‘If you could plough through these old reports with a couple of your men, I will do the same with your old case notes, Detective Sergeant,’ Blythe said. ‘Bearing in mind the Met aren’t going to leave me here indefinitely, so time is vital.’

Mohktar smiled to himself but said politely, ‘Indeed. But you must bear in mind that we are not in England and people here rise early but do not work in the afternoons in the heat of the day, Inspector. Here is also a small provincial force so our main help will come from Kuala Lumpur. All these records have come from there and there is only one policeman left in the force who was involved in this case and he will be our link with KL.

‘Good,’ Blythe said. ‘I presume that it will be almost impossible to determine how the child died after all this time?’

‘I believe it is doubtful,’ Mohktar said. ‘Unless the bones show specific breakages.’

‘What was the mother doing in Singapore? It seems odd that she was here when the body turned up after all this time?’

Mohktar was unsure due respect was being given to Mrs Campbell and her dead child. But perhaps it was the English way.

‘Mrs Campbell was on her way to see her daughter in New Zealand. She had a stopover in Singapore and she saw The Straits Times with the article about the grave, quite by chance, lah? When she went missing the hotel rang us and we contacted her daughter who flew to Singapore immediately. I believe it to be a sad coincidence that the lady arrived as the body of the child was found in the clearance of that piece of coastline.’

‘I am not sure I entirely believe in coincidences,’ Blythe said. ‘How come the child’s body was still intact and in one place in the jungle after all this time?’

‘It had lain, or been pushed, under rock in a natural underground cave. It had also been wrapped in something; many fibres of material were found on the body. If the driver of the machine had not stopped for the call of nature, the child’s body would never have been found.’

He looked at the English policeman. ‘Do you really expect after all this time that we will find out what happened, Inspector?’

‘Unlikely,’ Blythe said. ‘But maybe we owe it to the family to have one more try. I have a list of all the Europeans staying at the government rest houses in 1976, plus a list of local Malay and Chinese working or living there.’

‘You would like me to look into the whereabouts of any locals who were here at that time?’

‘Yes. I know it’s time-consuming, but…’ It was also complicated, Blythe thought, by the fact that some families had brought their own servants on holiday.

The two men looked at each other. It all seemed a prodigious amount of work for an uncertain result. He had not been sent to solve the case, Blythe thought, but more to close it. He shook himself out of his jetlag. He shouldn’t have agreed to come if he had such a negative attitude.