‘She could have climbed over the railing,’ Georgina said.
‘Why?’
‘Suicide, obviously.’
‘But the iPod was found on the river bank further down.’
‘So you’re working on the basis that she was murdered and dumped in the river? A pretty big assumption from one lost iPod.’
‘We’ll know more when the crime scene investigators report.’ He decided this wasn’t the best time to tell her he’d asked for a second autopsy.
‘You may know more. Have you checked with missing persons?’
‘The first thing we did. Since then we’ve enquired at all the colleges and hotels.’
‘No names yet?’
‘So far, no.’
‘You’ve hit the buffers, then. Better scale everything down and get the room back to normal.’
‘I haven’t told you about Professor Hackenschmidt.’
She blinked rapidly. ‘Who’s he?’
‘The world expert on facial reconstruction using computer imaging. He and his team in Philadelphia are already at work.’
‘Did you say Philadelphia?’ Georgina was tight-lipped now.
‘He works from CT scans.’ Another bit of technological jargon coming to his aid.
‘Is this coming out of your budget?’
Diamond’s way of dealing with awkward questions was to ask one himself. ‘I expect you’re up with computer imaging, ma’am?’
‘I’ve heard of it, but I didn’t expect you of all people to give any credence to it. How much will this cost?’
‘I’m told the professor is only too pleased to be involved.’
‘Small wonder, if we’re paying. I hope you asked for an estimate.’
‘One of my team is dealing with it.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘John Leaman.’
‘Good. He’s no fool.’ Having said this, even Georgina seemed to realise Diamond could take offence. ‘This is just the kind of outsourcing we’ve been discussing on the Home Office course. These are tough economic times. We can’t employ experts for this and that and go way over budget. We need to make better use of our own resources.’
Diamond wasn’t backing down. ‘I wouldn’t trust this lot to reconstruct a face. We’d end up with something out of Frankenstein.’
‘Be serious, Peter.’
‘I am. You asked if we’ve hit the buffers and I’m telling you we haven’t. It’s all in train, if you’ll excuse the pun. Can’t be stopped now. As soon as the professor sends us a likeness we’ll forward copies to Japan and get them on TV and in the papers. Speeds up the whole enquiry. Once the woman is identified we’ll get to the truth of it, I promise you. Maximise our resources.’ The last words tripped off his tongue so glibly that Georgina was caught off guard. She drew a long, fatalistic breath and returned upstairs to consider her options. Dismantling the incident room might not be the best way forward.
At mid-morning, significant news came in from Keith Halliwell at the mortuary. The second autopsy had been conducted by Dr. Bertram Sealy, as Diamond had hoped.
‘And what did he find?’
‘He asked me to tell you he was sorry to have missed you, guv.’
‘Typical bloody Sealy.’
‘But he did find something the first man missed. There’s a bone called the hyoid in the throat, above the Adam’s apple, quite small and delicate and shaped like a horseshoe and not attached to any other bones. He removed it and pointed out that it was damaged, fractured at one end.’
‘Meaning that violence has been done to the neck?’
‘It’s the only sign of violence he could find, because of the bad condition of the flesh.’
Diamond whistled. ‘Fracturing of the hyoid bone is a common sign of manual strangulation. This could be it.’
‘I think it must be. He says it’s highly unlikely this was caused accidentally when the body was being recovered from the river, or while it was submerged. To break a young person’s hyoid bone you have to exert real pressure on the neck.’
‘Is this going into Sealy’s report?’
‘I asked him. He’s a pain. He kept me dangling for about ten minutes while he went through all the other symptoms of strangling: bruising, facial congestion, bleeding into the neck muscles. None of this showed because so much of the flesh had gone rotten in the water. Finally I got it from him. Cause of death: asphyxia by compression of the neck. His words.’
‘That’s all we need, Keith. We’re in business.’
‘I thought we were already.’
‘Nothing can stop us now, not Georgina, the coroner, Portishead. Tell Bert Sealy he’s my hero.’
There are times in police work when nothing goes right. Most days seemed like that to Diamond. Just occasionally there’s a break in the clouds and you have to make the most of such moments. Within twenty minutes of the call from Halliwell he heard from the search team at Green Park. Fibres had been found on a bramble bush on the river bank, and there were twin lines in the mud suggesting somebody had been dragged down the slope to the water.
‘Heel marks?’ Diamond said on the phone to the supervisor of the crime scene team. These days crime scene investigations were farmed out to private firms: outsourcing, as Georgina would put it.
‘Very likely.’
‘If she was wearing shoes, they may be in the water. I’ll arrange for the sub-aqua team to take a look. Is it deep there?’
‘Don’t know. I haven’t been for a swim.’
Now Diamond remembered the voice of a man he’d tangled with before, a smart-arse with a liking for sarcasm. ‘You’re Duckett, aren’t you?’
‘Who else did you expect? We’re a small business, not the Co-op.’
‘Surely you can tell at a glance if the river’s deep.’
‘It shelves steeply.’
‘And did you find any shoe prints near these marks?’
‘Far too many. We’ll need to check what every one of your search team was wearing.’
‘You’ll be telling me we corrupted your scene.’
‘A line of policemen tramping through? Give me a break. And presumably you had a look yourself?’
‘Only by the access path.’
‘Was there one? It’s like a football field here.’
‘The fibres,’ Diamond said. ‘What are they like?’
‘Like fibres.’
‘Wool, cotton, man-made?’
‘We won’t know until we get them under a microscope.’
‘And I suppose the iPod has gone to the lab as well?’
‘Where else?’
After the call had ended, Ingeborg said, ‘I heard you asking about the iPod, guv. I wonder if it’s still in working order. They’re well constructed. It would be good to know what music she liked.’
‘How will that help?’
‘It kind of brings her alive.’
He gave her a baffled look.
Ingeborg added, ‘Well, it tells us more about her. Any new information must be welcome.’
‘Give them a call at the lab if you like. I don’t fancy discussing music with the guy at the scene.’
Early in the afternoon when America was starting up, John Leaman took a call from Philadelphia. He discussed it with Ingeborg. ‘I’ve just been speaking to one of the professor’s team. He wants to know about the dead woman’s hair.’
‘What about it?’
‘The style, I suppose. It doesn’t show up in the CT scan, but they’d like to know what we observed. When they send us an image they want the look to be as lifelike as possible.’
‘Did you tell him she was in the water for weeks? It doesn’t do much for a girl’s hair.’
‘Can we say anything about the cut?’
‘Okay. It’s thick, dark hair with a fringe and cut sheer at the back. You can tell him that.’