‘To me, it looks like everyone’s idea of a Japanese woman. There’s not much character you can pick out.’
‘It’s a proper face. Remember the photofit pictures we used to work with? Compared to this, they were like kids’ drawings.’
‘But is it reliable?’
‘We’ll find out. If it isn’t, it could do more harm than good.’
He gave his attention to the press release. The tooth tattoo would be featured and so would the clothes the dead woman had been wearing. Until a definite connection was made with Green Park he couldn’t mention the iPod and the interest in classical music. He seemed to have spent the best years of his career waiting for forensics to go through their painstaking procedures.
But there was a big plus. The printouts of the computerised face from several angles made a pleasing difference to the display board. He thought about sending copies upstairs to Georgina, but in the end decided to let well alone. With any luck the ACC would be dealing with her backlog of paper work after a week’s absence.
That evening he got home to a string of messages on the answerphone. Normally he wouldn’t have bothered to play them before supper. Most would be junk calls. He was tired of being told by some fruity voice sounding as if doing him a huge favour, ‘This is a free message.’ But after all this time he still had hopes of a call from Paloma. Nothing.
He opened a pouch for the cat and a beer for himself. Put two large potatoes in the microwave. ‘What shall I have with it this time, Raffles? Beans, egg or cheese, or all three?’
Paloma had been encouraging him to cut down on the calories and take more exercise. There was a reward system. To earn a pie, he’d had to take a two-mile walk, and she’d come along to make sure. Lately, he’d let himself go again. His ideal had been to look like Orson Welles in The Third Man, but he was in danger of ending up like the Welles of the sherry commercials. Did it matter? In his present mood, not a lot.
Baked beans, scrambled egg and grated Cheddar joined the potatoes on his plate. One of those obsessive Swedish detectives was on the TV. He reached for his DVD of Casablanca.
More sensational news greeted him at the office next morning. The forensic lab had got through with an early finding. A hair Duckett’s team had picked up at the Green Park river bank site matched the DNA of the drowned woman. All doubt was removed that this was where she had entered the water.
A turning point.
‘We can forget about suicide or accident now, guv,’ Ingeborg said. ‘The heel marks prove she was dragged there and dropped in. You were so right to get us up and running.’
Keith Halliwell said, ‘What are we suggesting here – that she was killed before she entered the water and this was the murderer’s way of disposing of the body?’
‘That’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Ingeborg said.
‘Then wouldn’t the body have floated, rather than sinking? A person who drowns takes water into their lungs. That’s why they go down. A corpse still has some air inside.’
John Leaman joined in with one of his erudite contributions. ‘It’s not as straightforward as that. Other factors come into it. For one thing, it depends how the body enters the water. Face down, any air in the lungs and airways is trapped and will take time to disperse. But if it gets submerged on its back, the weight of the head bears down and there’s more chance of water entering the nose and mouth. And anyway after a corpse has been several hours in the water the airways get filled passively and it will sink. Fresh water is less buoyant than the sea, so the process is quicker in a river.’
Diamond said, ‘Where do you learn this stuff?’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Let’s deal with what we know for certain. The body was rotting, so it must have been underwater for weeks. We now have a crime scene. With any luck, forensics will give us more information. But we know enough already to get headlines with the press release.’
‘Are we going to use the computer image?’ Halliwell asked.
‘You sound doubtful.’
‘I’m not convinced by the science.’
Leaman said at once, ‘It’s based on a scan.’
‘Did you say scam?’
Diamond said, ‘Silence in the ranks. The answer, Keith, is yes, I’m going to issue it to the media. A picture is worth a thousand words.’
‘And if the picture is nothing like her?’
‘There must be some resemblance.’
‘May be.’
Ingeborg said, ‘People don’t expect a computer image to be perfect. There’s news value in the fact that we’re using this method. And when we finally do get a photo of the victim they’ll want to compare it. So we get more publicity, a second bite at the cherry.’