Jo shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, playing with a loose strand of her unruly beach-blonde hair that had escaped from its ponytail. It was a disquieting sight to see Jo Granski anything but entirely grounded and confident. ‘That’s just a little bit of a misunderstanding, David. You know yourself you can never be one hundred per cent confident about dates until we have the radio carbon dates through.’

He asked, ‘When are they due?’

Scratching her ear, Jo said confidently, ‘Two days tops.’

David thought that was remarkably fast. But if Jo Granski was normally anything, it was efficient. And she possessed that rare quality amongst academics of being both well respected and well liked. So he knew that if she pulled a few strings with her colleagues they were normally only too willing to bend over backwards for her. Therefore he didn’t question it. And to be frank it came as something of a relief to hear that the dating side of things was at least under control. He’d had Sally on the phone this morning saying Mark Stone had been bending her ear about the TV interview. Funny how things turned out. At the moment Sally’s friendship with Stone appeared to be the only thing preventing the Gloucestershire police from closing their dig down. An irony which certainly hadn’t escaped Sally, who’d been less than complimentary about Clare’s television debut.

He nodded. ‘As soon as those dates are in I want to hear about them. And make sure you get them to DCI Stone as a priority. We can’t afford any more fuck-ups.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘And you do realise that filming that burial without any screening was in breach of our Ministry of Justice burial licence, don’t you?’

Clare and Jo looked at one another.

He plucked a printout of the burial licence from the top of his printer and threw it at Clare. ‘Read the bloody paperwork! And next time you want to screw something up, try not to broadcast it on the nine o’clock news.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

Clare raised the bone china cup to her lips and breathed in the reviving smoky aroma of lapsang. ‘This is lovely, Jo. But we shouldn’t really be here.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘With things as they are we should be back on-site.’

‘You need to chill out, Clare. It’ll be fine. Neil’s a solid sort of dude. He knows what he’s doing. And after this morning I figured we could both do with a little R and R.’

Clare smiled. ‘Well, I can’t disagree with you there.’

After a month’s unremitting slog on the dig and David’s haranguing this morning, the cathedral tearooms seemed like an oasis of calm. Clare looked at her friend. Somehow despite her ripped denim jacket and Grateful Dead T-shirt she still managed to look as if she belonged.