The truth was, no one was to blame except the woman herself. She wasn’t under arrest but just saw an opportunity to leave and left. There were obviously too many questions that she didn’t want to answer. No one could know what she had been through – only she knew that. It was pointless being annoyed with her; she was the victim in this. One of the victims, anyway.
DCI Kapoor walked in and folded her arms.
‘I’ve just spoken with PC Milbourne and he said she gave no indication that she was going anywhere. One second she was there and when he looked again, she was gone. It’s happened now, anyway, so we need to make sure the newspapers don’t find out that we lost her.
‘The Echo have been asking for an interview with you, DS Miles. I said you would give them a call today, so do that before you go home. The last thing we need is them poking around the hospital. Remember: careful, measured answers. Reporters are always looking for an angle, that’s their job. Your job is to make sure they don’t get it.’
‘What if they ask me how she’s doing?’
‘Say she’s up and walking about. You wouldn’t be lying,’ Imogen said.
‘Please, someone tell me we have something else? Any new information on John Doe?’ Kapoor asked.
‘No match on his DNA and his fingerprints aren’t on file with us, either. Dr Forrester will send a photo over when he is done. I have compiled photos of all current male MisPers within a hundred-mile radius. We can expand further if that doesn’t pan out.’
‘How many are there?’ Imogen asked.
‘Too many,’ Gary said.
A brief silence descended over the room as Gary’s words hit home. A person goes missing every ninety seconds in the UK, almost two hundred thousand are reported missing a year. The amount of people who return to their families or home are few and far between. Most families never got any closure, left to assume the worst for ever.
‘Adrian, you go with Gary and see if, together, you can rule out some of those missing people until you get the reconstruction of John Doe’s face.’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ Adrian said, shooting a glance at Imogen as he left the room.
Separation anxiety, she thought.
‘Imogen, I would like you to speak to Dr Hadley who was treating Jane Doe. She is in the liaison room; she was called in for something else, but I thought it would be good if you could have a little chat while she’s here. She spent some time with the patient and may have some information that doesn’t violate the patient’s confidentiality. Maybe she mentioned a person or a place. Also, she might know if Jane Doe made any calls or if anyone suspicious in general was hanging around the hospital.’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ Imogen said.
‘Go on, then,’ DCI Kapoor said, shooing Imogen out of the office.
Imogen walked towards the liaison room to speak to the doctor, hoping she could give them a lead of some kind. At the moment, they were flying blind.
Someone had already given Dr Hadley a drink when Imogen arrived in the liaison room. She was occasionally the on-call doctor for the station and so she was friendly with many of the staff. Dr Hadley had even been out on a date with Adrian once, which Imogen couldn’t help but remember every time she saw her. It wasn’t jealousy, more an acknowledgment of the fact, which her brain liked to jab her with.
‘Dr Hadley,’ Imogen said.
‘DS Grey. Mira, DCI Kapoor, said you wanted to speak to me about the patient.’
‘Yes. Is there anything you can tell us about her that may help us locate her? I am sure you are aware that we found the body of a man near to where she was found. Down on the riverbank.’
‘Yes. And I saw the video of Adrian pulling her out of the river online.’
‘Do you have any information?’ Imogen said, ignoring her comment about Adrian.
If she told herself she wasn’t jealous enough times then maybe she would believe it.
‘I can tell you that she was terrified. She was calm and even-tempered when other people were around, but when she was alone, she was quite distraught. I walked in on her and saw her sobbing more than once. I got the feeling she was in some kind of untenable situation, as though a difficult decision needed to be made. She seemed to be unsure of what she should do.’
‘Well, she had been through a terrible ordeal.’
‘Yes, of course, but she was so determined to keep it hidden, that’s what concerned me. She didn’t ask for advice, or help. I’ve seen this kind of thing before.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Those injuries that she sustained, they weren’t the first. Not by a long shot. There was evidence of injuries and breaks going back a long time. Without saying too much, I think you are looking for a very vulnerable individual.’
‘Did she use the phones at all? Did you see anyone else hanging around the hospital? Did you see her speaking to anyone who wasn’t staff?’
Imogen fired the questions without giving Hadley the opportunity to respond. Hadley was so guarded with her responses and Imogen didn’t have all day.
‘She was very jumpy whenever someone walked into the room, expecting someone to come for her, I think. I don’t think she is running from the law, she is running from someone else. Pure speculation, of course, but I work predominantly with women who are either sexually assaulted or in domestic abuse situations. The marks I saw on her body are consistent with those I have seen on women who are in abusive relationships. As she didn’t tell me directly and as this is conjecture on my part, I don’t feel like I am breaking confidentiality in this instance.’
‘Thank you, Doctor. We’ll contact you if we need to speak to you again.’
Imogen showed Dr Hadley out of the liaison room and walked back to her desk. Finding Jane Doe seemed more pressing than ever.
Adrian clicked through all the images Gary had compiled. As they had barely any information on John Doe, he could have been reported missing at any point from anywhere. The things they knew were that he had naturally brown hair and brown eyes, and was no younger than twenty and no older than forty. He was five foot eleven and Caucasian. Anyone who didn’t fit those criteria was immediately removed from the list.
‘Dr Forrester said he would have something for us in less than half an hour,’ Gary said as he returned to the room with two hot coffees from the secret coffee machine in his office.
‘I’m down to under three hundred now, much better than what we started with,’ Adrian said. ‘I feel like we should be investigating all of these, anyway.’
‘It’s definitely depressing.’
‘I don’t know what we’ll do if he’s not one of these men. Back to CCTV from the quayside, I guess, see if there is anything. There must be something we are missing.’
Adrian looked through the faces one more time, thinking about the faces he had already discarded. Who was going to look for them? The idea that every single one of those people had someone who cared about them enough to notice they were gone, to report them missing, was distressing. Growing up with an addict for a father meant Adrian was no stranger to living with someone who was in and out of your life. Charlie