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not remember his making any promises but was reluctant to start an argument in the hotel restaurant so told him to carry on. There seemed to be no point in remaining at the hotel so I went back to our room, packed and left, leaving him either to stay for the rest of the time we had booked, another night, or check out. Then I took a taxi to Bath’s Manvers Street police station.
    At least, that was what I had intended to do. But, for a reason that I was not too sure about until I actually arrived, I changed my mind.
    â€˜SOCA,’ I said to the constable on guard outside the property now cordoned off with incident tape, showing him my ID card. I had asked the taxi driver to wait and had already spotted Carrick’s car.
    â€˜The DCI’s in the back garden,’ he told me, perhaps not daring to enquire what the hell the case had to do with that particular crime fighting agency.
    The front and back doors were wide open, which was wonderful, given the lingering smell. I paused in the downstairs doorways but knew better than to enter, a solitary scenes of crime officer, in a white anti-contamination suit, still working in the living room to the right of the front door. Some of the floor boards had been taken up but otherwise it did not seem that forensics had burrowed too deeply into the fabric of the house. My house.
    Part of the back garden had been forked or raked over, which I knew was necessary – I told myself it would take care of a lot of the weeds – and the blackbird was having a ball hauling out a large worm from the disturbed earth to feed to its young. It paid no heed to the man standing quietly surveying a medium-sized hole in the ground that I only noticed as I got closer.
    â€˜We found her clothes and bag but not anything that might have been used to decapitate the body,’ Carrick said after a quick glance in my direction and not appearing to find my presence surprising or out of order.
    â€˜The murderer buried them?’ I mused aloud. ‘I wonder why?’
    â€˜God knows when all he had to do was burn them or chuck them in the river. A small bush of some kind had obviously been dug out and then stamped back in any which way – that’s where they started digging.’
    â€˜Oh, the dead forsythia. I noticed that.’ I eyed the sad bundle of twigs with just a few tiny green shoots that had been put on one side. ‘That was done last year – it’s still struggling to grow.’
    â€˜Aye, the pathologist thinks she’s been dead a good twelve months.’
    â€˜So who was she?’
    â€˜The bag was plastic, thank God, so hadn’t rotted. The driving licence inside is in the name of Imelda Burnside. The address on it is here in Bath, in the London Road but it turns out she wasn’t living there then as she’d been evicted for not paying the rent. There was no money but her credit cards were still in the purse. The interesting thing is that there’s a set of car keys, plus a couple more that fit the doors to this house.’
    â€˜She must have been living here then.’
    â€˜Looks like it. Lynn’s talking to the neighbours and checking up on things like council tax and with the DVLA. If her killer had another set of car keys he might have sold it or used it for his getaway.’
    â€˜I was on my way to the nick when I thought I’d come here to ask myself if I still wanted to buy the place.’
    â€˜Did you come by taxi?’
    I nodded.
    â€˜I can give you a lift. I’m going back shortly.’
    As I went back through the house to pay off the taxi my phone rang. It was the estate agent, in panic mode. We had a short conversation.
    â€˜I’ve just received an amazing offer if I carry on with the sale,’ I said to James when I returned to the garden. ‘Although a price of twenty thousand pounds below what had originally been asked was agreed yesterday I’ve just been told I can have the