He excused himself, opened the back door and stood there for a moment to get a breath of air. The jungle of the garden, the hidden shed with the dress hanging from the beam, the mystery of it all, the sense of things still to be revealed. He was on the edge of discovery, and he loved the feeling of it, he always did, even if a dead body lay at the centre. From death he spiralled out and found meaning for himself, knowledge: this was his way.

He could hear Nicholas moving, his chair scraping across the floor. He half expected a blow on the back of his head and tensed. Instead Nicholas Graves stood close behind him and said, ‘If there’s nothing down there, nothing of interest to you …’

‘A corpse, you mean?’

This was waved aside. ‘If not, I’ll keep everything you find. Do you hear? Hobbes? It’s my property.’

The inspector didn’t turn round. He said quietly, ‘So you are interested, then?’

‘I’ll do it just to spite you.’

God, but that was a strange thing to say. It might have been a malicious nine-year-old boy speaking, not a man in his sixties.

Hobbes didn’t bother replying. He stepped outside and walked down to the edge of the overgrowth. Life was abundant here, struggling amid the dank leaves and tendrils. A weird mushroom drew his eye. It was attached to the earth like a parasite, cream-coloured, the cap billowing out like a shroud, the surface decorated with a darker pattern. A Rorschach test. It looked poisonous. Probably called ‘dead man’s tongue’, or some such. But of course he was no expert. He bent closer. The fungus stank to high heaven. Dozens of ants busied themselves under its shade. Nearby was a discarded toy, a plastic doll.

Hobbes went back inside. The kitchen was empty. He walked along the hallway and paused at the door at the top of the cellar stairs. The men were still working, still digging, But then the sound of the electric drill stopped. Hobbes placed his handkerchief over his mouth and walked downstairs, into the pit, the root of the house, the clogging air, the damp, that bittersweet incense of rot and mould.

There was no sign of Nicholas Graves.

DS Latimer was waiting at the edge of the work area, the lower part of her face covered with a work mask. She handed one to him. He slipped it on and stepped forward with her to where they could see down into the hole that had been dug. It was narrow, about five feet long, a trench or a grave – Hobbes couldn’t help the thought once it had taken hold. One end of the hole had been opened wider than the other, and it was here that the foreman of the work team was bending down, inspecting something in the dust and rubble.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ Hobbes said. ‘Move back, come on. Let me see.’

The workmen stepped back so that Hobbes and Latimer could peer into the hole. He grabbed a torch from a man, and used that to help him see. The beam moved over some object lodged in the dark of the pit.