For a moment Clare looked as if she was going to be sick. ‘But what if they are modern? That would mean …’

‘I know what it would mean.’

‘We can’t just sit around for weeks waiting for the RC dates to come through if there’s even the slightest possibility that those burials are recent. What if there’s some sort of baby killer in Bailsgrove?’

Jo couldn’t remember seeing Clare get this stressed before. Not even when someone had tried to kill them both at Hungerbourne. ‘Calm down, Clare. And lower your voice! I’ve already been on the phone to a guy I know in the lab in Florida. He can cut us a cheap deal to get them processed real fast.’ Jo could see the anxiety written on Clare’s face. ‘Chill out! I didn’t tell him.’

Clare’s relief was clear to see. ‘How long will it take?’

‘I can take the samples once we’ve finished lifting them tomorrow. If we courier them, we should have the results in three, maybe four days. The way police budgets are these days we’ll probably get the dates back before the police could anyway.’

Clare took in a deep breath. ‘I hope to God you’re right. I don’t want to think about what it might mean if you’re not.’

Jo said, ‘One thing’s for sure: we know that at least one of those children must have been buried there before Beth died.’

Clare asked, ‘How do you figure that out?’

‘Well, that first grave had been cut into by modern disturbance. The cut looked just like the pits our friendly neighbourhood nighthawks had left behind. So, if they were poking round the site between the police leaving and us arriving, the baby burial must be earlier. And they were on-site as soon as Beth’s body was found.’

Clare sat silently, swirling the last dregs of her Chardonnay around in the bottom of her glass. She seemed to be struggling with something. Eventually she looked up at Jo. It was difficult to make out her expression in the lengthening shadows.

Clare said, ‘Well, as it seems to be the evening for confessions, there’s something I need to tell you about those pits.’

Thirty minutes and another gin and tonic and white wine later, the two women sat staring into near total darkness, with only a couple of bats hunting their prey in the rapidly cooling night air for company.

Clare said, ‘So you see, I really don’t know what to make of it, Jo. Those finds obviously couldn’t have come from our site. But they were definitely there. I’ve seen the photos. And the people who put them there must have come within inches of digging up that first burial.’

Jo grimaced. ‘That would have given them one hell of a surprise.’