‘Do you believe in spontaneous human combustion?’ Detective Inspector Keith Tremayne asked.

‘Not me. I’ve read about it. Who hasn’t?’ Sergeant Clare Yarwood answered.

‘I haven’t,’ Tremayne replied which did not surprise his sergeant. In the months they had been together, she had come to realise that he was a man who had little interest in the world. A cigarette in his mouth, a beer in his hand and a murder to solve was about the happiest she ever saw him, and even then, he could hardly be regarded as one of life’s most sociable. And as for reading? The occasional police report, an early morning newspaper, the back pages for the racing results.

Hardly the ideal attributes for a trip into the murky world of paganism and its rituals, but that’s where they were heading, and it was going to get dangerous, very dangerous.