‘Two adults, sir. One male, one female. Recently buried, as you see, clothing in place.’

‘Well, hello, Mr and Mrs Williams.’ Hennessey glanced at the corpses. ‘We meet at last, I have heard so much about you.’

‘That would be my inclination, sir.’ Yellich smiled. ‘I mean, as to their identity.’

‘Yellich, you would sadden me to the point of clinical depression if that had not been your…inclination.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Yellich felt uncomfortable and glared at a constable who was beginning to, but did not actually, smile at his discomfort.

Hennessey glanced at the bodies. She was slender, light coloured hair, angular facial features. He was tall, short dark hair, moustache, postmortem stubble. Both seemed to be expensively dressed. She, in her youth, would have considered herself and been considered a beauty: he likewise, handsome.

‘Good morning, Chief Inspector.’

Hennessey turned. Dr D’Acre stood beside him. ‘I’ve just been a few feet away to collect soil samples for comparative analysis, but I think this soil is not alien to the location. They were not buried elsewhere for safe keeping, exhumed and then reburied here.’

She was, like Mrs Williams had been in life, slender, with close-cropped hair, large-framed, stainless-steel spectacles, boldly stating that she is a woman who wears spectacles and does not care at all. Not for her the vanity of contact lenses, nor, Hennessey doubted, when the time comes, would she be one for dentures. But perhaps she would. She was the same height as Hennessey, tall for a woman, he always thought.

‘Dr D’Acre.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘I haven’t seen you in a while.’

‘Well, things have been quiet, criminally speaking,’ she said. ‘Plenty of PMs on deaths by misadventure, children drowning in the Ouse because it looks inviting on a hot summer’s day, but no one has told them about undercurrents and eddies and stream flow; and farm workers trampled by bulls or impaled on agricultural machinery; elderly people who burn to death because their clothing catches fire. It all happens in the Vale, but little of recent note for the boys in blue. Mind you,’ Louise D’Acre said with a smile, ‘when we do get murders in the Vale, in North Yorkshire, they have a certain class about them, don’t you think? I mean, grubby pit village stabbings on Saturday night belong to South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire has its share of senseless violence, but we in North Yorkshire, particularly in the Vale, have murders of class.’

‘If you wish, Dr D’Acre, if you wish.’ It had taken Hennessey some time to fathom Louise D’Acre’s sense of humour, but when it had finally plumbed its depth he enjoyed, even envied, its dryness. ‘But this is murder?’

‘Oh, yes, I’d say so. Daresay you could commit suicide having arranged for a friend to bury you.’

‘I was being serious.’

‘So was I. Discounting possibilities, you see. They could have been killed accidentally and buried in a panic, by the motorist who ran into them while they were strolling down the lane and he was speeding whilst under the influence, but again, I don’t think so. The police surgeon has pronounced life extinct. He did that at nine-thirty. Something of a formality in this case, but these things have to be done correctly.’

‘Of course.’

‘But is it murder?’

The Home Office pathologist glanced at the two corpses, lying on their sides facing each other. ‘It’s not death by misadventure, it isn’t suicide. It also isn’t manslaughter followed by unlawful disposal of human remains. This is murder most foul. A man and a woman in their fifties, I’d say, both well-nourished, lived high on the hog, I suspect. I mean, look at the clothing and the jewellery, and his wristwatch, that’s a Cartier, isn’t it?’

‘Most probably, and they did live well.’

‘You know them?’

‘Well, professionally speaking…yes and no…never met them in life but we have known that they were missing, since Sunday last, but not reported until yesterday. I have every confidence that you’re looking at the remains of Max and Amanda Williams, of Old Pond Road, Bramley on Ouse.’

‘That’s not too far from here. A pretty village. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, magnificent yew in the churchyard. The church too is interesting, has ancient beams which look as though they’ve been bored by immense beetles, but not a bit of it, at the end of each hole there’s a musket ball—a group of Cromwell’s soldiers entered the church and blasted it from the inside with their muskets. Vandalism is no new thing.’

‘Neither is graffiti. Beverley Minster has it from the sixteenth century.’

‘That’s recent. Take a trip to Rome. Anyway, I can at this stage observe nothing that contradicts the report that they were alive a few days ago. But what I can tell you is that they were not buried immediately.’

‘Oh?’

Louise D’Acre nodded. ‘Yes. They were buried about twenty four hours after being killed.’ She knelt by the shallow grave and took the forearm of the male corpse and bent it at the elbow. It moved quite freely. ‘See that?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s no rigor mortis.’ Louise D’Acre stood. ‘You see, rigor begins to set in soon after death and in these climatic conditions, it will be fully established in twenty-four hours. Once the rigor has been broken it doesn’t re-establish itself.

‘So what happened is that they were murdered, then allowed to remain wherever for a period of at least twenty-four hours, then they were moved. But by the time they had to be moved, rigor had established itself and so to facilitate the removal of the corpses, the rigor had to be broken. You do that by forcing a joint to move. Takes a bit of strength to do that.

‘Then, once the rigor has been broken, you can bundle the body up into a compact place, possibly for transportation. I’ll tell you more about the likely time of death once I get them to the pathology department.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘A blow to the head. More than one blow to the head of the man, just one to the woman that I can detect, but a blow to the head nonetheless. Both the scalps are matted with blood so there’ll be traces of blood at the crime scene if the crime scene was indoors, less likely to trace blood if the crime scene was in the middle of a wood.’

‘No trace of anything here, sir, except the grave. No tyre tracks, no footprints, the ground is concrete hard—it’s been baked in the sun.’

‘Who found the bodies?’

‘A farm worker, sir. Gentleman by the name of Less.’

‘Less?’ Hennessey smiled.

‘Aye, boss. So he says. Colin Less. Lives in a tied cottage on Primrose Farm land. This is Primrose Farm land.’

‘I see.’

‘He said he didn’t see or hear anything of the grave being dug, but he knows the farm, he was in this field before the weekend, no trace of it then. But he says his experience would tell him that the grave was dug on Monday or yesterday.’

‘I don’t think I can do anything more here,’ Dr D’Acre said. ‘I’ll have the bodies removed to York District. Who will represent the police at the PM?’

‘Yellich, can you do that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Hennessey turned to D’Acre. ‘Can I look in the pockets?’

‘You can for me, Chief Inspector.’

Hennessey kneeled and felt the inside pocket of the man’s jacket and extracted a wallet. He stood and opened it. ‘Confirmation,’ he said. ‘As if we really needed it.’ He showed it to Yellich.

‘Max Williams,’ Yellich read. ‘Robbery wasn’t the motive.’

Hennessey showed the wallet to D’Acre. ‘A name for my report then.’

‘Certainly looks like it.’ Hennessey turned to Yellich. ‘We’ve got some bad news to break.’

‘I can do that, sir, collect the son from the naval base, ask him to formally identify the bodies. That’ll have to be done before the postmortem.’

‘Certainly will,’ Louise D’Acre said. ‘I’ll have to peel the skin from the skull. His face won’t be recognizable after I’ve finished. Neither will hers.’