“No positive ID as yet. It’s still a mystery.”

“What about dental records, like Albarn?”

“Dental records only work when we’ve got something to compare those records to. We had a pretty good idea it was Albarn already. The only thing I can think of is to get a team together and start trawling through missing persons. See if anybody matching the man’s age and appearance has been reported missing in the last few weeks.”

“That’ll take forever. We once spent two weeks on it in my last team, and we still drew a blank.”

“Well, we’ll have to start the process. Do you have any better suggestions?”

“Actually, I do. I saw the face. It’s bloated and discoloured, but you can vaguely make out the features. I reckon a good police artist can give us an idea what the poor man looked like before he died. Then we get that image out as widely as we can.”

”That’s a very good idea — but we can’t say we’re looking for the ID of a man who was murdered, cut in half and dumped in the sea. We’d have panic on our hands.”

“Shark attack, of course. Everybody still thinks it was a shark. We’ll let them keep thinking that for the time being. We’re looking for the ID of the victim of a tragic shark attack.”

“And I know just the artist.” Killian took out his phone. “Kathy Bradfield’s talents are legendary.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Eddie Sedgwick was a man of habit. He put it down to his days in the air force. He enjoyed routine. At seven on the dot, he opened his eyes, looked at Barbara on the single bed next to his and got out of bed. He went to the toilet and went to the kitchen to make some coffee. He scowled when he saw the newspaper wasn’t yet on the mat by the front door.

“Bloody paperboys,” Eddie said, “they keeping getting worse and worse.”

He opened the door to the back garden and breathed in the cool morning air. The click of the kettle told him it had boiled. On the way back, he picked up the red pen attached to the calendar with a piece of string and crossed out the previous day’s date.

“Another one bites the dust.”

Eddie had been crossing off days for as long as he could remember. Barbara had said he was like a man waiting to die, counting the time he had left, but Eddie insisted it was the opposite. He was celebrating the days he had lived.

He made coffee and took it through to the conservatory. A pleasant breeze blew in through the open door. Alice Green’s hollyhocks had always smelled sweeter than his. Eddie still did not know her secret and Alice would never tell him.

Eddie was lost without his morning newspaper. The first coffee of the day with an unread newspaper to take his time over was one of his greatest pleasures. He thought about phoning the newsagent to complain that the paper was being delivered later and later. Soon his wife would wake up and his solitude would be ruined. Barbara always had to talk while he was reading the newspaper.

The familiar sound of the Trotterdown Echo landing on the mat spurred Eddie into action. He made another cup of coffee and took both it and the paper to the conservatory.

The front page was mostly taken up by a massive photo of Dennis Albarn’s house after the explosion. There was not much left of it. The words ‘deadly inferno’ were written in bold black letters above the photo.

Poor man, Eddie thought. He had never had much time for Dennis Albarn when he was alive but Eddie still thought it was a horrible way to die. He read the article and was slightly disappointed by the lack of details. Eddie already knew most of it anyway, thanks to the local gossipmongers who’d been working nonstop since the blaze. He gave up and turned the page.

He spat coffee all over his pyjama jacket at the sight of the picture on page three. “Barbara,” he shouted to his wife, “come and look at this.” He could hear her slowly getting out of bed. “Quick. Look.” She shuffled in and he thrust the paper at her. “Who does that remind you of?”

“That’s Stanley. Stanley Green. What’s he done?”

“He’s dead. He was the one they found in the fishing nets. The one who was attacked by the shark.”

“Oh my.” Barbara sat down. “I wonder if Alice knows about it yet.”

“If she’s read the paper, she knows,” Eddie said. “That’s Stanley Green all right, no doubt about it.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

By eight that morning, the switchboard at the Trotterdown police station had already received over one hundred calls. Half of them had mentioned Stanley Green’s name. Ten percent would have been good enough. Taylor’s idea had worked. Kathy Bradfield had outdone herself with the drawing. Quite a few of the people who had phoned in had commented that the likeness to Stanley Green was uncanny.

“Poor Alice.” Taylor sat in the canteen staring at the picture in the newspaper.

“I remember Stanley Green,” Killian said. “Bit of a wide boy, if my memory serves me right.”

“I thought you said his fingerprints weren’t on our system?”

“That’s because he never got caught. No, he and Dennis Albarn were up to all kinds of things in their day.”

“And now they’re both dead.” Taylor could not help staring at Stanley Green’s face. His features were handsome in an old-fashioned, rugged kind of way. He bore a slight resemblance to her Danny. She could see why Alice had fallen for him in the first place. “I ought to go and see Alice,” she said. “She must be in a right state.”

“She’ll know by now. Like I said yesterday, this is a small community. I’ll send one of the Whites round to talk to her.”

“I’d rather go myself.”

“What’s with you and the old beekeeper?”

“I don’t know. She’s nice. Easy to talk to. She makes a lot of sense. I think it best if I go and see her. She trusts me. Besides, both Eric and Thomas White can be a bit insensitive at times.”

“Well, make it snappy. Our workload’s going to be bad enough as it is. Three elderly people murdered in Polgarrow in the space of a week. The press are going to cotton on to it, soon enough. It’s only a matter of time before they start asking questions.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

* * *

Taylor was halfway to Polgarrow when she suddenly remembered something Alice Green had said the day before. She’d said he had phoned on Wednesday night wanting to meet up. But Stanley had been dead for almost a week by then.

What’s happening around here? She stopped and dialled Killian’s number.

“Sir,” she said, “there’s something that’s bothering me.”

“Go on,” Killian said.

“Alice told me yesterday that her husband phoned her on Wednesday and asked if they could meet up. It couldn’t have been Stanley. He was already dead.”

“Ask her about it. Ask her if it could have been somebody pretending to be Stanley.”

“There’s something else. We were trying to work out the connection between the three dead people.”

“You’re not talking about this earth wind and fire stuff again, are you?”

“Dennis Albarn was Stanley Green’s best man.”

“OK,” Killian said.

“Milly Lancaster was Alice’s maid of honour. There were only four of them at the wedding and now Alice is the only one left.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I listen.”

“Bring her in.” Killian sounded serious.

“What for? Surely you don’t think she’s got something to do with all of this?”

“Of course not. I want you to bring her in for her own protection. Three of the wedding party are dead. Alice Green received a phone call from someone pretending to be her husband, asking if they could meet up. I think it was a trap.”

“This isn’t good.” Taylor carefully moved back onto the road. “Why would someone want to kill three people who were at a wedding forty years ago?”