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Chapter 6

Most of his Monday morning was spent on tedious work, the work John hated above all else. There was paperwork to do, forms to sign and Brian Williams stopped by to give his official statement after Kate called and invited him in. He hadn't wanted to deal with it, but his boss had been insistent that it needed to be him to ask Brian the same questions he had already asked him the day before when all John wanted was to wait for Clara Oswald to arrive. Missing the opportunity to be the one to show her the body was completely out of the question. John wouldn't let Kate take that away from him. Yes, she was his boss and yes, she told him what to do, but if he was the one to greet Clara first, it would be harder for Kate to deny him the chance to interrogate her further.

During the night, John had come to the conclusion that something was off about Clara Oswald. Of course, he didn't actually believe that she was guilty of a crime, but her reaction to the body hadn't exactly been a convincing one. Either that or she had still been tired when they had spoken. John wasn't entirely sure about that, but he wanted to talk to her again and that had nothing to do with her pretty face.

In the meantime, John hurried along the corridors to the part of the building that contained the morgue and Osgood's office. He hadn't met her yet, but that was about to change when he came to a halt in front of her office door. The sign made him pause for a moment. Petronella Osgood, forensic pathologist. John snorted at the ridiculous name before he knocked.

"Go away!"

The annoyed tone in her voice didn't deter him, however, so John stepped inside without an invitation. The office was clean and smelled faintly of embalming chemicals and disinfectant even though this room held no bodies. Instead, there was a desk and a woman sitting in front of a microscope. John thought she was around Clara Oswald's age, maybe a little older, but everything about her, from her messy, dark hair to the large pair of glasses, seemed almost childlike to him. Her style surely hadn't changed much since her mother had stopped dressing her.

"What part of go away did you not understand?" she asked him without looking up.

John Smith cleared his throat. "I was hoping to talk to you about the Jane Doe."

With a start, Petronella Osgood dropped whatever she was doing and shot around. Either her eyes had grown wider all of a sudden or the thick glasses distorted their size, but she was definitely surprised to see him here.

"DI John Smith," she blurted out while she rose to her feet. "W-w-what are you doing here?"

She was stammering and nervous for some reason and John frowned at her in reply. "I, uh, I just told you. I came to talk about the Jane Doe."

"You can't!" Osgood almost yelled at him before she nervously reached for her glasses and straightened them. She fiddled with them for a moment while she tried to regain her composure. "I mean, um, I haven't finished yet. You have to come back later."

He was obviously interrupting her work, so John decided to give her a little more time and nodded before he started to leave. Yet before he had reached the door, he heard Osgood's excited voice once again.

"I've read about you, by the way," she called after him. "Detective Inspector John Smith from London."

John stopped dead in his tracks. That wasn't something he had expected to hear, quite the opposite. People knowing him because of his father was something he could understand, people still recognising him from a couple of decades ago seemed natural, but not this. Had this young woman really gone to the trouble of looking him up?

Slowly, he turned around and looked at the woman once again and noticed the excitement in her eyes. "You looked me up?"

Osgood uttered a nervous laugh. "Well, it's not like we get a famous detective on our team every day," she explained with a smile.

"I'm hardly famous," John replied grumpily. The pathologist really was blowing the entire thing out of proportion. "I'm just from London, that's all."

"But your name comes up a lot," Osgood argued. "The way you caught the Richmond arsonist, that was impressive."

He granted her a smile in response as he started to retreat. Petronella Osgood seemed to be some sort of fan and he didn't have the time to deal with that right now, not when he had to wait for Clara to show up. "Hardly," he replied and reached for the door handle. "I'll come back later."

"There's a gap in your career though," she added. Osgood straightened her shoulders and looked straight at him, the previous nervousness almost forgotten. "You were fired in 1975, but then you came back two years later. What happened?"

John's face twitched and he hoped that Osgood didn't notice. That era in his life was over and he hated to talk about it, hated to so much as think about it, and he hadn't expected anyone here to bring it up. Kate had never requested any detailed information from his previous employers. He was a detective and Malcolm's son – that had been enough for her. So why and how had Osgood dug it up?

"I'll see you later," John repeated in a friendly manner, but he couldn't help but feel a little wary. Not because he thought that part of his life could still come back to haunt him or have consequences for his current job. No, John had been reinstated and forgiven for the mistakes of his past, and yet he hated the idea of people knowing about it.

As he made his way back to his office, John thought that he would continue the dreary paperwork until Clara arrived and he was already beginning to dread it when the woman in question turned around the corner and walked in his direction. John instantly slowed his pace when he realised that she hadn't noticed him yet and he used the moment to observe her as she strode towards him. The last time he had seen her, her body had been covered by a long nightgown and robe, veiling her figure, but now she was dressed in a way that left no doubt she was an English teacher. The navy dress over the yellow jumper, combined with a thick pair of tights, looked as prim and proper as it could get. However, what didn't quite fit in were the biker boots and the leather jacket she was carrying. When he also spotted the helmet, it suddenly made a little more sense. Clara Oswald owned a motorbike and John almost chuckled at the idea of this small woman on a big and heavy motorcycle.

The expression on her face was one of annoyance and it didn't change much when she spotted him at last. Clara Oswald didn't want to be here. Quite the contrary, it looked as if she would rather be far, far away.

"Miss Oswald," John greeted her in a friendly manner and extended his hand. "Glad you could make it."

Clara shook it firmly and looked him straight in the eyes. "Kate Stewart said I should talk to you," she replied without even saying hello first. There was a hint of hostility in her voice and John knew that he would have to hurry through the process before she directed the full blast of her annoyance at him. That was something he wanted to avoid at all cost. "She pointed me in this direction."

"She wasn't wrong," John replied and granted her a smile. "Follow me."

John led the way back to Osgood's office and he dearly hoped she wouldn't continue to ask about his period of absence from the police while Clara was present. The pathologist, however, didn't pay them much attention as she was quite busy with her microscope, so John stepped through to the mortuary and Clara followed him a little more reluctantly.

When they stepped inside, it was cold and the smell of embalming fluid became stronger, and he watched Clara raise her hand up to her face to cover her mouth and nose. She looked paler all of a sudden.

"Sorry about the cold and the smell," he apologised. "I'd say you get used to it, but not really. You might want to give those clothes a wash when you get home."

"Charming," she mumbled and when she withdrew her hand, John noticed for the first time that her hostility had probably nothing to do with him or the fact that he had asked her here, but the nervousness he suddenly detected. He thought he knew what it was about because every now and then, her eyes wandered to the table next to them where the Jane Doe lay beneath a sheet.

"Have you ever seen a body?" he asked in a calm voice.

Clara Oswald hesitated but eventually shook her head.

He smiled at her in return. John had been correct. "It's okay to be nervous, but there's nothing to be scared of," he told her. "Think of it as one of the shells you can find on the beach. It's just a shell. Whatever made them a person has long moved on."

John watched her take a deep breath before she nodded and when he stepped towards the table and reached for the sheet, he waited to see her reaction and only when she gestured for him to do it, John lifted the sheet.

For a moment, he forgot all about Clara Oswald next to him as he looked at the spitting image of her lying on the table. Whoever she was, John understood how Kate and all the others could have taken her for Clara because they were identical. If it hadn't been for the fact that she was standing right next to him, living, breathing, and uttering a small gasp, he would have believed it was her. He would get to the bottom of this mystery somehow.

Clara Oswald turned away and John decided put the sheet back over Jane Doe's face before he turned his attention towards the woman that mattered right now.

"Have you ever seen this woman before?" he asked carefully.

The shock was visible on her face and right now, she seemed even paler than before, her skin the colour of chalk under the harsh light. It could be either from the smell and inevitable nausea or the fact that she had just seen her own ghost. "Every day when I look in the mirror," Clara responded breathlessly, her voice husky and broken. Then turned to look straight at him. "But I don't know her. Who is she?"

John smiled at her and hoped that the kindness would help. "We don't know yet, but we're working on it."

"Let me know when you figure it out," Clara Oswald replied and then quite abruptly, she turned around on her heels and darted out of the room.

John hesitated a moment too long to go after her, wondering why she was in such a hurry and figuring that it was probably because of the smell. The first time he had been in a room like this, he had almost thrown up. When he finally moved and followed Clara through Osgood's office and into the corridor, she was gone.