What I learned about writing – The use of real people as characters.

The Muse Next Door: Weaving Real Life into Your Fiction (Pros & Cons)

As writers, we’re constantly searching for inspiration. Sometimes it strikes like lightning, a fully formed idea bursting forth. More often, though, our wellspring of creativity is much closer than we think: it’s the rich, messy, beautiful tapestry of real life itself.

The question then becomes: how much of that life – the people we know, the experiences we’ve had – should we actually weave into our stories? It’s a powerful tool, but like any powerful tool, it comes with a user manual that highlights both its immense benefits and its potential pitfalls.

Let’s explore the pros and cons of drawing directly from real people and personal experiences for your characters and plots.

The Allure of Authenticity: The Pros

There’s a reason so many authors look to their own lives and the people around them. The benefits are substantial:

Authenticity and Relatability: Real life has a texture that’s hard to invent. When you base a character on someone you know, or a plot on an event you’ve lived through, you bring an immediate sense of truth and lived experience to the page. Readers are incredibly astute; they can often feel when a character or situation rings true, and this fosters a deeper connection.
Rich Detail and Nuance: Ever tried to describe a facial twitch or an odd habit from scratch? It’s tough. But if you’re picturing your eccentric Aunt Carol, those details come naturally. Real people are complex, contradictory, and full of fascinating quirks that can make your fictional characters leap off the page in a way pure invention sometimes struggles to achieve.
Emotional Resonance: When you write about an experience you’ve had, or channel the emotions you’ve witnessed in someone else, that raw feeling seeps into your words. This can create powerful, moving scenes that deeply affect your readers because the emotion is rooted in a genuine place.
Overcoming Writer’s Block: Stuck on character motivation? Can’t figure out how a scene should unfold? Sometimes, recalling how a real person reacted in a similar situation, or remembering the actual sequence of events, can provide the perfect springboard to get your story moving again.
A Wellspring of Conflict: Life is full of conflict – big and small. The annoying neighbour, the family squabble, the quiet tension in a relationship. These everyday conflicts, when amplified or subtly altered, can form the backbone of incredibly compelling plots.

The Treacherous Territory: The Cons

While the well of reality is deep, it’s also fraught with potential dangers.

Ethical & Privacy Concerns: This is the biggest hurdle. When you base characters on real people, you risk:
- Hurting Feelings: Friends, family, or even acquaintances might recognise themselves – or parts of themselves – and feel exposed, misrepresented, or betrayed.
- Legal Repercussions: While less common for fiction, if you depict someone in a negative, identifiable way that could be proven false and damaging, you could face libel or defamation charges. (Though usually, fiction is protected if it’s not directly claiming to be fact).
- Breaching Trust: Once you start writing about people you know, they might become wary of sharing personal details with you in the future.
Creative Constraints: Sticking too close to reality can actually limit your creativity.
- Lack of Arc: Real people don’t always have satisfying story arcs. Their lives are often meandering, and if you simply copy, your character might feel directionless or flat in a fictional context.
- Predictability: If you’re too faithful to a real person, your character might act exactly as that person would, making their choices and the plot predictable for both you and your readers.
Personal Bias and Emotional Baggage: You can’t write about people you know or experiences you’ve had with true objectivity.
- Vengeful Writing: It’s tempting to use fiction to “settle scores” or air grievances, but this usually results in one-dimensional characters and a preachy, unengaging narrative.
- Emotional Overwhelm: Writing about highly personal or traumatic experiences can be emotionally draining and difficult, sometimes re-traumatising the writer.
Lack of Transformation: The goal of fiction isn’t to create a perfect mirror of reality, but to transform it into something meaningful. Simply transplanting a person or an event often misses the opportunity for deeper exploration, metaphor, or thematic development.
“Who’s That?” Dilemma: For those close to you, reading your work can become a game of “spot the real person,” detracting from their immersion in the story you’re trying to tell.

The Art of Transformation: Making it Work

So, how do you harness the power of real life without falling into its traps? The key is transformation, not transcription.

Mix and Match: Don’t base a character on just one person. Take the biting wit of your colleague, the fashion sense of your cousin, and the deep-seated insecurity of your old high school teacher, and blend them into a completely new entity.
Exaggerate and Subvert: Take a real trait and dial it up to eleven, or flip it on its head. Did your uncle always tell tall tales? What if your character is pathologically honest to a fault?
Change Circumstances: Put familiar people in unfamiliar situations. What would your overly cautious friend do if suddenly faced with an impossible life-or-death choice?
Shift Perspectives: If you’re drawing from a personal experience, try writing it from the perspective of another person involved, or even an outside observer. This creates distance and allows for more objective storytelling.
Focus on the Universal: Instead of replicating a specific argument you had, identify the universal themes within it: miscommunication, pride, fear. Then, build a fictional scenario around those themes.
Ask “What If?”: This is your greatest tool. “What if that person I know, with that specific trait, found themselves in this completely different, fictional situation?”

Conclusion

Our lives are the richest source material we possess. The people we meet, the places we go, and the emotions we feel are the raw ingredients of compelling stories. But like a skilled chef, a writer must know how to select, prepare, and transform those ingredients into something entirely new – a dish that nourishes the reader, stands on its own merits, and respects the origins without being bound by them.

So, open your eyes to the muse next door, but always wield your pen with thought, creativity, and a healthy dose of ethical consideration.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 152

Day 152 – Words of Wisdom

…

The Art of the Mirror: Why Great Literature Must Embrace the Mess

In his typically sharp, aphoristic style, Nassim Nicholas Taleb once argued: “Literature comes alive with covering up vices, defects, weaknesses, and confusions; it dies with every trace of preaching.”

It is a provocation that strikes at the heart of our modern literary malaise. In an era where “message-driven” storytelling is often prioritised over narrative integrity, Taleb’s words serve as a necessary intervention. He suggests that the moment a writer picks up a soapbox, they put down their pen.

But why does preaching kill a story? And why is the “covering up” of human frailty the very thing that makes a character breathe?

The Death of the Moral Compass

When a book begins to preach, the story stops being a mirror and starts being a lecture. A preacher assumes they have a monopoly on truth, and their only goal is to transmit that truth to a captive audience.

Literature, however, is not a monologue—it is a haunting, mutual experience. When an author decides that the purpose of their work is to moralise, they strip the characters of their agency. If a character is merely a vessel for a political or ethical point, they cease to be a “person.” They become a mannequin in a shop window, dressed in the author’s ideology.

Readers are sophisticated; they can smell didacticism from a mile away. When we feel we are being “taught,” our natural inclination is to resist. We stop reading to understand and start reading to evaluate. The magic is broken.

The Beauty of the “Cover-Up”

Taleb’s insistence that literature comes alive by “covering up” is not a call for dishonesty. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of the complexity of the human condition.

The greatest characters in literature—from Raskolnikov’s feverish guilt in Crime and Punishment to the quiet, desperate failures of the protagonists in Chekhov’s stories—are never fully transparent. They are bundles of contradictions. They act against their own interests. They suppress their darkest impulses, not because they are inherently “good,” but because they are terrified, confused, and profoundly human.

“Covering up” is the act of psychological realism. It is the writer acknowledging that we are all hiding something—from others, and often from ourselves.

When a writer portrays a character’s messy, confusing, and contradictory nature without labelling it as “wrong” or “right,” they create a space for the reader to step into. We don’t connect with perfect icons; we connect with the broken, the stammering, and the confused. We see our own “vices and defects” reflected in the prose, and in that recognition, we feel less alone.

The Reader as Co-Conspirator

If literature dies with preaching, it comes alive through the active labour of the reader. A great book presents a situation—a vice, a defect, a confusion—and refuses to provide the answer key.

By leaving the moral ambiguity intact, the author invites the reader to become an accomplice. You are not being told what to think; you are being shown what it feels like to be human. You are forced to judge, empathise, and grapple with the same mess the character is navigating.

Final Thoughts: The Courage to be Unclear

In the digital age, we are constantly bombarded with certainty. Every tweet, headline, and think-piece demands that we pick a side and commit to a moral posture.

Literature should be the last refuge from this binary exhaustion. By resisting the urge to preach, authors allow for the richness of ambiguity. They allow characters to fail, to be weak, and to be profoundly imperfect.

So, perhaps that is the ultimate test of a great book: Does it try to fix you, or does it try to show you? If it chooses the latter, it isn’t just a piece of writing—it’s a breathing, living thing that reminds us that in our vices, our weaknesses, and our confusions, we are at our most readable.

…

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 152

Day 152 – Words of Wisdom

…

The Art of the Mirror: Why Great Literature Must Embrace the Mess

But why does preaching kill a story? And why is the “covering up” of human frailty the very thing that makes a character breathe?

The Death of the Moral Compass

The Beauty of the “Cover-Up”

Taleb’s insistence that literature comes alive by “covering up” is not a call for dishonesty. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of the complexity of the human condition.

“Covering up” is the act of psychological realism. It is the writer acknowledging that we are all hiding something—from others, and often from ourselves.

The Reader as Co-Conspirator

If literature dies with preaching, it comes alive through the active labour of the reader. A great book presents a situation—a vice, a defect, a confusion—and refuses to provide the answer key.

Final Thoughts: The Courage to be Unclear

In the digital age, we are constantly bombarded with certainty. Every tweet, headline, and think-piece demands that we pick a side and commit to a moral posture.

…

What I learned about writing – Editing mistakes

Sharpen Your Prose: Banishing Blunders Like Mixed Metaphors, Faulty Parallelism, and Tense Troubles

Ever read something that makes your brain do a little somersault? You know, where you start nodding along, then suddenly hit a snag, and have to backtrack to figure out what the writer actually meant? More often than not, these jarring moments stem from a few common writing errors.

Today, we’re going to tackle three of the most prevalent culprits: mixed metaphors, faulty parallelism, and incorrect tense. Mastering these will not only make your writing clearer and more impactful but will also elevate your credibility as a communicator. Let’s dive in!

The Tangled Web of Mixed Metaphors

Metaphors are beautiful things. They allow us to paint vivid pictures in our readers’ minds by likening one thing to another, creating deeper understanding and engagement. But when you try to weave too many disparate comparisons together, or let a metaphor stray too far from its original intent, you end up with a tangled, nonsensical mess.

The Goal: To use a single, consistent, and effective metaphor to illustrate a point.

The Blunder: Combining two or more unrelated metaphors, creating confusion and often unintentional humor.

Examples:

Wrong: “We need to get our ducks in a row before we can really hit the ground running and climb the ladder of success.”
- Why it’s wrong: “Ducks in a row” implies organisation and order. “Hit the ground running” suggests immediate action and speed. “Climb the ladder of success” is about progress and achievement. These are all fine individual ideas, but crammed together, they create a jumbled image. Are we a team of organised ducks, a sprinter, or a mountaineer?
Right: “We need to get our ducks in a row before we can begin implementing our new strategy.”
- Why it’s right: This focuses solely on the “ducks in a row” metaphor, meaning to organise things properly, and it works.
Right: “We need to be ready to hit the ground running when the project launches.”
- Why it’s right: This uses the “hit the ground running” metaphor to convey the need for immediate and energetic action.
Right: “Her dedication and hard work were instrumental in her climb up the ladder of success.”
- Why it’s right: This uses the “ladder of success” metaphor effectively to describe career progression.

The Uneven Scales of Faulty Parallelism

Parallelism, or parallel structure, is about balance and rhythm in your writing. It means using the same grammatical form for elements in a series or comparison. When this balance is disrupted, your sentences can feel clunky and awkward, like a song with a broken beat.

The Goal: To present items in a series or comparison with consistent grammatical structure for clarity and flow.

The Blunder: Using different grammatical forms for elements that should be treated equally.

Examples:

Wrong: “She enjoys hiking, to read, and swimming.”
- Why it’s wrong: “Hiking” is a gerund (verb acting as a noun). “To read” is an infinitive. “Swimming” is another gerund. The shift from gerund to infinitive and back breaks the parallel structure.
Right: “She enjoys hiking, reading, and swimming.”
- Why it’s right: All elements are gerunds, creating a smooth and consistent list.
Right: “She enjoys to hike, to read, and to swim.”
- Why it’s right: All elements are infinitives, also creating parallel structure.
Wrong: “The new software offers speed, efficiency, and it is easy to use.”
- Why it’s wrong: “Speed” and “efficiency” are nouns. “It is easy to use” is a clause.
Right: “The new software offers speed, efficiency, and ease of use.”
- Why it’s right: All elements are nouns, providing consistent structure.

The Shifting Sands of Incorrect Tense

Verb tense is the anchor that grounds your narrative in time. It tells your reader when an action is happening. Inconsistent or incorrect tense can lead to confusion about the sequence of events or the overall timeframe of your writing.

The Goal: To consistently use the appropriate verb tense to accurately reflect the time of the actions being described.

The Blunder: Shifting verb tenses unnecessarily within a sentence, paragraph, or narrative.

Examples:

Wrong: “Yesterday, I go to the store and buy some milk.”
- Why it’s wrong: The action happened “yesterday,” which is in the past. The verbs should reflect this past action.
Right: “Yesterday, I went to the store and bought some milk.”
- Why it’s right: Both verbs are in the simple past tense, accurately describing past events.
Wrong: “The character wakes up, realises he is late, and runs for the bus.”
- Why it’s wrong: While this can be used for vivid storytelling (present tense for immediacy), if the rest of the narrative is in the past tense, this shift is jarring.
Right (if the narrative is in the past): “The character woke up, realised he was late, and ran for the bus.”
- Why it’s right: Consistent use of the past tense for a narrative set in the past.
Wrong: “She will tell you the secret if you ask her nicely.”
- Why it’s wrong: Mixing future and present tense for actions that are concurrent or related in time.
Right: “She will tell you the secret if you ask her nicely.” (This is actually correct as it describes a future conditional event).
- Let’s try another wrong example: “She told me that she will visit tomorrow.”
- Why it’s wrong: “Told” is past tense, but “will visit” refers to a future event.
Right: “She told me that she would visit tomorrow.” (Using “would” for reported future in the past).
- Or Right: “She tells me that she will visit tomorrow.” (If the telling is happening now).

Practice Makes Perfect (and Polished Prose!)

Don’t be discouraged if you find yourself making these errors. Most writers do, especially when they’re developing their voice. The key is to be aware of them and to actively proofread with these concepts in mind.

Read aloud: Hearing your writing can help you catch awkward phrasing and inconsistencies.
Enlist a fresh pair of eyes: Ask a friend or colleague to review your work.
Use grammar checkers: While not foolproof, they can highlight potential issues.
Study examples: Keep an eye out for effective (and ineffective) uses of metaphors, parallelism, and tense in the writing you admire.

By paying attention to these fundamental aspects of grammar and style, you can transform your writing from merely understandable to truly compelling. So, go forth and banish those blunders! Your readers will thank you for it.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 150/151

Days 150 and 151 – Writing Exercise

…

It was odd that an unidentified body washed up on shore in a relatively quiet stretch of shoreline.

It was winter, there were very few people about, and the person who found the body had only made a last-minute decision to go for a walk.

As it was, the anticipated rain came early, so it was a grim discovery on an appalling day.

I was well into the second half of the graveyard shift, shortly before dawn, and struggling to stay awake doing the paperwork I had been putting off for weeks.

The phone rang just as I was nodding off. Surprise nearly saw me fall off the chair.

I grabbed the receiver before the shrill sound set my nerves on edge. My partner had just left the room in search of some decent coffee.

“Yes?”

I should have answered with name and rank, and ended with How may I help you, but I hadn’t before and wasn’t going to start now.

“A member of the public had reported a body on Wilson’s Beach; uniforms are on their way “

I knew where Wilson’s Beach was, at the end of what used to be an almost impassable track, a short stretch of sand where teens took their alcohol and stupidity for a run. This wasn’t the first death to turn up there.

And it wouldn’t be the last.

“On my way.”

Not exactly true, I had to wait for Burns to get back from his odyssey. He would have more success finding Jason, the Argonauts, and the Golden Fleece than finding decent coffee in this building.

He looked disappointed when he arrived back five minutes after I hung up.

“We’ve got a job.”

“A drunk got hit crossing the road?” That was quite literally our last job.

“A dead body washed up on shore.”

“Let me guess. Wilson’s Beach?” He grabbed his coat and walked through the door I’d opened for him.

“How did you know?”

He just gave me one of those looks.

…

It was every bit as dreary outside as I’d imagined it would be, and rain was sleeting down on the vehicle we’d requisitioned before shift.

It was better than the last one, and at least it had fuel in it. We would not be lucky enough to get one of the electric vehicles.

I turned the heater up and the fan on full blast. It blasted cold air. The windows began to fog, a dangerous thing as the first shards of daylight appeared, making it hard to distinguish anything.

Water streamed off the windscreen and sloshed up from under the car, and those passing in the opposite direction. It was like driving through a tidal wave.

I was expecting more traffic.

Burns was surly at the best of times, a career detective who had only progressed as far as Detective Sergeant because he put family first.

He was one of the better ones I’d been paired with, except for being often regaled with the details of his life, wife, and six children, all of whom seemed to be larger than life.

At least he had a family, I didn’t, and the wife I had bailed many years ago after the first time I was nearly fatally shot. I guess you had to have a certain quality to be a cop’s wife.

It wasn’t a morning for conversation. Yesterday it was Burns’ 30th wedding anniversary, and their youngest child’s 18th birthday, a double celebration. He had come straight to work from the party.

I knew from his expression where he’d prefer to be.

Details of the case, if any, would magically appear in my cell phone, hopefully before we reached the crime scene, if it was a crime.

…

We arrived to join the collection of flashing lights easily seen in the darkened distance.

From the clearing just off the road, it was a longish twisty hike down to the beach. Not so bad going down, and an absolute bastard getting back up.

A uniformed officer in a raincoat was on guard.

Oliver, a newly assigned Detective Constable, had been assigned to me to learn the ropes. He was enthusiastic, but given his qualifications, far superior to Burns and mine, I thought he would be better off as a rocket scientist or jet fighter pilot.

Not standing in the rain waiting to fill in the crime scene details.

It was still raining.

“You look far more awake than I am, Oliver,” I said, wishing I could syphon some of his enthusiasm.

“Nothing like a dead body to liven up what might be an otherwise boring day.”

He handed us the necessary gear so we could go down, and we prepared.

“What’s the story?” I asked.

“Male, between 30 and 40, has not been in the water long. Initial inspection showed a bump to the head, but not severe enough to assume he was dead or unconscious before entering the water. My thought is that the victim fell overboard before or after hitting his head and face down, drowned. Sometimes the simple explanation…”

Oliver was like the Chief Superintendent, both liked closed, uncomplicated cases.

“We’ll know more after the post-mortem, I’m guessing. Anyone reported missing from a boat?”

“Not that I know of, but I’ll do a deeper dive when I get back to the station.”

We were ready, and Oliver led the way. The path had been recently hacked to clear away the usual entanglement of shrubbery. Several investigators were picking their way through the edges for any evidence.

At the beach level, there was a defined path we could walk along, about 20 yards to the water’s edge, where a tent had been set up over the body.

More investigators were searching the water’s edge.
.
I stopped at the entrance to the tent. Doc, the name we gave our coroner, was kneeling beside the body.

After a few minutes, she straightened and looked in my direction.

“Henry.”

“Doc. What have we got here?”

“A dead body.”

Doc had a strange sense of humour, one I got, but few others understood. Her medical experience came from a stint in the Army and volunteering in African hotspots. As well as the obligatory years as an intern in ER, in general practise, and specialising, though I was not exactly sure in what.

Didn’t matter, she had seen everything, and then some.

“Aside from the obvious.”

“Wounds consistent with falling overboard.”

“Pushed?”

“Or fell. Several contusions to the head, again consistent with a fall. He didn’t dive in on his own volition, though in the rough seas out beyond the bay, a wave could have picked him up and sent him back towards the boat. We’ll check the weather and tides.”

“Not a fall from a ship?”

“Possible, but there’d be more damage when he hit the water. I’ll know more when we get him back to the morgue. Doesn’t look like he’s been in the water too long. I’d be getting a list of boats in the area.”

“ID?”

“Nothing. A John Doe for the moment.”

I took a look at the body and surrounds. Swept in from the sea, and the person who found the body obviously dragged the body out of the water to check for life signs.

The waves were crashing, and it was rougher further out. Nothing screaming murder, not then.

Burns had spoken to the person who found the body. “The dog found it, rather than the owner. He then dragged the victim up the sand and checked for life signs. None. Called the police. Only one set of foot and paw prints.”

Burns put his head in the tent, took a moment, then came out.

“Not a party animal, not a fisherman. Just a normal person, like someone catching a ferry home.”

“Except there are no ferries.”

“There is that. I hate John Doe cases.”

He was not the only one. “Get a photo of his face. We’ll get Tech to run a check and see if we can get an ID. Also, check the nearest marinas for boats out last night.”

“Roger that.” Two notes in the pad, and back into the tent for a face photo.

Until we knew who he was and where he came from, this was not going to move quickly. I made sure he sent a photo to the Chief Constable. We needed his authority to widen the ID search beyond our jurisdiction.

As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait that long. An anonymous tip was received telling us that the man on the beach was Joshua Stevens. It came before the 10 o’clock news, and, oddly, it was on the 10 o’clock news.

A text message came from Wendy, one of the tech staff at the station who was assigned to our investigative team, telling me that there was an item of interest in the local radio station’s 10 o’clock news bulletin, and attached was a sound grab.

“The body of a 41-year-old London man, Joshua Stevens, was found on the shoreline at Wilson’s Beach in the early hours of this morning.

“So far, it is not known who Mr Stevens was, or if he had any family, or why he was in the area. Police are treating the death as accidental, but investigations are ongoing.”

That was it. It was more than I knew 10 minutes ago, and I thought it interesting that someone was more informed than I was.

That someone had to be Alison Brentwater, ace reporter for the local Chronicle, and if it could be said I had a nemesis, it was her.

…

Alison Brentwater and I were old sparring partners. It was not for the first time she had gazumped me in getting the juicy details of a murder suspect, and I often suspected she had a spy inside the station house.

I had her number on speed dial.

“Henry.”

“Alison.”

“Perhaps we should switch places,” she said with that special sarcastic tone she saved for me.

“The pay is terrible.”

“Perhaps not, then?”

“How?”

“I have my sources.”

“I’ll shout you coffee and cake, and we will have a talk.”

It wasn’t the first time she had all but thrown a spoke in the works, and I could feel the Chief Super reaching for the phone. I didn’t feel like a bollocking, not until I knew more.

“20 minutes, usual place.”

That she didn’t tell me where to go in no uncertain terms, like the last time, worried me.

. .

Petra’s Cafe was off the main street and an excellent choice to not be seen in. Petra was both Alison’s and my friend from University, the one who preferred being a barista to an accountant.

I was going to be a journalist, but the truth was Alison was so much better at it than I was, so I chose another profession. It wasn’t being a detective at first, that just came out of left field.

Alison thought it amusing, and typically of her, said she made a better detective, and in her inimitable manner set out to prove it.

She was the sort of girl you could love to hate. I had once considered dating, but it would not have lasted. She was too competitive in everything.

Petra was a different story, and I was still considering how I could approach her, given that she did not think as much of me as I did of her.

Petra was serving tables when I arrived, and I deposited myself at the back. It took a few minutes for her to reach me.

“You’re looking glum?”

“The case.”

“The floater?” Then she got that look. “Alison and her spies.” She shook her head. “You’re going to have to up your game. Latte?”

“Double shot.”

“That bad?”

We both saw her coming. It was not hard. She wasn’t conventional, still sporting green hair from an undercover reporting job in the city’s more seedy nightclubs. When she told me, I told her I didn’t want to be woken with the news she had been found in an alley somewhere.

It didn’t go down well.

“The usual,” she said, flopping into a chair.

Petra smiled, “Good morning to you, too.” And left.

“How do you do it?” I asked.

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

I knew she had a contact list that was a who’s who of the city, names that would make up an interesting suspect list if anything happened to her, if that book was ever found.

“Don’t spin me a line. There was no ID on the body, no distinguishing features, nothing except perhaps dental records, but I fear not even that will help us. How do you know?

“I briefly interviewed him two weeks ago in relation to an altercation in the Burberry Inn. Not a police matter, a friend was a victim of domestic violence, I was trying to get something on her boyfriend, and Joshua witnessed him being an ass. That’s it.”

“He was drinking a pint in the pub?”

“By himself, minding his own business. I got his name, that’s it. He wasn’t very helpful. He had a slight accent, I suspect he was born in England to foreign parents, no wedding ring, reasonably expensive clothes, nervous sort, kept looking in the direction of the door like he was expecting someone.”

“From London?”

“The bartender asked if he was new in town. He said he was up from London on business.”

“You think his death was an accident.”

Our coffee arrived in paper cups. Petra obviously thought we were both in a hurry.

“First impressions. But knowing now who he is, it depends on who he was doing business with. I guess I’d better set the wheels in motion.”

“I helped you, you have to help me.”

“You think I’m going to find out more than you. Perhaps it’s more appropriate for you to help me.”

“We’ll see.”

She put the lid back on her coffee, smiled, and left.

…

By the time I got back to the station, I had Oliver coming back from the crime scene, the body collected and taken to the morgue, and Burns on his way to the Burberry Inn looking for witnesses and CCTV. Oliver’s first job was to find as much information on Joshua Stevens as he could.

I went to see the Chief Superintendent and advised him on progress, the fact that Alison Brentwater had given us a preliminary identification of the body and the circumstances, and then held my breath.

I also added that consensus so far considered this the result of an accident, somewhat muddied by the fact that no one reported it, or a missing person within a 50-mile radius, which I’d checked before I got to his office. I was in the process of checking elsewhere in the country.

He simply wanted the case closed, but also the I’s dotted and the T’s crossed.

An email arrived with a list of missing persons after increasing the scope to Greater London, and Joshua’s name was on it, reported by his brother, and not his wife.

There were file notes on the interviews with both. The brother was concerned because they were in constant contact, and he had not sent an email for a week.

His wife said he was often on business trips that were sporadic and of indeterminate length. She thought he was just being Joshua, though she did say she suspected him of having an affair. She added that she had no idea where he was, and he rarely called. It was, I thought, an odd relationship.

I told Oliver to get a hold of his phone records and those of any family members. They would make interesting reading.

Next, I went down to the wharf where the two boats that offered cruises, fishing trips, and dinner cruises had their offices.

The first hadn’t run any cruises in the last few days. The second had run three, a fishing trip in the morning, a luncheon cruise, and, after dark, dinner cruises taking in the shore lights.

Margaret Bently, married to the son of the ship’s master and owner of Seaside Voyagers, according to the staff photographs posted behind the counter, was in the middle of a charter booking, city folk looking for an ocean adventure, or so it seemed.

The sales pitch was far more graphically interesting than the reality. Unless the picture I had in my mind was wrong.

I waited the five minutes before the conversation ended, not quite as expected. She did not seem pleased.

Putting the phone down, she gave me her attention.

I showed her my warrant card, and before I said a word, she was on the defensive. “We had nothing to do with anyone washing up on shore.”

To me, that sounded more like they did, but we’re not going to admit it.

“I take it you heard the news.”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Your company ran three tours yesterday. I would like a passenger manifest for each and proof they got on and got off the boat.”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“I can order the shutdown of this business, and impounding of all your vessels as potential crime scenes, and a complete audit of your operation, as well as a complete audit of your accounts.

“Apparently, the coast guard is about to investigate the possibility of small operations like yours picking up drugs brought in by large ships. It will only take one call.”

I had seen a memo hinting at a joint operation between services on drug importation, so I simply added a little embellishment.

She glared at me. “We have nothing to hide.” Her tone suggested otherwise. She pulled a binder out from under the counter and extracted three sheets, copied them and then gave them to me.

Passenger lists.

“Thank you.”

She ignored me. The phone had started ringing again.

…

The afternoon was taken up with Burns putting together a board that had Joshua Stevens on the centre, his brother Roger on one side, and his wife Stella, nee Williams, on the other. The photographs were missing.

The timeline working back from the time of discovery on Wilson’s Beach at about 6 am, time of death from 8 pm to 4 am, and before that, not a lot.

I listed Joshua in the Inn and Seaside Voyagers. Joshua’s name was not on any of the passengers’ lists, but it was possible he could have used an assumed name. Oliver was going to follow up on all the names.

We needed a coroner’s report, and that was in progress.

Joshua had a very small social media footprint. In face it was a Facebook page that had an icon and name and little else. There were no friends or family, and no wife. It was like he created it and then forgot it.

His wife had a similar page, a photo of EmWonder Woman, not hers, and no friends’ posts.

His brother had nothing but a name.

It seemed odd that the whole family just didn’t exist, outside a dead body and two ghosts. I asked the station that took the missing persons report to bring them in and ask more questions. And get photographs of them.

It was very unusual to be so anonymous. What struck me as a possibility was that Joshua and his wife were in some witness protection scheme, and he had been flushed out into the open.

There were no newspaper articles about either of them, which was a red flag. I set Wendy to dig deeper into the mire to see if anything was available anywhere on the internet.

Our board was very scant on details.

…

Before going home, I was called into the Morgue, where the results of the post mortem were in.

Death was not by drowning. He was not alive before he went into the water. In fact, he had suffered a severe heart attack and died quickly, not dragged out, and perhaps that was a good thing.

He had lipstick and scent about his person so he had been with a woman shortly before he died. No clues as to where he had been before ending up in the water, and equally, his time in the water hadn’t washed away the trace evidence.

It led to another possibility: he was murdered on the beach, and that put the man who discovered the body back on the list.

I went back to the office and added more items to the board, including the man who found the body, Jake Williams, and a photo Oliver had taken of him.

It was then that I noticed a slight similarity between him and Margaret at Seaside Voyagers. And the fact that both shared a surname.

Out of curiosity, I typed in the name Stella Williams and found an old Facebook page with a young photo of Stella.

No mistaking the resemblance.

What were the odds that Stella, Margaret and Jack were related?