He removed his cap and wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. ‘Who found her?’
One of the men nodded over his shoulder. Thirty yards down the beach, a fisherman, tall and big-boned, was loading a net into a surfboat hitched to the back of an old Model A flatbed. Another fellow – slighter, wirier, with lank, bleached hair – was helping him.
Hollis glanced back at the tarpaulin. ‘Don’t worry,’ said one of the younger men, thin lips buried in a scraggy beard worn to conceal a weak chin. ‘She’s fresh. A day, not even.’
His reluctance to take a look was that transparent? Crouching, Hollis folded back the tarp.
Death had not completely obscured her beauty. Blonde tresses matted with weed framed an oval face that descended to the delicate point of her chin. Her lips, though blue, were arched and full. Faint smile lines flanked her mouth. Her nose was sharp, her eyes wide-set and closed.
He resisted the temptation to force open the lids. Green, he guessed. He’d find out soon enough. There was a small scar etched into her left eyebrow, and pierce-marks in her ears. A beautiful young woman, her life cut short after no more than, what, twentyfive years? Thirty, maximum.
He examined both sides of her neck, instinctively, a vestige of his time in homicide. There was no bruising, but he did find something else, in the sand beside her head.
‘Anyone recognize her?’
The fishermen shrugged, not bothering to reply. Hollis folded back the tarp and got to his feet. ‘Who took her earrings?’
They stared at him, their faces set in stone. He held up the gold back-stud he had found in the sand.
‘I said, who took her earrings?’
He intended his words to have an edge of easy menace, but he knew they sounded petulant.
‘What you take us for?’ From the one with the beard again.
Hollis let it go.
The two men who had netted the body exchanged a few words as he approached them. ‘Deputy Chief Hollis,’ he announced. The tall fisherman nodded an acknowledgment. His dark hair was cropped short, his mouth was wide, intelligent. Steel gray eyes looked down on Hollis from beneath a broad, heavy brow.
‘You were the ones found her?’
‘Uh-huh.’
There was something unnerving about the steady, unyielding gaze. The stillness of the fellow was in stark contrast to his companion, who shuffled his feet nervously as he glanced around him.
Hollis removed a small memo pad from the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘Your name?’ he asked the taller one.
‘Conrad Labarde.’
Hollis looked up. ‘What is that, French?’
‘Basque.’
Basque. It rang a bell, some distant memory of a geography lesson.
‘And you?’ asked Hollis. The nervous fellow froze, then looked to his tall friend as if for assistance.
‘Rollo Kemp,’ replied the Basque. Even Hollis had heard of the Kemps, an old dynasty of farmer-fishermen, one of those families that went back all the way.
‘Cat got his tongue?’
‘You make him a little jumpy is all.’
There was no hint of aggression in his tone, no allocation of blame despite the phrasing. Hollis looked the Kemp boy over – something not quite right about him, he could see it now. Not ‘overburdened’, as his mother would have said. The product of inbreeding, perhaps.
‘You want to tell me what happened?’
Hollis took notes while the Basque, in an even monotone, described the events leading up to the discovery of the body. When he was finished, Hollis closed the pad and placed it in his hip pocket.
‘Any idea who she is?’
‘No.’
‘And what did you do with her earrings?’ It was an old cop trick – a question charged with assumptions, asked ever so casually.
The Basque held Hollis’ gaze, no trace of a flicker. Hollis showed him the earring back-stud.
‘Wait here,’ said the Basque, making for the group of fishermen. Hollis followed, damned if he was going to be ordered around.
The Basque stopped and turned.
‘It’s best,’ he said.
Hollis was too far away to hear the specifics of the exchange. At a certain moment, the Basque must have mentioned Hollis, because everyone glanced over at him. Not long after, the young fisherman with the beard became agitated, raising his voice. With a dismissive sweep of his arm, he turned on his heel.
He had taken all of two steps when the Basque placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. The younger man spun back, swinging a roundhouse as he did so. More shocking, though, was the speed of the big man’s reaction. He stepped inside the arc of the punch so that it fell harmlessly against his shoulder and in the same movement he pushed his assailant in the face with the open palm of his hand, so that he fell back on to the sand.
The Basque clamped a foot on the other’s chest and held out a hand. The younger man rummaged in his pocket and handed something over. Only then did the Basque remove his foot and step away.
He wandered back over and placed a pair of pearl stud earrings in Hollis’ hand. ‘What happens now?’ he asked.
‘The Medical Examiner’s on his way from Hauppauge. They’ll take her away.’
‘They’ll bog down on the beach. We should move her to the landing.’
Hollis nodded.
An hour later the Suffolk County Chief Medical Examiner and his two assistants arrived at the beach landing in an unmarked van. Dr Cornelius Hobbs was a stout, brisk man with gold-rimmed spectacles and a hairpiece that made little attempt to disguise itself as such. Jet black, its curling fringes flapped wildly in the breeze like a young bird struggling to take wing.
‘Deputy Hollis?’ he asked, not waiting for a reply. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got, shall we?’
His voice was pinched, nasal. Sinuses, thought Hollis, a welcome affliction for someone in his line of work.
The woman’s body had been placed on the bed of the Basque’s Model A. Without any consideration for the handful of onlookers, Hobbs seized the end of the tarpaulin and yanked it off.
‘Mmmmmmm,’ he mused, lowering his voice as he turned to Hollis. ‘A fine figure of a woman. I believe a little mouth-to-mouth is called for. You never know, Hollis, you just never know.’ Like many of the medical examiners Hollis had known in the past, Dr Cornelius Hobbs clearly enjoyed proclaiming his own ease when confronted with a corpse. He was still chuckling to himself as he used the trailer hitch to clamber up on to the back of the truck.
The Basque appeared at the side of the vehicle. ‘A little more respect, I think.’
There was nothing censorious in his tone. Had there been, maybe Hobbs would have reacted differently; as it was, he simply frowned. ‘Don’t I know you?’
‘Not sure I’ve ever had the pleasure.’
The reply brought a thin smile to Hollis’ lips.
The woman’s body was loaded into the van on a gurney by the two assistants. Hobbs closed the doors and turned to Hollis.
‘They never learn.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Hollis.
‘The sea’s no friend of ours. Third drowning this week.’
Here we go, thought Hollis.
‘Had a