The fisherman told me he'd been on his way to his repair shack at 5.30 a.m. when he saw the body. He knew she was dead from the look of her and he didn't go down on to the beach but straight along the Marginal, beyond the boatyard of the Clube Desportivo, to the Direccao de Farois to ask them to phone the Policia Maritima.

I squeezed my chin and found flesh instead of beard. I looked dumbly at my palm as if my hand was in some way responsible. I needed new tics for my new face. I needed a new job for my new life.

Dead girl on the beach, the seagulls screeched.

Perhaps being; exposed was making me more sensitive to the minutiae of everyday life.

The pathologist arrived, a small dark woman called Fernanda Ramalho, who ran marathons when she wasn't examining dead bodies.

'I was right,' she said, her eyes coming back to me after I'd introduced Carlos Pinto, who was writing everything down in his notebook.

'The best kind of pathologists always are, Fernanda.'

'You're handsome. There were those who thought you were hiding a weak chin under there.'

'Is that what people think these days,' I said, running for cover, 'that men grow beards to hide something? When I was a kid everybody had a beard.'

'Why do men grow beards?' she asked, genuinely perplexed.

'The same reason dogs lick their balls,' said Carlos, pen poised. Our heads snapped round. 'Because they can,' he finished.

Fernanda enquired with an eyebrow.

'It's his first day,' I said, which annoyed him again. Twice in less than an hour. This boy had shingles of the mind. Fernanda took a step back as if he might start lapping. Why didn't Narciso tell me the kid wasn't house-trained?

The photographer finished his close-ups and I nodded to Fernanda who was standing by with her bag open wearing a pair of surgical gloves.