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    ‘Any idea how old the bodies are?’ he asks.
    ‘I think they’re fairly recent,’ says Ruth. ‘Bones buried in sand usually disappear after a few hundred years.’
    Not for the first time, Nelson marvels at what archaeologists consider recent. ‘So they could be a hundred years old?’
    ‘I think it’s likely they’re more modern than that,’ says Ruth cautiously. ‘We’ll do C14 dating. Also there’s hair and teeth. We can run a number of different tests.’
    Nelson knows from previous cases that C14, or carbon fourteen dating, measures the amount of carbon left within a body. When we die we stop taking in carbon 14 and it starts to break down so, by measuring the amount of C14 left in a bone, archaeologists can estimate its age. He also knows that dates can vary by as much as a hundred years. This may not seem much to Ruth but it’s not very helpful when deciding whether or not you’re dealing with a recent homicide.
    ‘Anything else?’ asks Nelson, straightening up.
    ‘Bodies appear to be adult male, well-built …’ She pauses. ‘They’re bound, back to back. One has what looks like a bullet wound in the thoracic vertebrae, another looks as if he was shot in the back of the head.’
    ‘Natural causes then,’ says Clough, who is hovering in the background
    Trace laughs but Nelson glares furiously at his sergeant.Murder is no laughing matter, whether it occurred twenty, seventy or two thousand years ago.
    ‘What will you do now?’
    ‘We’ll expose all the skeletons, then we’ll draw and photograph them in situ. Then we’ll excavate, skeleton by skeleton. They should all be done on the same day.’
    ‘You can’t dig with a baby round your neck.’
    ‘I can supervise.’
    ‘Give her to me.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Give the baby to me. Just for a bit. I’ll sit in the car with her, it’s too cold out here.’
    The wind has picked up in the last few minutes. They can hear the waves crashing on the beach and sand blows around them. Kate stirs fretfully.
    ‘She probably needs feeding,’ says Ruth.
    ‘Well feed her and then leave her with me. Just for a bit.’
    ‘Jesus, boss,’ says Clough. ‘Are you setting up as a nanny now?’
    ‘Just for ten minutes,’ says Nelson. ‘Then it’s your turn.’
    Ruth’s first reaction is one of intense irritation, followed by an almost blissful sense of release. As Nelson carefully lifts Kate out of her sling, it is as if Ruth has her old body back, her old self back. She straightens up, feeling the gritty wind full on her face, her hair whipping back. She knows she is smiling.
    Kate has had almost a full bottle of milk, her eyelids are drooping. Nelson sits with her in the front seat of theMercedes, Clough watching open-mouthed from the passenger side.
    ‘She should go to sleep now,’ says Ruth.
    ‘If she doesn’t, Cloughie’ll sing her a lullaby,’ promises Nelson.
    Kate’s head rests against Nelson’s blue waxed jacket. Her fine dark hair, with its one whorl that never goes in the same direction as the rest, suddenly looks unbearably fragile.
    ‘I’ll get back to the excavation,’ says Ruth, not moving.
    ‘Don’t hurry back on our account,’ says Nelson, who is still looking down at Kate.
    Ruth finds herself almost running back along the cliff path. She can’t wait to get down to the beach and start work on the trench. She wants to assert her authority on the proceedings, to check that the skeleton sheets are properly filled in, that there is no mixing of bones, that everything is securely bagged and labelled. But, more than that, she wants to be involved. It is over six months since she did any practical archaeology. She knows that Trace thinks that she is using Kate as an excuse not to do her share of the hard work, to ‘supervise’ instead. Ruth is the expert here, she’s entitled to sit back and delegate, but Trace will never know how much Ruth wants to dig, to forget everything in pure physical hard work. She would not have