She plonked herself down at her desk. ‘We’ve now got three of those bloody pits.’

‘Empty?’

‘Not quite, unfortunately. This one had modern plastic in it.’

‘Ah.’

‘Ah indeed.’

‘I did say Beth didn’t miss much.’

She nodded in the direction of the sheaf of context sheets he held in his hands. ‘I know, and there’s nothing in the records to show that she’d spotted any of them before she’ – Clare hesitated, groping for the right words – ‘finished on-site.’

Neil shook his head. ‘No. I did check.’

‘So did I.’

If there was no record of the pits being there when the site had been closed down, they must have been dug and then backfilled since. Which meant it looked like they’d had illegal metal detectorists on the site. Or, as they were rather too glamorously known in the trade, nighthawks. In reality the people who dealt in such things were anything but glamorous.

Neil sighed. ‘Well, there’s nothing much we can do about it now.’

‘Not about the damage that’s already been done, maybe, but we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

‘You don’t want to start messing with nighthawks, Clare. They’re a nasty bunch of fuckers.’ Then, suddenly seeming to think better of his choice of language, he added, ‘Sorry.’

Clare wasn’t sure why but somewhere along the line Neil seemed to have gained the impression that she was what her mum would call ‘posh’. It was true that life as a solicitor’s wife had polished away her last remaining Essex comp vowels. But deep down inside there was still more than a touch of the girl from the council estate. A fact that, though she rarely shared it, she was secretly rather proud of.

She waved his apology away and smiled. ‘It’s alright, I happen to think your choice of language is spot on. And I have absolutely no intention of trying to take them on single-handed.’

‘Thank Christ for that. I was on a Roman site over in the Forest of Dean a few years back when one of my mates nipped back to site one night to pick up some kit he’d forgotten. He got beaten to a pulp with a pickaxe handle by the bastards.’

‘You’re not making me feel any better about this, Neil.’

‘Tell you what, I’ll go and make you that cuppa.’

Once he’d left the office and was out of earshot, Clare retrieved her mobile from the pocket of her combat trousers. Scrolling through her contacts, she found the number she was looking for. She thought she was going to be out of luck, but just as she was about to ring off a male voice answered. ‘Mark Stone.’

‘DCI Stone.’ She stumbled over her words, momentarily uncertain of how she should address him. ‘Mark. It’s Clare Hills – from the Bailsgrove dig site.’