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He never thinks that Nelson is being funny; he just thinks he’s being Northern.
    ‘Of course not. Just that we have to make sure that we do it all by the book. Can’t afford to cut any corners.’
    ‘I never do,’ says Nelson. And now he
is
being funny.
    An hour later, Nelson and Clough are driving towards Broughton Sea’s End. It is normally the junior officer who drives but Nelson hates being a passenger and Clough likes to leave his hands free for eating so they are in Nelson’s dirty white Mercedes, doing seventy along the winding coastal roads.
    ‘So, boss,’ says Clough, as the North Norfolk coastline shoots past, blurry and indistinct, caravan parks, pubs, sand dunes, pitch and putt. ‘Do you think we’ve got another serial killer on the loose?’
    ‘I assume nothing,’ says Nelson.
    ‘Still,’ says Clough hurriedly, fearing another variation on Nelson’s ‘never assume’ lecture, ‘seems funny, doesn’t it? Four skeletons in one grave. It’s an out-of-the-way place, too; cut off by the tide most of the time.’
    ‘We don’t know anything yet. Skeletons could be bloody Stone Age.’ Nelson has never forgotten the first time that he met Ruth Galloway. He had called her in to investigate a body found at the edge of the Saltmarsh, which he had thought might be that of a child and, in a way, he was right. Except that this child had died over two thousand years before.
    ‘Trace says that Ruth thinks they’re comparatively recent,’ says Clough.
    ‘Ruth’s not always right,’ says Nelson.
    And when they reach the beach at Sea’s End the first person that Nelson sees is Ruth, with the entirely unwelcome addition of a child slung around her neck.
    ‘Why the hell have you brought Katie?’
    ‘Childminder’s sick,’ says Ruth.
    ‘What were you thinking? It’s way too cold for a baby.’
    ‘She’s well wrapped up.’
    Katie looks like an Eskimo child, thinks Nelson. She is wearing an all-in-one thing with built-in feet and mittens. She is sound asleep.
    ‘I hadn’t got time to make other arrangements,’ says Ruth.
    ‘What about Shona?’
    ‘She’s teaching.’
    Nelson knows he can’t say any more. Not here. He glares at Ruth and crunches away across the shingle. He doesn’t like this beach; it feels claustrophobic somehow, with the cliffs looming on one side and that monstrosity of a house on the other. He looks across at the turrets of Sea’s End House. Presumably that’s where Whitcliffe’s mate lives. Never trust a man who flies the Union Jack. Everything is so bloody grey – grey stone, grey sea, grey sky. Nelson has a very clear idea of what the seaside should look like, a vision that stays remarkably true to his native Blackpool – sand, big dippers and donkeys. Not this God-forsaken pile of rubble in the middle of nowhere. There’s not even a slot machine, for heaven’s sake.
    At the far side of the bay there is an opening in the cliff, a sort of cleft about a metre wide. The mad Irishman Ted is there, clearing stones away with a shovel. Trace is there too, talking into her phone. Nelson sees Clough give her a little wave. Pathetic.
    ‘Top of the morning to you,’ Ted greets him.
    ‘Is this where the skeletons were found?’
    ‘Yes, in this recess. The opening was blocked off by a rock fall. I’ve cleared most of it away now.’
    ‘We’ve started on the trench.’ Ruth appears next to him. ‘It’s difficult because there’s not much space to dig.’
    There is already a neat trench in the narrow gap between the tall cliffs. Nelson looks at it with pleasure. Annoying though archaeologists can be he admires their way with a trench. His scene-of-crime boys could never get the edges that straight. Then he looks closer. The trench appears to be full of bones.
    ‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘How many in there?’
    ‘Just the six, I think,’ says Ruth. She leans over and Nelson looks anxiously at Kate, suspended in her baby sling. How safe were those things anyway …