‘Here, ready.'

‘Let him get on with it.’

Fry waited for the DCI to ask about the doctor, but she looked up and realized that he could already see Dr Inglefield making his way down the path.

‘Finder?' said Tailby.

‘Back at the cottage, sir. With DC Cooper.'

‘Let's see what the doc says then.’

The doctor was giving his name to a PC standing halfway up the path. Tailby waited impatiently while they compared watches to agree the time, and the PC wrote it down in his notebook. Most of the other officers who had inevitably begun to gather round the scene had been sent away to continue their search, grumbling all the more at the futility of it.

Blue and white tape hung in strands for several yards around the body, wound round the trunks of trees and a jutting stump of black rock. From where the detectives stood, all that could be seen of Laura Vernon was a lower leg. The black fabric of her jeans contrasted with the glare of a white, naked foot, its toenails painted blood-red. The rest of the body was hidden in a dense clump of bracken, and around it there were numerous signs of trampling. Fry knew that the broken stems and crushed grass raised the odds in favour of thecrime scene examiners producing the sort of evidence that would lead to a quick arrest. She longed to get nearer, to get a close look at the body, to see the girl's face. How had she died? Had she been strangled or battered, or what? Nobody was saying. At this stage, nobody wanted to commit themselves. They simply stood and watched the doctor do his official business as he nodded at the policemen without a word and made his way gingerly along a marked-out strip of ground to the crushed bracken.

They were, of course, assuming the body was that of Laura Vernon. There seemed little doubt, but it was not considered a fact until one of her parents had been dragged through the process of identification.

‘No hope of getting the caravan down here,' said Tailby.

‘Nowhere near, sir,' agreed Hitchens.

‘Is there a farm track nearby? What's over that side of the trees?'

‘Don't know, sir.’

Hitchens and Tailby both turned to look at Fry. Hitchens frowned when he saw who she was, as if he had been expecting someone else.

‘See if you can find out, Fry,' he said. 'Closest access we can get for the caravan.'

‘Yes, sir.’

Fry wondered how she was expected to do this, when there was no habitation in sight. The village itself was invisible beyond the huge outcrop of rock. There was a cliff face at her back and dense woodland stretching in front of her down to the road.

She was aware of the tall DCI studying her. He had a thin, bony face and keen grey eyes with a vigilant air. She had not encountered him face to face until now — he had simply been a figure passing in the distance once, pointed out to her and noted as one of the people who mattered. The last thing she wanted to do was to look useless now, on their first meeting. First impressions lasted a long time.

‘Perhaps you could find somebody who has a bit of local knowledge,' suggested Tailby.

Hitchens said: 'Maybe we'd better ask —’

Then Diane Fry registered the noise that she had been aware of in the background all the time they had been on the hillside. It was a juddering and clattering noise, stationary now somewhere over the trees to the east. The helicopter was holding position until its crew were given instructions to return to base.

Fry pulled out her radio, and smiled. 'I think I've got a better idea, sir.’

The DCI understood straightaway. 'Excellent. Get them to let Scenes and Scientific Support have a location as well for their vans.’

Dr Inglefield had taken only a few minutes before he was walking back up the path towards Tailby.

‘Well, dead all right,' he said. 'Skull bashed in, I'd say, not to put too fine a point on it. You'll get the technical details from the PM, of course, but that's about it. Rigor is almost completely resolved and decomposition has started. Also we have quite a few maggots hatching in the usual places. Eyes, mouth, nostrils. You know .. The pathologist should be able to give you a pretty good idea of the time of death. Normally I'd say atleast twenty-four hours, but in this weather . . .' He shrugged expressively.

‘Sexually assaulted?' asked Tailby.

‘Mmm. Some disturbance of the clothing, certainly. More than that I couldn't say.'

‘I'll take a quick look while we wait for the pathologist,' said Tailby to Hitchens.

He pulled on plastic gloves and approached to within a few feet of the body. He would not touch it or anything around it, would not risk disturbing any of the possible forensic evidence waiting for the SOCOs. Inglefield looked at Fry curiously as she pocketed her radio. She had been listening keenly to their conversation even while she made the call.

‘New, are you?' asked Inglefield. 'Sorry about the maggots.'

‘New to the area,' said Fry. 'I've seen maggots on a dead body before. People don't realize how quickly flies will get into the bodily orifices and lay their eggs, do they, Doctor?'

‘In weather like this the little beggars will be there within minutes of death. The eggs can hatch in another eight hours or so. How long has the girl been missing?’

‘Nearly two days,' said Fry.

‘There you are then. Plenty of time. But don't take my word . .

‘It's a question for the pathologist, yes.'

‘Mrs Van Doon will no doubt give your chaps the chapter and verse. A forensic entomologist will be able to tell you what larval stage they're going through and all that. That can fix the time of death pretty well.’

There was the sound of engines beyond the trees, and the helicopter appeared again, flying low, guiding a small convoy along the forest track that had been found.

‘I'd better go and direct them,' said Fry.

‘Somebody was luckier than me,' said the doctor. 'My car's back up the hill there somewhere. Ah well, no doubt the exercise will do me good. It's what I tell my patients, anyway.’

Fry shepherded the Home Office pathologist and the Scenes of Crime team down the hillside. The SOCOs, a man and a woman, were sweating in their white suits and overshoes as they lugged their cases with them to the taped-off area and pulled their hoods over their heads until they looked like aliens. Tailby was backing away, leaving the way clear for the photographer to set up his lights against the lengthening shadows that were now falling across the scene. The exact position of the body had to be recorded with stills camera and video before the pathologist could get close enough to examine her maggots. Fry turned away. She knew that the next stage would involve the pathologist taking the girl's rectal temperature.

She was in time to catch DI Hitchens taking a call on his cellphone.

‘Hitchens here. Yes?’

He listened for a minute, his face slipping from a frown into anger and frustration.

‘Get everyone on to it that you can. Yes, yes, I know. But this is a priority. We're going to look complete idiots. Pull people in from wherever you need to.’

Hitchens looked round to see where Tailby was, and saw him walking back up the slope towards them.

‘Bastard!' said Hitchens as he pushed the phone into his pocket.

‘Something wrong?' asked Fry.

A team went to pick up Lee Sherratt, and he's done a runner.’

Fry winced. It was bad luck to lose your prime suspect just when you were hoping that everything would click together easily, that the initial witness statements would tie your man into the scene and the results of forensic tests would sew the case up tight. It was bad luck she didn't want to be drawn into, she thought, as they watched the DCI approach, peeling off his plastic gloves.

‘We need to get that time of death ascertained as close as we can,' said Tailby. 'Then we need the enquiry teams allocated to doing the house-to-house again, Paul.'