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has breakfast in her room.’
    ‘So we should probably concentrate on Ms Jones and your man with stomachache. What was his name?’
    ‘Charles Dodgson.’
    Wesley smiled.
    ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘Charles Dodgson was the real name of Lewis Carroll, the man who wrote Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps someone’s trying to lead us down a rabbit hole. You’d better run a check on him. Did you ask if you could search the rooms of the three who weren’t at breakfast?’
    ‘Yes. Dodgson and Carmody were keen to cooperate but Serena Jones got a bit uppity about it. We didn’t find anything suspicious, of course.’
    ‘Pity. I would have liked to get this one cleared up.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m going to the Tradmouth Castle Hotel to see if they have a name for our corpse in the river. The boss wanted to come with me but the chief super’s called him to a budget meeting.’
    ‘Bet he’s pleased about that,’ Rachel said with a laugh.
    He called across the room. ‘Are you busy, Trish?,
    Rachel gave her a sharp look. ‘Can you run a check on a man called Charles Dodgson on the PNC?’
    ‘I’ll do it now, Sarge,’ Trish said sadly. She turned and wandered back down the corridor. Wesley knew that Rachel had just taken advantage of her rank. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. There had been times when the . prospect of an afternoon alone with Rachel Tracey, even in the course of work, would have excited him. But he had put all that behind him now. He thought of Pam and felt a pang of guilt.
    ‘Fancy coming to the Tradmouth Castle?’
    Rachel didn’t need asking twice. She went into the office to fetch her coat.
    The Tradmouth Castle wasn’t generally regarded as the smartest hotel in town. It was the comfortable, slightly old-
     
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    fashioned home of chesterfields and hunting prints, the natural habitat of the mayor and the Rotary Club. Professional men held their annual dinners there and middle-aged, middle-class men took their wives to eat there on their wedding anniversaries. They took their mistresses elsewhere. Wesley had never frequented the place and he strongly suspected that Gerry Heffernan hadn’t either. Rachel, however, announced that she had once been to a Young Farmers’ dinner dance there. Wesley was glad that somebody knew their way around.
    The young woman behind the reception desk stared at them like a rabbit caught in car headlights when they produced their warrant cards and Wesley guessed that, as she obviously wasn’t a master criminal, she probably hadn’t encountered many real police officers at close quarters before. She was a thin, nervous-looking girl in her late teens and her brown hair was scraped back from her face, making her brown eyes enormous against her pale skin. Wesley made a special effort to put the girl at her ease before she chewed her ragged fingernails down too far and did herself a serious injury.
    ‘It’s just routine,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’ He knew he sounded like a doctor reassuring a terrified patient that a potentially unpleasant medical procedure wouldn’t hurt a bit: as his parents were both doctors he concluded that he’d probably. picked up the bedside manner by osmosis. The tactic seemed to work. The girl. stopped chewing at her nails and visibly relaxed.
    ‘You’ll have to see the manager. It was him who rang the police. ‘
    Wesley glanced at Rachel, who looked as puzzled as he felt.
    ‘The manager called the police?’
    , ‘Only a few minutes ago. We didn’t expect you to be so quick. I mean you hear about the police not turning up for hours and … ‘ The girl’s voice trailed off. ‘I’ll tell him you’re here,’ she added feebly before picking up the phone.
     
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    She looked at the instrument, consulted a sheet of paper then pressed three buttons carefully. She was definitely new to the job, Wesley thought.
    The manager hurried straight out of his office behind the desk. It would probably have