He squatted down to take a closer look, being careful not to step into the enormous pool of blood. It was obvious even to him that his throat had been cut. Lying there on the concrete path, the life force drained from him, Wayne ‘Crabby’ Crabbs looked twenty years older than the last time he’d seen him. What was it he’d said to Clare Hills about him? ‘He inhabits a different world to the rest of us.’ Well, he certainly did now, the poor bastard.

He turned away to examine the second victim. At least this one wasn’t human. One of the SOCO team was squatting down taking close-ups of it. It was a huge black bird. His sergeant – Ray – had confidently informed him it was a raven. He’d worked alongside Ray for the best part of a decade and it was the first time he’d found out the man was a twitcher. It really was a strange old morning. But what troubled Mark Stone wasn’t the bird itself but what had been done to it. Its skull had been crushed with a rock that still lay nearby; its throat had been cut and there was a length of orange baler twine cutting deep into what remained of its neck.

CHAPTER TWENTY

With Jack Tyler dead and Beth Kinsella dead, it meant that two people who’d worked on the Bailsgrove excavations had met an unnatural end in the last three months. And that was two too many for David’s liking.

Despite what Sally had said he just couldn’t get the connection out of his head. His paper was first up in the afternoon session, but he’d been on autopilot as he’d addressed the auditorium. As soon as he’d finished he’d made his apologies and departed.

David might have had second thoughts about slithering his way through Snake Pass in the worst of the winter snows, but it was only an hour and a half down the A57 across the Pennines from Manchester to Dronfield in the summer months and today there wasn’t so much as a raindrop in the air. He had no clear idea of exactly what he was going to do when he got there, but he did know that if there was anyone Beth Kinsella might have confided in it would have been her father.

From what Clare had told him, David knew Beth must have been close to him. David had spent the last few years watching his own father’s gradual decline from Alzheimer’s. But increasingly he’d watched from a distance. He was only too well aware of his own deficiencies in that department. He could never have cared for his father in the way that Beth had hers. And despite everything he might have said and thought about Beth Kinsella, he had to admit he admired her for it.