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nice haircut and well-kept nails. No jewellery.”
    “Do you think the motive was theft?” George Flint asked. George was the pushy sergeant who wanted Stella’s job.
    “It has to be considered. But you don’t need to commit murder to nick a handbag from a beach. People take amazing risks with their property every time they go for a bathe. If you want to steal a bag all you have to do is watch and wait.”
    “I know that, guv.”
    “She may not even have had a bag with her,” Hen pointed out.
    “So where did she keep her car key?”
    “A pocket.”
    “In a swimsuit?”
    “They can have pockets.”
    “Ah, yes.”
    “Actually, this one didn’t,” Hen admitted.
    “So where were her clothes? In the car?”
    “We found no clothes in the car, and no bag either.”
    “Then the killer walked off with her clothes, or her bag, or both. We’re dealing with theft here.”
    Hen tilted her head sharply. “You don’t give up, do you? OK— probably she did have a bag. But theft may not be the real motive. The killer may have taken the bag to make identification more difficult. I don’t see the link between strangulation and stealing handbags.”
    “What’s left if we rule out theft?”
    “Wise up, George. Most killings are carried out by people in a close relationship with the victim. Family, lovers, ex-lovers.”
    George Flint had hammered away at this theory for long enough. It was another voice that asked, “Guv, do we know if she was alone on the beach?”
    “We know nothing. The lifeguard claims he didn’t see her alive. The witnesses all left before the patrol car arrived.”
    “We’ll have to put out an appeal, guv.”
    “I’m coming to that.”
    “What about this lifeguard? Is he a suspect? Can we believe everything he tells us?”
    “He’s an Australian named Emerson, and he’s not comfortable. I dare say there are things he doesn’t want us to know about how he got the job. But he was on duty. To have killed her, he’d have needed to leave his post for a while, and someone might have noticed.”
    “There must be other lifeguards. I’ve seen more than one of them sitting up there. He could ask one of his mates to cover for him and take time out to kill her.”
    “For what reason?”
    “Who knows? He recognised her as someone who dumped him some time in the past?”
    “Not much of a motive,” George Flint commented.
    “We don’t have any motive yet.”
    Stella nudged the discussion in another direction. “If the victim is this doctor, we could have another motive: the patient with a grudge.”
    “That’s good, Stell,” Hen said, forgetting her own insistence that they’d said enough about Dr Wilkinson. “I like that. GPs deal with life and death issues every day. There are always people who feel they were denied the right treatment, or misdiagnosed.”
    “Or refused the drugs they want.”
    “Would you take that on, Stella? Go to the health centre and find out what you can.”
    “You mean look at patients’ records?”
    Someone sitting near Stella murmured in a sing-song tone, “Data Protection.”
    “Talk to the receptionists, pick out the gossipy one and ask about the nutters and complainers they have to deal with,” Hen said. “You’ll get names. Then try the nurses and the cleaners and the caretaker. I don’t have to tell you, Stella.”
    “But you did.”
    Smiles all round, Hen’s included.
    “Getting back to what happened on the beach, we need to find this guy who alerted the lifeguard. He was asked to remain at the scene, and didn’t. We have a description of sorts. Tall and thin. Short, brown hair. Around thirty years of age. Skin turning red, so presumably he wasn’t a regular on the beach. And we have his name . . . Smith.”
    She timed the pay-off like a stand-up comic and got the laugh she expected.
    “He has a wife or partner, short, a bit overweight and with dyed blond hair. Also a five-year-old daughter called Haley.”
    “Are we regarding him as a