‘Yes, I remember. What can I do for you, Clare?’

Was it her imagination or did he seem somewhat cheerier than she imagined the average police officer sounded? Sally would have you believe they were being run ragged most of the time and barely had time to deal with serious crime, let alone take random phone calls from a virtual stranger. Well, if he was in a good mood, the least she could do was take advantage of it. ‘I was wondering when you had the dig site sealed off if there had been any sort of unusual activity.’

‘Not that I’m aware of.’ He sounded more cautious now. ‘Why, have you had some sort of problem?’

‘You could say that. There seems to have been some illegal metal detecting on-site between the time Beth stopped digging and when we took over. There’s no way of knowing exactly what they’ve taken, but of course that’s not the most important thing – they’ve wrecked a large area of the site.’

She was sure she could hear him sighing on the other end of the phone. ‘I’m really sorry to hear that, but there’s not much we can do. After all, you said yourself that there’s no way of knowing what’s been taken.’

‘But they must have done this while you had the site sealed off. I don’t understand how it could have happened.’

He laughed. ‘I’m not exactly sure “sealed off” is the right way to put it. It was an unexplained death, not a murder enquiry. As soon as we’d had SOCO out there and they’d done their bit we locked the place up and left site.’

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You mean you just left it? With no one there to protect it?’

‘Look, I know the site is important to you, Mrs Hills, but nothing much has come from it, has it? Not as far as we could make out from what the dig team said when we arrived.’

‘Well, no, not yet maybe. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need protecting – who’s to say what we might find.’

There was no mistaking it; this time Clare could hear an audible sigh on the other end of the line. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Mrs Hills, but it’s not a legally protected monument, is it?’

‘No, that’s true, it’s not Scheduled. But that doesn’t mean it might not be important. And if it does prove to be as significant as Dr Kinsella thought it was it could be Scheduled in the future.’ Even to her ears she was beginning to sound desperate.