Opening for a Investigation story

It was a glamorous day on the beach, and John Holmes didn’t regret his choice of  holiday destination one bit.
Picking a shady part of the beach, he set up camp, and, dusting his chair off, he tentatively sat down.
It had been a stressful year for John, but just glancing at the deep blue ocean seemed to calm him endlessly, proving that a holiday is usually all you need to recharge your batteries.
John had been here before though, and he easily recalled the large, proud mountains that stood on the rocky shores of South Torquay.
He had went there as a child, and his experiences had influenced his actions in the years that followed.
         As a matter of fact, the mere sight and sound of children playing merrily on the beach caused him to cast his mind back, the air had been a slight bit cooler then, and it had cut through people on especially windy days.
Suddenly, a scream assailed John’s ears, making him sit bolt upright instantly, and then another, and then more cries, from different people this time. The first screams had been that of a young woman’s, and John carried this thought as he stood up and grabbed his coat off of its stand.
It was quiet on the beach now, as half of the families had taking their questioning children back to their hotels and B&BS.
John had meanwhile made a break for the source of the cry, which was where the more curious holiday-makers were gathering, John slid through the group, lightly pushing people aside until he got to the ‘eye of the storm’ itself.
There was a woman, lying on the sand with a steady trickle of blood leaking from her mouth, simply lying there, definitely dead.

“Looks like a strangulation to me.”
John turned to meet the gaze of an especially big man, with a long brown moustache and dark blue eyes; he was wearing nothing out of the ordinary.
“If its strangulation, then why is there blood coming out of her mouth?” John thought this was a fairly good question really.
“Are you a police officer? A detective maybe? No, you are not. She probably bashed her head on a rock or something,” saying this, he pointed to her slim neck “look, there are dark marks on her neck, there was obviously a struggle, and then she just ran out of air.”
John Holmes doubted this, after all, there were no rocks to be found anywhere near here, the beaches of Torquay were smooth and sandy; it was a slim chance that she would have hurt herself in such a way. Seeing John’s reaction to this theory, the detective’s face darkened.
Something glinted in John’s eye, the woman had something under her.
Sensing that John was about to touch the victim, the policeman (or so John guessed) grabbed him by the collar, partially lifting him up, John was a full grown man, but no heavyweight.
“Listen, stop playing games and leave this to the professionals.”
“For God’s sake stop treating me like some random desk-clerk! I’m a private investigator.” John winced as he said this, he wasn’t really meant to tell anyone anything other than ‘he was on holiday, he might be in trouble now.”

“Identification?” The officer probed
“Don’t have any…” that was true.
“Humph”
“You haven’t shown me any I.D yet either.”
The man flinched for a small second, then simply stated; “it’s in the car, I’ll go get it right now.”
The air seemed to clear as the ‘officer’ left, now that John thought about it, the man was probably a heavy smoker but John had not noticed because of the situation. It was odd that the man would leave just like that though.
         John Holmes dropped his heavy coat so that he could kneel before the woman, and put his hand carefully under her head. There was something stuck there, a barb or a spine? No, it was a dart.
John Read Holmes’ heart froze as he withdrew the small sharp object, it smelled faintly of Curare, which was the most often used blowpipe poison in South America years ago. John knew the smell because he had dealt with this type of poison before, it had featured prominently in a series of murder cases that he had taken up, and there was never any explanation.