She must have replied to her companion, though Wexford hadn’t heard the words. But now, without turning round, she stamped her foot and the man said:

‘How can you go to the bloody place, Iris, when we can’t find anyone to take us? There’s nowhere to land. I wish to God you’d give it a rest.’

Dora took her husband’s arm, hastening him along. He could read her thoughts, not to eavesdrop on someone else’s quarrel.

‘You’re so nosy, darling,’ she said when they had reached the steps and were out of earshot. ‘I suppose it’s what comes of being a policeman.’

Wexford laughed. ‘I’m glad you realize that’s the reason. Any other man’s wife would accuse him of looking at that girl.’

‘She was beautiful, wasn’t she?’ said Dora wistfully, conscious of her age. ‘Of course we couldn’t see her face, but you could tell she had a perfect figure.’

‘Except for the legs. Pity she hasn’t got the sense to wear trousers.’

‘Oh, Reg, what was wrong with her legs? And she was so beautifully tanned. When I see a girl like that it makes me feel such an old has-been.’

‘Don’t be so daft,’ said Wexford crossly. ‘You look fine.’ He meant it. He was proud of his handsome wife, so young-looking for her late fifties, elegant and decorous in navy skid and crisp white blouse, her skin already golden after only two days of holiday. ‘And I’ll tell you one thing,’ he added. ‘You’d beat her hollow in any ankle competition.’

Dora smiled at him, comforted. They sat down at a table in a pavement café where the shade was deep and a cool breeze blew. Just time for a beer and an orange juice, and then to catch the water taxi back down the coast to Mirna.

In Serbo-Croat mirna means peaceful. And so Wexford found the resort after a gruelling winter and spring in Kingsmarkham, after petty crime and serious crime, and finally a squalid murder case which had been solved, not by him in spite of his work and research, but by a young expert from Scotland Yard. It was Mike Burden who had advised him to get right away for his holiday. Not Wales or Cornwall this time, but the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia where he, Burden, had taken his children the previous year.

‘Mirna,’ said Burden. ‘There are three good hotels but the village is quite unspoilt. You can go everywhere by water. Two or three old chaps run taxi boats. It never rained once while we were there. And you’re into all this nature stuff, this ecology. The marine life’s amazing and so are the flowers and butterflies.’

It was the marine life with which Wexford was getting acquainted two mornings after the trip to Dubrovnik. He had left Dora prone on an air bed by the hotel swimming pool, knowing full well that sunbathing was impossible for his Anglo-Saxon skin. Already his nose was peeling. So he had anointed his face, put on a long-sleeved shirt, and walked round the wooded point to Mirna harbour. The little port had a harbour wall built of the same stone as the city of Dubrovnik, and kneeling down to peer over, he saw that beneath the water line the rocks and masonry were thickly covered by a tapestry of sea anemones and tiny shells and flowering weed and starfishes. The water was perfectly clear and unpolluted. He could clearly see the bottom, fifteen feet down, and now a shoal of silvery-brown fish glided out from a sea-bed bush. Fascinated, he leaned over, understanding why so many swimmers out there were equipped with goggles and schnorkels. A scarlet fish darted out from a rock, then a broad silver one, banded with black.