‘If the police get hold of this body, we will be implicated,’ Cathy says eventually, her hands still curled around the sides of her face, but now looking directly at him. A light breeze moves its way between them. He catches a whiff of sun-cream.

‘Not necessarily,’ he says, trying to be useful. What would his father have done? He tries to channel him as he used to be rather than as he is now. Authoritative Owen. Way more like Cathy than like Joe. ‘If we all backed Frannie up. If we all said, I don’t know – that he walked out in front of the car from nowhere …’

‘What, tell it to the policeman who gave me a fucking warning?’ Frannie says.

‘You and me both,’ Joe snaps.

Think. Think. Joe tries to remember everything he knows about DNA. Hardly anything. He rubs at his forehead. He’s been doing routine operations for ten years, pigeonholed into it because of his steady hand. And his poor bedside manner, Frannie had once said with a smirk. But it’s true that he is better off doing the cutting, the anaesthetics, spaying, removal of hairbands and underwear that Labradors have eaten. He drags a finger through the dust in front of him. The line he draws is perfectly straight.

‘I’m pretty sure they will be able to tell what time he died,’ Cathy says. ‘And that you were here … did you touch him? The wound? Right after?’

‘Yes,’ Frannie says.

‘It’s something to do with how your DNA mingles with his blood, I can’t remember, I don’t know …’ Cathy says.

Joe stares at the body. Its eyes are open. Mouth going from slack to stiff, like cooling candle wax. There’s a perfect oval thumbprint on his naked torso. Cathy’s or Frannie’s or his own, he can’t tell.

‘You’re right,’ Joe says eventually. ‘Plus the car is probably on some CCTV camera somewhere. Where were you going?’ he says to Frannie.

‘I wanted wine from that little all-night place, you know?’ Frannie says quietly. It sounds so trivial next to the body. Fucking wine. His hands have begun to shake again. They’re cold and clammy. He bunches them into fists. He needs some sugar and some sleep.

‘Is he getting rigors?’ Joe says. He directs this to Cathy.

She immediately reaches for his feet, clad in white trainers. A hand around his black socks, she moves his ankles from side to side, then shakes her head. ‘Not yet.’

But he will. Soon. And then his blood will begin to settle in the parts of his body that sit the lowest – his back, his elbows, the backs of his knees. He will begin to smell. That sweet, rotten-egg smell Joe comes across very occasionally, when somebody brings in a long-dead animal. Panic spews up through him. He’ll never be able to work again.

He gets out his phone. ‘I’m calling the police,’ he says. ‘What’s the number?’

‘It’s 112,’ Cathy says quietly.