'Ah, the great white chief. Took your time getting here, superintendent.'

'Got the call on my way back from a meeting in Nottingham,' said Dalziel. He saw Longbottom smile his awareness that the meeting in question had taken place under floodlights on a rugby pitch.

'Well, at least now you're here, perhaps you can tell the bunch of incompetents who've preceded you to get their fingers out and start imposing some sort of order on this mess.'

'I'll do my best,' said the Fat Man mildly. 'Talking of messes, sir, that's a right one you've got out there. Looks like a health hazard to me.'

'On the contrary, it's a cordon sanitaire,' said Batty. 'After the damage those lunatics did last summer, it was quite clearly beyond the police force's competency to protect us, so we took steps of our own to thwart these criminals.'

'Criminals,' echoed Dalziel as if the word were new to him. 'You'll be prosecuting then, sir?'

Batty said, 'If it's left up to me, we will! Normally we don't care to give these lunatics the oxygen of publicity, but I suspect in this case, some exposure is already unavoidable?'

'Aye,' said Dalziel. 'Having a body dug up in your back yard usually gives off a lot worse stink than oxygen.'

'As I feared, though I suppose the exact nature of the publicity depends on how diplomatically things are handled. Troll, what can you tell us?'

Dalziel gave the pathologist a look which dared him to speculate an inch further than he'd done on the edge of the crater.

'Early days, David, early days,' murmured Longbottom.

'And getting close to early hours,' said Dalziel looking at his watch. 'Mebbe I could see the witnesses now…?'

'Yes, I suppose so. Patten will take you along. Troll, let's try to get your outside dry and your inside suitably wetted.'

With an apologetic mop and mow at Dalziel, the pathologist let himself be led away. Dalziel who kept his slates as carefully as any shopkeeper, chalked up another small debt against Batty's name and followed the security man through one of the hessian doors and down a long corridor.