No matter how long the morning briefing had been allowed to run on, it would not have been capable of providing a satisfactory conclusion. There was no lucid narrative to the deaths of the two victims at Pity Wood Farm, no story of their lives to give them an identity. Apart from confirmation that they were both female, they still had no humanity.

Every officer present in the room was conscious of the lack of information, the gaping hole in their enquiry, the blockage that was stalling it before it had even got going. No IDs.

Cooper always felt a particular sense of despair at these cases. Of course, there were many people who lived transient lives. They put down their roots in shallow soil. Unnoticed when they arrived, and unmissed when they left.

‘First of all, there’s no evidence of major trauma, no broken bones,’ said Hitchens, getting straight to the main issue. ‘Some poisons might show up in the hair mat that had sloughed off the first victim. But if death was due to injury to the soft tissues, we’re right out of luck.’

‘Parts of the first body looked almost … mummified,’ said someone.

‘That’s adipocere. We don’t see mummified body parts very often in this part of the world – you need a dry, arid climate for that.’

The list of potential evidence dug out by the forensic anthropology team was impressive. During the excavation, they’d packaged up forty-four bones, two dirt samples, twenty-nine bags labelled ‘unknown debris’, fifteen bags of clothing fragments, and seventeen teeth.

‘Yes, they’ve been dead for about a year and four years respectively, we’re told, but neither of them was necessarily killed where they were found,’ said Hitchens. ‘Or even buried there when they first died. Apparently, the scene is right on a geological boundary – the clay on the south side of Pity Wood Farm doesn’t extend into the fields to the north or east. It’s probably why the place was built there in the first place. Historically, I imagine there was a brickworks, or a clay pit.’

‘It’s almost certainly how the farm got its name,’ said Cooper. ‘Pity Wood, because there were several clay pits here, in the woods. Obviously, most of the trees have gone now, too. They would have needed the wood for firing kilns.’

‘What about dental records, sir?’ asked Fry.

‘OK, we have good dentition remaining on the more recent of the two bodies. Enough to confirm an identity from dental records. If we had a potential identity to confirm, of course. But at the moment we haven’t a clue who she is.’

‘Mrs van Doon said there was an unusual amount of decay to the victim’s teeth.’