The only clue to the cause of death was the slight cyanosis that Jumbo had spotted, which indicated a lack of oxygen, and Tom was hoping Amy could give them something more concrete to focus on so he could stop his endless hypothesising. Had she been drugged and then smothered? Had she died somewhere else and then been brought to the Flash? If she had come alone, how had she got there? There were no cars unaccounted for, and she had no coat, not to mention no shoes. And where were her shoes? Although they were searching for them, everywhere was still covered in snow, and they were unlikely to be found until it melted.

As well as cause of death, he needed the pathologist to give him a time frame so they could review CCTV footage. There were no cameras in the country park itself, but they could access those on the roads close to the entrance on the off chance that their victim had caught a bus and walked the rest of the way, despite the lack of a coat. Maybe her coat was with the shoes.

On top of everything else, the toxicology results were likely to take days, and it felt to Tom as if the investigation had no direction. They were thrashing about in the dark. They didn’t even know yet if this was murder, suicide or accidental death.

He pushed open the door to the mortuary suite, trying to curb his irritation at their lack of progress. ‘I hope you have some news for me, Amy,’ he said to the pathologist, earning himself a pair of raised eyebrows above her mask.

‘Yes, I may well have,’ she said, in the brisk voice that Tom had become accustomed to over the previous twenty-four hours. ‘I’m as certain as I can be that she died exactly where she was found. Look here,’ she said, pointing to an area of lividity. ‘This is where she was sitting, the lowest point in her body. If she had been moved – unless she was in exactly the same position where she died – the pattern would be different. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Tom resisted the temptation to mention that he had been to one or two post-mortems in his time, and smiled at her instead. ‘I get that, thanks.’

‘Good. I thought you would. So there’s no sign of any physical trauma, and all her organs seem to be in reasonable order, although I would say she was slightly undernourished. But nothing too serious. She was possibly of quite a nervous disposition – her nails are badly bitten – but she was clean and unlikely to have been a vagrant.’

Tom nodded, appreciating her staccato presentation of the facts. ‘Do you have any idea of the time of death?’