Katerina Diamond - Woman in the Water

They asked me who he was. I couldn’t tell them; they can’t find out who I am. If they do, then he will find out I am here.

I heard the nurse talking about how there is a video online of the detective pulling me out of the water. I can no longer disappear. Maybe he didn’t mean it when he said he was done with me and wanted me dead.

Who am I kidding?

Dr Forrester was placing an eyeball in the socket of a plaster mould of a skull when Adrian and Imogen entered his office on the Streatham Campus of Exeter University. The office was a cornucopia of dusty old books and curios, the way you imagine a professor’s office to look. There were several clay skulls at various stages of development around the room. Adrian had seen plenty of dramatisations of this kind of thing on the TV, but it was fascinating to see in person.

Gary stood up excitedly as they approached. ‘Imogen, Adrian, this is Dr Carl Forrester.’

Dr Forrester nodded hello to them. ‘I would shake your hands, but I’m a bit mucky at present.’

‘The doctor is reconstructing our John Doe’s face,’ Gary said.

‘Already?’ Imogen asked.

‘What is it you’re doing? How do you do that? How do you know what his eyes were like?’

Adrian fired a series of questions at the professor. This kind of thing seemed like magic to Adrian and yet he had seen the results with his own eyes before. It worked. What was it they said? Magic was just science we don’t understand yet, which, in Adrian’s case, was almost all science.

‘I spoke to your pathologist last night and she sent me photos and measurements. From the body, I would say that we are looking at a Caucasian male in his late twenties. He has brown hair and brown eyes, and would have stood around five foot eleven, which we know because the pathologist told us; that’s not information we normally have when reconstructing.’

‘How did you get the skull so quickly? Is pathology done with it?’ Adrian asked.

‘We did an MRI of the head and then used a program to create a 3D image of the skull from the source material. We were then able to print a 3D replica of it, so we didn’t need the actual skull,’ Gary said excitedly.

‘When that was ready, I began to attach the markers and the eyeballs. Next, I will start to build muscle up to the marker lines,’ Dr Forrester said.

‘How do you know where the marker lines are?’ Adrian said.

‘There’s a lot of measuring and maths involved, plus decades of research and other people’s work to pull from. We measure the skull and construct markers of varying depths, which we place in specific points on the skull that will in turn guide us when creating the flesh and muscles out of clay.

‘We already have more to work on than usual, because the actual skull is still … well, fleshy. The eyeball that I have just inserted is on a bed of clay to bring it to the right depth, which is where the flat part of the front of the eye is flush with the socket around it. Next, I will be adding clay to the chin and jaw. Then I fill the spaces in between the markers and smooth it all out until we have a face. You are welcome to stay and watch.’

‘Thanks, Doc,’ Adrian said. ‘When do you think he will be ready?’

‘Give me ’til the end of the day. If I work through, I should have it done.’

Adrian and Imogen stood and watched as Dr Forrester rolled the clay carefully into tiny balls and placed each one in between the markers on the face – small foam tubes of varying lengths. He started on the jawbone, filling the space slowly with the small lumps of clay until they reached the required height, then he smoothed it over until you could barely see the markers anymore.

Adrian would have loved to stay and watch the man work all day, but they had to go and speak to the woman again. All this could be completely unnecessary. She might change her mind and give them the name of the man whose body they found floating in the River Exe. Even as he thought it to himself, he knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Whoever had hurt the woman had scared her enough to keep her mouth shut. Nothing they could say would change that. They had to keep trying, though. Someone was missing this man and they deserved to know the truth.

They were soon back at the hospital. Imogen had grown to hate this place: the smell, the noise, everything about it set her on edge. She had been here too many times already, not only with her own injuries, but also visiting Adrian, victims, witnesses. She had never been to hospital for a happy occasion. She didn’t have many friends, certainly none who were interested in having babies, and given her history, she wasn’t sure she would be that happy in that situation, anyway.

The injuries that Imogen had sustained in a previous case made the likelihood of her being able to have a child unlikely. She still thumbed at the scar that ran the length of her torso, given to her by a suspect of that case. The doctors at the time hadn’t completely ruled out having children, but she got the feeling they were just trying to spare her feelings. It wasn’t something she was preoccupied with at the moment, as she wasn’t ready to have kids of her own, but she knew that there might come a time when she might feel differently.

She had never talked about it with Adrian, nor any of her previous boyfriends, either. Adrian had a son, but Adrian was still young enough to have more children, younger than a lot of first-time parents these days. Hospitals made her think about these things and that was annoying; the rest of the time it barely crossed her mind.

They walked towards the ward Jane Doe was on and already could feel tension as people bustled about. Even from this distance they could see the uniformed officer they had left with her now walking in and out of rooms, looking for something or someone. They didn’t even need to hear it before they broke out into a run – their Jane Doe was missing.

‘What the hell happened?’ Imogen called, startling the young PC.

He stood bolt upright and she saw him fumbling for words.

‘Where is she?’ Adrian said.

‘I really needed the loo and I told her I would be back in five minutes. When I got back, her bed was empty,’ the PC said nervously.

‘When exactly did this happen?’ Adrian asked.

‘About twenty minutes ago,’ the PC said sheepishly.

‘You’ve called this in, right?’ Imogen snapped.

‘I thought I would be able to find her.’

‘Have you told hospital security?’ Imogen said.

‘I was just about to,’ PC Milbourne replied.

‘Twenty minutes? She could be anywhere by now.’

‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Call it in. We’ll see if anyone saw her leave,’ Imogen said to the PC, whose face was the colour of a raspberry.

She had wanted to add a few expletives, but time was of the essence and, realistically, aside from making her feel better momentarily, it would be completely pointless. The young man looked distraught enough as it was; he had learned a lesson. DCI Kapoor would have a few words for him, anyway.

‘Maybe she didn’t leave of her own accord. I’ll get them to pull up the CCTV and see if anyone was with her. Maybe whoever did that to her found her after that sodding footage got out,’ Adrian said.

‘Hey, this isn’t your fault,’ Imogen said, knowing that Adrian would already be blaming himself for allowing the woman at the riverbank to film him. ‘She probably just left on her own. Let’s find out what happened before we freak out.’

‘I’ll go check with security, you go check the main entrance,’ Adrian said to her and rushed off.

Imogen peered into rooms as she walked briskly towards the main entrance to the hospital. The buses ran quite frequently past the hospital and so she could be on a bus, or she could have walked into the residential area. Given that they knew nothing about her, they had no idea where to look.