‘You’ll feel better after you get cleaned up,’ she said. ‘We can go straight back to the hospital as soon as you’ve showered.’
‘What if she dies?’
‘Whatever comes next, we are going to find out what happened to her. She’s not going to die. I know it. You saved her, Adrian.’
Imogen parked the car near Adrian’s house and he jumped out immediately. He didn’t want to hang around, she could tell. He unlocked his door and went inside, leaving it open for her to follow.
Imogen made herself comfortable on the sofa and waited for Adrian to return. She was at home in his house now, maybe even more at home here than in her own place.
There was an old cookery show on TV; it was one she hadn’t seen since her mum was alive and she felt a pang of sadness as thoughts of her mother crossed her mind. They used to watch Keith Floyd together regularly; her mother loved his vibrancy and authenticity. She would wink and say that she had met him once, and Imogen wondered if it was code, a clue that he was her biological father. The mythical bio-dad who was everything from a prince to a crack addict – it seemed silly now to think that she thought this TV celebrity might be her father. There again, her mother had a way of doing the unexpected, so it wasn’t completely out of the question.
It had been almost a year since her mother had died and she had barely allowed herself time to think about her. Once she gave herself that permission, there would be no stopping it and so she preferred not to start. Imogen had always felt as though crying was a weakness in some way and so she was loath to succumb. She switched channels until she found something less emotionally challenging.
Her eyes became heavy as she focused on the screen, the Northern accents a refreshing change from the Devonshire twang that she was used to.
Adrian’s lips woke her, pressing against hers gently; she wondered what she must look like and hoped she wasn’t drooling.
‘I forgot to say thanks,’ he said before kissing her again.
She kissed him back.
‘Feel better?’ Imogen said.
‘I’m sorry if I was a shit,’ Adrian said, perching on the sofa next to her.
She moved to accommodate him and nestled in his arm as he drew her closer.
‘You weren’t. I get it. That must have been a traumatic experience for you. Sorry you had to go through it alone.’
‘I’d better get back to the hospital,’ Adrian said.
‘Can we just stay here for a minute?’
‘DI Walsh is already there. She hasn’t woken yet, but I’d like to be there when she does eventually wake up. I offered for us to do the night shift. He just phoned to tell me the doctor ruled out sexual assault.’
‘Well, that’s something at least,’ Imogen said.
‘Is it? I don’t see how anything could have made it any worse. She was as near to death as anyone I have ever seen. When I felt her hand around my leg, I thought I had lost my mind. She looked so … she just looked gone. I should have checked her pulse straight away.’
‘She’s in good hands now. The doctors will take care of her. We just need to find out who she is and how she ended up there. How about you? Are you OK?’
‘I don’t know if OK is the right word for it.’
‘I can see your brain ticking over. You can’t overthink this one; you’re going to do your head in. You acted quickly and now that woman is in hospital getting treatment thanks to you. You did absolutely everything you could. This isn’t on you. This is on whoever did that to her, OK?’
‘This is going to be a messy one, isn’t it?’ Adrian sighed.
‘Let’s hope we have seen the worst of it. Whatever happened to her, she’s got us now. And we can make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else,’ Imogen placated but knew his mind was already swimming with the ghosts of his own past.
‘I wish I shared your optimism.’
‘If I had been through what she had been through then there is no one else I would want on my side. You saved her life, Adrian. Remember that.’
Chapter Four
I am in a hospital bed, everything hurts and I don’t know how I got here. Various nurses and doctors come and go – I haven’t opened my eyes yet, but I hear them speaking. I know from their conversation that I have no identification on me and they have no other way for them to identify me. I wonder if this is all a dream – am I really asleep? Or maybe I’m really dead and in some kind of celestial waiting room. I can’t say I would be devastated if that were the case. I feel no pain – I am grateful for the drugs they’ve given me. I fade in and out of sleep, undecided on whether or not I even want to wake. Maybe this time I can disappear. I have a head start and he thinks I’m dead.
Chapter Five
Adrian watched the numbers and lines on the heart monitor. He had no idea what any of the information meant, but it was steady and so he assumed that was a good thing. They weren’t in intensive care either, which also boded well for the mystery woman. The easy chair in the hospital cubicle was comfortable and he had volunteered to stay until the woman woke. He had sent Imogen home after a couple of hours; there was no point in both of them losing the night.
Adrian was shaken by what had happened. He had seen plenty of horrific cases in his time as a DS and he wondered if there would ever come a time when he wasn’t shocked by this kind of thing. But being upset was the right reaction. The moment you stopped being upset was the moment you should go and do something else. It’s normal to be afraid or angry. It’s normal to feel frustrated or powerless in some situations. You had to keep it inside, though. You had to stay strong, not just for yourself, but also for the people around you. One chink in the armour and all of your defences were compromised.
A nurse came in with a small basin and a cloth. She smiled uncomfortably at Adrian then gently wiped the woman’s face and hair, trying to soften the mud that had now dried on her skin and clumped together at her roots. They had already scraped under her fingernails and taken photographs of any abrasions or bruises. But legally they couldn’t take blood samples or test her DNA without consent and she would need to be awake for that. The nurse rinsed the cloth and dabbed at a cut across the woman’s eyebrow.
As he watched the nurse, Adrian remembered his mother, a fragment of time that they shared together. In a conscious effort to block out his father, Adrian’s mother had also disappeared into the back regions of Adrian’s memory, but it hadn’t worked and his father now became more prominent than ever.
The moment he thought of now was of his mother sitting with him at the kitchen table, remnants of a shattered plate on the floor as they played Connect 4. Adrian’s father had thrown the plate across the room and it had glanced off his mother’s temple before smashing against the terracotta floor tiles. She steadied herself against the counter and, in order to distract Adrian from the argument, she smoothed her skirt and suggested he run upstairs and get a game for them to play.
When he returned, she had a plaster over her eyebrow and it was as if nothing had happened. They played the game over and over until bedtime, presumably just to avoid any kind of conversation or acknowledgment of what had transpired. Until weeks later, that is, when there was a fragment of blue-and-white willow china lodged under the corner of the washing machine that his mother had missed. The rest of the memories of his mother then faded and reappeared with little clarity; she was an extra in his childhood with barely a speaking role.
Outside, the light faded as the machines bleeped and blinked at regular intervals. Who was this woman? Why had no one reported her missing? Was no one missing a daughter? A sister? Wife? No one even remotely matching her description was in the recent additions to the missing persons database. This was highly unusual and Adrian considered all the questions he didn’t even know to ask yet. Already unnerved, Adrian folded his arms and settled in for the night.
Troubling dreams woke him – bruised faces of women he had questioned over his years in the police. Whether it was a husband, a father or a stranger, the assailants were almost always men and more often than not they were known to the victim. He knew that domestic violence wasn’t purely men against women, but in his experience that was much more common, or at least women coming forward and reporting it was. People warn you about strangers, but no one warns you about the people you love, the people who say they love you.
He looked over at the woman and saw something different about the way she was breathing. It was shorter, shallower – more controlled than before. His eyes adjusted to the dim lighting and he stood slowly so as not to startle the woman who was almost certainly now awake. Her one good eye opened and she looked across to him; the swelling in the other had reduced significantly since he had found her. She started to breathe faster.
‘Hey, I’m a police officer. My name is DS Adrian Miles. I found you by the river. Do you remember?’
She blinked away a tear and he felt her fingers brush against his hand.
‘Water,’ she mouthed.
He couldn’t hear her, but he could see the formation of the word on her lips.
‘I’ll get a nurse.’
‘Wait,’ she whispered again, the faint noise coming from her. Then she wrapped her fingers around his. ‘Thank you.’
Out of nowhere, Adrian felt a weight in his throat. What if he hadn’t found her when he did? Adrian leaned in and spoke softly to her.
‘Can you tell me your name?’
She closed her eye again, although this time it stayed closed tight as a tear rolled down her face.
‘I don’t remember,’ she said weakly.
Chapter Six
The police officer is sitting by my bed. I have the smallest memory of him pulling me out of the water. I open my eyes and he rushes over. He asks my name again but I tell him I don’t remember.
Maybe I could get away this time. Couldn’t I? He has that look in his eyes; I have seen it a million times before. He tells me I am safe now. He thinks he saved me. I can’t be saved.
Chapter Seven
Imogen stood by the wall and looked over the crime scene. She hadn’t been able to relax, so she took Adrian to the hospital last night and got down to Glasshouse Lane as soon as the sun came up the next morning. They needed to figure out what had happened to their Jane Doe. Best-case scenario, they would find some kind of identification that the woman dropped. Imogen knew the scene hadn’t been fully processed yet and so there would be people there.
It was a huge area to cover. The woman could have got to the river from several access points and they would need to check all of those as well as the routes from the access points to where she was now. Not to mention the fact that the river itself posed a massive problem in terms of processing evidence. Even just getting hold of the correct equipment took time, as it had to be shared with the whole constabulary. Water and forensics didn’t mix.
Imogen climbed the makeshift step that put her on the other side of the wall. She saw the techs working meticulously beside the riverbank, pulling snagged hair and fabric from the branches that overhung the water. The inhabitants of the houses surrounding the area gathered back by the road to try to catch a glimpse of the crime scene technicians at work. DI Matt Walsh was already there when she arrived and he surveyed the river, trying to work out where the woman could have come from.
The forensics team were spaced out along the riverbank looking for any evidence that pertained to the woman Adrian found. Imogen looked on at the chaotic hedgerows that enclosed the water and was glad at least that this part wasn’t her job. She didn’t have the patience for something as meticulous as forensics.
‘They’ve got another one!’ someone called.
It took a few moments to realise what that meant. No one moved and then suddenly everyone sprang into action. There was someone else in the water.
Imogen walked as quickly as she could to the technician who had called out, careful not to step on anything that could later be determined as evidence.
‘Got another what? A person?’ Imogen asked.
‘Yep, about a mile upriver.’
‘Alive?’ Imogen said.
The technician shook his head as Matt Walsh got to him.
‘What’s going on?’ Walsh asked.
‘There’s another body, but according to the technician at the scene it’s difficult to discern anything. Male this time. He’s in a pretty bad way, apparently. He’s been beaten, by the sounds of it. They are just securing it now. There’s no real riverbank up that end and so they will transport it straight to the morgue.’
‘They can’t tell anything else?’ DI Walsh asked the tech.
‘Late twenties at a guess, but we will know more when we get him back to the pathologist.’
‘We’ll need to set up a tent before the news cameras get wind of this. Dead body adds to the news appeal of this case and we need to find out who it is, first. Did you speak to DS Miles? Is the woman awake yet?’
‘Yes, DS Miles called to say she’s awake but she hasn’t said anything meaningful yet. She claims she doesn’t remember anything. Including her name.’
‘Get over there and see if you can find out anything about this man. The DCI is going to want a briefing ASAP with both you and Adrian. See if you can drag him away from the hospital. He seems to be taking this case rather personally.’
‘He did pull her out of the river. He feels responsible for her. That’s all. I’ll do my best to get her to talk.’
‘They must be connected and so she must know something. Tread lightly, but see if you can push for information on who did this to them and who the other victim is.’
Imogen trudged back to the car. As awful as it was, a body would at least tell them something – it was a break in the case. But then, what could the motive be? Revenge? Hatred? Punishment? A message? Over her time in the police, Imogen had realised that when it came to murder, there weren’t that many possible motives; figuring out who these people were was key to finding out why this had happened to them.
Chapter Eight
Imogen handed Adrian a coffee she had picked up on the way over. He hadn’t left the hospital all night; he had barely slept since she had been discovered yesterday. He was a mess.
She looked at the woman. She could see instantly why Adrian was so affected by this case. Who wouldn’t be? The cuts and bruises across the woman’s face looked angry against her pale, shiny porcelain skin. Imogen could see the weave line of the woman’s hair extensions – not cheap ones, either. The nails she had left were acrylics, a French manicure. Her clothes were folded on the chair by the bed – Stella McCartney jeans that run at three hundred quid a go. Imogen wondered how much they would be worth now they had been cut into several pieces. There was also a gold ring, a wedding band, sitting on the bedside table. Presumably, it was hers. Whoever this lady was, she wasn’t destitute and yet still no one had reported her missing.
‘Hey,’ Adrian said, standing and stretching out of his hunched seated slumber.
Imogen waved Adrian over to the corner of the room, as far away from the woman as they could get without actually leaving the room.
‘We found another body in the water, about a mile from where you found the woman. Male, similar age – dead, though; much worse injuries than her. They must be connected. I’m going to have to ask her about it,’ she said quietly.
‘Why didn’t you call and tell me?’
‘I thought it would be better in person. DCI Kapoor wanted me to question her, so I thought it best just to tell you when I got here.’
The truth was, she wanted to check on Adrian. He had refused to leave until the woman had woken. Well, she was awake now.
‘Maybe he will have some ID on him. We still don’t know her name; she said she doesn’t remember.’
‘Do you believe her?’
‘I don’t know what I think, to be honest. I don’t know why she would lie. Do we know anything else about the body?’
‘No, but hopefully the pathologist will be able to tell us more. It’s possible he is your woman’s boyfriend but we don’t know that either. The DCI wants us back at the station to brief us after we have spoken to her.’
‘I don’t want to leave her.’
‘What did the doctor say?’
‘Dr Hadley said she is going to be fine – sore for a while, but fine. She was beaten quite badly, possibly with the intention of killing her. Now that we have found the other body, that seems quite likely. Whoever did this, I get the feeling it was personal. It must have been someone who had something against her, or him. She still had valuables on her so robbery wasn’t the end goal, and according to the doctor, neither was sexual assault. Most of the damage to her was on the surface, no internal injuries. I guess we need to figure out if they were both the target or if it’s something that’s only connected to one of them.’
‘It’s already been on the news that she’s in hospital,’ Imogen said.
It was almost impossible to keep a lid on any kind of news these days.
‘Do you think she could still be in danger?’ Adrian asked.
‘I don’t think we can know anything for sure at this point. That could be why she isn’t telling us her name. We need to speak to her.’
‘She woke briefly but she hasn’t said much about anything. It’s entirely possible she really doesn’t remember what happened, given the state of her and the injuries she sustained.’
‘Or she doesn’t want us to know what happened. Maybe she is still afraid. Whoever did this is still out there,’ Imogen said.
The truth was they could speculate all they wanted at this point. Until she gave them information, or they managed to identify the man whose body they found, they might as well just be pissing in the wind. Imogen could already see how invested Adrian was; he wasn’t about to walk away from this case. Imogen shuddered involuntarily, a chill at the nape of her neck. She had a bad feeling about this woman, whoever she was. Adrian was already well and truly hooked.
Chapter Nine
They found him. They think I am asleep, but I hear them whispering. Their words drift in and out of my head as they pass my bed. That’s what happens when I try to get away, people get hurt. He warns me and yet still I persist.
When will I ever learn?
I am both glad and disturbed that I can’t remember what happened that night. I have the tiniest ember of hope left. If he thinks I am dead, then there is still a chance that I can get far enough away before the truth comes out.
Chapter Ten
In the briefing room, Adrian had his phone on the table, waiting for Dr Hadley to call and update him on the condition of their Jane Doe. She had promised to message when the woman woke again. While violent attacks were on the rise by almost twenty per cent in the last year across the country owing to a multitude of factors, including government cuts and a mounting feeling of general hopelessness among the populace, this was something else. This was personal.
He thought about the body they found. He should have checked the area to see if there was anyone else. He didn’t even think to do that. Maybe he could have saved that man if he had just walked a little further downriver. What if the man heard him? What if he tried to call out? Adrian waited for any small piece of information that would release him from the weight of his guilt.
DCI Mira Kapoor walked into the briefing room with DI Walsh and nodded at Adrian before putting her mug down on the desk. Gary Tunney followed closely behind and opened his laptop. Gary was the district forensic computer analyst and all-round genius; they relied on him for a lot and he seemed more than happy to oblige. He was one of those people who was constantly thirsting for knowledge, always doing a course of some kind or other. At present, Gary was doing a part-time degree in forensic psychology. Adrian was a little in awe of Gary’s capacity to learn things.
‘First, great job, DS Miles. That must have been a very upsetting situation and I’m very proud of the way you dealt with it. You’re a credit to the station.’
Adrian was slightly taken aback by this comment, as it wasn’t like Kapoor to heap the praise on quite so thickly. Just take the compliment, he thought.
‘Thank you, Ma’am.’
‘Also, thank you for staying with the Jane Doe at the hospital last night. Now, we don’t have an ID on the male victim, is that correct?’
‘Nothing as yet,’ Imogen said.
‘And she still hasn’t said who she is?’ DCI Kapoor added.
Adrian looked at the DCI and shook his head.
‘Has anyone been reported missing?’ she asked.
‘Not in the last week,’ Gary said.
‘Well, they came from somewhere and so someone is missing them. When the woman spoke to you, did you notice an accent? Was she British?’
‘I believe so. She hasn’t said much, but it seemed to be an English accent.’
‘Gary, do you have anything?’ the DCI said.
‘I haven’t managed to find anything through the CCTV; there’s not a whole lot of cameras down that way,’ Gary said sheepishly.
Adrian watched and waited as DCI Kapoor sucked in a breath. It was always tough when there were no leads. All they could do was hope that once the crime scene was processed and the autopsy had been carried out, they would have more to go on. It wasn’t a given. Some investigations required a little more investigating than others.
‘Do we know the time of the death of our John Doe? Was he alive when I got her out of the water?’ Adrian asked.
‘I spoke to Karen Bell. She was heading the forensic team down there and she said he had been dead for more than twenty-four hours. Likely, he died some time before you found her on the Saturday morning. You couldn’t have saved him,’ Imogen said.
Adrian could see she wanted to reach out across the table to reassure him, but with all the prying eyes, she settled for giving him a comforting look. He wondered if anyone noticed these affectionate glances between them. It was mostly her decision to keep the relationship a secret, though he was happy to go along with it for now, until they were comfortable enough to go public.
‘There was nothing you could have done,’ Walsh added, which was uncharacteristically comforting.
Adrian could tell Walsh’s opinion of him was, at best, on the fence.
‘So, we have nothing? Nothing at all?’ DCI Kapoor said with a prominent tone of disappointment in them.
‘I can check with other constabularies re MisPers. It’s possible whoever they were that they were just visiting the city,’ Adrian said.
‘Is that likely? That would make this an opportunist attack and it certainly doesn’t feel that way,’ DCI Kapoor said.
‘It’s got to be worth checking. I don’t mind doing it,’ Adrian said.
‘Thank you, Adrian, that would be great,’ DCI Kapoor said. ‘The preliminary report from the pathologist records that he died from multiple blows to the head. Definitely deliberate, definitely with the intent of killing the young man. He will have a more detailed report for us in a few days.’
Gary raised his hand. ‘I know someone at the university who may be able to help. He’s the professor of forensic anthropology and archaeology on the Streatham Campus.’
‘How is an archaeologist going to help us?’ Adrian said.
‘He does skull reconstruction and can get a good likeness of John Doe for us to work from. He is superfast. I don’t have any decent facial reconstruction software here and if we send it off to London or one of the other constabularies with the program, it’s likely to take a week minimum because of backlog. It’s actually two separate programs run by two different people.’
