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shouting, pointing to the trees. ‘Over there.’
    ‘We haven’t excavated over there yet,’ Charlie Buttock was explaining. ‘There can’t possibly…’
    But Peter Maxwell was creeping over the ash tree roots, feeling his way in semi-darkness, trying to force his eyes to focus after the sharp light of the sun. He couldn’t make out anything at first, then his foot hit something, soft but solid.
    ‘Jesus!’
    ‘What is it, Mr Maxwell?’ Douglas Russell, their archaeologist guide, was standing with the Leighford sixth formers at his elbow.
    ‘Nothing,’ Maxwell turned to face them. ‘Paul, get the kids in the minibus, will you?’ In such moments, even Peter Maxwell was apt to denigrate his own sixth form, but in theface of death, the sophisticates of Year Twelve were children indeed.
    ‘What?’ Moss frowned, but he’d worked man and boy with Peter Maxwell for years now, almost all his working life. Mad the man may have been, but he was only mad nor’ by nor’west. And when Mad Max told you to do something , he had his reasons. And you did it. ‘Oh, right. Come on, people. Home-time.’
    ‘But sir…’ Robbie couldn’t believe what was happening.
    ‘Yes, Robbie. Tell me all about it later.’
    The Year Twelve students, in jeans and t-shirts, had been grateful enough to take a break from the rigours of their AS revision slog to look at a few artefacts, but this was different , frightening, urgent. Had Robbie Wesson been literally burning, not one of them would have pissed on him to put him out, but there was something wrong. They all sensed it. Mad Max’s face was odd, serious and suddenly grey. His voice was hard, his words deliberate, and in such moments, you didn’t cross him. You just kept your head down and you moved. A couple of girls put their arms around Robbie’s skinny little shoulders and instantly turned into their mothers, leading the bewildered boy back to the minibus.
    Douglas Russell was in the undergrowth now, squatting with those muscles that archaeologists the world over develop in their years at the soil-face. ‘My God,’ he hissed, staring at what Peter Maxwell was staring at.
    ‘That is… was …David Radley?’ Maxwell needed confirmation . He’d only met the man once and the light was poor in the ash-tree thicket.
    Russell was nodding. ‘God in Heaven…’ and his hand instinctively went forward.
    ‘No!’ Maxwell was faster, snatching the man’s wrist andholding it firm. ‘Evidence,’ he said more softly. ‘You, of all people…’
    ‘Yes,’ Russell visibly pulled himself together, ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry. An eleven-hundred-year-old body I can cope with. But this…’ He realized he was shaking. He was going to throw up.
    ‘Do you have a mobile phone?’ Maxwell asked, as much to give the man something to do as anything else.
    ‘Er…yes…I…I don’t know…’ He slapped his pockets uselessly. It would be in his jacket, in the tent, in the four-by-four, at the hotel. At that precise moment, he didn’t really know.
    The Head of Sixth Form stood up, lifting the shaken archaeologist with him. He led the man into the sunlight. Charlie Buttock stood there, one or two other diggers alongside her, watching the scene unfold as if in a film. Somebody else’s screenplay, somebody else’s set.
    ‘Paul,’ Maxwell called to his oppo, standing by the bus. All the kids were inside, peering intently out of the window . All except the two girls playing mummies to Robbie Wesson. And Robbie Wesson, owner of more syndromes than China, was trying very hard not to cry.
    The Head of Sixth Form waited until the Head of History was alongside him. ‘Call the police,’ he said softly. ‘It’s a murder.’
    And he bent down and picked up the fallen headgear of Robbie Wesson, as though it was Richard III’s crown in the bush at Bosworth.
     
    If he’d been asked, Peter Maxwell couldn’t have told you when the blue and white police tape stretched around a murder scene