He sniffed at the milk carton, splashed some into his mug and, still trying to replay the scene in his head, headed towards the living room. Stepping through the door he looked up, momentarily confused. Where was his visitor?

He sensed rather than saw the movement behind him. And then came the crashing blow that propelled his scalding mug of tea across the living room carpet and him into oblivion.

CHAPTER SIX

‘Let’s take a look at that, Malcolm.’ Malcolm stood aside and Clare stepped into the trench. Kneeling down, she examined the shallow hole in front of her. As she deftly scraped her trowel through the soft, dark earth she was sure she could feel Malcolm’s eyes boring into her back. He seemed a decent sort of bloke. But he was a hardened digger, with over two decades’ experience on commercial dig sites. And here she was in charge of him, and twenty of his equally experienced colleagues. She remembered reading an article somewhere about impostor syndrome and now she began to understand what it felt like.

Blowing out her cheeks, she tried to focus on the task in hand. The hole in front of her looked like some kind of shallow pit, but the soil in it was loose, offering no resistance to her trowel. And mixed into it were small lumps of limestone – just like the surrounding bedrock. She was nearly at the bottom now and it was obvious that there was absolutely nothing in it.

She rocked back on her heels. ‘Have you had any finds out of it?’

Malcolm pointed to the small plastic tray that sat on the side of the trench. ‘Just that.’ In the tray was a small, nondescript piece of blue plastic.

‘Where did it come from?’

‘About halfway up the fill.’

No chance it had found its way there accidentally then. Clare stood up and stretched her back.

‘Thanks, Malcolm. Just finish recording it and then go and give Steve a hand over on his cutting.’

She clambered out of the trench and made her way disconsolately back towards the Portakabin. Malcolm’s was the third pit like this that they’d found so far. With absolutely no sign of finds except some modern tat and looking for all the world as if they had been dug yesterday. Which she suspected was uncomfortably close to the truth. Why could things never be simple? As if Paul Marshall wasn’t enough to cope with, now it looked as if someone had been messing about with the site before they’d taken it over. What sort of messing about she couldn’t prove for sure, but she had a damn good idea.

When she got to the office, she found Neil already there, poring over a folder full of context sheets.

He looked up. ‘You look like you could do with a brew.’

‘I wouldn’t say no.’

‘What’s up?’