Free Sea of Suspicion by Toni Anderson

Hammy, I want you to oversee every piece of evidence and make sure it is catalogued like the Crown Jewels.” He glanced at his watch. His boss would want to be notified, and the Procurator Fiscal.
    His gaze lingered on the young woman’s body. Her skirt was hiked up around her thighs, suggesting a possible sexual assault, arms outstretched over her head as if she’d tried to crawl away.
    All that blood…
    She’d taken time to die.
    Why her? How had she attracted a killer’s attention? Or was she simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? Cursing, he walked on the tarmac, trying not to step in blood. But it was everywhere, glistening thickly in the dim light. Had he missed it earlier, or had the girl been attacked when he was inside the Gatty?
    “Hey!” He turned and yelled to P.C. Lewis and pointed along the path he’d just walked. “Get this area roped off too. There’s blood everywhere.”
    The sobs grew louder and Nick resisted rolling his eyes at his witnesses. The fine line of irritation was about to trip his temper. Lucky for him doing the job was as automatic as breathing, and muscle memory had him jerking out a notebook and stabbing a pen in its center. He thought he’d escaped this crap. This was St. Andrews, not Stoke Newington. He’d thought he was finished with death and destruction.
    “I’m Detective Inspector Nick Archer. Can you ladies tell me what happened?”
    A short, chubby brunette had her arm thrown protectively over the blonde’s shoulders. Both wore Gor-Tex rain jackets, blue jeans and trainers that were covered in a dark sticky substance that was probably blood. The brunette had a big handbag on the bench at her side, a flashlight beside it.
    “We were just walking hame.” The broad Glaswegian twang cut through him.
    The whining pitch of her voice set his teeth on edge, but he nodded. “What’s your name?”
    “Tina Bell.” The girl met his gaze briefly. “People call me Tinker.”
    ’Course they did.
    Her gaze shifted to her friend, whose head wobbled when Tina shook her gently by the shoulders. The blonde looked up, her pupils optical saucers, telling him exactly why the brunette was being so damn protective. At least one of them was surfing the cosmos and it wasn’t him. When the blonde didn’t say anything, Tinkerbell plowed on. “And this here is Cynthia Parkinson. Cyn.” She shook her friend again and the girl’s head bobbed.
    Nick wrote it in his notebook along with their address, then he verified their ID. “Mind if I take a look at your cell phone?”
    Tinkerbell dug deep into her coat pocket.
    “Thanks.” He flipped through the call history and checked the time of her last call. One twenty-three, to 999, the emergencies services. When he’d been busy in the office above their heads, rifling through Sizemore’s desk. A visceral heat swept through him and opened his pores.
    Had the girl on the beach still been alive?
    “Mind if I take a look in your handbags?” Nick asked, ignoring his own emotions and doing the job. Not that these two were likely killers, but he couldn’t afford to ignore the obvious.
    Tinkerbell was smart, he could see the understanding in her eyes. “Go ahead, but we didn’t kill her.”
    It was too much to ask to find a blood-soaked blunt instrument in the recesses of a canvas tote, but killers were generally careless and often unintelligent, and regularly hung out at their crime scenes. There were no other spectators, and no media to control yet, which was a blessing.
    “Did you see anyone? Hear anything?” He passed the bags back and Tina shook her head.
    Cynthia chose that moment to quit crying, her blond curls damp around pinched features. “I slipped. And when I put my hand on the path it got covered in something sticky and then Tina got out her torch and we realized there was blood everywhere. We thought maybe some animal had been run over and we wanted to try and help it. But then…then we saw the body…” She started