‘And that’s what they found?’

‘And then some. They found two cists, and inside, two perfectly preserved bodies, one male, one female, buried in the Bronze Age crouch-foetal position.’

‘The bodies were mummified,’ Miko says.

‘You heard of bog people?’ Femi says. ‘Bodies buried in peat bogs keep their internal organs and skin for tens of thousands of years. You can see their wrinkles, the fucking expression on their faces. Which can be pretty freaky considering plenty were sacrificed.’

‘Wow.’ I look over at the unassuming grassy mound. Think of those black-brown excisions in the moorland between Ardcraig and the Coffin Road – Will’s dark scars – and fight the urge to shudder. ‘But this isn’t a bog.’

Femi grins wider. ‘And they weren’t ordinary bog bodies either. The acidic pH of a peat bog preserves skin and soft tissue, but disintegrates bone. These skeletons were completely intact. Straight after death, they were placed in a bog just long enough to be pickled, maybe a year tops, and then they were dug up again. And then – get this – they weren’t buried in those cists for another three to five hundred years.’

‘Why?’

‘They must have kept ’em somewhere. There are the remains of a Bronze Age settlement about half a mile away, out towards West Point. And if you keep heading southwest to Oir na Tìr, literally the Edge of Land, you’ll find standing stones older than Stonehenge. This island, particularly this side of it, is a hotspot for human sacrifice, unusual burial rites, ancestral worship. Who knows what those mummies were used for?’ Femi shrugs. ‘Maybe they were spiritual advisors, maybe they were guardians to ward away evil. Either way, seems like they played a very active part in society for centuries before they were reburied in these barrows.’

I have an immediate and unwelcome image of one sitting at the head of a dining table.

‘D’you think they were sacrificed?’

Femi’s smile turns even more gleeful. ‘We know they were. Skull fractures, stab wounds, you name it. They still have ligatures around their wrists and ankles.’

‘Femi,’ Miko says. ‘Do you always have to make it sound like the plot of a Stephen King novel?’

‘More like Frankenstein,’ he says.

I look over at the three archaeologists still kneeling in the nearest trench, watch them painstakingly putting what look like dried clods of mud into large Tupperware. ‘Frankenstein?’

‘They were composites,’ Miko says. ‘The bodies. They weren’t two people. They were six. Radiocarbon dating in early ’94 showed that their appendicular skeletons – that’s everything but the skull and trunk – dated from around fifteen hundred BC. The trunks, fourteen hundred. And the skulls, sixteen hundred – around the time of Tutankhamun.’

‘That’s—’

Femi laughs. ‘Rad.’

‘At the time, it was a major archaeological discovery.’ Miko looks over at Jaz, still crouched between the main mound and the cemetery wall. ‘I’ve been trying to secure the funding to come here for years. We’re thoroughly exploring all of this ridge for now, but what I really want to do is re-excavate the site of the first dig – the main barrow. It’s not unusual to find other cists inserted into an existing mound maybe hundreds or even thousands of years after it was first built.’ She frowns. ‘We don’t need the islanders’ permission, but it’s always better to get their blessing. Any discoveries on the site will attract new tourists to the island, and new funding for us.’