‘Ben, I don’t really know what you’re talking about.’

‘Never mind. But I think I’ve found your dead place.’

‘You have? Is there any sign of Freddy Robertson?’

‘His BMW is parked near the Slacks’ house.’

‘And the Slacks themselves?’

‘Nowhere to be seen. You’ve been to Robertson’s place, Diane – have you seen any sign that he possesses a firearm? Maybe a shotgun?’

‘No. But, Ben – you say you’ve found the dead place?’

Cooper looked at the skull. The skeleton lay inside a limestone building, exposed to the air, not so much as a shred of desiccated flesh left on its gleaming bones. Something had picked it perfectly clean. Something that might be called a flesh eater.

‘Yes, Diane. I think this is it.’

Chapter Thirty-Five

When Fry arrived at Greenshaw Lodge, four uniformed officers had gathered on the steps near the back of the house, their torches playing across the ground. They were wearing yellow jackets with white glowing strips, like figures from a ghost train. One of them was talking into his radio, calling for the medical examiner and specialist support.

‘What have you found?’ she said.

‘A body, Sergeant. Quite a fresh one. Dead no more than an hour or two, we reckon. The clothes are barely wet.’

‘Any ID?’

‘Not yet.’

Fry stepped to the edge of the pool of light created by the officers’ torches. The body lay on its side, the left cheek pressed into the grass, hanks of grey hair tangled and damp on the neck. Life had gone from the face, the eyes were open and staring. But she could see as much as she needed to.

‘I know who it is. It looks as though death came a bit closer than he expected, after all.’

‘What?’

‘The victim is known to us,’ she said. ‘His name is Professor Frederick Robertson.’

‘Are you sure, Sarge?’

‘Certain.’

While the officer using his radio relayed the information to Control, Fry looked at one of the other men behind the torchlight.

‘Do we have any idea how he died?’

‘It looks as though he was shot.’

He directed the beam of his torch on to the ground near the professor’s shoulder. Fry saw the oily gleam of congealing blood, the dark stains of a man’s life draining into the earth. For a moment, she didn’t know what to say. Then a phrase came into her mind, a phrase so appropriate that it could almost have been spoken in Robertson’s own voice.

She turned away from the officer’s puzzled face and gazed into the darkness.

‘Caro data vermibus,’ she said. ‘Flesh given to the worms.’

Ben Cooper thought of the old Datsun in Tom Jarvis’s damp paddock, the clumps of grass pushing through its corroded floor. The paddock and this building in the woods seemed to be worlds apart at first glance. But they had a similar atmosphere, forsaken and lifeless, the result of their human use. Both places had the feeling of somewhere that had been turned into a graveyard.