“Gerry. Gerry Sweeny. Now I have it. Who’s this victim here, Gerry?”

“We don’t know yet. He has clothes on but there’s nothing in his pockets,” replied Sweeny. He hunkered down beside Minogue and drew the heavy plastic back from the face.

Minogue held his breath and let his eyes out of focus. The sound of the sea filled the air around him. He looked to Sweeny’s face and found that he too was grimacing. With a great effort Minogue looked to the face again. The wound over the left eyebrow had to be an exit wound: it was too large, too ragged to be otherwise. The dead man’s skin reminded Minogue of a fish. The gaping hole was now a lilac, blubbery flower on the man’s forehead. At least the seawater had washed him clean.

“There’s two on this side by the ear,” Sweeny mumbled. “They came out the neck on your side.”

Minogue didn’t want to push the ear back to see. “What?”

“This side, Inspector, there’s two distinct gunshot wounds here. As well as the one in the back of the head. Hard to miss that one, I’m telling you.”

Sweeny rose. His shoes crunched pebbly sand underfoot. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. Minogue stayed on his hunkers, already putting up that shield between his own shock and fear and the body which had been a living person. Still, he felt that alertness and dim excitement come to him as his horror gave way. He made a conscious effort to relax his eyes and let them wander about the body.

“Well,” he whispered. “I’ll stake money that this is a secondary site. I wonder how far away from here he was actually shot, though…”

“Beg your pardon, sir?” said Sweeny, swallowing.

Minogue didn’t answer. Already his trained eye was looking for ligature marks. He allowed his gaze to move slowly from place to place on the exposed skin. The abrasions looked postmortem, he thought. He took out a pencil and poked it under the dead man’s shirt, lifted the shirt-tail slowly, and immediately spotted the edge of a lividity which he guessed discoloured the back of the body completely. Minogue breathed out slowly through pursed lips.