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there?’
    The uniformed man was carrying a badly-wrapped package suggesting a fish and chip supper which it manifestly wasn’t. He looked down at it. ‘Bones, sir.’ He began to open it up carefully.
    Markby recognised the paper as a crumpled ordnance survey map. The man held it out to him. A jumble of brownish objects nestled in the cup formed by the officer’s hands and he could see one of them was a jawbone. Markby fought to keep his face free of expression. Could these be the bones of the lost rapist – or of one of his victims? Had one of them raised her head and seen him and met death?
    â€˜Pretty old,’ he said. Yes, lying bare for twenty years or more at least. He looked at the young man in the yellow waterproof and made a guess. ‘Did you find them, sir?’
    â€˜Yes,’ returned the young man. ‘I fell down a slope and there they were.’
    â€˜This gentleman is Dr Morgan,’ explained the other officer. ‘Being a medical man he knew what they were. We had a look round, just in the area where they were found. We couldn’t find any more, not just in a quick search.’
    â€˜I’ll see someone gets out here and has a better look.’ Markby glanced at the woodland. ‘But it will be difficult to search the whole wood.’
    â€˜Pity you didn’t leave them where you found them, sir,’ said the other officer to the young man in the yellow cape. ‘You are sure you took us back to the right spot?’

    â€˜Yes, I’m sure,’ said Dr Morgan testily. ‘You saw for yourself the marks where I rolled down the slope. I didn’t leave them there because something might have moved them before you got here. I couldn’t stay with them. I told you, the mobile didn’t work in there and anyway, you’d never have found me. I had to come out here and wait for you.’
    â€˜Well, you’d better come with us and make a statement,’ said the first officer. He cast a slightly apprehensive glance at Markby.
    â€˜Thank you for reporting your find, Doctor,’ Markby said to him politely. ‘Spoiled your hike, I expect.’
    â€˜No sweat,’ said the other with gloomy resignation. ‘This walking break has been pretty well jinxed from the start.’
    â€˜Stovey Wood is an unlucky place,’ Markby replied and the other three looked at him, startled.
    They parted company. Dr Morgan divested himself of his yellow cape, revealing the hump to be a rucksack which he unslung before climbing into the back of the police car. Alan returned to his car, opened it up and leaned in to take out a newspaper. He spread a layer of sheets on the car floor. He wasn’t a finicky person but there was no point in making work. He scraped some of the mud off by rubbing his sole on a tussock, sighed and clambered in behind the wheel.
    Their small convoy set off, lurching back down the potholed track to the village. As they reached the church, Markby tapped his horn to let the men ahead know he was leaving them there. He pulled up by a lych-gate and watched the police car until it was out of sight.

Chapter Three
    Ruth Aston perched unhappily on a rickety stepladder, cleaning Sir Rufus Fitzroy’s memorial with a bright green feather duster.
    The Fitzroy monument, as the leaflet giving the church’s history called it, gave the impression of having been an expensive piece of sculpture in its day. The leaflet, however, repeated the tale that the sculptor had been down on his luck and done the work for a song. He’d been an Italian who’d arrived in Britain hoping for commissions from wealthy patrons. He had been reduced to making nymphs and satyrs for landscaped gardens when asked, almost in passing, if he couldn’t produce a suitable memorial for a gentleman. Nevertheless, the result was one of the tourist attractions of Lower Stovey’s parish church, in as much as it had any. Architecturally, it