With a degree of understatement, police described the woodland site inBeaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where they found Mohammed Shah Subhani’s remains as “challenging”.

Though it is off a country lane that runs beside the M40, it is remote and not easy to reach.

Police used scaffolding to build a bridge down to it from the lane, so investigators could access it safely.

A sharp slope at one side runs with water washed off the motorway and needed to be covered in matting before anyone could begin the search for clues.

The continuing rain has made much of the surface still treacherous.

Divers and dogs have been used to explore the less accessible areas and forensic anthropologists have been brought in to help identify the human remains.

Police believe someone involved in Mr Subhani’s murder must know the area.

It is not a place you would pick at random to dump a body, so that will help them focus on suspects with local knowledge.

Detectives know that a black BMW X5, one of several suspect vehicles, was seen with two occupants near the site in the days after Mr Subhani vanished.

They recovered it, but want to hear from anyone who saw it.

The car was stolen in Farnborough, Hampshire, in February and fitted with a cloned number plate YC67 MFY.

On 7 May – the day he disappeared – Mr Subhani visited Acton police station at 1.45pm, where a criminal investigation was dropped.

He collected two mobile phones, but not the large sum of cash he was expecting to be returned to him.

CCTV footage caught Mr Subhani driving his white Audi Q3 through Hounslow at 3.17pm – and he went to a business premises in Derby Road where he was due to collect £5,000.

His car left 30 minutes later, but police do not believe he was driving it.

The vehicle was found, with bullet holes, abandoned a month later in north London. Police do not think Mr Subhani was killed inside it.

Detectives still want to know how Mr Subhani was found to be the 15 miles from Hounslow to his last resting place, whether he was dead or alive when he got there, or even exactly how he died.

They have found shotgun cartridges in the woods, though they are unconnected to the murder.

But bird shooters are among a number of potential witnesses police want to hear from.

There are still lots of questions, but detectives are getting closer to answering them.

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