He straightened slowly. “It sounds ridiculous,” he said, “ but it’s the right shape for the classic blunt instrument.”

“Murder?” she said. “Are you sure?” Again it was so far from what she had expected when she came to the quay that she could hardly believe it.

“Well, I don’t see how it can have been an accident, and it can’t be suicide. He’s hardly going to hit himself on the back of the head.”

She stood up, her head spinning with the smell of fish and the exhilaration and awesome responsibility of a murder investigation. It was her case, she thought. They could not take it away from her now. She gripped the deck rail and tried desperately not to be sick.

“Are you all right?”

It was the doctor, thinking the idea of such violence was making her ill. She could have told him that she had come to terms with it years ago.

“Yes,” she said. “ Fine.”

She looked around her and caught the eye of Louis Rosco, who was still standing in the lighted wheelhouse. She nodded towards the body.

“Can you sort this out with my sergeant?” she said. “I want to talk to the skipper and find out what all those people were doing on the boat anyway.”

“Birds!” the doctor said.

“What do you mean?” She looked at him suspiciously.

“That’s what they were doing on the Jessie Ellen. They’re birdwatchers. I’m one myself. I went on the same ship three weeks ago. They got me Wilson’s petrel.”

With that he left her alone on deck and went to talk to Sergeant Berry. Probably, she thought, about women’s weak stomachs. The pubs beyond the harbour wall were closing. There were good-humoured calls, the occasional snatch of singing. The crowd peering down at the Jessie Ellen was growing.

Louis Rosco watched the policewoman on the deck with a mounting despair and confusion. He had thought these formalities would soon be over. Greg’s death would be put down as an accident, and there would be no more questions. Now the sight of the woman bending over the body, talking earnestly to the doctor, made him realise that this hope was quite unrealistic. She was the sort to be curious. She would want to know everything. Even the shape of her depressed him. She was angular and tall, with a sharp nose and pointed chin. Her pale hair was tied away from her face. He sensed that she was well dressed and that some men might find her attractive, but he only had an impression of order and dogged persistence. She frightened him.

When she came to the wheelhouse door, Rosco still had no idea what he would tell her.