The marsh was very still. At least in the middle of the week there were few other people to disturb him. He could hear the waves moving the shingle and the sound of the wind over the reeds. It was then that he saw that the flap of the hide was open. All the jarring tensions of the day returned. Someone was in his hide, watching his birds. Did they think that the marsh was public property, these twitchers with their dirty habits and fancy birds? Did they think he had organized and bullied the Conservation Trust to buy the marsh, to build hides for them to be used as a doss house for spiky-haired louts with safety-pins in their nostrils?

He pushed open the door of the hide.

“Don’t you know you need a permit to come here?”

It was like a nightmare. The embarrassment of the drama class was exactly duplicated. The occupant of the hide was a well-dressed elderly man who, if he showed any reaction at all, showed a little distaste, a little pity, and who took from his pocket a permit which allowed him unlimited access to the hides for the rest of the year.

George Palmer-Jones saw a man in his mid-fifties, slight, sandy-haired, with very prominent veins on his face and neck. The man seemed only just in control of himself; he was balanced on the edge of hysteria. He was shaking now and his face was very flushed. George wished that Molly was with him. He felt awkward and did not want to be patronizing. The man gave a terrible, nervous giggle, and with a visible effort regained control of himself.

“Sorry about that,” he muttered. “Should have known. But you get all sorts here. Twitchers most of them. Got to keep an eye on them.”

They looked in silence at the avocets. When he felt that the man beside him was steady, more comfortable, Palmer-Jones said:

“I suppose you get a lot of strangers here.”

The bitterness and fury seemed to flow out of the man. He stammered as the words rushed into each other.

“They come here as if they own the place. I’ve lived here all my life. They wouldn’t find these rarities if we hadn’t put the work in. They don’t know about the meetings we had, the pressure we put on the council to stop the development … And they contribute nothing, nothing. They’re rude and dirty. They use us.”

“Some of the twitchers care enough about the place to want to live here.”

“We don’t want them.” He was shouting.

“What about Tom French?” George asked. “Didn’t you want him either?”

“No,” he shouted. “ I bloody didn’t. I know what you’re thinking and I don’t care.”

The man hid his face in his hands. George felt dirty. He knew that he had provoked the outburst, but he listened and registered every detail.

“You speak as if you hated him.”

“I did bloody hate him.”

George spoke very quietly. “ You didn’t hate him enough to kill him?”