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28/09/2007. 1707 hours.

    The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished Caucasian female. The irises are brown. The corneas are clear. The pupils are fixed and dilated.
    The body is cool to the touch and there is posterior lividity and partial rigidity. There are no tattoos, deformities or amputations. The victim has a linear 5” surgical scar on her abdomen at the bikini line, indicating a prior Caesarean section.
    Her right and left earlobes are pierced. Her hair is approximately sixteen inches in length, brown, with a wave. Her teeth are natural and in good condition. Her fingernails are short, neatly rounded with polish present. Pink polish is also present on her toenails.
    The abdomen and back show evidence of significant soft tissue abrasions and heavy bruising caused by blunt force trauma. These markings are consistent with an impact such as a fall.
    The external and internal genitalia show no evidence of sexual assault or penetration.

    The facts have a stark cruelty about them. A human being with a lifetime of experiences is label ed like a piece of furniture in a catalogue. The pathologist has weighed her organs, examined her stomach contents, taken tissue samples and tested her blood. There is no privacy in death.
    ‘What about the toxicology report?’ I ask.
    ‘It won’t be ready until Monday,’ he says. ‘You thinking drugs?’
    ‘It’s possible.’
    Abernathy is on the way to saying something and changes his mind. He takes a satel ite map from a cardboard tube and unrol s it across his desk. Clifton Suspension Bridge is at the centre, flattened of its perspective until it appears to be lying on top of the water instead of seventy-five metres above it.
    ‘This is Leigh Woods,’ he says, pointing to an expanse of dark green on the western side of Avon Gorge. ‘At 13.40 on Friday afternoon a man walking his dog on the Ashton Nature Reserve saw a near-naked woman in a yel ow raincoat. When he approached her, the woman ran away. She was talking on a mobile and he thought it might be some sort of TV stunt.
    ‘A second sighting was made at 15.45. A delivery driver for a dry cleaning firm saw a ful y naked woman walking along Rownham Hil Road near St Mary’s Road.
    ‘A CCTV camera on the western approach of the bridge picked her up at 16.02. She must have walked along Bridge Road from Leigh Woods.’
    The details are like markers on a timeline, dividing the afternoon into gaps that can’t be accounted for. Two hours and half a mile separated the first and second sightings.
    The sergeant flicks through the CCTV images so quickly it appears as if the woman is moving in juddering slow motion. Raindrops have smeared the lens, blurring the edges of each print, but her nakedness couldn’t be sharper.
    The final photographs show her body lying on the deck of a flat bottomed boat. Albino white. Tinged with lividity around her buttocks and her flattened breasts. The only discernible colour is the red of her lipstick and the smeared letters on her stomach.
    ‘Did you recover her mobile?’
    ‘Lost in the river.’
    ‘What about her shoes?’
    ‘Jimmy Choos. Expensive but re-heeled.’
    The photographs are tossed aside. The sergeant shows little sympathy for the woman. She is a problem to be solved and he wants an explanation— not for peace of mind or out of professional curiosity— but because something about the case disturbs him.
    ‘The thing I don’t understand,’ he says, without looking up at me, ‘is why did she go walking in the woods? If she wanted to kil herself, why not go straight to the bridge and jump off?’
    ‘She could have been making up her mind?’
    ‘Naked?’
    He’s right. It does seem bizarre. The same is true of the body art. Suicide is the ultimate act of self loathing, but it’s not usual y characterised by public self abuse and humiliation.
    My eyes are stil scanning the photographs. They come to rest on one of them. I see myself standing on the bridge. The