The drop on the other side was a little lower and he just managed to save himself from embarrassment when he fell by placing his hand on the ground as though he were a superhero who had fallen from a great height. Anything over four feet was a bit too high for Adrian. It wasn’t like he was trying to impress anyone, but he wanted to avoid any humiliation, as this could all end up in a police report, depending on what he found in the river.

He took his phone out of his pocket and switched on the torch; the sky had adopted a grey-and-orange hue as the sun hid behind the houses. The blue thing in the bushes looked like denim. It was obscured and could just as easily be a discarded denim jacket or plastic bag from a newsagent as anything else. He tried not to think about the anything else. As he got closer it became clear that whatever it was, it wasn’t a discarded item of clothing. Please don’t let it be a child.

Holding his breath, Adrian edged closer to the pair of legs that lay in the undergrowth, the top of the body still obscured by the bushes. Forced to climb into the river, he put his phone between his teeth as he walked around the legs into the water. It was cold and muddy; he tried not to slip on the mud banks as he made his way to the top of the form. After taking the phone from his mouth, he shone the light on the legs, gradually moving upwards until he found a head.

It was a woman. She wore a baggy cream Aran jumper and jeans. One of her boots was missing. Her right arm, hips and backside were submerged in the water, but her body was contorted in such a way that her head, legs and left arm were out of the water. Her face was dirty, one eye swollen from a possible fracture as the bruising had closed it, but her other big blue eye was staring at him, fixed.

He turned the torch off on his phone and dialled DI Matt Walsh.

‘We need a team down on Glasshouse Lane. I’ve sent over my location. I’ve found a body in the water.’

‘A body in the water? A dead body? How?’ Walsh responded.

‘Well, I was driving down the road when I saw a group of women by the riverside wall. I approached the women and they said that last night their kids were playing outside and this morning told their parents they saw something that resembled a body.

‘Description of the victim is: female, Caucasian, maybe twenty-five years old, blonde hair, blue eyes. Looks like she was assaulted beforehand. She’s been here at least the one night, not sure how much longer.’