‘Thank you, Adrian, that would be great,’ DCI Kapoor said. ‘The preliminary report from the pathologist records that he died from multiple blows to the head. Definitely deliberate, definitely with the intent of killing the young man. He will have a more detailed report for us in a few days.’

Gary raised his hand. ‘I know someone at the university who may be able to help. He’s the professor of forensic anthropology and archaeology on the Streatham Campus.’

‘How is an archaeologist going to help us?’ Adrian said.

‘He does skull reconstruction and can get a good likeness of John Doe for us to work from. He is superfast. I don’t have any decent facial reconstruction software here and if we send it off to London or one of the other constabularies with the program, it’s likely to take a week minimum because of backlog. It’s actually two separate programs run by two different people.’

‘Why don’t we have this software? Can’t you run it?’ DCI Kapoor asked.

‘I can run it. It is, however, several grand. I put in for it a couple of years back but was denied owing to budget constraints. My guy at the uni is a fast worker and he would prioritise it; he lives for this kind of thing.’

‘OK, brilliant. Has he worked with us before? Is that how you know him?’ DCI Kapoor said.

‘No. He’s in my guild. He’s the Healer.’

‘Your guild?’

‘Warcraft. It’s a computer game thing. We have a local guild and we meet up occasionally. Anyway, he is kind of a big deal. In the real world, I mean, but also in the game.’

Denise Ferguson, the duty sergeant, knocked on the door of the briefing room and walked in with a piece of paper, which she handed to Gary. When Denise looked up, her eyes widened at Adrian and she had a smirk on her face.

‘This was just on the local news Twitter feed.’

Gary put a video up on the big screen. Bloody mobile phones. Adrian knew before it even started what it was going to be. He watched himself pulling Jane Doe from the bushes and then carrying her to safety on the bank, to the soundtrack of gasps from both the women in the video and his colleagues in the room, followed by a round of applause when it ended on a freeze-frame of him walking towards the camera. He blushed.

‘I see they cut out the bit where I asked her not to share this with anyone until we identified the woman,’ Adrian said.