Reluctantly, the Water Board men climbed out and leaned against the back of the truck, which was filled with barrows, spades and the other implements of their trade. They waited impassively for the car to come up the ramp on to the circular apron. A uniformed inspector and a large man in plain clothes emerged and walked towards them, looking down at the water below.

‘What’s all this, then?’ boomed the inspector, in the time-honoured greeting of policemen everywhere. He was a thin man with a lined face and a bushy moustache, almost certainly ex-RAF, thought the youth.

The driver stepped a pace forward, touching a finger to the peak of his flat cap. ‘I’m the foreman, Ted Reynolds. I sent the lad to phone you when we found this stuff.’ He pointed the finger away from the water, towards the bushes that filled the area between the concrete and the perimeter fence twenty yards away. The man in the tweed suit and a trilby with a turned-down brim introduced himself as PC Christie, the coroner’s officer. The five of them walked the few paces to the edge of the rim and stared across the water to the distant hills.

‘What exactly is this place?’ asked Christie.

‘An old holding reservoir, gives a head of pressure down to the villages round Pontrilas and Grosmont,’ responded the foreman. ‘We come up now and then to clean the sluices and check the inlet valves.’

‘Best show us what you’ve found,’ grunted the inspector.

Ted Reynolds turned and led the way across the concrete into the rough ground beyond, filled with saplings and brambles. The lad hung well behind, not too keen on a reunion with what he had discovered two hours ago. Reynolds halted behind a scraggy elder bush, then bent and pointed down with a calloused forefinger.