‘Against a breakwater, you said?’
‘Yes, they’re really massive, about ten feet tall on the side where she was. She was right up against the wood, partly hidden behind one of those posts that support it all.’
‘Was anyone else about?’ DC Pearce asked.
‘No one I noticed. I would have asked for help, wouldn’t I? I had to go up to the top and call at the nearest house that backs onto the beach. The people phoned nine-nine-nine and I waited for the police to come.’
‘Hold on a bit,’ DCI Mallin said. ‘Before you went up to the house, didn’t you try to resuscitate her?’
‘She was well dead.’
‘How do you know that? Did you feel for a pulse?’
‘I didn’t touch her. I could see.’
‘See she wasn’t breathing, you mean?’
‘It was obvious,’ Jo said, more annoyed than defensive. ‘Her skin was deathly white. There was seaweed clinging to her. Flies.’
‘Have you ever done a life-saving course? People apparently dead can be saved with mouth-to-mouth or chest compressions. Drowning cases offer the best hope of recovery. But I won’t labour the point. We’ve established that you did nothing. Carry on.’
Jo’s so-called statement had long since ground to a halt. ‘I don’t know where I was.’
‘Waiting for the police,’ DC Pearce prompted her.
‘Where?’ Hen Mallin asked.
‘What?’
‘Where did you wait? On the beach?’
‘Of course.’ To keep up her confidence she reminded herself that this hard-nosed chief inspector was Hen to her friends. She’d also noticed that the chief inspector’s fingers were nicotine-stained. Even the police experienced stress.
‘Did you notice anything of interest?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Stuff lying around.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘We’re asking you, Jo,’ Hen Mallin said. ‘It isn’t our job to put words in your mouth. Apart from the dead woman, was there anything you noticed along that bit of beach?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Hen Mallin spelt it out as if to an Alzheimer’s patient. ‘You were there, Jo. We weren’t. The place has been covered by the tide many times since that morning. Things get moved, washed out to sea, covered over. The site isn’t of much use to a crime scene investigation team now, but while you were there it was fresh.’
At the words crime scene, Jo’s insides clenched. ‘Are you saying there was a crime?’
‘Didn’t you notice?’
‘Notice what?’
‘The marks on the flesh.’
‘I expect there would be some. It’s a stony beach.’
‘Bruising to the neck consistent with finger pressure.’
A pulse throbbed in her temple and she thought she would faint. ‘No-how dreadful!’
‘We’re treating it as a violent death and possibly murder.’
Gooseflesh was forming on her arms.
‘She drowned, as you must have guessed,’ DC Pearce said in a tone meant to make it less of a shock, ‘and the marks suggest she was held under the water.’
‘Horrible.’
‘Yes.’
‘I had no idea. And this happened at sea?’
‘Not in the way you mean,’ Hen Mallin said.
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘You’re assuming she was attacked on a ship. We don’t think so. Human skin immersed in water for any length of time gets bleached and wrinkled. It used to be called washerwoman’s hand, but these days we don’t use the term. This woman’s skin was in good condition, wet from the waves, and no more. We think the attack happened close to the beach.’
‘I can’t believe this.’
‘It seems she was in the water with her killer and held under until she stopped breathing. Now do you see why your recall of the scene is so important?’
She released a large, shaky breath. And nodded.
Hen Mallin pressed on with her questions. ‘You found the body at the base of the breakwater, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘As you pointed out, they stand ten or twelve feet high, those breakwaters. On the one side, that is. On the other, the stones are stacked almost to the top, so you don’t see much timber at all. It’s the action of the tide, dragging the stones from under one breakwater and heaping them against the next one.’
Jo waited for her to get to the point.
‘And the sea was quite rough. Had been for some hours. Do you follow me? If the body had been washed up, it wouldn’t have got where you found it.’
It was as if they were questioning her account. ‘That’s where it was.’
‘So it looks as if the tide went out and the body was left there, more or less where she drowned. That would explain why it was on that side of the breakwater.’
‘I suppose.’
‘You didn’t find any clothes nearby?’
‘No. Why?’ She knew the question was stupid as soon as it left her mouth, but all this had come as a shock.
‘She’s not going to be on a public beach in no more than her knickers.’
‘There weren’t any clothes that I could see.’
‘You must have wondered where they were, surely, finding a poor dead woman almost naked.’
‘I don’t know what I thought. I was very upset when I discovered what it was I’d found.’
‘You didn’t look around, then?’ Hen Mallin’s brown eyes regarded her with disbelief, if not disapproval.
Jo felt annoyed by the question. ‘I’m not an expert like you. I thought she’d been washed up by the tide. I’m only the person who happened to find her.’ She almost added that they were making her feel like a suspect, but she stopped herself in time. ‘Was she…?’
‘Raped? Apparently not. The signs weren’t there, but who can say what was in the mind of the killer? Something that starts out as sex play can turn ugly if the woman doesn’t welcome it.’
These words, ‘raped,’ ‘killer,’ ‘sex play,’ and ‘ugly’ struck Jo with near-physical force. ‘Do you think they knew each other, then? They went to the beach together for a swim?’
‘That’s our present assumption.’
‘And he held her under and she drowned?’
‘He, or she. We consider every option.’
‘Why?’
‘Why was she attacked?’ Hen Mallin turned up her palms. ‘No one can say yet. The killer could have planned it, expecting she’d be taken for some unfortunate woman who fell overboard. You understand why I’m asking if you remember anything from the scene?’
‘Who was she?’
‘We don’t know yet. She could be local. Equally she could have come from miles away. Or been brought there by her killer.’
‘Poor woman.’
‘Yes. Whoever she was, her luck ran out that weekend. Cast your mind back, Jo. Who did you see along the front?’
‘Nobody I knew.’
‘That isn’t what I’m asking. I don’t expect names. I want your recollection of everyone you noticed.’
‘That’s hard.’
‘Think for a bit. Take your time.’
She frowned. The finding of the body had pushed everything before that moment into a hazy, unimportant background. For much of the walk she’d been absorbed in her own thoughts, hoping against the odds to meet Jake. She’d been on the lookout for tall men, that was one sure thing.
‘There was a young guy who passed me early on. He was tall, over six feet, and wearing a fleece and tracksuit trousers. Grey, I think. And he had an iPod. Well, I saw the earphones.’
‘You say he passed you. Do you mean overtook you?’
‘No, he was coming towards me.’
‘From the direction of the body?’
‘Yes, but I don’t think-’
‘Hair colour?’
‘God, this is difficult. Darkish brown and short.’
‘Age?’
‘Younger than me. Mid-twenties probably.’
‘Was he in a hurry?’
‘He was walking quite fast when I saw him. He could have been a jogger.’
‘Did you speak?’
She shook her head. ‘There wasn’t even eye contact.’