by Candy Denman
“If you want to be a Home Office forensic pathologist, Billy, you have to go for it. We’ll work something out, but I’ll never hold you back.”
He came over to her and gave her a hug.
“Thank you,” he said and smiled, only this time he looked like he meant it.
Callie just wished she could ignore the knot of anxiety that had formed in her stomach.
Chapter 19
The evening news had included a short item featuring pictures of both body number nine and the young woman found the day before and asking for information about them. They had used the picture that Lisa produced for Callie, which made her happy that she had braved her concerns about meeting the photographer again after the rally, and set her wondering again about the black eye she had tried so hard to cover up. Callie was sure she must have got it at the rally, the question was, who was responsible? It wasn’t surprising that Lisa had decided to take time off work because of it – a crime lab was the last place you could get away with saying you walked into a cupboard door, they spent far too much time analysing evidence in domestic violence cases to let that go.
“About time they started to try and find out who body nine really was,” Callie said crossly to Kate.
“Better late than never,” Kate replied, opening a packet of crisps and laying it on the table between them. “The pictures were very clear, I can’t believe no one will recognise them.”
“I know. There will probably be hundreds of calls.” Callie knew that Miller had been given a team of civilians on overtime to answer the phones in anticipation. She just hoped they were able to pick out the ones with real information from the time wasters that always responded to appeals for information. They were often well-meaning souls, calling to claim their long-lost son or daughter, who would be in their fifties by now so it couldn’t possibly be them, or just to say they were praying for the poor young things, but not realising that all they were doing was clogging up the lines and stopping the police from listening to the people who really could help.
It was Friday night and The Stag was heaving. It was hard to talk over the noise of people drinking to celebrate the start of the weekend. Even the garden was packed, so they squeezed into a corner, next to a family of weekenders. The two small children were clearly bored and kept jumping up and down, knocking the table and spilling their drinks. Callie and Kate didn’t usually come to The Stag on a Friday because it could get too busy. But pretty much every pub in town was busy on a Friday night.
“Do they think she was dumped at sea, like the bloke?”
“Seems that way. The police checked the cliff above, but there was no sign she had been up there and jumped or was pushed, although it’s not easy to be sure.”
“Are there many places you could throw yourself from along the clifftop?”
“Not really, it’s not like Beachy Head along there. The paths are generally further inland and it’s heavily wooded most of the way, so you would most likely get caught on a tree or bush. Why, are you thinking of pushing someone off?” Callie couldn’t imagine Kate killing herself, someone else was much more likely.
“Always handy to know. In case.”
“You could always take a walk along the cliffs and check it out for yourself.”
“Get real.” Kate laughed. Callie knew that walking was her least favourite form of exercise.
There were a few moments’ silence and Callie’s mind drifted back to Billy and her worry about their future.
“Come on, tell me about it or I’ll have to resort to torture, or buying you another drink,” Kate said with a concerned smile.
“Tell you what?”
“Whatever it is that you are fretting about.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yes. Apart from everything else, you usually go out with Billy on a Friday, or rather, stay in with him.”
Callie hesitated, Kate was her best friend, and there was little she had kept from her over the years, but somehow her concerns about their future seemed too close and personal for friendly chat just yet. That, and she didn’t know where to start.
“It’s nothing, he’s busy working, that’s all.” Callie didn’t think she had fooled her friend for a moment, their friendship was too long and too close for that, but she hoped she hadn’t offended her by holding back.
“Please tell me you haven’t split up.”
“No! Nothing like that.”
“Good, and I’ll accept that for now,” Kate told her, “but just make sure you come to me if you need to talk it through with someone.”
“I will, I promise,” Callie replied. “But for now, I think I need to be patient and see how it pans out. I might be worrying about nothing.” But her voice belied her concerns. What would she do if Billy moved away? Up sticks and follow him? Or stay and try to maintain a long-distance relationship. That might be possible if he took a post in London, but what if there were no vacancies as he had said and he decided to look further afield? The North? Or even to go abroad? Could she, would she, want to leave Hastings?
Kate was watching her closely as all these thoughts went through her head.
“I think another drink is called for,” she said and grabbed their glasses.
She was right, but Callie also knew that if she had a few more she might open up and tell all her worries to her friend. Perhaps that’s what Kate was hoping, and who knows? Callie thought, perhaps that would be the best thing.
* * *
Next morning, it was a beautiful clear day and Callie decided to walk to work. She had a slightly muzzy head from all the alcohol she had ended up drinking the night before. She had indeed ended up telling her friend all her worries after a couple more glasses of wine, and Kate had been her usual robust self, telling her to stop worrying about something that might never happen. After all, she had argued, Billy could fail his exams.
As if, Callie had told her, Billy had never failed an exam in his life. So, giving up that line of argument, Kate had concentrated on the likelihood of a vacancy coming up with the London practice of pathologists and Billy getting it. They giggled as they discussed ways of creating a vacancy and whittling down the competition. Callie favoured a mass poisoning whilst Kate suggested a sexual scandal of some sort.
Even with all these scenarios being nothing more than fantasy, discussing it had made Callie feel better. She knew she needed to put her worries to one side and give Billy the space to decide what he wanted for his future, and if that involved leaving her behind, so be it. She would survive. She was surprised that overnight, whilst she slept, she seemed to have made the decision that even if he moved away from Hastings, she wouldn’t. Perhaps that told her something deep and meaningful about their relationship, or at least her relationship with the town and the people who lived there. She honestly didn’t know why she felt that way and now wasn’t the time to try and work it out, she thought. Not with a hangover.
As Callie reached the bottom of the East Hill steps, she could see David Morris, sitting on a wall. His face was badly bruised and he had a grey tinge that told her, even from a distance, that he was in pain.
“David! What are you doing here? Have you discharged yourself from hospital again?”
He grunted as he tried to stand up, before deciding to stay as he was.
“I wanted to tell you something, before going away to, um, convalesce,” he explained.
Callie had to admit that leaving town made sense, Hastings certainly wasn’t a healthy place for him to be at the moment.
“Have you told the police where you are going?” she asked, knowing that they were the last people he would have spoken to. “Or who did this to you?”
“No.” He grunted again and shifted his position slightly in an attempt to get more comfortable, he clearly didn’t want to talk about being beaten up. “To both.”
“But if you talk to them, tell them what Claybourne’s up to, he’ll be arrested and you will be safe.”
“Safe?” he sn
orted in derision. “I’ll more likely be dead.”
Given how badly he’d already been beaten up, Callie wasn’t about to argue with him on that score. She knew that even if Claybourne was arrested, he would almost certainly get bail and go after Morris again, unless the police put him in protective custody, and that wasn’t likely to happen.
“I used to drive them over for him, but I got pissed one time and missed the ferry and he got a replacement.”
“The cigarette smuggling?”
He nodded.
“I just wanted back in, you know? But the bastard wouldn’t let me. Said I was too unreliable.”
Callie couldn’t argue with Claybourne on that, with Morris’s drinking problem he could hardly be called reliable.
“Was it you who told the police about the van? Got the new driver arrested?”
He nodded again.
“He guessed it was me. Threatened my mum. She’s in a home, for Christ’s sake. Doesn’t even know what day it is. That’s why I went to the rally and, well…”
He shrugged. She knew the rest.
“So, why did you want to speak to me?” she asked. “Just to tell me you were leaving?”
“No. It was about that picture they showed on the news,” he said, “the girl.”
“Did you recognise her?” Callie couldn’t disguise her interest.
He nodded.
“She was going round, asking questions.”
“About what?”
“Her boyfriend. Said he’d gone missing.”
“Do you think he could have been the man in the second picture?”
“Maybe. I didn’t really look at the photo she was showing everyone.” He gave her an apologetic look.
“Where was she asking about him?”
“I was in the club and she came in.” Callie knew he meant the Fishermen’s Institute and Social Club in All Saints’ Street, a favourite haunt of Morris’s because the drinks were cheap there.
“Do you know anything more about her? Where she was from? Was she alone? How long had her boyfriend been missing?” Callie could hardly contain herself, she had so many questions.
“Whoa!” He shook his head. “Like I said, I didn’t talk to her myself. Sorry. She did say she was down from London – I know that. But, you know, I didn’t speak to her and no one in the club said they’d seen him, so she left.”
Despite her continued questioning, he had nothing more to add and after a while, levered himself off the wall.
“Thanks for telling me this, David.”
“Yeah well, I could hardly tell the cops myself, could I?” he said with a smile. “Got to be going now.”
She watched as he walked, slowly and carefully, up the road towards the Old Town. She hoped he’d be all right and she wished he would tell her more about Claybourne’s operation, and just how far he would be prepared to go to protect it, but after a quick look at her watch she hurried on down Rock-a-Nore Road to the new surgery premises. She was going to be late if she didn’t get a move on.
* * *
Before Callie was able to even start her morning surgery, she was called into the police station to see a prisoner who they wanted to interview and needed to be sure she was sober enough. There was a mad scramble as Callie tried to see as many patients who were already waiting as possible, and Linda, the practice manager, worked to re-allocate or cancel others before she could leave. The result was that she had no time to call the incident room and tell them of her conversation with David Morris. Instead, she resolved to speak to them when she had finished with the prisoner.
Once at the station, she found out she had been called to see Marcy, again. A regular both in the cells and in the surgery, Marcy was a drug user and prostitute who had been known to assault her customers on more than one occasion, whether that was the service they had asked for or not. Callie had tried to get her into rehabilitation many times, but Marcy just didn’t seem interested.
“What am I going to do with you, Marcy?” Callie asked having checked her over and found her relatively sober, and with nothing more than a few minor cuts and bruises. She had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly in the early hours of the morning. Unfortunately, she’d bitten a police officer during the arrest, so there were going to be greater charges added in, and on which the police, and CPS, were still deciding. Resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer for certain, and they could go all the way up to attempted murder, depending on circumstances. Police officers generally didn’t like to be bitten by drug addicts, for obvious reasons.
“Messed up again, didn’t I, Doc?” Marcy replied, apparently unperturbed by the fact.
“Yes, you did. Now, are you going to let me take blood to check for hepatitis, HIV and any other blood-borne diseases, or am I going to have to get a court order?”
Marcy held out her arm by way of reply. She knew the drill, which was a relief for Callie, and for the officer involved, as ruling out any nasty diseases would at least give them some peace of mind, provided Marcy tested negative, of course. The custody sergeant had told her the officer in question had already been sent to the hospital for his own blood tests and to have the wound cleaned up, and Callie knew he would also be offered preventative medication whilst they awaited the results, just in case Marcy had infected him with anything.
“Why did you do it, Marcy? Think of that poor officer and his family.”
Marcy hung her head in shame and didn’t even flinch as Callie took the blood sample.
“Sometimes, I just lose it, you know?” she explained.
“You need to get yourself sorted out, Marcy, once and for all.”
“Easier said than done, Doc.” Marcy hesitated. “I don’t suppose you can give me something? I’m going to be here a while, I reckon.”
Callie wrote her up for some methadone to see her through and left her, looking resigned to her fate. Optimists would say that if she was sent to prison it would be her opportunity to get clean, but Callie knew that wasn’t the case. Drugs were just as readily available inside as they were on the street.
Feeling thoroughly depressed, Callie walked up the stairs to the incident room so she could tell them her information about the girl in person.
There was a buzz of excitement in the room that told Callie something had happened, and glancing over at the whiteboard, she saw a tentative name next to the dead girl’s photograph: Michelle Carlisle.
DC Nugent bustled up to the whiteboard as she watched and stuck another photograph next to the first. It showed a younger Michelle, pouting for a selfie. It was undoubtedly the same girl and Callie was both happy that they had identified her, and sad for the family that would now know that she was dead.
Callie intercepted the detective as he returned to his desk.
“What do we know about her, Nigel?” she asked him.
“Hello, Dr Hughes.” He blushed as he spoke. “Michelle Carlisle was eighteen, family home in Bolton. She was reported missing three years ago after she apparently ran away to London with a friend. The friend came back a few weeks later, but Michelle chose to stay. The family say there’s been nothing heard of her since.”
“Same old story,” Jeffries said from just behind her, making her jump. “Preferred selling herself on the streets to being rogered for free by her stepdad at home.”
He was right, it wasn’t an uncommon story, but it was still a sad one.
“Nothing on the man?” she asked, knowing that if there had been any news, it would have been written on the board.
“Still checking out a few possible leads,” Nugent said. “But none of them are looking promising.”
“Which might suggest he was one of the traffickers and nothing to do with the girl.”
Callie turned to Miller who had come out of his office to join in the conversation.
“Except that she was looking for him.” That certainly got their attention.
“What?”
“I bumped into a patient this morning
who told me that she had been showing a picture of a man around, asking if anyone had seen him. Said he was from London.” She petered out as Miller seemed to be going quite red in the face.
“If you could come into my office, Dr Hughes, I’d like to hear the details. Now!”
He turned on his heel and walked into his office. Callie could feel every eye in the room on her as she hesitated. On the one hand, he had no right to speak to her like that, particularly in front of a room full of colleagues, but on the other hand, she had information she wanted him to have as quickly as possible. She also wanted to convey it in a way that didn’t land David Morris in even more trouble than he was in already. She followed him and as he sat behind his desk, chose to stand opposite him. Needless to say, Jeffries had followed her in and closed the door behind him.
“Why haven’t you told us this before?” Miller demanded.
“Because it only happened this morning, on my way to work,” she responded, tight-lipped and furious with him for being so unnecessarily rude.
Miller wiped his face with his hands and she could see how tired he was, and she relented, sitting down in the visitor chair. He really did seem angry and Callie wondered if perhaps he had just told his senior officer that he didn’t think the two were connected and would now have to change his report. Maybe she should have found the time to speak to him before.
“I came in as soon as I could, but got waylaid by the custody sergeant. So here I am, telling you now.”
“And what exactly are you telling us?”
“This man, my patient, said that the girl in the photograph, Michelle Carlisle, was in the Fishermen’s Club showing round a photograph of a man and asking if anyone had seen him. She claimed he was her boyfriend and he was missing.”
“And the photo she was showing round was of the man we know as body nine?”
“He doesn’t know. He didn’t look at the picture, but it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“And he’s sure it was her?”