And then I looked back at the tomb as the wheels of the bulldozer fought for purchase in the soft soil. All at once the great slab of stone came away with the crack of torn granite. It rose in the air, clumps of dirt and cement falling away, and the grave was suddenly open.

A dozen officers in protective clothing moved quickly forward, and there were shouts and groans and protests as they heaved the lid of the tomb on its side and eased it up against an ancient oak. The white-suited SOCOs and the uniformed officers edged forward, but the grave was pitch black, buried in the darkness.

Somebody adjusted a light.

And there in the earth were the small bones of perhaps a dozen spaniels, their legs as thin as fish bones, their skulls the size of tennis balls, locked for eternity in the embrace of what were unmistakably human remains.

Chapter 34

34

NATASHA CAME DOWN The Broadwalk in Regent’s Park, her perfect face impassive behind dark glasses, long of hair and arms and legs, the little Pekingese-Chihuahua cross trotting by her side with a stick in its mouth, and she looked like the one for me.

It was sixty hours since we’d found the lonely bones of Anya Bauer. I had not slept and I had not eaten since we’d opened the grave, but after taking Scout to school on the third morning I knew that I desperately needed to do both. You can go without food and sleep for three nights and then you begin to fall apart. A single parent can’t afford to fall apart.

Then I saw Natasha coming towards me as I was finishing my second bacon sandwich at a table outside The Honest Sausage, and I saw that I needed her even more.

‘My stalker,’ she said.

‘The merry widow,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

‘No daughter? No dog?’

I looked under the table. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something.’

‘Too bad,’ she said. ‘I like your dog and daughter.’

Susan had abandoned her stick and was snuffling at my hand.

‘They like you,’ I said, wondering if it was too much. ‘My daughter and my dog.’

‘I can’t think why.’

‘Me neither.’

She indicated the little Pekingese-Chihuahua cross who was eating out of my empty hand.

‘I didn’t know Susan cared for you.’

‘Nothing to do with me. Everything to do with my bacon sandwich.’

Natasha took off her dark glasses. She seemed younger than I remembered, and not quite as tough as she wanted to be.

‘Listen,’ she said.

Later, as we lay side by side, and I knew her for the first time, my hands moved across those long limbs and skin that was as white and unbroken as snow. And I remembered that I had seen her naked body once before, long ago, the first time we met.