Gillard parked in the lane. He made his way across the meadow and over the embankment to see that Hancock hadn’t wasted any time since CSI had packed up and left. There was what looked like a full-scale archaeological dig marked out with a chequerboard grid of string and posts, dividing the site into yard-wide squares, including the spot where the body had been found. A dozen volunteers crouched or sat, carefully socially distanced, while sifting through samples of soil. Aqua Western had put up a perimeter fence around the field, and it was certainly more difficult to get in, although anybody who was determined to do so could wade in the shallows of the river. Clive Hancock was at the centre of the dig, his wild hair pluming in the wind. He had a sheet of plastic on which various small items had been placed. He looked up as Gillard approached.

‘Found anything?’ Gillard asked.

‘A few coins, not much else so far. However there is this, just found a few minutes ago.’ He picked up a marble-sized muddy pebble and showed it to the detective.

‘What is it?’

‘I think it’s an amber bead. I won’t know for sure until we’ve cleaned it, but it may be from a necklace or something similar. Anglo-Saxon, quite probably, given where we’ve found it.’

‘I’ve found another one, Clive.’ The call came from a girl on the far edge of the dig. The archaeologist carefully stood up and made his way across to where she was squatting. Gillard followed. The teenager, slim and tousle-haired in T-shirt, jeans and engineer’s boots, was pointing to a raised lump in a patch that she had cleared carefully with a decorator’s brush. Hancock knelt down and looked at it as closely as he could, a magnifying glass between him and the ground. ‘Just a hand-width away from the last one,’ he observed.

The girl, about sixteen, looked up at Gillard, beaming. ‘I hope we find the rest of the dagger. That would be so cool.’ She had an elfin face and short brown hair.

‘What dagger?’ Gillard glanced balefully at the archaeologist.

‘The one with a broken bit in the neck of the dead man,’ the girl said. ‘Are you from Greenpiss?’

‘No, I am nothing to do with Aqua Western.’ He rested a hand on Hancock’s shoulder. ‘I’d like a word, Clive, in private.’ The archaeologist stood, and with Gillard leading they threaded their way away out of the dig towards one of the large willow trees which leaned over the river.

‘Clive, did I not make it clear to you that this was to be treated with the utmost confidence?’

The archaeologist squinted and scratched his head. ‘Well, I didn’t mean to say anything. But they all knew I’d been to the mortuary to see the body, and naturally they wanted to know all about it.’