The policewoman’s matter-of-fact tone calmed Mandy, and she stopped shivering and tried to breathe deeply and slowly. The most likely explanation of the tragedy was that the dead woman had been drunk, and had stumbled into the water while staggering along the towpath in the small hours. It was a frightful way to die, but perhaps she had been too befuddled to grasp the danger she was in. If you were unconscious when you died, presumably you just stopped breathing without knowing anything about it. In any case, the shock of being immersed in freezing cold water might have killed her before she had time to realise what was happening.

‘Let’s hope we all go like that,’ she said.

The policewoman looked surprised and Mandy realised she had spoken aloud.

‘I mean –’ she stammered, ‘I mean I hope she was too drunk to know what was happening to her. I assume she was drunk, and that was why she fell in the river.’

‘It seems likely,’ the police officer replied with a noncommittal nod.

‘I guess we’ll never know for sure,’ Mandy said.

The policewoman gave her a curious look. ‘Maybe not,’ she said.

Mandy nodded. ‘I suppose finding out how and why she died is what you do. I mean, that’s your job, isn’t it?’

The policewoman nodded but did not reply. Feeling foolish, Mandy cleared her throat. ‘I’d better be going then,’ she said.

‘If you’re sure there’s nothing else you can tell us?’

Mandy shook her head. ‘There isn’t anything else. Will you tell me what happened? How she died, I mean.’

The dead woman was a stranger, yet Mandy felt a strange sense of kinship with her. If it hadn’t been for Mandy, the corpse might have lain in the river for weeks, slowly eroded by water insects and animals, prey to maggots and rats and other scavengers.

‘I’m sure the media will report it,’ the policewoman responded, becoming brusque in her manner now that Mandy had concluded her brief statement.

‘I wasn’t being inquisitive,’ Mandy tried to explain. ‘I was just – concerned, that’s all.’

The policewoman smiled and thanked her for her time before turning away.

2

Geraldine had not long been at her desk when Detective Chief Inspector Eileen Duncan called a briefing. As the team listened, Geraldine stared at Eileen’s ferocious expression with a mixture of admiration and concern. The senior officer’s dedication to her work was unquestionable, but she had an unfortunate tendency to bark aggressively at the team. Everyone knew that complicated investigations could take time to clear up, and the Serious Crime Command in York had a reputation for solving crimes swiftly, so Geraldine was not convinced that Eileen’s pushy attitude was actually helpful.