He was younger than she’d expected – early thirties at most – with a shock of ginger hair and a few days’ stubble that almost passed for a beard. He had bags around his eyes, but she guessed that excessive tiredness was only to be expected with a young baby. As they made their way up the street towards her car he kept up a constant stream of chit-chat, with Clare barely able to get a word in.

Strapping himself into his seat, he turned to face her. ‘I really appreciate you coming all this way – my car’s in dry dock at the moment. The exhaust is shot.’ He hesitated, clearly embarrassed. ‘Things have been a bit tight since the plug was pulled on the dig.’

‘No problem. After everything that’s happened it’s good of you to agree to come and show me the ropes – we’ll pay you for your time, of course.’

He said, ‘No worries.’ But Clare couldn’t help noticing the look of relief on his face.

His tone was more upbeat than she’d been expecting after their phone conversation and she began to wonder whether his reluctance to return to the dig had more to do with not having the cash to repair his car and get to site than any deep-seated trauma.

When they got to Bailsgrove it didn’t take him long to get stuck in. He started by taking Clare through the site recording system that Beth had used, before unfurling a series of pencil-drawn plans and placing them on the desk in front of her.

He weighed down their corners with plastic bags full of finds. And stepping back from the desk he looked around him, then broke into a broad smile. ‘You know, I was really nervous about coming back here. I thought it might stir up the chaos of it all again. But now you’ve got it all in order, I don’t know, it just seems sort of like everything is back to normal again. Beth would have been horrified by the state the police left this lot in.’

Clare wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that it wasn’t Beth who’d left the place as she’d found it or horrified at the thought that it had been the police.

She said, ‘It looks from what I’ve seen so far as if she was a good record keeper.’

‘Meticulous. You might almost say fanatical.’

She smiled. ‘There are worse faults for an archaeologist to have. Beth’s painstaking approach is certainly going to help us pick up where she left off.’