He looked down, excited although he knew how foolish he was being, and saw Hattie James lying at the base of the trench. She was on her back and she stared up at him. Her face was marble white in the shadow. She was dressed in black and the image had the washed-out look of a photographic negative. Even the blood looked black – and there was a lot of blood. It had spurted into wave-shaped patterns on the bank of the trench and seeped into the soil. It was on her hands and her sleeves and on the big brutal knife with which, it seemed to Sandy, she’d slit her wrists. The cuts weren’t made across the wrists, but were deep, lengthways slashes, almost up to her inner elbow. The sunlight continued to reflect from the knife blade and made a mockery of the earlier image he’d formed in his head.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her face, the sight and shape of it were swimming in front of him. He realized he was about to faint and leaned forward, forcing himself to stay conscious. He turned away, then had to look back to check it wasn’t some awful nightmare. He couldn’t phone Perez until he was certain. Then he went back to the house to call the inspector’s mobile.

Perez answered immediately, but when Sandy explained in a stuttering sort of way what he’d found, there was a complete silence.

‘Jimmy, are you there?’ Sandy felt the panic taking over. He couldn’t deal with this on his own.

And when Perez did reply his voice was so strange that Sandy could hardly recognize it.

‘I was at Setter last night,’ Perez said. ‘I looked across the site, but not in the trenches. I should have found her.’

‘There would be nothing you could do.’

‘I persuaded myself that she’d gone out on the ferry,’ Perez said. ‘I should have been more careful, brought people out to do a proper search. She shouldn’t have had to be there on her own all night.’

‘She would have been dead by then,’ Sandy said, and again: ‘There would be nothing you could do.’ It seemed odd to him that he had to reassure his boss. Usually Perez knew what to do in every situation; he was the calm one in the office, never flustered and never emotional. ‘Will you come over? Or is there someone I should call?’

‘You’ll need to get a doctor to pronounce her dead.’

‘Oh, she’s dead,’ Sandy said. ‘I’m quite sure of that.’

‘All the same,’ Perez said. ‘We need it official. You know how it works.’

‘I’ll get Brian Marshall. He’ll be discreet.’