock and reached for her cigarettes. ‘Do you mind? I just need a quick one.’

‘Help yourself,’ Thorne said.

‘Actually it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. I thought there’d be stuff… dripping on us.’

Thorne watched her, saw the flame from her Zippo light up a sheen of sweat on her face and neck.

‘It’s probably a good job,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t have been very easy carting all our stuff down here, would it? The lights, the generator, what have you.’

‘At least your CSI won’t be complaining,’ Holland said.

‘It’ll make a change.’ Howell took a drag. ‘Andy Barber’s a moaning sod at the best of times. He wasn’t my first choice for this, tell you the truth. He can be a bit lazy sometimes…’ She froze, the cigarette halfway to her mouth.

Thorne looked. ‘What?’

‘Jesus, you OK?’ Holland asked.

Howell looked up at Thorne, panic-stricken and paler suddenly than she had been going into that first cave. ‘He was supposed to check,’ she said. ‘I asked him to check while I was taking the remains away. It’s routine procedure, for pity’s sake.’

‘Check what?’ Thorne asked. ‘Bethan?’

Howell stood up. The wind blew the cigarette smoke into her face and she narrowed her eyes against it. ‘You were right.’ She glanced up, towards the edge of the land above their heads and the fields beyond. ‘What you said before, when we were up there.’ She looked at Thorne. ‘He didn’t dig another grave.’

FORTY

He’d thought they were burglars.

Yes, it was a stupid time to be doing it, not even halfway through the morning, for heaven’s sake, and you’d think your average self-respecting burglar might worry about there being someone in the house. No, he hadn’t heard a window breaking or anything like that, but they could just as easily have walked straight in through the back door. Nobody bothered locking all their doors and windows, certainly not during the bloody day when they were in the house. There wasn’t too much crime round there beyond a spot of perfunctory vandalism and a few kids doing a bit of blow every now and again and he had bugger all worth nicking anyway.

Yes, they had known what his name was.

All the same, robbery had seemed like a reasonable assumption. His best guess. After all, what else could they possibly have been doing there?

The two of them.

Standing in his kitchen in broad daylight, dark hair, hands in pockets of dark coats. A glimpse of pale faces, tight and fierce. He pictured a pair of perching ravens or rooks, blinked the image away before he started to shout and moved down the hall towards them.

‘The hell are you? What do you want…?’

He’d been doing some paperwork in the living room. Sitting at their knackered old computer, getting stuff together for the tax return. Putting numbers into columns had been doing his head in and he wasn’t really concentrating anyway; half listening to something on the radio, which he supposed was why he hadn’t heard the back door open and close. He’d been almost done. He’d been thinking about nipping to the pub for his lunch, wondering what to do with a few free hours in the afternoon, when there was a second or two of silence on the radio and he heard someone saying his name.

He had shouted, convinced he had been hearing things, got no response.

So, he’d stepped out into the hall just to make sure and that was when he’d seen them.

‘The hell are you? What do you want…?’

His voice sounded a bit higher than normal, and the tremor that had started in his belly when he’d heard his name being called had spread to his arms and legs. The distance between himself and the intruders was swallowed up in seconds and he raised his hands, balling his fists when he realised that they were moving every bit as quickly as he was. They were rushing towards him, grimacing or grinning, it was hard to tell which.

Hands coming out of pockets, too fast for him to see what was in them.

He grabbed at the bigger one, the one who was on him first; sensed straight away that he was stronger than his assailant and swung him round into the wall, sending pictures crashing. He swore and grunted as they struggled. He moaned and threatened, then he felt something pressed to his neck. He smelled burning and the snap-and-fizz blew the words from him, sucked the strength away in a second and then it was only the carpet and the broken glass rushing up to meet him.

If he lost consciousness, it was for no more than a few seconds and he was wide awake as they lifted him. Carried him down the hall and then up. The agony that screamed in every muscle was way beyond anything he might have felt as his head cracked against the treads or when they dropped him halfway up the stairs.

‘Careful,’ one said.

‘Does it matter?’

‘Don’t make me laugh.’