Holt was in a fire service inflatable with two other fire service officers and a paramedic. During gaps in the rain they were taking the chance to inspect the many vehicles which had tumbled down the river. It was a risky plan, because the centre of the river was still a torrent with vicious ‘stoppers’, waves caused by buried obstacles that were quite capable of swamping their boat. But if anyone was still trapped in those vehicles, they couldn’t afford to wait until first light. Exposure would kill in an hour. Boatswain Chris Marshall steered the boat expertly, watching out for the many underwater obstacles that a newly submerged shoreline could offer. They collided with only one, which turned out to be a cast-iron bench on what used to be the riverbank, just a foot or so below the waterline. Steering around it, Marshall powered the outboard until they could reach the car.

The hopes of finding anyone living were not high. When a vehicle has taken in so much water that it floats upside down, there is no place inside that offers enough air for survival. The tyres are the only buoyancy. Holt called out and rapped on the side of the vehicle, hoping for an answer. He didn’t expect one, and he didn’t get one. All the windows were underwater, just the bottom six inches of corroded door sills visible in the light beam. But there was good news. The driver-side door, on the far side, was open, and had bent in half against itself where it had scraped against the bridge. That gave some hope that anyone inside had escaped. With the inflatable next to the car, Holt tried to rotate the vehicle so that he could reach the open side. After a few minutes cutting of branches, he succeeded.

As the vehicle bobbed around, a great fan of fair hair floated up in the water. He reached down and felt a clothed female body beneath. He tugged gently, but she was clearly snagged. He felt for the seatbelt but it was snug in its holder. He wriggled in further, the freezing water coursing up his sleeve and down his neck as he forced the waterproof torch into the narrow cavity between the waters and the driver’s footwell. Yes, a leg was caught deep in the water, tangled in the steering wheel, now at the base of this watery cell. The icy, bone-chilling unknotting of the limb allowed him to float her free. A young woman, no more than a girl.

She was as cold as stone.

Chapter Seven

Monday

Alison Rigby had demanded a seven a.m. incident room meeting on the Beatrice Ulbricht case on Monday, making no allowance for the after-effects of the flooding. She had somehow put Surrey CID on to continental time, always to be prepared for an early call from Germany. There was no doubt where her priorities lay.

Detective Chief Inspector Craig Gillard was in, on time, at 6.45 a.m. The CID block was virtually deserted. The overnight on-call detective inspector, John Perry, had just come in, dripping water everywhere. He was dressed for a Welsh bank holiday: heavy duty anorak, waterproof trousers and wellies. He sighed heavily as he dropped a head torch, laptop bag and various other bits and pieces on the nearest desk. With his hangdog expression, and prematurely greying hair, the forty-two-year-old looked more like the exhausted school physics teacher he once had been than a detective. To Gillard, and many of his more junior colleagues, Perry exuded that submissive resentment of the unsporty schoolkid, always forced to be in goal.