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waitress poured the first cup for me. Naturally as a private eye I was supposed to drink mugs of stewed tea and eat eggs-over-easy in a ‘greasy spoon’ somewhere but apart from the fact that you’d be hard pressed to find such an establishment in Bath it just wasn’t my style. This , I was telling myself, as the white-aproned waitress wended her way towards me with my Eggs Benedict, was my style . Just then dirty jagged shadows fell across the pristine white of the table linen. The waitress slowed, then stopped.
    ‘Thank you, we’re not hungry,’ said DI Deeks. The waitress hovered uncertainly.
    ‘And he’s about to lose his appetite,’ added DS Sorbie, pointing at me.
    Quite the comedy duo. There was no sign of hangover in Sorbie today; he was well shaven, neatly pressed and frighteningly alert.
    ‘What’s up with you two?’ I asked, annoyed because the waitress was retreating with my order towards the manager at the cash desk.
    ‘We bring glad tidings,’ Deeks said. ‘We found your car.’
    My heart sank. ‘Did they trash it? Where’d you find it?’
    ‘Not much damage but then I’m told it wouldn’t have looked much different before you said you lost it.’
    ‘Very funny. Where is it?’
    ‘In the middle of a field in Lower Swainswick.’
    ‘So it’s not a total write-off? They didn’t torch it?’
    ‘No,’ said Sorbie reassuringly. ‘It’ll be just fine. Once we’ve scraped the dead body off the back seat.’

Chapter Four
    The car zipped fast up Lansdown hill. DS Sorbie was driving, I was in the back of the big Ford with Deeks. Neither of them answered any of my questions though where we were going was becoming obvious when Sorbie screeched right, down a minor road which soon turned into a network of muddy farm tracks. ‘We really want a Land Rover for this kind of thing,’ Sorbie complained as he cranked on the wheel to avoid the worst ruts and holes.
    ‘Dream on,’ Deeks encouraged him. He turned to me. ‘Now, I should really have cautioned you at the Pump Room only the Super said there was no need. But you do anything stupid or even think about doing it and I’ll cuff you, clear?’
    So Needham had put in a word for me. Obviously not a huge one or I’d be finishing my Eggs Benedict just about now but a word nonetheless. ‘Yeah, no sweat.’ Then I gave an involuntary groan because as we splished past yet another cluster of dripping farm buildings I could see it there below us. Smack in the middle of a gently sloping field of pasture stood my car. Three doors were open. The tracks on two sides of the field were clogged with police vehicles: Land Rovers and saloons and a noddy car, vans, a minibus and an ambulance. There was a large white tent in the field, just below and to the left of my black DS21. Police tape fluttered everywhere.
    When we got there Sorbie simply abandoned the car on the track and we all got out into the thin rain. We hopped and zigzagged and took unnaturally long strides to avoid the puddles and waterlogged ruts until we got to a uniformed constable stoically guarding the remains of a wooden five-bar gate. It looked like someone had driven the DS straight through it. It also looked like it was half rotten anyway which meant somebody had been lucky; only on TV do wooden gates simply crumble when you drive through them. The small field was bordered by hedgerows on all sides and this appeared to be the only way in. Scene of Crime Officers were busy along the hedge, around the car and the tent, all in their white space outfits. At the entrance to the tent stood the bulk of Superintendent Michael Needham, sensibly clad in a blue rainproof over his suit. He’d stuffed his trousers into a pair of black wellies but even so he’d managed to get his suit splashed with mud. His deep-set intelligent eyes under thin, dark eyebrows dispassionately followed our slithering progress up the slick slope. Needham’s sparse grey hair was closely cropped, his broad face pale and