Zweigstelle	Standorte	Status	Vorbestellungen	Frist
Zweigstelle: Hauptstelle	Standorte: SL Engl Rend	Status: Verfügbar	Vorbestellungen: 0	Frist:

Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something slightly less savoury - a human hand.

 

The corpse, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped in a purple cotton sheet. The post mortem can not reveal the precise cause of death. The only clue to solving this mysterious murder is a crack in one of the dead man's ribs.

 

Wexford knows it will be a difficult job to identify the dead body. Although it covers a relatively short period of time, the police computer stores a long list of missing persons. People disappear at an alarming rate - hundreds each day.

 

And then, only about twenty yards away from the woodland burial site, in the cellar of a disused cottage, another body is found.