“There’ll be a lot of herring needing pickled just now,” Lubbi posited. “A lot of salmon to be cured and bottles and bottles of the hard stuff to be bought. Cheers.”

Then he raised his plastic bottle and knocked back a couple of gulps of some moonshine he had found and mixed with coke. Jeanette was about to get her own bottle out of her rucksack when she caught sight of two police officers who had changed tack and were heading straight towards them.

“Look out Lubbi, s’the fuzz,” she said in warning, pulling a cigarette out instead and lighting it.

Lubbi rapidly put away his bottle and was also in the process of sparking up when they began speaking to him.

“Are you drinking hooch straight from the bottle, Lubbi?” one of them asked—a fundamentally kind woman, but with a stern expression.

Lubbi leaned back nonchalantly with his cigarette between his lips.

“What’s a man supposed to do?” he said, holding out his hands. “Riedel glassware has got so damn expensive. Haven’t you got anything better to do than lurk around here harassing sunbathers?”

“Apparently not,” said the policewoman. “You be careful you don’t burn yourself, Lubbi. You’re already starting to look a bit rosy.”

“Thanks for thinking of me,” said Lubbi, crossing his arms over his chest. “But shouldn’t you focus a bit more on that murder and a bit less on the factor of my sun cream?”

Her male colleague smiled, but the grim policewoman wasn’t to be deterred.

“Try to be discreet, guys. You don’t need to advertise what you’re up to. And you don’t actually own these benches—there may be other people who want to use them too.”

“I’d like to see them try!” said Lubbi with feigned indignation.

“Exactly my point. They won’t. Maybe you could try out some different benches some time? Or settle down on a blanket in the woods somewhere?”

“We’ll give it some consideration,” said Lubbi, exhaling smoke through tight lips.

The two officers left them and Jeanette resumed her hunt for the bottle in her rucksack. She took a good long slug from it and then put the bottle away again—it seemed unnecessary to tempt fate.

“They’re not half annoying, those cops,” Kat said.

“Meh, they’re just doing their job,” said Lubbi.

“What does it matter if we’re sitting here?”

As usual, Kat struggled to see the obvious.

“Just like they said, we sit here all day so no one else gets a chance to use these benches. They could have driven us away loads of times, but they don’t. They see that we’re drinking, but let us stay even though the consumption of alcohol is illegal in public space. They could have arrested the lot of us, put us in the van and driven us away, but they don’t because they’re all right.”