Murder Most Royal

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The girl on the beach emerged into the light and stared out across the mudflats at the horizon. She had been checking the hides at the end of the path to the wildlife reserve at Snettisham, on the Norfolk coast, to see how they had weathered the night’s heavy storm. By day, the huts were home to birdwatchers who came from miles around to observe the geese and gulls and waders. By night, they were an occasional refuge from the cold sea breeze for beers and . . . more intimate activities. The last big storm surge had smashed up some of the hides and carried them into the lagoons beyond. This time, she was glad to see, the little piggies at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds had built their home out of more solid wood.

Back outside, the girl studied the skyline. One of the things she loved about this place was that here, at the edge of East Anglia, on the eastern most coast of the United Kingdom, the beach stubbornly faced due west. It looked out on to the Wash, a bay formed like a rectangular bite out of the coastline between Norfolk and Lincolnshire, where a clutch of rivers ran into the North Sea. No pale pink sunrise here; instead, the sun had risen above the lagoons at her back. Ahead, a bank of cloud sat low and heavy, but the watery light gave it a pale gold glow that was mirrored in the mudflats, so that it was hard to tell where the earth ended and the air began.

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