Clare and Mark Stone were standing on the edge of the trench waiting anxiously for Jo Granski to deliver her verdict. ‘Well, you were right on the money, Clare. It’s an infant. From the look of it I’d guess around six months.’

Mark Stone looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘Any fool can see it’s a baby. The question is how long has it been here?’

‘I’m an osteo-archaeologist not a miracle worker, DCI Stone. There doesn’t appear to be anything else in this part of the pit to date it. So we’ll need a radio carbon date before we can say for sure.’

‘And how long will that take, Dr Granski?’

Jo said, ‘Generally a few weeks. Could be a while longer. A little quicker maybe if we could find some extra funding.’ She looked at Stone hopefully, but to no evident effect. Turning to Clare, she said, ‘And you’re gonna need a Ministry of Justice licence to lift it, Clare.’

Stone harrumphed. ‘Do you lot always fanny around like this?’

Jo said, ‘In your line of work I would’ve thought you’d appreciate due process, Chief Inspector.’

Clare seemed destined to play the role of peacekeeper. ‘It’s all sorted. I sent off the application yesterday – as soon as we found the remains. And the licence came back this morning. So there shouldn’t be any delay in excavating them.’

Stone said, ‘Good. I need to know whether or not I’m dealing with a murder.’

Jo said, ‘Now that I can tell you. You’re definitely dealing with a homicide.’

Clare and Stone opened their eyes wide in disbelief and stared at her. And at precisely the same moment, both said, ‘What?’

‘See that horseshoe-shaped bone right there?’ She pointed towards the tiny skeleton with her trowel. ‘That’s the hyoid bone. From what I can see so far, I can tell you that it has a cut mark on it. It’s a sure-fire sign the child’s throat’s been cut.’

Clare opened her mouth in shock. ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible. It was only a baby.’

Stone reached inside his jacket and retrieved his mobile. ‘Right, I need to get SOCO over here right away.’

Clare couldn’t believe this was happening. There was a murdered baby in front of her. And now her whole site was going to be closed down. From the moment she’d got here she’d known she should never have persuaded David they should take this job on. But Jo appeared to have no such worries. She just laughed.

Stone stopped, his fingers poised over his phone. ‘What’s so funny?’

Jo said, ‘Like I say, I can’t give you an exact date until we get the RC dates through, but from the condition of the bone, given it’s in an alkali environment, I’d say this baby has been here a while.’