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we’re the poor bastards who have to attempt to identify him,’ Jack Galbraith stated cheerfully.
    ‘The other hand was missing?’ I asked.
    Bryn nodded. ‘And no trace or residue of any clothing. Every possible identifier has been removed. Only that plastic sheeting, which, after all this time, is next to useless.’
    ‘But at least we can discount suicide.’ Jack Galbraith chuckled facetiously.
    ‘Ritual killing?’ I offered.
    Jack Galbraith snorted and shook his head contemptuously. ‘It’s a fucking hit. This place is just a dumping ground.’
    I wasn’t quite sure whether he was referring to the actual grave or the entire locality he had assigned to me. ‘Will you be setting up an incident room, sir?’
    Jack Galbraith grinned at Bryn. ‘I think Capaldi’s looking for some action.’
    ‘It’s going to be desktop to start with,’ Bryn explained. ‘Marry up all the stuff SOCO and forensics can give us and try to come up with an identity. Work the missing-persons route at the same time.’
    ‘You look crestfallen, Capaldi,’ Jack Galbraith commented.
    ‘It’s a crime scene, sir.’
    Bryn leaned forward, but kept his tone sympathetic. ‘I know, but there’s nothing left here to investigate. Too much time has elapsed and the site has been devastated.’ He shrugged. ‘A place like this, if there were locals unaccounted for, we’d have known about it long ago.’
    ‘It’s a hit, Capaldi. As I’ve already said, this is just the rubbish dump.’ Jack Galbraith made a pistol using his thumb and forefinger and pointed it at me. ‘Dope? Gang related? Someone got caught fucking the wrong man’s wife? Who knows? I just know there’s nothing here.’ He clicked his thumb, mimicking a firing pin striking. ‘Kerpow . . . It’s a vanished legend. All those years ago someone drove out of somewhere, dumped a body in the boondocks, and then drove back to that place where things happen. The only thing that happens here is the fucking weather.’
    ‘You put me here, sir.’
    He shot a smile at Bryn. ‘Is this a complaint?’ he asked me.
    ‘You put me here for this eventuality. To be in place when bad things happened.’ He was wrong. The tingle was telling me that there was a local connection here.
    He gave me a wise, mock-patient look. ‘But I’ve just explained, the bad things didn’t happen here.’ He scrunched his eyes shut and took in a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ he said, resigned to it, ‘play my devil’s advocate. And don’t
sir
me every time. It gets tedious.’
    I took in my own deep breath and almost choked on the smoke. ‘Why here?’
    ‘It’s remote, hard to get to,’ he came back at me quickly. ‘A fucking good place to hide a body. Until the Save the Planet Brigade decide to construct a wind farm.’
    ‘As you said, it’s hard to get to.’
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘You would have to know it. And we’re talking about what was only a rough hill track in those days. I can’t see a hard man from Salford or wherever driving up it with a naked, dismembered corpse in the boot, just in the hope that he might arrive at somewhere convenient to dispose of a body. And he would have needed to be in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. And why travel so far out of the place where things happen?’
    He glanced at Bryn. ‘Underline your point,’ he commanded.
    ‘They knew about this location. They had researched this. Or they were living here.’
    ‘Which makes them still around, does it?’
    ‘It’s a possibility.’
    He looked over at Bryn again, who shrugged. He thought hard for a moment. ‘I suppose it works on a PR level. We’re seen to be doing something tangible. Okay, Capaldi, go and ask your questions. But I still say you’re wrong.’ He grinned. ‘And don’t step too hard on Inspector Morgan’s toes,’ he added.
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said gratefully. Mentally I had already hit the ground running.
    PRIVATE – GOLDMINE – KEEP OUT
    The sign had been daubed on the sheet-metal gate