But then Nikolai had asked him to start digging a trench for the footings of a new wall. Jamie had dug barely more than a few inches into the ground before the soil changed colour. It had taken him a while to get even that far down, though. There were so many stones to be prised free with the spade and lifted out, not to mention lumps of concrete and long splinters of rusted metal. Without his gloves, his fingers would have been raw by now.

After half an hour, he’d been starting to think that Nik had given him the job as a punishment for something, or just because he was the youngest on the crew and a student at that, the one they called ‘The Professor’. Or maybe it was on account of the fact that he didn’t understand what they were going on about when the blokes started joking around on site, and they were taking advantage of him. Probably there wasn’t going to be a wall here at all. Nobody had ever shown him the plans for the new development, so he couldn’t be sure. But during the last few days Jamie had made his own plans. He reckoned that if he’d bought the farm himself, he’d have kept the old dry-stone wall and turned this bit of ground into a nice patio. All it needed was a few yards of paving, not a fancy brick boundary wall that needed some idiot to dig a trench for twelve-inch footings.

Damn that trench. Just the thought of its moist, slippery sides made Jamie feel like throwing up. If it weren’t for all the other blokes standing around gabbling to each other in Polish, he’d have lost his breakfast ages ago.

Even in his distracted state, Jamie noticed that one or two of the labourers were looking a bit nervous as the police sirens got nearer. No papers, he supposed. Illegal workers. Well, it wasn’t his business, and he bet the cops wouldn’t care either, not today.

Nevertheless, Jamie automatically counted up the men. Nine, all present, but standing behind Nikolai for safety.

And all of the crew were looking in the same direction now – at the cluster of objects Jamie had accidentally uncovered with his spade. There wasn’t much to look at, not really. A strip of plastic sheeting and a scrap of rotted leather. A bulge of cloth, torn and faded, a surprising eggshell blue where patches showed through the dirt. And there had been a faint glint of metal, slick with the dampness of clay, reflecting a glimmer of light and the movement of his spade.

But most of all, he knew they were staring at the only thing worth seeing – that unmistakable object laid out in the mud, like a bird trapped in cement, or an ancient fossil preserved in the clay. It was like a five-limbed sea creature, bony and white.