Latimer was leaning over. ‘What is that?’ she asked.

‘Looks like a piece of cloth. Give me some gloves.’ She handed him a plastic pair. He reached down into the hole and pulled at the cloth. It was heavy, dark in colour, but discoloured from the years underground. He pulled hard and a piece tore off in his hand, it was so weak and rotten. He lifted it out and he and Latimer stared at it. It wasn’t anything like the flowery dress.

‘It looks like curtain material,’ she said. ‘Ideal to wrap something in. A body, for instance.’

‘Let’s not jump ahead.’ Hobbes turned to the foreman and asked him to dig down further, a few pieces at a time. ‘And, for God’s sake, be careful.’

But Latimer said, ‘Let’s stop now. We should get Forensics in.’

‘Yes, yes. Just a moment.’

Hobbes was impatient. He wanted to know. He needed to know.

The foreman scraped at the side of the hole with a trowel, working carefully; he looked for all the world like an archaeologist at some important historical dig. He handed up larger pieces of rubble as they fell away. And then the hole was wide enough for Hobbes to ask Latimer to have a look. She did so, bending down and peeling back the torn layers of exposed curtain. He shone the torch over her shoulder.

She gasped, loud enough for Hobbes to hear.

‘What is it? Meg? Talk to me.’

Her hand was on a fragment of material, not the curtain, separate from that, but also torn and frayed and very ragged at the edges. She lifted it carefully and handed it to Hobbes. And even with all the dirt and decay and the slow effect of the years passing, he could see the blue of the material and the remains of a yellow flower design.

Latimer was bending down into the pit again.

‘There’s something else,’ she said.

‘What is it?’

‘It looks like – like a bone. A number of them.’

Hobbes was suddenly very still, unmoving. As always, at this moment, the moment of discovery, his mind took control of the case. He was a machine with one purpose only. There was someone down there. A body waiting to be uncovered.

A killing to be solved.

The Shiver

The two subjects vied for attention, and they ended up blurred, merging together in his mind. His missing son, and the results of the dig at the Graveses’ home. His hands gripped the steering wheel and he was thankful when he had to pull up at a red light. One thing, then another: two lost people. At the Kew Road police station he picked up a set of the photographs that had been taken in the cellar. Latimer gave him a look, but said nothing. She carried on with her work. He was glad of it: some other officers were staring at him. One held back a laugh. So, he’d made a fool of himself, yet again. That bloody cellar! Hobbes was about to say something, to justify himself, but what was the use?