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Tiff hid her shudder as the body was placed onto the trolley.

Donkey Pool was a fishing pond on Priory Road, Dudley. Located next to a playing field, it wasn’t the largest fishing spot in the area but remained popular with the locals due to a good showing of carp. It had garnered national headlines in 2019 when a prolific thief, after a car chase, fled his vehicle and swam to the island in the middle of the pond to hide. He was eventually found by a fire rescue team in a dinghy and taken to hospital suffering from hypothermia. Every police officer in the borough knew the story.

She wasn’t squeamish, and it wasn’t the first dead body she’d ever seen. It wasn’t even the first she’d seen removed from water. But it was the first she’d seen that had been submerged in water for approximately two years.

She’d seen bodies with adipocere, the waxy formation that occurred in the right conditions. She knew that once formed it could preserve the body for years. She wasn’t disturbed by the bloated, misshapen corpse that was formed into ‘the drowning position’, where the back is arched and the limbs appear to be reaching down. What she hadn’t seen before was the presence of ‘washerwoman’s hands’, a wrinkling and sloughing of the skin particularly on the hands and feet, common in cases of prolonged immersion.

The remaining clothing reminded her of the film The Hulk: the garments had been stretched and ripped in different places as they strained against the bloating.

‘Wanna bet against me that’s our misper from a couple of years back?’ Sergeant Kendrick asked her.

‘No bet, Sarge – the clothes match,’ Tiff replied with a smile. Kendrick was one of the good guys and she never missed an opportunity to work with him. In some ways he reminded her of DS Bryant. He’d reached the rank of sergeant and decided that was where he wanted to stay. Only eight months away from retirement, Kendrick still treated every incident as though it was his first.

‘Wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ he said. ‘Water can discolour…’

‘It’s the belt, Sarge. Our misper was wearing a double looped, gold belt buckle with a lion’s head.’ She nodded towards the ambulance. ‘Same one…’

Sergeant Kendrick nodded approvingly as two of Tiff’s colleagues passed by.

‘It’s all right, folks. Vera’s on the case. She’ll have it sewn up by teatime,’ said the one in front, a man she’d shared many shifts with.

Sarge heard the comment but said nothing.

She tried not to let her feelings show on her face. Thank goodness the sarge had said nothing in her defence. That would have just made everything worse.

This was how it had been ever since she’d applied for CID. She’d expected some backlash, but the root of the hurt she felt was that the snarky comments were coming from colleagues who had been her friends. She’d been drinking with both of these officers numerous times. Together they’d celebrated arrests, birthdays, promotions…but her decision to try for CID had put a wedge between her and them. Right now she was in limbo and didn’t fit anywhere.

‘Ignore the haters,’ the sarge said, beckoning for her to walk with him. ‘Your identification of the belt just earned you a prize.’

‘It did?’ Tiff asked. ‘What do I get?’

‘You get to come with me to inform the family.’