DI Walker

THE DAY AFTER THE SOLSTICE

HE STEELS HIMSELF. LEANS FORWARD to look into the pit and...

Nothing. Just the dark of the soil.

"There's nothing there." He turns to the uniformed officer who led them here. "I thought you said you'd found human remains."

The officer nods. "Yes. But we found the remains themselves some way further into the trees. If you'll come this way."

Walker and Fielding follow, deeper into the wood. They walk for several minutes, the trees growing thicker, darker, denser.

"Just there." The officer points, eventually. Another little boundary of police tape. Within it, a heap of blue plastic. Something pale, whitish, gleaming inside. "It's like they've been dragged—an animal or something? But I can't think of any animal large enough to do this."

However many years of experience Walker has under his belt, however cold the case, it never loses its sting, this stark confrontation with death. You can never really be prepared to look upon the remains of a human being.

And there's something so pitiful about these jumbled bones wrapped in their blue plastic shroud. This was once a person. With a life. Loved ones. No one should lie like this, abandoned, alone, in a patch of unmarked woodland.

This. This is why he's been drawn to cold cases: to the unavenged, the disappeared. This is why he leaves no stone unturned. Because everyone deserves their funeral rites. To be properly mourned by their family. And everyone deserves justice.