Hollis was intrigued. From her very first glance she had clearly recognized the girl, but she insisted on viewing all four photographs, taking her time as she did so. When she was finished, she handed them back.

‘Lillian Wallace. Her family has a house on Further Lane.’ Only now did she look Hollis in the eye.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

Mary accompanied him around the side of the building to the street. She folded her arms across her midriff as if chilled by the eighty-five-degree heat. ‘She loved the ocean. I sometimes saw her there, down at the beach, in the evening when I was walking the dog. She liked to swim there.’

Strange, somehow she didn’t seem like a woman who owned a dog. What would it be? Something devoted and fiercely loyal—a retriever, maybe, or a labrador.

‘She was a good swimmer?’ he asked.

‘Not good enough, it seems.’

‘I appreciate it,’ he said, holding up the envelope. Mary watched him leave.

‘I was sorry to hear about your wife,’ she called after him. Turning back, he groped for something to say. In the end he simply nodded then carried on his way.

Returning to the patrol car, he found a note from Abel on the driver’s seat: Dinner tonight, 7:30. Don’t worry—I’m cooking!

Hollis smiled, fired the engine and pulled away.

The length of the yew hedge that flanked the entrance gates of the Wallace property on Further Lane gave some indication of the scale of the plot, close on a hundred yards wide, while the height of the hedge concealed all else from prying eyes. The white wooden gates, discreet but imposing, were open and Hollis guided the patrol car through them, slowing only to read the name painted in neat black capitals on a board—Oceanview—proof that wealth and imagination didn’t always make for natural bedfellows. All the properties on Further Lane gave directly on to the ocean at the rear.