I elect for neither. Presley has been raided, too, I remind him. Bulldog seized tools of his, and paints belonging to Beth. Then I remember the brief conversation Presley had with Christianne, the morning she and I set off for the walk that took us to her favourite clifftop site. Presley was rummaging round in his van, parked outside Evelyn’s bungalow. Catching sight of Christianne, he’d asked her whether she’d love it. At the time, I hadn’t a clue what he meant. Now I’m beginning to suspect he was talking about the coffin he might have put together. In terms of decorative motifs to accompany Christianne to the afterlife, an Egyptian theme, to Beth, would have been beyond irresistible.

‘Yeah?’ Mitch doesn’t seem to have understood me. He’s on his feet now, looking towards the bar.

‘I’d go for the hake,’ he says. ‘While there’s still some left.’

After the pub, we drive slowly home, keeping to the country roads. Detective work has always fascinated me, and some of the best roles early on in my career came from cop thrillers. Cri-fi did the same for my ex-husband and Berndt ended up putting stellar Scandi scripts on the big screen, but in real life Mitch is exceptionally good at it. He knows which relationships to nurture, which investigative paths to follow, how to marry character strengths and weaknesses to an emerging pattern of clues. Christianne’s death, and everything that’s followed in her wake, has really caught his interest, not least because he senses wider ripples beyond the backwater that is Budleigh Salterton.

‘Beth’s on to it, too,’ he grunts. ‘Did you hear what she said in the plane? When we were looking at all that red muck in the sea? The soil from the cliff? England bleeds, she said. Credit to her, it’s a great phrase. Every nation has a jugular and this one’s no different.’

‘You mean the UK?’