Honey, I’m home, she would say, crouching beside a corpse to ascertain the hour of death. The phrase came out caustic or tender, depending on her mood, mostly in a whisper as she put her hand out and held her palm a millimetre over the flesh to take in its body heat. Its. Not his or hers anymore.

‘Bang it once more,’ she asked him.

‘I’ll use the claw hammer.’ This time the metallic noise echoed into the dark space, and when it died down everything became silent.

‘Close your eyes,’ he said. ‘I’ll light a sulphur lamp.’ But Anil had worked in night quarries alongside sulphur brightness, or in basements made naked by it. The porous light revealed a large room, the remnants of a toppled saloon counter in the corner, behind which she later would find a chandelier. This was to be their storage space and work lab, claustrophobic, the odour of Lysol in the air.

She noticed Sarath had already begun using the space to store some of his archaeological findings. There were rock and bone fragments wrapped in clear plastic all over the floor, crates roped tight. Well, she hadn’t come here to deal with the Middle Ages.

He was saying something she could not hear, while unlocking boxes, bringing out the results of a recent dig.

‘… mostly sixth century. We think it was a sacred grave for monks, near Bandarawela.’

‘Were any skeletons found?’

‘So far three of them. And some fossilized wood pots of the same period. Everything fits into the same time pattern.’

She pulled her gloves on and lifted an old bone to test the weight. The dating seemed right.

‘The skeletons were wrapped in leaves, then cloth,’ he told her. ‘Then stones were placed on top of them, which slid down later through the rib cage into the chest area.’