‘No, I didn’t ask for familial, just an ordinary match.’

Gillard suggested they download the full PDF onto a large screen so they could read it in detail. The results were astonishing.

‘So it’s not a familial test,’ Gillard said. ‘But it’s impossible. They’re saying that the woman in the Allegro is Jane Morris. But it can’t be. Jane Morris would be fifty-two. The girl we saw was thirteen maybe, seventeen tops.’

‘So what do I do now?’

‘Get them to retest. It’s possibly some cross-contamination. Thank God it’s the kind of mistake we can spot immediately.’

The detective chief inspector looked up at the arrival of DC Hoskins, grim faced, with a polythene evidence bag which appeared to be full of mud. ‘Another packed lunch, Carl?’ Perry said, and chuckled at his own joke.

Hoskins ignored him, and said, ‘This was found in a tree a mile downriver.’

‘What is it?’ Gillard asked.

‘I’m told it’s a scarf,’ he responded. ‘I’m off down to forensics, do you want to come?’

Chapter Nine

News of the find spread like wildfire. Five minutes later half a dozen detectives gathered round a large plastic sheet on the desk in forensics as technician Petra Amin used tongs to extract the item from the plastic bag. Filthy, stinking water sloshed out with it, and as the forensic technician stretched out the drenched woollen item to its full five feet, it was clear that it had once been multi-coloured. Muddied versions of red, orange, green, blue, indigo and violet wool, hand knitted by a loving mother for her talented daughter.

‘Do we know who found this?’ Gillard asked Hoskins.

‘Geoff Holt and Chris Marshall from the fire service.’

‘I’m impressed. They had enough on their plates with the floods, but still had time to read the missing persons round-robin.’

Hoskins nodded. ‘I’ve emailed the senior officer there to ask them to keep a lookout for the hat and the violin.’

The door burst open to reveal Chief Constable Alison Rigby. She immediately made the room seem very crowded. ‘I heard the news,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘The Environment Agency says the waters are now safe for police divers, and that’s where I want all of the effort to go in trying to find Beatrice.’

DI Perry, standing at the back of the group, piped up. ‘Ma’am, I put a request in this morning, but there is no confirmation of when we’ll have them. As you can imagine with six people still missing in the county and a huge number of sunken vehicles across the Wey, Cranleigh Waters and the Mole, we’re probably only going to get one team to begin with, as we’re already competing with Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire for resources.’

Rigby smiled. ‘Fear not, John. The moment I heard the news about the scarf, I did a little calling around. As of five minutes ago I’ve been offered four teams coming in on an RAF flight from Scotland. The Home Secretary has agreed to pay the bill. Of course they should be useful not only for the Beatrice Ulbricht case but for the wider search for those missing in floods.’