Could be. Why not?’

‘Ask Jean-Marc to check the frame of that painting they brought back for blood.’

‘I will.’ Making a note.

After being whacked on the head he’d been shot by someone who’d missed twice. ‘Easy to miss if you’re running,’ Petrucci suggested. ‘Jean-Marc says the terrain going down from park level to shore is pretty rough. The cuts and scratches bear that out.’

‘Yes…’ Mulling it, the thought occurred: Or if you’re scared, running for your life, looking over your shoulder, panicked, shooting, missing, running further, turning and firing again. Missing…easy to miss. Running! Finally getting lucky as the pursuer drew near. Was their victim the pursuer? Chasing someone with a painting, and a gun, wanting the one, discounting the other. Someone who shot him and then beat him around the head with the painting? And then, by virtue of a half-assed throw into the shallows, makes them a virtual gift of the guilty gun. But it was the victim’s gun… She could not make sense of that scenario.

But he kept his gun in his waistband and his pants were off. The gun would have been lying there beside them. Someone could have taken him unawares — especially if he was having sex — and grabbed the gun. The object of his affections? Or a third person? …Turn it around. Their victim was running with the painting. The killer was wanting it. That was the more logical scenario. When the killer finally runs the victim down and finishes him off, he also — before? after? — administers a beating around the head with an ornate hardwood frame, then throws the painting away like so much garbage after a picnic by the river. And the gun. The victim’s gun.

‘The cuts around his head — from the frame — ’

‘If they are,’ Petrucci cautioned. First let’s link painting to murder in no uncertain terms.

‘Yes, yes… But the cuts: are they before or after death?’

Raphaele Petrucci took a moment. ‘I’ll say just after death. He bled, but the river cleaned him up. Then again, these here…’ indicating slightly ridged contused areas along the forehead, ‘these are from being hit with the same thing, I’m positive, but the skin is unbroken. You’d expect bruising, but the blood didn’t have time.’ A non-committal smile betrayed his pronouncement. ‘Yes: After. Kind of a fitful and completely unnecessary smack across the cranium after the coup de grâce, which was the bullet through his brain. Not that it matters.’

‘No.’ But with the painting? That mattered. Who would do that? Why?

She couldn’t fathom it. The found gun and the execution style of the killing would not fit together in her mind. Nor the ruined painting.