He gestured towards Mitch who was walking towards a tall woman she instantly began to throw her arms in the air and apparently pull faces at Mitch. I grunted in the affirmative and he gave a tiny shake of his head.

“Don’t. Touch. Anything.”

It seemed to me that the act of speaking was causing him physical pain.

“Right,” I nodded and flashed him a big grin. “Message received.”

“Just because I have to put up with him doesn’t mean I have to entertain his sidekick. Alright?”

“Mitch, what the hell’s going on?” I hissed.

“Err, interviewing suspects mate,” he winked mock-conspiratorially. “Think I’ve got this one wrapped up to be honest.”

“Good show. How do you figure that?”

“Er, well, actually it was a mixture of good old detective skills and the… well, the fact that that tall woman wandering off towards the clubhouse kept repeatedly claiming to have – err – killed this poor sod.”

Mitch nudged the corpse with his foot.

“Oi,” said the policeman.

Mitch looked down, avoiding eye contact with him and continued, “Seems pretty straightforward.”

“Sounds good,” I said, giving him a little pat on the back. “So how did she do it?”

“Oh, well, she didn’t say.”

“Really?”

“Erm, yeah.”

“And did she say why she did it?”

“No, actually. That did strike me as odd at the time.”

“So there’s a good possibility that she didn’t do it.”

“Ah, well when you put it like that…”

“So who was the lanky bird then Mitch?”

And Mitch broke down the little he actually knew. The dead man was some sort of banking high-flyer who got out before the bubble burst and everyone started lynching bankers. Since then he’d got into dealing high end art, the kind bought by corporations as investments. He’d been golfing with his lawyer (the tall, dark, mentalist) and a rival dealer (the cigar smoker). Some other bloke who was an accountant had been tagging along to make up the numbers but that was it.