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When he reached us, Paul was bloated, slimy and a very dark shade of green, probably the most horrible sight I had seen. The water had completely swelled his body and the smell was disgusting. Amazingly, he still had a needle in his arm.

Clive was not impressed by this in the slightest. ‘You know what this means,’ he said in an annoyed manner. Graham spoke the word ‘Forensic’.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t it obvious why he’s dead?’

‘So how do you think he died, Michelle?’ Clive asked me. I then felt out of my depth, and probably should have kept my mouth shut.

‘He’s drowned?’ I replied sheepishly.

‘That is the whole point, has he drowned, or was he dead from the heroin? If it’s drowning then Ed could do the PM, but if he overdosed from the drugs, the police will need to be involved and Dr Twigworth will do it.’

‘How will we tell?’ I asked.

‘They’ll go down the forensic route anyway, to cover all the possibilities. Serious stuff, supplying drugs, Michelle. If he has died from the overdose, the supplier could be in a lot of trouble, even go down the road for a long time.’

‘They never find them, though,’ Graham said disappointingly. ‘Filthy, dirty habit, and the users would rob their own mothers.’

He was clearly not impressed, and thought nothing of showing it.

Within the hour, Dr Twigworth had arrived and Clive had decided he was going to treat him with a firm hand. ‘I’m not having any messing around with this one, he’ll be in and out, I’ll make sure of it.’

One thing I had learnt about Clive was that, when he wanted something done, it was done and no doubt about it; not even the great Professor Ranulph Twigworth was allowed to get up to his normal tricks on this one. As soon as he was changed, Clive was chivvying him up, reminding him that the rest of us had homes to go to, even if the Professor didn’t; he kept mopping the floor around Twiggy every time he spilt a drop of blood, tutting loudly and sighing. He sprayed air freshener around like it was going out of fashion, and pointedly refused to enter into any chat with him.

It worked, though. We were cleaned down and everyone was out by five that evening. Twiggy had informed us that Paul had no water in his lungs, so in all likelihood he had overdosed before the floods rose, and that he would be residing with us for a while because more tests would need to be done. This news was not the best we could have received in view of poor Paul’s choice of eau de toilette, but at least he could be tucked away in one of the isolation fridges so we wouldn’t be too aware of him as we went about our daily business.

Ed ended up tussling with the Reverend Samuelson’s death for a long time. As he told Clive, examination of tissues under the microscope showed only generalized degeneration with no clues as to the cause. The microbiological tests all came back negative, as did the toxicological tests. It was a mystery why he had died, with nothing suggesting either a definitive natural disease process or anything unnatural. ‘He’s got a touch of furring of his coronary arteries but not enough, I would say, to have killed him,’ he sighed.

He went back through all the medical notes, not for the first time, which was when he had a brainwave. He came at once down to the mortuary office. ‘Hypothermia,’ he said. ‘I reckon that’s what did it. He was immersed in that flood water for a long time, and I reckon his core temperature went way down.’

‘But he recovered,’ I pointed out. ‘Is that what normally happens?’

‘Yes, he was lucky enough to recover but I think that during the episode of hypothermia, he suffered some sort of generalized ischaemia of the heart muscle. He developed heart failure and that, in turn, led to poor blood supply to other internal organs, which failed in turn. Hey presto.’

He left looking a lot happier than he had for some time, but it didn’t last long. A few days later, he confessed, ‘The Coroner asked for an expert opinion from a leading intensive therapy consultant. He