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24
Samuel
Thanks to the efforts of my remarkable colleagues in the forensics department, I am now enjoying a plethora of facts about the bones that were found by Jason Mott on the shores of the Thames. I pin the facts to the cork board in my office and gaze at them.
Young woman, 27–33, possibly with training as a dancer, bunions on both feet
Date of death roughly 1995
Blood type A
Body wrapped in a dark-coloured cotton towel fromYves Delorme. A similar towel today would cost around £200. Logo in use between 1988 and 2001
Leaves mainly from London plane trees and trees of heaven (often planted along avenues), but also some deadsummerblossom from the PERSIAN SILK TREE,rare in London
Hair colour dark blonde
Small fracture to skull around the left-hand temporal bone
Currently a team of five officers is trawling the missing person records from 1988 to 1999 for a slight young woman, possibly a dancer, with dark blonde hair and, according to the forensic facial reconstruction sculptor currently working with the young lady’s facial bones, a rather pronounced weak chin. Given the quality of the towel which had once been wrapped around her body, they are particularly looking at those missing from well-to-do areas or families. Although of course this poor woman may have stumbled into the path of someone rich enough to spend two hundred pounds on a towel without being well-to-do herself. Another officer is briefing a so-called ‘tree-detective’ to find a point in London where the London plane and the Persian silk might coincide. And me … I am waiting. Waiting for my office door to burst open and for one of my team to walk in with a look of hope and possibility and say,I think I might have found her.
Because it is only a matter of time, and the only thing that stands between success and failure is the possibility – and it causes me genuine pain to consider it – that nobody ever reported this poor woman missing in the first place.
