‘I hope you do, really.’ A terrible sadness crept across his handsome face. ‘Because I’m certain I’ll never see mine again.’

‘You have a daughter?’ she asked incredulously. Somehow the fact that he may have a family had never even occurred to her.

‘Had. She’s abroad somewhere with her mother. I haven’t seen her for six years.’

A quiet descended on them both as they fell into personal reveries and thought about their lost daughters.

After a while, Nikki said, ‘I guess there is nothing we can do for Lisa Jane now, not without disturbing anything. We’d better ring the station and check how long it will be before forensics can get out here. It’s no longer a missing person’s case. It’s murder.’

‘Shall I do it, ma’am?’ asked Joseph.

Nikki slipped rather reluctantly from his arm and stood up. ‘I’m okay now, Sergeant, thank you. And I could do with some fresh air.’

‘You and me both.’

Together they made their way back out into a watery sunshine, and Nikki flipped open her phone and reported their findings. ‘They reckon about five minutes, then they have to get across the fields, of course.’ She looked across the acres of flat farmland. ‘Why did her killer pick this place, I wonder?’

Joseph leaned against the quad bike and shook his head. ‘And how did he get her here without Nigel Grieves or one of his family or workers seeing them?’

‘I’m pretty sure he, or maybe they, used the dyke.’ Nikki pointed to the narrow waterway that ran close to the barn. ‘With all the summer rain we’ve had of late, you could easily get a small boat along there.’

Joseph walked across to the edge of the dyke. ‘I think you’re right. The bank is pretty well trampled down. The SOCOs may find something.’

‘Let’s hope.’ Nikki sat down on a stone bollard that had probably once been part of a wall, and looked up at her sergeant. ‘Why haven’t you seen your daughter for so long?’

‘Because she hates me.’ He swung himself on to the quad bike and sat back in the saddle. ‘Well, actually she hates the person I used to be, but Tamsin refuses to believe that that man is dead and gone.’

‘And who was that man?’

‘A soldier. A highly trained special forces operative. One who killed people for a living.’ He threw Nikki a resigned look. ‘So I can hardly blame her for disowning me, can I?’

‘Soldiers don’t kill for fun.’