Discovery of the Trowel and the Dig Crime Scene

The discovery of the trowel and the dig crime scene transforms a missing tool into a physical link between the archaeological site and Katy Devlin’s death. Rob Ryan traces the trowel from Sean Callaghan’s account of leaving it in the finds shed to its recovery beneath tarpaulins in a different shed; luminol then reveals blood in the finds shed itself. The sequence gives the investigation a concrete location and evidence to pursue, while stopping short of proving which person used or concealed the weapon.

The Missing Trowel and Its Timeline

The clue comes to Rob as he watches the archaeologists at work. After a tense exchange between Mark Hanly and Macker subsides, Rob is preparing to leave when the realization strikes him: the trowel. Instead of departing, he seeks out Sean Callaghan, who says he had to buy a replacement because his own tool had disappeared. The memory turns Rob’s attention from the visible confrontation to the less conspicuous question of where the original trowel went.

Sean places his last sighting of it in the finds shed, where he had taken an old coin for Ian Hunt to identify. He explains that the team was excited by the find, one of relatively few coins recovered on the dig, and that he carried it on his trowel because handling an old coin could damage it. Hunt consulted books, and at the end of the day Sean left the trowel on the shed table and forgot it. When he returned the next morning, it was gone. The loss had not immediately seemed alarming: Sean assumed another worker had picked it up, perhaps to annoy him, and he did not need it while the crew worked on a drainage ditch.

The timing matters more than Sean’s initial suspicion about who took it. He says he first needed the tool again on the Thursday when Rob’s team came to speak with Mark Hanly. By then it had already been missing for days. Sean eventually places the coin discovery on Monday, before the drainage-ditch work. Rob notes that Katy Devlin’s body appeared on Wednesday; Ian Hunt’s logbook independently confirms that Sean found the coin on Monday, a few hours before Katy died. The account therefore locates the trowel in the finds shed shortly before the killing, though it does not establish exactly when it was removed.

From a Forgotten Tool to a Search

Sean had suspected Macker, but revises that view when he remembers that Ian Hunt locked the finds shed and Macker had no key. That correction gives Rob a more useful lead than the earlier guess: the shed was secured, so access becomes central to the inquiry. Sean nevertheless cannot be ruled out, because he might have invented the story that he left the trowel there. The clue is promising, not conclusive.

Rob checks Sean’s account with Ian Hunt, who consults his logbook and confirms the Monday coin find. Hunt identifies the coin as an Edward VI base penny from the early 1550s, a detail that corroborates the incident Sean described and fixes its place in the dig’s working history. Rob then phones Sam O’Neill and urgently requests Cassie Maddox, additional officers, and a team from the Bureau, including Sophie if possible. He asks them to bring a metal detector and someone able to operate it, anticipating a methodical search rather than a quick inspection.

When the team arrives, Rob sets out the evidentiary theory. The missing implement had a leaf-shaped metal blade and a short wooden handle; Sean’s initials, SC, were burned into it. Dr. Cooper’s description of the implement used in the assault on Katy Devlin matched that kind of trowel. Because Sean says he left it in the finds shed and did not know it would be there, Rob considers it a weapon of opportunity and the shed a possible primary crime scene. He identifies Ian Hunt, Mark Hanly, and Damien Donnelly as people with keys, while keeping Sean under consideration in case his account is false. He also distinguishes possible routes for concealing or moving the body: Hunt and Hanly had cars, whereas Sean and Damien did not, so the latter would have had to hide it nearby. Rob’s search plan includes the missing trowel, a bloodstained plastic bag, and evidence of primary and secondary crime scenes across the site.

Recovery Beneath the Tarpaulins

The search carries a professional risk for Rob. He has mobilized much of the investigation rather than quietly asking Sophie to inspect the finds shed, and he recognizes that a fruitless search would leave him answerable to O’Kelly. The scale of the operation reflects how much depends on the clue: if the trowel connects the assault to the dig, the site may preserve evidence capable of reshaping the case; if not, Rob has committed substantial resources to a lead that may go nowhere.

Cassie Maddox finds the trowel in the tools shed, not the finds shed. It is jammed behind a pile of tarpaulins and against the wall, deep enough that its point has torn the tough material. Sam O’Neill holds the tarps aside while a torch picks out the owner’s mark on the handle: the lowercase initials SC, burned unevenly and deeply into the varnished wood. The location suggests deliberate concealment, but the find alone does not identify who put it there. Sam observes that the tarps appear to have been stored behind other equipment and are not used often; he connects that circumstance to Dr. Cooper’s earlier suggestion that Katy may have been wrapped in something before her body was found. The damaged tarp and the concealed tool thus become related lines of inquiry, not proof of a single person’s actions.

The Finds Shed as a Crime Scene

While Sam remains with the recovered trowel, Rob and Cassie go to the finds shed, where Sophie has begun a forensic examination. The technicians cover the windows, control access, and use luminol, which can reveal traces of blood even after an attempt to clean a surface. Under ultraviolet light, the floor glows with scattered, pooled, and smeared patterns; smaller marks appear on the lower metal shelves. Sophie’s team swabs the material and confirms that it is blood, turning Rob’s earlier theory about the shed into a finding supported by forensic testing.

Rob recognizes the consequence: Katy Devlin died on that floor, and the investigators had interviewed the killer in the shed without knowing they were at the scene of the crime. The room’s ordinary appearance under its overhead light contrasts with what the forensic work discloses. The evidence does not merely place a suspect near a tool; it locates the killing in a work space that had seemed routine and had already been part of the investigation.

Significance and Limits of the Discovery

The discovery joins two locations and two kinds of evidence. Sean’s account and Hunt’s logbook place the trowel in the finds shed on Monday, shortly before Katy died; its recovery beneath tarpaulins identifies the missing object by its burned initials; and the luminol examination confirms blood in the finds shed. Together, these details establish a substantial evidentiary chain and direct attention toward access, movement around the site, and attempted cleaning.

The chain remains incomplete as to responsibility. The evidence identifies people who had keys and preserves the possibility that Sean’s story was false, but the recovered trowel and blood do not, by themselves, determine who moved or used the tool. The scene’s decisive change is therefore both practical and narrative: the investigation moves from an uncertain suspicion to a physical crime scene, while the identity of the person responsible remains a question for the wider inquiry.