The sheep lay on its side. It had been sheared recently, giving it a forlorn naked look and making it all too easy to spot the bloody gash in its stomach through which most of its innards seemed to have been pulled out. I’m not very fond of animals, even when they’re on their way to the dinner table. But you don’t do policing by holding your nose and looking the other way. I put on my surgical gloves and squatted down to have a look and do my due diligence.

The edges of the wound were ragged, suggesting tearing rather than cutting, and the glistening viscera looked like they’d been dragged out, widening the hole. Had she been caught on a hook of some sort? Agricultural machinery looked pretty fearsome to me. Plenty of dangerously sharp bits of metal attached to ridiculously over-torqued diesel engines – an accident waiting to happen. But I couldn’t see any tyre tracks in the short grass around the body. I got my face as close to the wound as I could, closed my eyes and held my breath.

There was a kind of vestigia associated with the body. Very faint, nothing that Toby would get out of his basket for.

‘Do you see any horse tracks around here?’ I asked.

‘Do you mean hoof prints?’ asked Dominic as I stood up.

I told him that, yes, I did in fact mean hoof prints and we all spent five minutes looking around the scene to see if we could find any – with no luck.

‘Why did you think a horse had got into your stash?’ I asked Stan. ‘Were there tracks? A smell?’

‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s just what came into my head when I found it.’

Vestigia for certain. Which meant what? Something unnatural was buggering about in the countryside, but I hadn’t seen any indication, beyond the dead phones, that it had anything to do with Hannah and Nicole. For all I knew, this was everyday life for country folk. What I needed was some of your actual evidence. Or, failing that, a couple of hours with Hugh’s folklore book.

‘It’s Falcon,’ I said. ‘But it’s not necessarily anything to do with the kids.’

‘Should I call Windrow?’ asked Dominic.

I considered just how much fast talking it would take to explain exactly why I wanted West Mercia Police to put some of their forensic resources into autopsying a sheep, and then phoned Dr Walid.

He said he’d be delighted, and if I could protect the corpse and maybe pick up some samples, he’d send some people over to collect it.

‘What kind of people?’ I asked.

‘There’s a couple of firms that specialise in biohazard removal and forensic preservation,’ said Dr Walid. ‘I consult for them occasionally, and in return they send me anything I might find interesting.’