Aunt Bessie provides help to Constable Hugh Watterson whenever she can. Elizabeth Cubbon, Aunt Bessie to nearly everyone, has been involved in far too many murder investigations in the past year and a half. But when Hugh asks her to help him work out the identity of a body that washed up on Laxey Beach around twenty years earlier, she's happy to help. Aunt Bessie provides Hugh with a list of men who left the island not long before the body was found. If Hugh can track them all down, at least he'll know who the body isn't, but the job isn't as straightforward as it first appears. Aunt Bessie provides a sympathetic ear for the family and friends of the various missing men. But when one of them proves impossible to find, will anyone step forward to provide a DNA sample to compare with Hugh's body?