Woman in the Water

by Katerina Diamond

  ‘What happened?’ one of the paramedics said.

  ‘Some kids found her; I just pulled her out. I’m hoping the doc can tell us more about what’s happened to her.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Adrian said, realising she hadn’t answered him when he had asked her before.

  ‘What’s your name, love?’ the paramedic asked the woman, leaning down to hear better.

  The woman winced and closed her eyes as the ambulance went over a pothole. She squeezed Adrian’s hand weakly.

  They pulled up outside the hospital and Adrian saw that Dr Hadley was waiting outside the emergency department’s bay doors. Adrian had texted her to come and meet them. Dr Hadley had worked with the police on numerous occasions and Adrian knew she specialised in women’s cases, especially where sexual assault was a probability. The clothes the victim was wearing were intact when he found her, which was unusual in cases of sexual assault. But whatever had happened to her, this was a horrific attack that she wasn’t going to be getting over anytime soon. If she made it, that is.

  ‘I’m going to go now, but I will be back.’

  ‘Please don’t go,’ the woman said.

  ‘This is my friend Dr Hadley and she is going to look after you, OK? I’ll be back before you know it,’ Adrian told her.

  The woman nodded.

  ‘Thank you, DS Miles. I’ll give you a call after I’ve done a thorough examination,’ Dr Hadley said with a heavy sigh as she appraised the woman’s condition.

  Adrian watched as they wheeled the trolley into the hospital through the emergency doors, two uniformed officers following behind. The ambulance doors closed and the vehicle drove out of the bay.

  Pulling his phone from his pocket, DS Miles texted Imogen to come and pick him up. Still covered in mud, his clothes still damp, Adrian needed to get changed before the last half an hour got a chance to creep under his skin. Someone had hurt this woman and discarded her. He was going to find out who.

  Chapter Three

  Imogen put a towel down on the passenger seat of her car before Adrian sat down. He had that look in his eye, that angry, determined look he got when he was well into a case and it wasn’t going their way. Whatever he had seen had obviously affected him; he seemed anxious and slightly haunted.

  ‘What happened? I only saw you a couple of hours ago,’ she asked.

  ‘That woman I found. She was completely fucked up, thrown away like rubbish. It was awful. I thought she was dead. She looked dead.’

  ‘You found her in time, though. You got her to the hospital.’

  ‘Who does that to another person? Sometimes I feel like we are swimming against the tide with this job, I really do. Every day it’s something else; it never stops.’

  Imogen knew that this was about more than the woman he had rescued today – it was about the woman he grew up with, about his parents. Adrian rarely talked about his mother, but Imogen knew that his father had been violent and that Adrian struggled to accept aggression towards women on any level. She knew what it was like to grow up in challenging circumstances, but not a day went by when she wasn’t grateful that there was no kind of abuse in her own childhood; she had seen what it had done to friends. Working in the police, she knew how demoralising an abusive childhood was and how massively it impacted who people became.

  ‘You’ll feel better after you get cleaned up,’ she said. ‘We can go straight back to the hospital as soon as you’ve showered.’

  ‘What if she dies?’

  ‘Whatever comes next, we are going to find out what happened to her. She’s not going to die. I know it. You saved her, Adrian.’

  Imogen parked the car near Adrian’s house and he jumped out immediately. He didn’t want to hang around, she could tell. He unlocked his door and went inside, leaving it open for her to follow.

  Imogen made herself comfortable on the sofa and waited for Adrian to return. She was at home in his house now, maybe even more at home here than in her own place.

  There was an old cookery show on TV; it was one she hadn’t seen since her mum was alive and she felt a pang of sadness as thoughts of her mother crossed her mind. They used to watch Keith Floyd together regularly; her mother loved his vibrancy and authenticity. She would wink and say that she had met him once, and Imogen wondered if it was code, a clue that he was her biological father. The mythical bio-dad who was everything from a prince to a crack addict – it seemed silly now to think that she thought this TV celebrity might be her father. There again, her mother had a way of doing the unexpected, so it wasn’t completely out of the question.

  It had been almost a year since her mother had died and she had barely allowed herself time to think about her. Once she gave herself that permission, there would be no stopping it and so she preferred not to start. Imogen had always felt as though crying was a weakness in some way and so she was loath to succumb. She switched channels until she found something less emotionally challenging.

  Her eyes became heavy as she focused on the screen, the Northern accents a refreshing change from the Devonshire twang that she was used to.

  Adrian’s lips woke her, pressing against hers gently; she wondered what she must look like and hoped she wasn’t drooling.

  ‘I forgot to say thanks,’ he said before kissing her again.

  She kissed him back.

  ‘Feel better?’ Imogen said.

  ‘I’m sorry if I was a shit,’ Adrian said, perching on the sofa next to her.

  She moved to accommodate him and nestled in his arm as he drew her closer.

  ‘You weren’t. I get it. That must have been a traumatic experience for you. Sorry you had to go through it alone.’

  ‘I’d better get back to the hospital,’ Adrian said.

  ‘Can we just stay here for a minute?’

  ‘DI Walsh is already there. She hasn’t woken yet, but I’d like to be there when she does eventually wake up. I offered for us to do the night shift. He just phoned to tell me the doctor ruled out sexual assault.’

  ‘Well, that’s something at least,’ Imogen said.

  ‘Is it? I don’t see how anything could have made it any worse. She was as near to death as anyone I have ever seen. When I felt her hand around my leg, I thought I had lost my mind. She looked so … she just looked gone. I should have checked her pulse straight away.’

  ‘She’s in good hands now. The doctors will take care of her. We just need to find out who she is and how she ended up there. How about you? Are you OK?’

  ‘I don’t know if OK is the right word for it.’

  ‘I can see your brain ticking over. You can’t overthink this one; you’re going to do your head in. You acted quickly and now that woman is in hospital getting treatment thanks to you. You did absolutely everything you could. This isn’t on you. This is on whoever did that to her, OK?’

  ‘This is going to be a messy one, isn’t it?’ Adrian sighed.

  ‘Let’s hope we have seen the worst of it. Whatever happened to her, she’s got us now. And we can make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else,’ Imogen placated but knew his mind was already swimming with the ghosts of his own past.

  ‘I wish I shared your optimism.’

  ‘If I had been through what she had been through then there is no one else I would want on my side. You saved her life, Adrian. Remember that.’

  Chapter Four

  I am in a hospital bed, everything hurts and I don’t know how I got here. Various nurses and doctors come and go – I haven’t opened my eyes yet, but I hear them speaking. I know from their conversation that I have no identification on me and they have no other way for them to identify me. I wonder if this is all a dream – am I really asleep? Or maybe I’m really dead and in some kind of celestial waiting room. I can’t say I would be devastated if that were the case. I feel no pain – I am grateful for the drugs they’ve given me. I fade in and out of sleep, undecided on whether or not I even want to wake. Maybe this time
I can disappear. I have a head start and he thinks I’m dead.

  Chapter Five

  Adrian watched the numbers and lines on the heart monitor. He had no idea what any of the information meant, but it was steady and so he assumed that was a good thing. They weren’t in intensive care either, which also boded well for the mystery woman. The easy chair in the hospital cubicle was comfortable and he had volunteered to stay until the woman woke. He had sent Imogen home after a couple of hours; there was no point in both of them losing the night.

  Adrian was shaken by what had happened. He had seen plenty of horrific cases in his time as a DS and he wondered if there would ever come a time when he wasn’t shocked by this kind of thing. But being upset was the right reaction. The moment you stopped being upset was the moment you should go and do something else. It’s normal to be afraid or angry. It’s normal to feel frustrated or powerless in some situations. You had to keep it inside, though. You had to stay strong, not just for yourself, but also for the people around you. One chink in the armour and all of your defences were compromised.

  A nurse came in with a small basin and a cloth. She smiled uncomfortably at Adrian then gently wiped the woman’s face and hair, trying to soften the mud that had now dried on her skin and clumped together at her roots. They had already scraped under her fingernails and taken photographs of any abrasions or bruises. But legally they couldn’t take blood samples or test her DNA without consent and she would need to be awake for that. The nurse rinsed the cloth and dabbed at a cut across the woman’s eyebrow.

  As he watched the nurse, Adrian remembered his mother, a fragment of time that they shared together. In a conscious effort to block out his father, Adrian’s mother had also disappeared into the back regions of Adrian’s memory, but it hadn’t worked and his father now became more prominent than ever.

  The moment he thought of now was of his mother sitting with him at the kitchen table, remnants of a shattered plate on the floor as they played Connect 4. Adrian’s father had thrown the plate across the room and it had glanced off his mother’s temple before smashing against the terracotta floor tiles. She steadied herself against the counter and, in order to distract Adrian from the argument, she smoothed her skirt and suggested he run upstairs and get a game for them to play.

  When he returned, she had a plaster over her eyebrow and it was as if nothing had happened. They played the game over and over until bedtime, presumably just to avoid any kind of conversation or acknowledgment of what had transpired. Until weeks later, that is, when there was a fragment of blue-and-white willow china lodged under the corner of the washing machine that his mother had missed. The rest of the memories of his mother then faded and reappeared with little clarity; she was an extra in his childhood with barely a speaking role.

  Outside, the light faded as the machines bleeped and blinked at regular intervals. Who was this woman? Why had no one reported her missing? Was no one missing a daughter? A sister? Wife? No one even remotely matching her description was in the recent additions to the missing persons database. This was highly unusual and Adrian considered all the questions he didn’t even know to ask yet. Already unnerved, Adrian folded his arms and settled in for the night.

  Troubling dreams woke him – bruised faces of women he had questioned over his years in the police. Whether it was a husband, a father or a stranger, the assailants were almost always men and more often than not they were known to the victim. He knew that domestic violence wasn’t purely men against women, but in his experience that was much more common, or at least women coming forward and reporting it was. People warn you about strangers, but no one warns you about the people you love, the people who say they love you.

  He looked over at the woman and saw something different about the way she was breathing. It was shorter, shallower – more controlled than before. His eyes adjusted to the dim lighting and he stood slowly so as not to startle the woman who was almost certainly now awake. Her one good eye opened and she looked across to him; the swelling in the other had reduced significantly since he had found her. She started to breathe faster.

  ‘Hey, I’m a police officer. My name is DS Adrian Miles. I found you by the river. Do you remember?’

  She blinked away a tear and he felt her fingers brush against his hand.

  ‘Water,’ she mouthed.

  He couldn’t hear her, but he could see the formation of the word on her lips.

  ‘I’ll get a nurse.’

  ‘Wait,’ she whispered again, the faint noise coming from her. Then she wrapped her fingers around his. ‘Thank you.’

  Out of nowhere, Adrian felt a weight in his throat. What if he hadn’t found her when he did? Adrian leaned in and spoke softly to her.

  ‘Can you tell me your name?’

  She closed her eye again, although this time it stayed closed tight as a tear rolled down her face.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ she said weakly.

  Chapter Six

  The police officer is sitting by my bed. I have the smallest memory of him pulling me out of the water. I open my eyes and he rushes over. He asks my name again but I tell him I don’t remember.

  Maybe I could get away this time. Couldn’t I? He has that look in his eyes; I have seen it a million times before. He tells me I am safe now. He thinks he saved me. I can’t be saved.

  Chapter Seven

  Imogen stood by the wall and looked over the crime scene. She hadn’t been able to relax, so she took Adrian to the hospital last night and got down to Glasshouse Lane as soon as the sun came up the next morning. They needed to figure out what had happened to their Jane Doe. Best-case scenario, they would find some kind of identification that the woman dropped. Imogen knew the scene hadn’t been fully processed yet and so there would be people there.

  It was a huge area to cover. The woman could have got to the river from several access points and they would need to check all of those as well as the routes from the access points to where she was now. Not to mention the fact that the river itself posed a massive problem in terms of processing evidence. Even just getting hold of the correct equipment took time, as it had to be shared with the whole constabulary. Water and forensics didn’t mix.

  Imogen climbed the makeshift step that put her on the other side of the wall. She saw the techs working meticulously beside the riverbank, pulling snagged hair and fabric from the branches that overhung the water. The inhabitants of the houses surrounding the area gathered back by the road to try to catch a glimpse of the crime scene technicians at work. DI Matt Walsh was already there when she arrived and he surveyed the river, trying to work out where the woman could have come from.

  The forensics team were spaced out along the riverbank looking for any evidence that pertained to the woman Adrian found. Imogen looked on at the chaotic hedgerows that enclosed the water and was glad at least that this part wasn’t her job. She didn’t have the patience for something as meticulous as forensics.

  ‘They’ve got another one!’ someone called.

  It took a few moments to realise what that meant. No one moved and then suddenly everyone sprang into action. There was someone else in the water.

  Imogen walked as quickly as she could to the technician who had called out, careful not to step on anything that could later be determined as evidence.

  ‘Got another what? A person?’ Imogen asked.

  ‘Yep, about a mile upriver.’

  ‘Alive?’ Imogen said.

  The technician shook his head as Matt Walsh got to him.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Walsh asked.

  ‘There’s another body, but according to the technician at the scene it’s difficult to discern anything. Male this time. He’s in a pretty bad way, apparently. He’s been beaten, by the sounds of it. They are just securing it now. There’s no real riverbank up that end and so they will transport it straight to the morgue.’

  ‘They can’t tell anything else?’ DI Walsh asked the tech.

  ‘Late twentie
s at a guess, but we will know more when we get him back to the pathologist.’

  ‘We’ll need to set up a tent before the news cameras get wind of this. Dead body adds to the news appeal of this case and we need to find out who it is, first. Did you speak to DS Miles? Is the woman awake yet?’

  ‘Yes, DS Miles called to say she’s awake but she hasn’t said anything meaningful yet. She claims she doesn’t remember anything. Including her name.’

  ‘Get over there and see if you can find out anything about this man. The DCI is going to want a briefing ASAP with both you and Adrian. See if you can drag him away from the hospital. He seems to be taking this case rather personally.’

  ‘He did pull her out of the river. He feels responsible for her. That’s all. I’ll do my best to get her to talk.’

  ‘They must be connected and so she must know something. Tread lightly, but see if you can push for information on who did this to them and who the other victim is.’

  Imogen trudged back to the car. As awful as it was, a body would at least tell them something – it was a break in the case. But then, what could the motive be? Revenge? Hatred? Punishment? A message? Over her time in the police, Imogen had realised that when it came to murder, there weren’t that many possible motives; figuring out who these people were was key to finding out why this had happened to them.

  Chapter Eight

  Imogen handed Adrian a coffee she had picked up on the way over. He hadn’t left the hospital all night; he had barely slept since she had been discovered yesterday. He was a mess.

  She looked at the woman. She could see instantly why Adrian was so affected by this case. Who wouldn’t be? The cuts and bruises across the woman’s face looked angry against her pale, shiny porcelain skin. Imogen could see the weave line of the woman’s hair extensions – not cheap ones, either. The nails she had left were acrylics, a French manicure. Her clothes were folded on the chair by the bed – Stella McCartney jeans that run at three hundred quid a go. Imogen wondered how much they would be worth now they had been cut into several pieces. There was also a gold ring, a wedding band, sitting on the bedside table. Presumably, it was hers. Whoever this lady was, she wasn’t destitute and yet still no one had reported her missing.