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the ground. She was somewhere in her forties. For some reason he had expected someone who was younger, but she had lines on her face that expressed her age.

Dominic stood over the woman and took in her state. There were ligature marks around her throat and yet it had also been cut. Had he tried to strangle her but failed, so cut her instead, or had the strangulation been part of an elaborate game? Her clothing was dyed red where the blood had run down from the slice in her neck. Her legs were still under the soil. She had been dragged partly out of the ground she had been placed in and Dominic surmised that it was probably animals that had disturbed the basic shallow grave, pulling on the woman in an attempt to better get at her, to see what she was. But he didn’t think they had done much damage. It didn’t look as though she had been in the ground long, though flies had already made themselves at home. He flicked his hand in front of his face to shift a stray fly that had moved too far away from his feeding ground.

A stain of bright red lipstick smeared around her mouth added a garish look to the poor woman.

Clicking sounded in Dominic’s ear as one of the CSIs took photographs of the scene and of the woman in situ. Dominic stepped back out of the way and the CSI thanked him.

‘Ah, Dominic, what do we have all the way out here, then?’ The voice came from behind him. He turned. It was the Home Office registered forensic pathologist Nadira Azim. She was a petite woman with a softly spoken voice. He liked the way she worked. Her respect of the dead shone through in everything she did.

‘It’s not pleasant, Nadira,’ he said as she approached.

‘They seldom are,’ she replied, lifting her face mask up to cover her mouth.

He moved to the side to allow her past and she stepped over to the woman in the ground and crouched down at the side of her. ‘Good evening, what are you going to tell me today?’ she said to the corpse in the ground, so quietly Dominic had to strain to hear her.

It seemed as though the only sound in the woods was the noise of the flies as they buzzed around the body. He hated death and what it did to people. He understood that it was natural. That this woman in front of him didn’t feel any of this and that her energy was going back into the soil every minute that she rested here. But still, it irked him the lack of respect that was shown to her. She should be with her loved ones. Ideally alive, but if she was dead then she deserved to be laid to rest as she and her family had decided she would be. Not left like this for the wildlife to make the most of.

‘She’s not quite gone into bloat yet, Dominic,’ Nadira said from her position on the ground. ‘Which means she hasn’t been dead long. I’d say a day or two but I can give you a better idea once I do the PM back at the morgue.’

‘When will you be fitting that in?’ Dominic asked.

She turned to him. ‘I’ll table her for first thing in the morning. How does that suit?’

‘Suits fine. I’m hoping we’ll have an ID by then. I hate when they lay unidentified. It seems so disrespectful.’

Nadira’s fingers worked quickly as she took nail clippings from the woman before she bagged up her hands. ‘I hope you do. I like to put a name to my patients.’ She sat back on her heels. ‘I’m not sure about bagging her head. It’ll interfere with the cut mark around her neck.’ She paused a moment and Dominic let her think. The flies continued their own work around her and Nadira ignored them, unperturbed. ‘I think I’ll leave it and make sure she’s bagged properly as a whole so we don’t lose anything. I don’t want to risk that wound any more than those flies are damaging the evidence right now.’

Dominic peered over Nadira’s shoulder at the wound across the woman’s neck which was gently humming. His stomach twisted. ‘Urgh. The natural process is disgusting. When I die you can burn me and make it quick.’

‘You’d better have a conversation with Ruth then. Make sure she’s aware of your wishes.’ Nadira picked up one of the flies with a pair of tweezers — too stuffed with feeding to move out of her way — and unceremoniously dumped it into a clear glass vial before twisting a lid on.

‘How do you want to go?’ Dominic asked. ‘Do you believe in all this green burial that’s all the rage now? Where you’re left in the ground without a casket to let the bugs eat you so you go back to the earth where you supposedly came from?’

Nadira continued with her tweezers, collecting flies and eggs and dropping them into vials. ‘I do, Dom. It’s a brave new world. As a Muslim woman I will be buried without a casket anyway.’

A couple of CSI clanged up behind them with the huge metal lights and suddenly they were bathed in fluorescent white light. The woman was illuminous in death in the white glow.

‘That’s better,’ said Nadira. ‘I was beginning to struggle. What with the tree cover and the time of day.’ She turned to the CSIs. ‘Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.’

The day was dragging on; they were losing the light. They needed a break in the case, some new evidence they could move on or the day would close on a new case with no leads.

Chapter 11

Dominic

They didn’t have an identification for the woman as yet. There was nothing on her person that gave her