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was decapitated?’
    ‘You’re a mind-reader.’
    ‘Why? To hinder identification?’
    ‘Probably.’
    ‘Was he murdered, then?’
    Diamond rolled his eyes. ‘I’m trying to keep the proverbial open mind.’
    ‘A headless corpse,’ Wigfull said, beginning at last to be interested. ‘It might make an item for the press.’
    ‘Not yet, old chum. We’re still digging. We may get more information. Meanwhile I’m interested in your missing cavalier. Be sure to let me know when he turns up.’
    ‘I doubt if there’s a connection.’
    ‘Even so.’
    He let Wigfull reconnect with his screen.
    Back at the dig, the crime scene team were on another break, flasks and newspapers out, when Diamond turned up. An inflatable tent the size of a small barn had been erected over the area of excavation. He took a look inside. Nothing seemed to have changed since he’d last seen it. The bones were still partially embedded in soil.
    ‘How did you spend the morning?’ he asked after emerging from the tent.
    Duckett, the head honcho, looked up from the Daily Mail . ‘What?’
    ‘I said how did you spend the morning? To me it looks the same as it did last night.’
    ‘Skeletons do, on the whole,’ Duckett said, and got some grins from his team.
    Diamond contained his annoyance. ‘I don’t know if this makes any difference at all to your rate of work, but we could be dealing with a recent murder here. I’ve got an expert coming out. A forensic anthropologist.’
    ‘We heard. That’s why we downed tools. He won’t want it disturbed any more than it has been already.’
    This was probably true. Not often did Peter Diamond come off the worst in an exchange of opinions. He turned his back on them and gazed across the vast landscape as if something of much more interest was happening two miles away.
    Actually the action was much closer. Ingeborg’s head and shoulders appeared over the brow of the hill. Beside her, at about the level of her bobbing breasts, was a man in a white zipper suit carrying a cardboard box almost as big as himself. ‘This is Dr Peake,’ Ingeborg told Diamond when she was close enough.
    ‘Lofty,’ the small man said in a tone suggesting he’d heard every conceivable play on his name and settled for this one. ‘Ingeborg kindly gave me a lift here. Let’s have a look at what I came for.’ He dropped the box, put on surgical gloves, dipped under the crime scene tape and entered the tent, followed by Diamond and Ingeborg. ‘Ah, beautifully presented. Full marks to the diggers. Give me a few minutes with the young lady.’
    Diamond had got accustomed to men making a play for the attractive Ingeborg, and it didn’t amuse him any more. ‘You can have your few minutes with me. I’m the SIO here.’
    Lofty Peake said, ‘I think we’re at cross purposes. I was speaking of the deceased.’
    ‘You said “young lady ” .’
    ‘Look at the pelvis. Obviously female.’
    Time for a rapid rethink. Diamond had convinced himself the victim was male ever since he’d linked the death to the Battle of Lansdown.
    He turned to Ingeborg. ‘You’d think that dozy lot would have recognised a female skeleton.’
    ‘Maybe they did,’ she said.
    ‘And said nothing to me? That would be so unprofessional.’
    ‘I wouldn’t take it up with them, guv.’
    ‘I don’t intend to. I’m not giving them the satisfaction.’
    Lofty Peake was on his knees beside the skeleton, his face so close to the bones that he could have been sniffing them. ‘Has she had her picture taken?’
    ‘The victim? Yes, repeatedly.’
    ‘Soil samples taken? A search made for trace evidence? I think we can lift her, then. I’ll find out more in the lab. First impressions suggest she was a young adult, average in height. I don’t suppose there’s much chance of finding the skull, but you’ll make the effort, won’t you?’
    ‘Do you think it’s hereabouts?’ Diamond asked.
    ‘Don’t ask me. Try a sniffer dog. They’re more