‘Do you know any other people who come here?’ Becky asked, trying to move his mind away from the body.

‘Not so much to this hide. It’s a bit off the beaten track. Most of the hides are padlocked overnight, but not this one. I suppose that’s how she got in. But how do you think she got here? The place has been cut off for days. Do you think she’s been in there a while?’

Becky shook her head. ‘It’s hard to say. When it’s this cold—’ She had been about to say that the body didn’t seem to have decomposed much, but thought better of it. ‘I don’t suppose you have the names of other people who come here regularly, do you?’

‘No, I only know them to nod to. There are some online forums, though. People often chat on there about what they’ve seen.’

Becky noted down the web addresses Mr Denshaw gave her and pushed herself up from the log. He looked up at her.

‘She wasn’t wearing any shoes. Did you notice that? Of course you did. Sorry. But what do you think happened to her shoes?’

Becky shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, but at the moment we don’t have any answers. We’re going to need to take a formal statement from you, and I’ll get someone to arrange that. I’ll organise a lift home for you as well.’

Thanking Mr Denshaw for his help, Becky shook his hand and walked over to Tom, who was talking quietly to Jumbo by the entrance to the hide.

‘So what’s up with our victim, then?’ she asked. ‘I can see from your faces that you think she is a victim and not just some young woman who wandered in and died.’

Tom shook his head. ‘Jumbo’s not entirely happy with the overall picture, and I agree with him. She doesn’t look like a vagrant who decided to shelter overnight in the hide. If that were the case, we might assume she died of hypothermia. But she’s too clean for someone who sleeps rough, so how did she get here? She isn’t wearing a coat, and it’s been too bloody cold to be out without one. Her feet are a bit grubby, but if she had walked here after the snow started she would almost certainly have frostbite. So that suggests she drove here. And yet there’s no abandoned car in the car park.’

‘Or she walked through the snow and threw her shoes in the water,’ Becky said.

Jumbo nodded. ‘Possible, although quite why she would do that I can’t imagine.’

‘She has no identification on her,’ Tom continued, ‘and there’s no sign of what might have killed her. The most obvious possibility is an overdose, but there’s no evidence in the hide that she took anything – no debris – pill bottle, blister pack, water, needles.’