‘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 takes a 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.