PROLOGUE

A smear of blood was still visible around the edge of the hand, where it had been severed cleanly from the rest of the arm. The flesh around the fingers had started to tighten and decay. On the second finger there was a twisted gold ring, but the metal had been streaked and discoloured, as if exposed to a sudden, searing heat.

The Labrador dropped the hand on to the ground, shaking it free from its mouth.

Jack Turner looked up. It was early morning, the dew still fresh on the fields. The dog had bounded back from a small patch of woodland, on a hill that looked across the Kent countryside and out to Ashford beyond. Turner took this walk with the dog every morning. Never before had he come across anything more interesting than an empty beer can.

He bent down, examining the hand more closely. The skin retained a soft, creamy colour. Whoever it once belonged to, it was certainly a woman. ‘Dodger,’ Turner shouted to the Labrador. ‘Follow, boy.’

He marched quickly in the direction of the woods. The wind was whistling through the trees and there was a distinct chill in the air. In the background, Turner could hear a pair of blackbirds fluttering away. The dog bounded ahead of him, panting as it ran across the wet ground.

The earth lay open and fresh, like a wound cut into the surface of the ground. Turner could feel his pulse quickening as he approached. At the centre of a clearing between the trees there was an open pit, stretching ten feet across and five or six feet deep, the size of a mass grave.

Turner slowed his pace as he approached. Whatever sights might await him there, he sensed his stomach was going to heave.

Only a few parts of the body could be seen as he peered gently across the lip of the trench. He could see a foot, a part of what might once have been an elbow, the fragments of a spinal chord, a tuft of what could have been blonde hair. The blood had all long since seeped into the ground and disappeared. Next to the body lay two yellow canvas travel bags, singed but still intact.

Holding his breath, Turner leapt into the trench, took the first bag between his hands and unzipped its chord. He looked briefly inside, closed his eyes, then looked again. Bank notes. Thousands of bank notes, packed into neat, tidy wedges.

Reaching inside, he took out a sheaf of euros, dollars and pounds and held it in his hands. The notes were high denominations – fifties mostly, with a few hundreds thrown in as well. Turner had never seen so much money in his life, nowhere near. Without counting it he had no way of knowing, but he guessed there must have been a million, maybe much more, in the one bag he had opened. He reckoned he had at least two grand in his fist alone.

Turner reached for the second bag. Already he could sense what he might find there. He pulled back its zipper, reaching inside. Another pile of notes, packed tightly together.

The wad of notes in his hand he stuffed into the pocket of his jacket. Then he re-zipped the bags, making sure he left them exactly as he found them.

Scrambling against the mud, Turner pulled himself up from the ditch and shook the dirt free from his hands. The Labrador nuzzled up close to his leg. ‘I’ll tell you what, Dodger old boy,’ Turner said gruffly, ‘a dead woman and several million pounds in a ditch – there must be quite a story behind that.’ He reached into a pocket, took out his mobile phone and dialled 999.