He had been a different guy back then. Now he felt older, almost protective of these cops. The beat was the beginning.

They came into what Hardy called the walking room. Pico had changed into a turtleneck and sportcoat, though he still wore his swim trunks. He stared emptily straight ahead, sitting on the edge of the pool next to the gurney that held the shark.

‘Find anything else?’ Hardy asked.

Pico let himself off the pool’s lip, withering Hardy with a look. After the introductions, Varela walked over to the hand, still lying where Pico had thrown it. ‘That what it looks like?’

‘That’s what it is,’ Hardy said.

‘Where’d you get this shark?’ Soper asked. ‘Hey, Bobby!’ Varela was poking at the hand with a pencil. ‘Leave it, would you?’

Pico told Soper how the shark had come to the Steinhart. Soper wanted to know the fishing boat’s name, captain, time of capture, all that. Hardy walked over to Varela, who was still hunched over, and stood over him.

‘Pretty weird, huh?’

Varela looked back over his shoulder, straightening. ‘Naw, we get these three, four times a week.’

‘I wonder if the guy drowned?’

Varela couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the thing.

‘You’d hope so, wouldn’t you? How’d you like to have been alive instead?’

Soper had passed them, going into Pico’s office to use the telephone. Pico came over. ‘He’s getting some crime-lab people down here. No way am I putting my hand in that guy again.’

Varela shivered. ‘I don’t blame you.’ He walked back to the shark and gingerly lifted the incision along its stomach with his pencil. ‘Can’t see much.’

There’s more in there,‘ Pico said. ’We’d just started.‘

Varela stepped back. ‘Dan’s right. I think we’ll just wait.’

Hardy stared down at the hand. ‘I wonder who it was,’ he said.

‘Oh, we’ll find out soon enough,’ Varela said.