“No, I’m a police officer.”

The nurse flipped the pages up on the chart and frowned. “Is there anything you can tell us about him?” he asked. “All we’ve got is a name, and that hasn’t actually been confirmed.”

Joanna reached into her satchel for a plastic bag containing Gregor’s wallet. “The ID we have for him is all in here.” The wallet and its contents had already been swabbed and dusted for prints by the CSI team. There wasn’t much in it that could help them trace family; only cash, a single VISA bank card and the driver’s license. The nurse took the wallet out of the plastic bag and retrieved the license. Jo looked from the photo to the man in the bed, to his slack, unconscious face, as smooth and unmoving as a marble statue, all the life that was present in the photograph gone.

“So there was considerable brain damage, from being hit on the head?” said Jo.

“The head injury wasn’t as bad as we thought. It was the drugs he ingested that have caused his system to shut down.”

“Drugs?”

“Everything points to opiates. There are no track marks, so not injected. Probably some kind of prescription drug. I couldn’t say what at this point, only that it’s too late to reverse the effect. None of the usual antidotes revived him.”

“What about the head injury? It felt pretty serious to me.” Like his brain was coming out, she thought, with a degree of revulsion.

“I agree it did look dramatic, but the CT scan showed only a large extracranial hematoma and some skin abrasions. If he hadn’t ingested the drugs, I think the outlook would have been much more positive.”

Jo said, “Any sense of how he might have been injured? There was an initial theory that he slipped and fell in the bath, hitting his head on the edge.”

The doctor was shaking her head before Joanna even finished the sentence. “I don’t think so. The bath wouldn’t have broken the skin like that.”

“You won’t mind if we have someone come in to examine him?” said Jo. “One of our medical forensic people will need to see the injury, have access to the medical records, and so on.”

“You’re welcome to examine him. But I’m afraid, while he’s alive, you would need his consent to get access to the medical records.”

Joanna looked at the still and silent patient, then at the doctor. “How do you suggest I go about obtaining that?”

“That’s your department. You might need to get a court order. I can’t release the notes without one.”