He ended the call and leant against the nearest tree, watching as two officers began carefully scraping away the earth inside the taped perimeter. He’d seen paint dry faster, but knew they had to take it slowly for fear of missing something. They worked in relative silence, and apart from the occasional screech of a radio, the stillness of the trees made it seem that even they were holding their breath, waiting to see what would be uncovered.

A little under ten minutes and two feet of soil later, Porter saw the officer closest to him stop, bending down to peer at something. Porter squinted, trying to make out what he was looking at, but all he could see was damp, spongy soil. The officer reached down, swiping a short bristled brush across a patch of ground by his foot. Porter’s toes bunched and uncurled inside his shoes, nervous energy that had to escape somewhere. His impatience got the better of him.

‘What have we got?’

The officer straightened up, twisting round towards Porter, his feet staying planted in the mud. ‘It might not be her, guv, but it’s a someone, not a something.’

Porter stepped closer and peered at the ground, and saw what he was talking about. A curved grey dome streaked with dirt. A single eye socket staring blindly up at him, the other still buried. Teeth, stained the same colour as the rest of the skull. He looked up at the faces around him, saw a few of them nodding gently. They’d have to run tests, of course. Prove it was her. Surely it had to be, though, didn’t it? He didn’t like to jump to conclusions, but to come looking for her, only to find someone else? That only made sense if Locke had used his wife to feed them false information, but if that was the case, who the hell would he want them to have found? Fuck that. It was her unless or until someone proved otherwise.

‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘She’s been down there too long already. Let’s get her out of here.’

NATASHA – APRIL 1983

Natasha closes her eyes as she inhales. Feels the sweet sting of smoke tickling the back of her throat. She tolerates Mary’s husband for her brother’s sake, but there’s only so much of his Lord of the Manor attitude she can stomach without a ciggy break. She has barely touched her Sunday roast before escaping into the back garden, but then again who can blame her? Alexander’s money can buy clothes fit to grace a catwalk, but doesn’t, it seems, stretch to cookery lessons. Mary tries, bless her, but her Yorkshire puddings are as tasty as papier mâché, beef so overcooked Natasha expected it to turn to ash when she touched it, and all doused in gravy the colour of muddy water.