Oh god! He thinks she shat herself, Harry realises, and nearly laughs himself. And, really, that might not be a bad thing. It might explain the vomit smell at least, and might stop him sniffing too hard and getting a whiff of the birds. Bloody hell, though, he must be wondering what she’s eaten to get her shit smelling like that.

‘Jesus, Harry,’ Mitch says, now peering into the fish bucket. ‘You said you got a coupla snotties. You’ve cleaned up, bruv!’

‘Yeah well. You know what nets are like. Sometimes when they turn it on, they turn it on.’

‘I might just give ’em a count,’ Mitch declares.

‘Oh, you don’t have to do that,’ Lucy calls up to him. ‘I already counted them. There’s eighteen.’

‘Good to know,’ Mitch says. ‘But I might just give ’em a count myself, if it’s all the same to you. One, two, three …’ he begins counting officiously as he takes each fish from the bucket.

Lucy catches Harry’s eye, and she cringes as she mouths to him: They’re under the fish.

Harry grimaces.

He has to admit, it’s an ingenious hiding place. Not only are they buried, the mound of fish would stop the smell good and proper. And Lucy couldn’t have known that bloody Mitch would want to count the bloody fish.

‘Twelve, thirteen,’ Mitch counts, and Harry prays that he’ll realise it’s impossible for the bucket to hold another seventeen fish and will stop. But he knows Mitch: knows that Mitch will be loving this—being the centre of attention, being the man with the power—and will press on and so find the birds.

Sure enough, when he gets to fifteen, the counting stops. ‘What’s this?’ he asks, looking down at them and holding one of the chicks up by its feet for them to see. ‘What have you three been up to?’

‘We only got a couple,’ Flo bursts out. ‘And we only done it this once. Honest!’

‘Jesus. I know you know it’s illegal, Flo,’ he says, pointing his finger at her imperiously, brandishing it as if it wielded all the power of the law.

‘Mate, could you turn a blind eye, just this once, for old—’ Harry starts, but Mitch cuts him off.

‘Don’t ask me that, mate. I got obligations now,’ he says, and he turns the finger that had been pointing to Flo on himself, jabbing himself in the chest with it, imbibing himself with that power.

‘So what’s going to happen?’ Lucy asks in a small voice.

‘Well. I’ll have to seize these, as evidence. And write you up. And you’ll have to appear in court.’

‘And then what’ll happen?’ Lucy asks.