James ate his sandwich while sifting through his emails and the various reports that had landed on his desk. He then started making lists of all the jobs that needed doing and all the questions that needed to be answered. But he didn’t get far before he was interrupted by DCI Tanner who came rushing out of his office with an excited look on his face.

‘I’ve just taken a call from the chief forensic officer,’ he said. ‘You need to get out to Oaktree Farm right away, James. The team over there has found something.’

James felt his heart jump. ‘Did he say what it is?’

Tanner nodded. ‘The skeletal remains of a baby. Buried beneath the cellar.’

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

James headed straight out to Oaktree Farm with DC Abbott in tow. He left it to Tanner to arrange for a forensic anthropologist to meet them there.

He or she would have to analyse the remains and try to determine how long they’d been there and if the skeleton was that of a male or female.

James was already convinced that it would turn out to be a girl. And that the mystery of where Megan Roth had been for the past twenty-four years had been solved.

It seemed as though she had died before her parents and had been concealed under the floorboards in the cellar. But the grim discovery threw up a fresh bunch of questions.

How did she die?

Did one of her parents kill her?

Why wasn’t her body found when police and forensic officers searched the farm at the time?

James felt a flare of unease when he thought back to what Lisa Doyle had said about the crying baby that she ‘contacted’ during the second séance at the farm. Did it mean that in future he should be less sceptical about all things paranormal?

‘Ever since I heard about the Roth case, I’ve suspected that their baby was dead,’ Abbott said. ‘But I didn’t expect this. It’s so sad and horrible to think that the little mite has been there under the farmhouse all this time. And Robert and Mary Bateman obviously had no idea.’

‘Perhaps they did,’ James said.

Abbott turned to look at him. ‘Are you serious, guv? Surely if that had been the case, they would have made it known.’

James shook his head. ‘It’s time we stopped making assumptions about this case. It’s throwing up too many surprises. And the more we learn about the farm itself the more inclined I am to believe that it was never just a cosy little nook in the middle of the dales.’

‘You’re not the only one to draw that conclusion, guv. DS Stevens reckons that if someone decided to write a book about the creepiest places in Cumbria Oaktree Farm would have to be included.’