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had been replaced by American Yellow. Any more than he could have told you when British policementook to wearing body armour or carrying night-sticks. Something to do with global terrorism, was it? Nine eleven? Al Qaeda? Nor could he say when policemen began to look younger than he did. No, that wasn’t true. That he did remember. He’d been 31 when a spotty kid had come to tell him, with a faltering voice and unsteady gaze, that his wife and child were dead.
    ‘DS Toogood,’ another spotty kid stood in front of him now, ears damp, tail bushy. ‘You are…?’
    Gagging for something alcoholic, Maxwell wanted to say, but this was hardly the time to be flippant. ‘Peter Maxwell.’
    To be fair to Martin Toogood, he wasn’t spotty at all. He was dark and good-looking in a Massimo Serrato kind of way.
    ‘You found the body, I understand?’
    ‘Not exactly.’
    Maxwell had stayed on the edge of the trees since Paul Moss had made his phone call. He knew the need to keep out of crime scenes and he knew that he and Russell and little Robbie Wesson at least had been crashing about all over the place. He kept the natural nosiness of the other diggers at bay, with gently raised hands and soothing words. They’d all known Radley – his friends and colleagues. He’d insisted that the Leighford kids go home and had got them all away before the law arrived. That had taken eighteen minutes; not bad perhaps in these days of hi-tech gadgetry. Even so, Maxwell wondered whether or not in his day, an old copper on his bike couldn’t have done it in ten.
    ‘I’ve got a dead man here, Mr Maxwell,’ Toogood snapped shut his warrant card holder. ‘I don’t have time for cryptic clues.’
    ‘Indeed not, no.’ The last thing Peter Maxwell wanted to do was to hinder the police in their enquiries. ‘The bodywas found by a student from Leighford High School – Robert Wesson. Special Needs kid in Year Eight.’
    ‘Where is he?’ Toogood was scanning the site, oddly golden now in the early evening sun.
    ‘At home,’ Maxwell said. ‘I sent the Leighford party away.’
    ‘ You did?’
    ‘Murder sites aren’t the place for children, Sergeant. Wouldn’t you agree?’
    ‘If I had the leisure for it, sir,’ Toogood told him. ‘What were you all doing here?’
    Maxwell wandered with him down the slope of Staple Hill, past strange men in white coats and hoods, who had arrived in myriad police vehicles, sirens blaring, lights flashing, trampling without respect over the archaeological site, interested only in gathering evidence of an altogether more recent tragedy.
    ‘Dr Radley invited us,’ Maxwell told him. ‘He was keen to attract students to his department.’
    ‘The dead man?’ Toogood stopped and turned.
    Maxwell nodded.
    ‘When did you see him last? Alive, I mean.’
    ‘Er…’ Maxwell sighed. ‘Let’s see. Today’s Thursday. Yesterday. Yesterday afternoon. At Leighford High. We set up this visit then.’
    ‘What time was this?’ Toogood was jotting it all down, in true text book fashion in his notepad.
    ‘Quarter past, half past four? After my teaching day, certainly .’
    ‘And what is it you teach, Mr Maxwell?’
    ‘History,’ the Great Man said. ‘I’m Head of Sixth Form.’
    ‘English was always my thing,’ Toogood said, his face suddenly softer. ‘History came a pretty close second.’
    ‘I find it often does,’ Maxwell smiled.
    ‘Martin,’ a female voice made them both turn and an auburn-haired woman stood there, picking her way over the rubble of ages in incongruous office shoes. ‘SOCO want a word. In the main tent.’
    Toogood nodded, slipping the book away. ‘Any sign of the governor yet?’
    The woman shook her head.
    ‘We’ll talk again, Mr Maxwell,’ the sergeant said and was gone, up the hill and into the tent with its white-coated men.
    She flashed her warrant-card at him. ‘DS Carpenter,’ she said.
    ‘We can’t go on meeting like this,’ he muttered, wanting to catch her