Delahaye nodded. ‘I’d say there’s fairly strong evidence that we’re talking about someone who’s been here less than fifty years.’ He reached into the bucket and with a pencil pointed at several jagged splinters an inch or two long, plus some smaller pieces.

‘Is that glass or ceramic?’ Gillard asked.

‘Plastic, from a ballpoint pen,’ Delahaye said. ‘They were nearby, rather than on the corpse, so we can’t be sure they were his.’

Gillard nodded. ‘It makes it difficult, given how much disturbance of his last resting place has occurred.’ He inclined his head back towards the excavator. ‘For forensic purposes I’m going to assume this is a crime, so I’ll let CSI examine the entire area and bring out the body, or as much of it as we can find. It’s a long shot, but I’d like to see if we can get any DNA from the biro fragments, if we can’t get any from the body. In the meantime it would help if you would both stay around to spot anything CSI might miss.’

They agreed.

Gillard stepped away to answer messages left by his boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Brian ‘Radar’ Dobbs. The DCS, who’d got his nickname from his prominent ears, was a thirty-year veteran of policing and had spent his early years as a detective in Hong Kong. More recently he had an acquired reputation as a bit of a paper pusher and this, together with bouts of severe depression, meant he was rarely seen outside Surrey’s police headquarters at Mount Browne in Guildford. However, since Gillard had been pulled from a high-profile case early in the year, Dobbs had been tasked by Chief Constable Alison Rigby with more closely supervising him. In practice this involved second-guessing almost every conclusion Gillard came to, making him nostalgic for the days when Dobbs was off sick and he had almost complete operational independence.

Terse message returned, Gillard made his way back to the car and left the experts to it. He sat there for a few minutes checking his messages. The Environment Agency and the water company Aqua Western Ltd had sent him the requested maps of dates and times of work commissioned in the immediate area. Glancing at them, it didn’t immediately help establish how recently the soil at the riverbank had been disturbed. No doubt the archaeologist could make more sense of them.

A tap at the window made him look up. An unmasked distinguished-looking woman in her early seventies with neat silvery hair, was looking in at him. He buzzed down the window. ‘Excuse me, are you with Aqua Western?’ she asked.

‘No. Surrey Police.’ He hurriedly put his mask back on, but the woman showed no signs of stepping away.

‘Oh, is that about the body?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid I can’t tell you very much—’