‘The remains were completely skeletonized?’

‘Pretty much,’ said Cooper. But it wasn’t entirely true. He still remembered the partially fleshed fingers, the thin strips of leathery tendon attached to the bones. Some parts of the woman’s body had clung together stubbornly, long after her death.

‘By the way, I’ve been calling her Jane Raven,’ said Lee. ‘Jane, as in Jane Doe. Raven after where she was found. That’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Ravensdale, near Litton Foot.’

‘Apart from the basic facts and a few measurements, that’s all I know about her. But I don’t like to leave a subject completely anonymous. It’s easier to interpret a face if I give the individual a name.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘So I named her Jane Raven Lee. Then I could think of her as my sister. It helps me to create the details, you see.’ Lee smiled at his raised eyebrows. ‘My English half-sister, obviously.’

Cooper looked at the file he’d been holding under his arm. It contained a copy of the forensic anthropologist’s report in which the dead woman had been assigned a reference number. This was her biological identity, all that was officially known about the person she had once been. A Caucasian female aged forty to forty-five years, five feet seven inches tall. The condition of her teeth showed that she’d been conscientious about visiting the dentist. There would be useful records of her dental work somewhere, if only he knew which surgery to call on.

But perhaps it was the detail about the width of her shoulders that had given him his mental picture of the dead woman. He imagined the sort of shoulders usually associated with female swimmers. By the age of forty-five, after at least one pregnancy, her muscles would have become a little flabby, no matter how well she looked after herself. Living, she might have been generously built. A bonny lass, his mother would have said.

‘Facial reconstruction is still an art as much as a science,’ said Lee. ‘The shape of the face bears only limited resemblance to the underlying bone structure. It can never be an exact likeness.’

Cooper nodded. A reconstruction couldn’t be used as proof of identification, but it did act as a stimulus for recollection. The accuracy of the image might not be as important as its power to attract media attention and get the eye of the public. Any ID would have to be confirmed from dental records or DNA.

‘There’s a fifty per cent success rate,’ said Lee. ‘You might be lucky.’

Cooper accepted a set of photographs from her and added them to the file. It immediately felt thicker and more substantial. Reference DE05092005, also known as Jane Raven Lee, five feet seven, with shoulders like a swimmer. A bonny lass.

‘Thank you, you’ve been a big help,’ he said.

Lee smiled at him again. ‘Good luck.’

But as he left the laboratory and went out into the Sheffield drizzle, Cooper wondered if he was imagining too much flesh on the unidentified woman now. It could be an emotional reaction to compensate for what he had actually seen of her, those last few shreds of skin on the faded bones.