He shrugged. ‘Just being honest. I wouldn’t want to end up with another one to process.’

She smiled wearily. ‘Any chance this one will turn out to be an accidental?’

He screwed up his nose. ‘I’d not be counting that particular chicken if I were you.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘There’s something about the positioning of the fracture. It’s very high up on the back of the head. Don’t suppose he was found at the bottom of a flight of stairs by any chance?’

Sally shook her head. ‘Next to his settee on his living room floor. Why?’

‘It’s the only way I can think he might’ve received a blow to the cranium like that without someone else being involved.’ He rubbed his fleshy chin. ‘Long shot, though. If he’d fallen down stairs I’d have expected multiple contusions as a minimum. He has sustained another minor blow to the back of his head. But I’d expect to see fractured limbs and probably the odd broken rib if it was a fall.’

‘No sign?’

‘Nope. Nothing except broken skin on the knuckles of his right hand, and one small and one large donk on the bonce.’ He took a slurp from his tea before setting down his mug on top of the jumble of papers and cardboard folders that occupied his desk.

Sally smiled. ‘There you go again, Frank, blinding me with science.’

‘Well, whether it’s a depressed fracture of the cranium or a donk on the bonce, the blow that killed him wasn’t self-inflicted. And from what you’ve said about where he was found it only confirms my conclusions. It most definitely wasn’t accidental. So, Sally my girl, it seems congratulations are in order. It looks like you’re going to be heading up a murder inquiry.’

Sitting curled up on the sofa in the living room of her Salisbury flat with her laptop in front of her and a large glass of Sancerre by her side, Clare was feeling almost human again after her shower. She’d thought about staying on at Bailsgrove this weekend to keep an eye on the site, but she was shattered, and in the end she’d decided that David had a point. An encounter with a bunch of pickaxe-wielding thugs was not her idea of a fun night out. And, just as importantly, if she did run into them there was no way she was going to be able to stop them on her own. So instead she’d asked Neil to install a couple of battery-operated wildlife cams on-site in the hope that if the nighthawks did show their faces they might at least have some sort of evidence.