It was the ‘some time after’ that worried Cooper. The location and position of the body were so carefully chosen that they gave the appearance of ritual. In fact, the foliage winding its way through the bones might even suggest an offering to nature, a human sacrifice that was slowly being claimed by Mother Earth. But that was pure fancy, surely.

He looked up the number and called the anthropologist again. Sometimes, you just had to hope for a bit of luck.

‘Any chance of a cause of death?’ he said.

‘You’re joking.’

‘Nothing at all?’

Dr Jamieson sighed. ‘I’ve looked for signs of any skeletal trauma that might suggest the manner of death, or indeed tell us something about what happened to the body after death.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing. No cut marks, no visible trauma, other than a certain amount of postmortem damage. Some gnawing of the bones at the extremities.’

‘Scavengers,’ Cooper said. ‘Foxes, rats.’

‘Or some kind of bird. We’re missing two of the carpals – the hamate and capitate. If you happen to come across them, one is a cuboid bone with a hooklike process, and one is a bit like a miniature half-carved bust. They’re small, but quite distinctive. We’ve also lost some of the tarsal bones from the left foot, but otherwise the extremities are mostly intact. And of course the hyoid bone is gone.’

‘Why “of course”?’

‘The hyoid is located just above the larynx, where it anchors the muscles of the tongue. It’s the only bone in the body that doesn’t touch any other bone. So when the tissue around it disappears, the hyoid drops away and can be lost completely. You’re lucky to have the incisors, since they have only one root. When the soft tissue decomposes, there’s nothing to hold them in the jaw.’

‘Doctor, isn’t the hyoid bone the one that sometimes gets broken when a victim is strangled?’

‘Yes, that’s correct.’

‘And with skeletonized remains, damage to the hyoid bone might be the only indication we have that the victim died of strangulation?’

‘I shouldn’t really comment on that. But it’s true that, without any soft tissues present, we can only look for trauma. Unless there are signs of fractures or nicks to the bone from knife wounds, the condition of the hyoid might well be crucial to an assessment of the cause of death. But only if the cause was manual strangulation.’

Cooper recognized the hopelessness of the thought that came into his mind then. But he said it anyway.

‘We’d have to organize another search of the scene, if we’re going to find that bone.’

‘It is a very small bone,’ the anthropologist said. ‘Given the nature of the location, you’ll be looking for a needle in a haystack. And, don’t forget, the hyoid could have disappeared from the scene completely.’

‘That doesn’t sound very hopeful.’

‘Well, I can give you an estimate of the time of death, based on plant growth. We got a botanist to have a look, and his report has just landed on my desk.’