"I didn't know you were that much of a reader."

"I'm not," he said, sitting on a brown leather lounge near a marble fireplace. "This was my parents' home until recently."

Anya knew that Dan's mother had died and that his father was in a nursing home following a stroke, but very little else about his parents.

"My mother was a voracious reader. Anything from philosophy and religion to world affairs. It always surprised me that crime fiction was her true guilty pleasure. She was also an accomplished writer and artist."

"Your father?"

"A couple of weeks after Mum died, Dad had a massive stroke. We tried to keep him at home but he needed twenty-four-hour nursing and the house and garden aren't wheelchair friendly. To be honest, I think he found it hard to be here without Mum."

He flicked something minute off the arm of the lounge.

"Anyway, we moved him into a nursing home but he had another stroke and lost all speech. I didn't like the care he was getting so I moved him a couple of weeks ago."

Anya felt more comfortable now they were discussing his family. She had not met Therese Brody, but had heard wonderful things about her philanthropy and work with indigenous literacy projects; she had obviously been an intelligent woman with a strong social conscience.

"Has he settled in?"

"I believe so. Where are my manners-can I get you a coffee?"

"No thanks. I am curious, though, what you wanted to see me about. Please don't say it's just to check your ankle."

Despite the warmth of the room and seeing Brody in a new, almost refined light in his home, she didn't feel the visit was meant to be social, particularly if he had a new girlfriend. Another woman arriving home and getting the wrong idea was the last thing she wanted tonight.

Dan sat straight and ran both hands down the thighs of his jeans. "Maybe I should just show you."

He limped out of the room and returned with a faded wooden box, not much bigger than average shoe size. He held the object with almost outstretched arms, as if frightened of the contents. After looking around, he opted to place it on the carpeted floor, then stepped away and sat on the stool with his back to the piano.

"This is what I called you about. I didn't know what else to do. I mean, I got one hell of a shock when I found it a few hours ago."

"Don't tell me it's a live rat."

"Trust me, it isn't alive. The lid was sealed tight. I had to pry it open."

Anya didn't like dead rats any more than live ones, but she slid off the lounge and onto the floor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Brody stand and move further away. Whatever was inside really had him spooked.

She tentatively wiped some dust off the lid with the back of her hand and revealed a detailed marquetry design. "This is beautiful craftsmanship," she said, but her host was staring out the window. She couldn't imagine what was inside that could be so disturbing. Undoing the clasp, she flipped open the lid and lifted what felt like wax-paper wrapping. She quickly sat back on her haunches, unable to believe her eyes.

"Where did you find it?"

Brody didn't move. "Under the floorboards in what was my parents' bedroom. I was rearranging the walk-in wardrobe when part of the old floor gave way. When I eventually yanked my ankle out, the box was right there."

Anya studied the tiny dead form, curled up inside the small chamber. The miniature body lay in a fetal position, knees resting against the chin. There was no doubt. This was a fossilized human baby.

The pair remained in silence for a few moments.

"I could do with that coffee now," Anya said, returning the lid and closing the latch. "After I wash my hands."

"Of course."

Brody moved to the kitchen area with a glass conservatory overlooking more gardens. A granite island-bench dominated the area, with copper pots hanging from a chained metal grid above it. Dan obviously had no trouble reaching the utensils that were out of reach of most people.

His hands trembled as he loaded a small machine with a metal capsule and placed a demitasse cup, the only size small enough to fit, under the nozzle. The smell of rich coffee filled the air.

He pulled a carton of full-cream milk from a serving door in the stainless steel fridge and placed some in a steel mug adjacent to the machine. Within seconds, he poured frothy milk into a china mug and repeated the process.

Anya washed her hands in the sink and dried them with paper towel from a dispenser at the wall. The mug warmed her hands. She could appreciate the lawyer's anxiety at the find. Despite dealing with criminal trials, he had probably never seen a human body before, let alone experienced the shock of discovering one in his parents' wardrobe.

"Do you have any idea whose child it could be?"

He offered his guest a cane stool, which she accepted.

"This house has been in Dad's side of the family since it was built three generations ago. It was always passed on to the eldest son."

"Was there ever any scandal about illegitimate pregnancies?"

Dan shook his head and washed out the used steel mug. Apart from fresh basil in a small vase, the benches were empty of clutter.

"Do we need to call crime scene? I mean, will they want to photograph the..."

"Possibly. I'll check with them, but it's not as uncommon as you might think. With garden renovations, it's not unheard of for someone to discover tiny remains, particularly given the number of stillbirths and backyard abortions in the past."

Brody nodded but didn't appear relieved in any way.

Anya excused herself to make the call. Moments later she returned, with a swab kit from the bag in her car.

"I just need to take some shots of the wardrobe with my mobile. I'll take the box with me if you like, and take it to the morgue. There'll have to be a post-mortem."

"Of course. I'll show you where I found it."

"I should probably take a DNA swab from you now, if you don't mind, for comparison to the child."

Dan leaned against the bench. "It...it isn't mine."

"I'm not suggesting that. We know it's old from the type of box and condition. But it would help us work out whether the child was born to someone in your family."

"My grandparents always had servants. My grandfather had a reputation for being quite the ladies' man, before and during his marriage."

The irony of his own reputation with women appeared lost on Dan Brody.

Anya knew it wouldn't have been the first time that a servant was impregnated by her boss and the results hidden. But to hide a dead child in the wardrobe wasn't the wisest move. It would have made more sense to throw the remains away or bury them.

She removed the cotton-tipped swab from her kit and Brody bent forward, allowing her to scrape the inside of his cheek. She felt his breath on her face as she removed the swab and returned it to its sealed container.

Dan reached forward enough to brush her hand.

"I'm just...well, grateful you're here. I didn't know who else to call."

Anya felt a surge of blood to her face. She had never seen Brody like this and had never imagined that he could be so vulnerable. At work he was always in control and his arrogance was incomparable, even in the egotistical domain of law. Then again, if anything could rattle a person, an unidentified dead body in the house was it. His girlfriend would no doubt comfort him soon enough. For a brief moment, she felt jealous of the new woman.

With a permanent marker from her kit, she labeled the specimen before returning to the drawing room. Brody stood in the doorway, keeping his distance.

Anya bent down and collected the tiny body in its makeshift coffin. She hoped for its sake, and for Brody's, that the baby had died of natural causes.

12.

The following afternoon Anya removed the wax-paper covering, held her breath and slowly lifted the remains from the box. Any uneven pressure could break off limbs. It was a wonder the body had survived the damaged floorboards and the subsequent car journey.

The white form seemed more delicate against the cold steel dissecting table.

Jeff Sales had been finishing off some paperwork and greeted Anya with something akin to excitement at her find. He was keen to examine the remains as soon as possible.

"It's an adipocere all right, not that I doubted you."

Unlike the normal process of decomposition, this skin and soft tissue had undergone transformation. What once was skin was now a hard waxy substance-adipocere-most obvious over the buttocks, abdomen and cheeks, the fattiest areas of the body.

"It's a reasonable size and it's possible that it was delivered full-term." Jeff switched on the overhead surgical lights. "What do we know about it?"

"Only that it was found in a wardrobe, under the floorboards in an old wooden box. At the moment we have no idea who gave birth or how it got there, or whether it ever lived to take a breath."

"So we're looking to see if any signs of homicide are present." He moved the light directly over the abdomen. "Remarkable, I think we can presume it's a female judging by the genitalia. I've never seen anything quite this preserved before. There's a stump of an umbilicus so at one stage someone cut the cord, post delivery."

Determining whether or not the baby had taken a breath was not that easy. If the lungs had ever inflated, they were now collapsed and semidecomposed.

"Is there a chance you can rehydrate the umbilical stump and see histologically whether the child was freshly born or a few days old?"

"That's an excellent thought, I'll take some biopsies."

The bright light highlighted splits to areas of the infant's skin. It would be difficult to determine whether they had occurred during the adipocere formation or were due to blunt-force trauma to the abdomen, thighs and upper arms.

John Zimmer wandered in with a female crime scene officer, both in their work overalls.

"The secretary said you were here."

Zimmer had a sixth sense for unusual deaths. As part of his job, he frequently attended autopsies. "Thought we'd get the heads-up on whether this one will be ours."

"We still don't know whether the death was suspicious or not."

Regardless, Jeff Sales invited them both in. "The more the merrier, I always say."

Zimmer dwarfed his younger colleague. "This is Milo Sharpe, she's just transferred from down south."

After introductions, Milo stood, hands behind her back.

"You have an unusual name," Jeff said, glancing up over his half-glasses. "What's the derivation?"

"It's a nickname. I have below average motor skills which came to the attention of fellow officers here, before I arrived." She seemed to ignore Zimmer.

The senior CSO rocked on his heels. "Well, it is our job to investigate and scrutinize."

"Why Milo?" Anya dared ask. The rationale behind the name had to be obscure and less than complimentary.

"On the 26 January I attended a car accident in the rain." She spoke in a monotone as if tired of repeating the story. "My gloves were wet and my superior threw me the car keys. I failed to catch them and they slid down the drain. I spent the next fifty-four minutes successfully extricating them."

Milo, who didn't offer her real name, stopped without further explanation and turned her attention to the tools the pathologist had laid out for the post-mortem.

"Get it?" Zimmer said.

Anya raised her eyebrows.

"Venus de Milo. The armless statue. You've got to HAND it to her. It's a classic." He grinned.

Apparently the officer endowed with the name didn't agree.

"It could be worse," Zimmer added. "* Showbags' liked his nickname until he realized what it meant. He looks great but is full of shit."

Anya hoped she hadn't acquired a nickname she was yet to learn about.

Jeff Sales refocused. "What we have here, detectives, is an adipocere. It's a form of preservation."

Milo's face was now centimeters from the table, studying the body. "Is it a cultural phenomenon?"

"Good question. We're not talking mummification through embalming. This sort of preservation is mostly seen in bodies that have been immersed in water or left in humid or damp environments. It occurs where fat is present."

"How?" Milo spoke without sounding either interested or bored.

"Bacterial enzymes and body enzymes alter the free fatty acids but don't cause the normal signs of decomposition, like bloating and discoloration. These remains had to have been protected from insects, or the story would be completely different."

Obviously the box had been well sealed, as Dan Brody had described. The wax-paper wrapping would have contributed to the process.

The technician arrived with a portable X-ray machine and slid an X-ray plate gently beneath the fragile form. He had only one lead gown for protection, the one he was wearing.

Milo slowly circled the table, as if looking for clues. "Who would just stick a baby in a box and hide it? The mother had to be mentally ill."

Anya looked up. "Not necessarily. We don't know how long the child had been in the box or how young the mother was. That box could have been in the wardrobe for decades. And if you think about it, babies buried in gardens weren't that unusual even a few years ago. Unmarried mothers were ostracized and received no government support. Backyard abortions were rampant. Some of the mothers were even sent to prison-like institutions or reform schools."

The pathologist stepped back and ushered them out of the suite into the corridor while X-rays were taken.

"And," Anya continued, "in the past stillborns were buried in nameless mass graves or just thrown out with other hospital refuse. Maybe this mother loved the child and didn't want to see that happen."

"Logically," Milo added, "landscapers and home gardeners should find these babies."