Donald May had attended more postmortems than he cared to remember. This one was different. Nicholas Sandman – if that was his name – had been dead for at least forty years; possibly more. The remains were well preserved, and there were even shreds of clothing attached to the skeleton. Fizz Harbord showed May and Ellis the pieces of what she took to be a school blazer.

‘I haven’t finished trying to join up all the bits yet, Don, but it’s my guess that young Nicholas here was a student at Templeton Towers. The grey fibres look the same sort as the present school uniform. Worth checking what the uniform looked like back then.’

‘Back when? Early 1980s?’

Felicity Harbord nodded. ‘Sometime around then, judging by the rate of decomposition.’

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