THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

End.’
    The other men stifle smiles. Ted is famous for knowing every pub in Norfolk, no mean feat in a county reputed to have a pub for every day of the year.
    ‘Let’s just walk this beach,’ says Trace, getting out a camera. ‘We can take some GPS readings.’
    ‘Erosion’s bad here,’ says Ted. ‘I’ve been reading about it. Sea’s End House has been declared unsafe. Jack Hastings isin a right old two and eight. Keeps ranting on about an Englishman’s home being his castle.’
    They all look up at the grey house on the cliff. The curved wall of the tower is only two or three feet from the precipice. The remains of a fence hang crazily in midair.
    ‘There was a whole garden at the back of the house once. Summer house, the lot,’ says Craig, one of the men. ‘My granddad used to do the gardening.’
    ‘Beach has silted up too,’ says Trace. ‘That big storm in February has shifted a lot of stone.’
    They all look towards the narrow beach. Below the cliffs, banks of pebbles form a shelf which then falls steeply into the sea. It’s an inhospitable place, hard to imagine families picnicking here, children with buckets and spades, sun-bathing adults.
    ‘Looks like a cliff fall,’ says Ted.
    ‘Maybe,’ says Trace. ‘Let’s get some readings anyway.’
    She leads the way along the beach, keeping to the edge of the cliff. A sloping path leads from Sea’s End House down to the sea and fishing boats are moored higher up, above the tide line, but the sea is coming in fast.
    ‘There’s no way off the beach this side,’ says the man whose grandfather was a gardener. ‘We don’t want to get cut off.’
    ‘It’s shallow enough,’ says Trace. ‘We can wade.’
    ‘The current’s treacherous here,’ warns Ted. ‘We’d better head straight for the pub.’
    Trace ignores him; she is photographing the cliff face, the lines of grey and black with the occasional shocking stripe of red. Ted plunges his staff into the ground and takesa GPS reading. The third man, whose name is Steve, wanders over to a point where a fissure in the cliff has created a deep ravine. The mouth of the ravine is filled up with stones, probably from a rock fall. Steve starts to climb over the rubble, his boots slipping on the loose stones.
    ‘Careful,’ says Trace, not looking round.
    The sea is louder now, thundering in towards land, and the sea birds are returning to their nests, high up in the cliffs.
    ‘We’d better head back,’ says Ted again, but Steve calls from the cliff face.
    ‘Hey, look at this!’
    They walk over to him. Steve has made a gap in the pile of rubble and is crouching in the cave-like space behind. It’s a deep recess, almost an alleyway, the cliffs looming above, dark and oppressive. Steve has shifted some of the larger stones and is leaning over something that lies half-exposed in the sandy soil.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Looks like a human arm,’ says Ted matter-of-factly.
    Detective Sergeant David Clough is eating. Nothing new in that. Clough eats almost constantly throughout the working day, starting with a McDonald’s breakfast, moving on through several Mars Bars and a Pot Noodle for lunch, through a sustaining sandwich and cake at tea time before treating himself to a pint and a curry for supper. Despite this, Clough’s waistline is admirably trim, a fact he attributes to ‘football and shagging’. Recently, though, he has acquired a girlfriend, which has cut down on at least one of these activities.
    Clough has had a trying day. His boss is on holiday and Clough was secretly hoping that this would be the week when a serial killer stalked Norfolk and was caught personally by super-policeman David, soon to be Sir, Clough. But, instead, he has had two break-ins, one taking and driving away and one old dear found dead on a stairlift. It’s not exactly
Miami Vice.
    His phone rings, blasting out an irritating jingle from
The Simpsons
.
    ‘Trace! Hi, babe.’
    Detective Sergeant Judy Johnson, who is (under protest) sharing a desk with Clough, makes gagging motions. Clough ignores her, ingesting the last of his blueberry muffin.
    ‘Dave, you’d better come,’ says Trace. ‘We’ve found some bones.’
    Clough leaps into action, grabs his phone and dives for the door, yelling for Judy to follow him. The effect is slightly ruined by the fact that he has forgotten his car keys and has to come back for them. Judy is still sitting at the desk, stony faced.
    ‘What do you mean “follow