In the blackout, we had to tape up our windows to prevent damage from broken glass, and we also had to hang up the heavy blackout curtains. Every night, Mother used to send me outside to check that not a sliver of light showed because our local ARP man was a real stickler. I remember the whole village laughing the day we heard Mrs. Darnley got a visit from him for blacking out only the front of her house, but not the back windows. “Don’t be so daft,” she told him. “If the Germans come to bomb Hobb’s End, young lad, they’ll come from the east, won’t they, not by Grassington way. Stands to reason.”

On moonlit nights, especially if there was a full moon, the effect could be spectacular: the hills were dusted with silver powder, the stars glittered like cut diamonds on black velvet, and the whole landscape looked like one of those black-and-white engravings or woodcuts you see in old books. But on cloudy or moonless nights, which seemed far more frequent, people bumped into trees and even cycled into the river with alarming regularity. You could use a torch if you wrapped the light with several layers of tissue paper, but batteries were scarce. All car and bicycle lights had to be hooded and masked with a variety of gadgets that let the light through only in muddied, useless slits. Needless to say, there were a lot of car accidents, too, until petrol became too scarce and nobody drove anymore except on business.

Several events made the war more personal for us, such as the Spinner’s Inn fire, or the Jowett boy getting killed at Dunkirk, but the day before Gloria Stringer arrived, something hit even closer to home: Matthew got his call-up papers. He was due to report for his medical in Leeds in two weeks.

Jimmy Riddle had once accused Banks of skiving off to Leeds to go shagging his mistress and shopping at the Classical Record Shop. He had been wrong that time, but if he had seen Banks nipping out of the Merrion Centre late that afternoon, a new recording of Herbert Howells’s Hymnus Paradisi clutched in his sweaty palm, Riddle would have felt vindicated at least on one count. Not that Banks gave a toss. He didn’t even bother to look furtive as he walked out past Morrisons onto Woodhouse Lane.

It was gone half past five. Shops were closing and office workers were heading home. Banks had driven to Leeds behind John Webb’s Range Rover and stayed with him until they got the skeleton set up and secured in Dr. Williams’s lab, which turned out to be the first floor of a large red brick house off the main campus. While there, he had called the forensic odontologist Geoff Turner again and persuaded him – at the cost of at least one pint – to drop by the following morning to examine the skeleton’s teeth.

After that, Banks had watched the lab assistants start cleaning the bones, then he had gone out for a quick sandwich at a café on Woodhouse Lane, making a slight detour to the Classical Record Shop. He had been gone for about an hour and a half.

DS Cabbot was just parking her Astra when Banks arrived back at the lab. She didn’t spot him. He watched her get out and look up at the building, checking with the sheet of paper in her hand and frowning.

He stepped up behind her. “It’s the right place.”

She turned. “Ah, sir. I was expecting something a bit more… well… I don’t know really. But not like this.”

“More labby?”

She smiled. “Yes. I suppose so. Whatever that means. More hi-tech. This place looks like my old student digs.”

Banks nodded toward the building. “The university bought up a lot of these old houses when the families and their servants couldn’t afford to live there anymore. You’d be surprised how many odd and eccentric departments are hidden away in them. Let’s go inside.”

Banks followed her up the steps. This evening she was wearing black tights and shoes, a mid-length black skirt and matching jacket over a white blouse. She was also carrying a black leather briefcase. Much more businesslike. Banks caught a brief whiff of jasmine as he walked behind her. It reminded him of the jasmine tea that Jem, his friend and neighbor in the Notting Hill bed-sit, used to pour so fastidiously, as if he were performing the Japanese tea ceremony.

Banks pressed the intercom and got them buzzed in. The lab was on the first floor, up one flight of creaky, uncarpeted stairs. Their footsteps echoed from the high ceiling.

Dr. Ioan Williams waited for them on the landing. He was a tall, rangy fellow with long, greasy blond hair. Wire-rimmed glasses magnified his gray eyes, and his Adam’s apple looked like a gobstopper stuck halfway down his throat. Much younger than Banks had expected, Dr. Williams wasn’t wearing a white lab coat but was dressed casually in torn jeans and a black T-shirt advertising Guinness. His handshake was firm, and judging by the way he lingered over DS Cabbot, his mind was not one hundred percent focused on science. Or maybe it was. Biology.

“Come in,” he said, leading the way down the corridor and opening the lab door. “I’m afraid it isn’t much to write home about.” Despite his name, Williams had no trace of a Welsh accent. He sounded pure Home Counties to Banks, or Oxbridge. Posh, at any rate, as Banks’s mother would say.

The lab consisted of two rooms knocked into one. Apart from the long table at the center, where the skeleton lay, there was nothing much to distinguish it. Bookcases lined one wall, a long lab bench another. On it lay various measuring instruments and pieces of bone with tags on them like shop-window goods.

Still, Banks thought, what more did Williams need? All he looked at were bones. No mess. No blood and guts to clean up, no need for dissecting knives, scalpels or brain knives. All he really needed were saws, chisels and a skull key. And, thank God, they didn’t have to worry about the smell, though the air was certainly redolent of loam and stagnant mud.

There were a couple of posters on the walls, one of Pamela Anderson Lee in her “Baywatch” swimsuit and another of a human skeleton. Perhaps, Banks speculated, the juxtaposition meant something to Dr. Williams. A reflection on mortality? Or maybe he just liked tits and bones.

The bones on the table certainly looked different now that Williams’s assistants had been to work on them. Much of the crusting remained, especially in the hard-to-get-at crevices, but the skull, ribs and long bones were easier to examine. They were still far from the sparkling white of the typical laboratory skeleton, more of a dirty yellow-brown in color, like a bad nicotine stain, but at least the whole resembled something more like a human being. There was even a little matted red hair on the back of the skull. Banks had come across this sort of thing before, so he knew it didn’t mean the victim had been a redhead; hair turns red when the original pigment fades, and even many of the “bog men,” Iron Age corpses preserved in peat bogs, had red hair.

“There are a number of odds and ends my lads found while they were cleaning up,” Williams said. “They’re over there on the bench.”

Banks looked at the collection of filthy objects. It was hard to make out what they were: pieces of corroded metal, perhaps? A ring? Shreds of old clothing?

“Can you get them cleaned up and sent over to me?” he asked.

“No problem. Now let’s get down to work.”

Annie took out her notebook and crossed her legs.

“First of all,” Williams began, “let me confirm, just for the record, that we are dealing with human remains, most likely Caucasian. I’ll check a few things under the microscope tomorrow, do some more work on the skull dimensions, for the sake of scientific accuracy, but you can take my word on it at the moment.”

“What about DNA analysis?” Banks asked.

Williams grunted. “People seem to think DNA analysis is some sort of miracle answer. It’s not. Right now, I can tell you a hell of a lot more about what you want to know than any DNA could. Believe me, I’ve had plenty of experience in this field. May I continue?”