Louise Palmer nodded impatiently. ‘We’ve taken about forty cores from the bog this last week. This was the only time we found anything unusual.’

‘Can you find the spot again?’ asked the constable.

Geraint answered this from his chair. ‘Our coring plan tells us where it is to within a couple of feet — and I stuck a gorse branch in the hole to mark the exact place.’

Edwards pondered again and after Louise had again dismissed the obvious explanation that it might be a dead sheep, he turned the tube over his fingers and made his decision.

‘I’ll have to talk to my superiors in Aberystwyth, Miss Palmer. They may want to send this off to Cardiff to see if it really could be human.’

‘That’ll take ages, surely?’ objected the young woman, who was anxious to claim the glory for finding a Welsh bog body.

The sergeant shrugged. ‘If it’s as you say and the body has been there for centuries, then a few days or even a week or two won’t matter much, will it? If they decide it’s worth investigating, we’ll need you back up here to show us exactly where you found it.’

And with that, Louise had to be content, while Geraint was more concerned with calling at the fish-and-chip shop on their way back to the railway station.

TWO

Fortunately, Doctor Richard Pryor liked women and was very comfortable in their company. It was just as well, as there were already three attractive ladies in Garth House and a fourth was expected later that day. At the moment, he was hidden away in his study at the back of the detached Edwardian house, which sat on the western slope of the Wye Valley, with a great view across the river to the English side.

In the laboratory, which had been converted from the large dining room at the front, Priscilla Chambers sat at her bench facing a series of racks which held the day’s quota of paternity tests. Across the room behind her, technician Sian Lloyd was handing some alcohol results to Moira Davison, their housekeeper-cum-secretary, for her to type in the adjacent office.