Body Heat

by Candy Denman

  Kate paused as she finished the cheese and biscuits and sipped her red wine as Callie looked at her expectantly.

  “I mean, Nigel will definitely play by the book but I can imagine that Sergeant Jeffries bloke going through all the profiles and contacting any women that he thought he might get lucky with–” Kate ducked as Callie threw a napkin at her and managed to at least smile as Kate guffawed at her own wind-up.

  “That is my worst nightmare,” Callie told her once Kate managed to stop laughing. “Promise me you’ll take my profile down tonight or I won’t sleep a wink.”

  Kate finished her wine and grinned.

  “Don’t worry. Of course I will take it down. Why don’t you come back to mine and we can do it now?”

  Callie followed her friend out, relieved that her adventure on the web site was finally going to be over.

  Chapter 21

  The sun was shining and the air had a clear, clean feel after the overnight rain and as Callie walked to work, across the clifftop park and then quickly heading down the narrow steps that led to All Saints Street, she was feeling positively light hearted. She had slept unusually well, safe in the knowledge that her profile had been taken down from the SSE website and that she almost certainly wouldn’t have to confess to Nigel, or Miller, that she had posed as a client.

  Whilst she knew she had done nothing wrong in doing so, she also knew it would be embarrassing if they ever heard about it, and, in particular, if Sergeant Jeffries ever heard about it. She knew that he would never, ever, let her forget it. She still had a slight worry that they would trace her through the client list, but Kate had reassured her that the police would be concentrating on tracing the men using the site, not the women and Callie hoped that Jeffries hadn’t got it into his head to check out the ladies, including those who had removed their details. It would be just like him to do something like that, hoping to find willing and available women for himself rather than searching from a work point of view, but even that small, niggling anxiety wasn’t enough to dent her good humour. She was sure that the police would quickly discover who the murderer was now that they had all the contact details. After all, there couldn’t be too many men in common between the three victims, could there?

  Callie’s mobile rang and she stopped walking to search for her phone in the depths of her bag, heart beating slightly faster when she saw that the call was from Miller.

  “Dr Hughes speaking,” she answered, mentally kicking herself for sounding so formal and unfriendly.

  “Hi, Callie,” Miller said and Callie could immediately detect some embarrassment in his voice. She started to slowly move down the hill again, putting her slight breathlessness down to the speed she had been walking rather than because she was speaking to Miller.

  “I wanted to apologise for last night and to, um, let you know that Mark was arrested again this morning.”

  “What?” Callie stopped dead, her good humour fading fast.

  “Nothing to do with the murders. Apparently, he torched a disused barn last night,” Miller told her. “He confessed, said he needed to stop the roar in his head.”

  Callie took a deep breath.

  “I told you this would happen if you kept pushing him. I told you he couldn’t take the pressure.”

  “I know, I know and, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  Callie believed him, and knew that it wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t, in all reality, had any choice.

  “Is he at the station now?”

  “Yes,” Miller confirmed. “I told them not to interview him until either you or Helen were there and I went down to see him, just to check and he seemed okay, calmer than I’ve ever seen him before, in fact.”

  “That’s the effect it has on him. Setting fires releases all his stress.”

  “Maybe I should give it a try.”

  Miller sounded tired and Callie knew he must be under an awful lot of pressure with three women dead and the press, his bosses and the public all demanding he find the culprit. She would have liked to say something comforting, if only she could think of anything that might help.

  “Was anyone hurt?” she asked instead.

  “No, no, the barn was in the middle of nowhere. No chance of him hurting anyone, and it was pretty much derelict, so I think the farmer’s actually quite pleased with the idea he might get some insurance money out of it.”

  “I told you he wouldn’t deliberately hurt anyone.” Callie couldn’t help adding what amounted to an ‘I told you so’.

  “I know.”

  Callie checked her watch.

  “Look, I’ve got morning surgery, so I can’t make it to the station until lunchtime and much as you say Mark is pretty chilled at the moment, it might be better to see if Helen can come in before then. Can you ask her?”

  “That’s fine, I thought you would be busy. I was just letting you know as much as anything else. It’s not my case, but I’ll ask them to call Helen, okay?”

  “Thanks, and sorry.”

  Callie would have liked to ask him about the contact list from the website and if they had found any names in common. Had Lee, or Lance or Gerry contacted the women? But whilst she was still trying to work out how to put the question, he said goodbye and hung up. She would have to wait to hear, unless, she thought, she managed to finish surgery quickly and fitted in a trip to the station afterwards. The plan appealed. Even if Helen had already sat in for Mark’s interview, he was unlikely to have been released by lunchtime as the paperwork always seemed to take hours. She could always say she was just checking up on him – a welfare visit to one of her patients – and it would be polite to drop in on Miller whilst she was there, wouldn’t it? After all he had had the courtesy to let her know Mark had been arrested, hadn’t he?

  Having convinced herself that this plan was in the interests of everyone and not just idle curiosity, Callie started walking again, hurrying to get to the surgery. Although she had plenty of time before her morning list was due to start, she wanted to try and catch Adrian Lambourne and find out if he had managed to see Mark before the boy had imploded. If Lambourne hadn’t, despite all her requests for him to do so, she thought that she could insist he make room to see Mark as an emergency as soon as he was released. Of course, Lambourne would also be a good target for her pent-up frustrations. She was in the mood for a good argument.

  * * *

  Before Callie could ring Lambourne, she found another reason to get upset. A quick check of her paperwork basket revealed a request for her to forward on the electronic patient records for Jill Hollingsworth, her patient with hypothyroidism, and husband David Hollingsworth. It seemed that they had recently registered with a new surgery. The request, as always, didn’t say where they were moving to, but another note in her basket told her that a surgery in a village many miles from their home had called to try and expedite the transfer of information. Callie was surprised they had applied to join such a distant service and even more surprised that they had been accepted, unless they had moved.

  A quick look at her watch told her it would be a bad time to call the new surgery, as they would be starting their own morning clinics, so, instead, she decided that she might just have enough time to call Lambourne and vent some of her anger without being too late for her own patients. She hurried down to her consulting room, switched on her computer in preparation for work and reached for the phone.

  “Dr Hughes here, I’d like to speak to Adrian Lambourne immediately, please,” she said as his receptionist answered the phone, and was gratified when she was put straight through.

  “Dr Lambourne speaking.”

  His persistent use of the title of doctor irritated Callie intensely as she felt it was done to deliberately mislead patients. She knew he was entitled to call himself Doctor as he had a doctorate, a PhD in some obscure aspect of psychology, but he hadn’t been to medical school or taken a degree in general medicine as most people assumed. Whilst Callie knew he was still highly skilled at treati
ng patients, it did mean he couldn’t prescribe at all or treat anything other than psychological disorders. It didn’t take an in-depth knowledge of psychology to know that he insisted on being called Doctor because he had some kind of chip on his shoulder about not being a medical doctor and wanted his patients to think he actually was. Now probably wasn’t the time for her to tell him her feelings on this, however, but it did add to her list of reasons to be angry with him and made her persist in not calling him Dr Lambourne, if only to irritate him.

  “Adrian, it’s Callie here. I was just wondering if you had managed to see Mark yet? Or get him admitted any time soon?”

  She knew, of course, that he hadn’t, and also that she was being unfair because it was most unlikely that he could have found a bed yet, even if he had tried.

  There was a moment’s silence before Lambourne responded. She could almost hear him counting to ten before speaking in a well-practised and measured tone.

  “He has an appointment to see me, I believe. Let me just check my records, ah, yes, tomorrow. As I am sure you know, we would love to have the resources to fit patients in and to admit them at the drop of a hat, but we don’t and I am doing my best, Dr Hughes, I really am. You might not think it good enough, but it is honestly the best that I can do.”

  Callie took a deep breath and told herself to chill. Much as she would have liked to have a rant at him, she knew that he was right.

  “I’m sorry, Adrian, I know I’m being unfair, but Mark was arrested again this morning and has been charged with arson.”

  “Not another murder, surely? I didn’t hear anything on the radio this morning.”

  “No, not a murder, they know he’s not responsible for those, but he did set fire to a disused barn, probably because of the stress of being treated as a suspect.”

  “Oh, have they definitely ruled him out of the murders, then? That’s good news if so.”

  “Yes, yes, he’s been ruled out. He was actually in a police cell when one of the murders took place so that’s no longer the problem, it’s more about the continued questioning that he’s been subjected to.”

  “Oh, right, still upsetting for him, yes. Do you think he’ll be released today?”

  “I should think so, but there’s the worry that if the pressure starts building again−”

  “Quite. Look, I’ll ask my receptionist to call him later and see if she can get him to come here today and I’ll check and see if there are any beds available anywhere. If not, I’ll get my colleague Dr Andersen to up his medication and try and get him seen by one of us daily for a while. How does that sound?”

  “Thank you.”

  Callie was genuinely surprised he would offer to do that much. Dr Andersen was one of the psychiatrists who practised at the sleep clinic where she knew Lambourne regularly did sessions and she was also aware that they had an arrangement whereby Andersen would prescribe medication for Lambourne’s patients when it was needed urgently rather than waiting for the patients’ own GP to do it.

  “That sounds more than I could reasonably have expected of you. I’m sorry to have been so rude earlier,” she said.

  “Not at all. I really do want to try and help the boy. After all, we were doing so well before all this. Goodbye, Dr Hughes.”

  * * *

  Callie had rushed through her morning patients and, despite having found a note in her basket telling her that Helen had been able to drop everything and go to be with Mark for his interview, she hurried out of the office, leaving paperwork and visits for her partners. Sometimes, she thought it might be nice to be a Roman Catholic and assuage her guilt by confessing and saying a few Hail Marys for penance, but deep down she suspected that deliberately sinning in the expectation of getting forgiveness was probably against their rules anyway.

  She arrived at the police station, having nipped home to collect her car, at about the time she thought most doctors would be finishing up paperwork and taking calls after their morning clinics. She fished in her bag for her notepad and phone and keyed in the number for the surgery that had requested the Hollingsworths’ notes.

  “Hello,” she said once her call was answered. “My name is Doctor Hughes from The Bourne Surgery, Hastings. I received notification today that some patients of mine from Croft Hill Farm in Westfield have registered with you, is that correct? I have their NHS numbers if that will help?”

  Callie waited patiently as she was first passed to the practice manager, who insisted on checking her identity with Linda, who she knew from the practice managers’ support group, before answering cautiously in the affirmative. The Hollingsworths had indeed registered at the practice, but she wasn’t happy to say more than that.

  “Thank you,” Callie persisted. “What I am at a loss to understand is why they have left our practice and why they have re-registered somewhere so far from where they live, not to mention quite why you would have accepted them, under the circumstances.” Callie waited whilst the beleaguered manager put her on hold, presumably to discuss her questions with someone else. It was several minutes before she was taken off hold, and this time she was speaking to a Dr Simms, the GP who had accepted the couple’s registration.

  “It’s a delicate matter, Dr Hughes,” he told Callie, “and I’m hesitant lest I break confidentiality.” His Scottish accent still breaking through, despite living so far south.

  “I certainly wouldn’t want you to do that, Dr Simms, and I have to say that I am not surprised that they have decided to move practices. It’s no secret that Mr Hollingsworth made a complaint against me. I am just concerned that they have chosen to register with a surgery so far from where they live and that you would take them.”

  “Well, I have to say it was not without a good deal of pressure from the husband. He seemed to think that all the doctors in Hastings would have it in for him because of that complaint.”

  “That seems rather excessive.”

  “Indeed. I was half expecting him to have a history of paranoia when I got the records through. I don’t suppose there’s anything of that sort that I should know about?”

  “He’s hardly been to the surgery the whole time he’s been registered with us, so if he is paranoid, it’s only recently become about his doctor. Although,” she added as an afterthought, “it would explain how he’s been behaving recently.”

  “Aye, well, he was very persuasive, I’ll have you know. I felt I had to take them.”

  “I’m sorry it’s come to this, and I hope for your sake it’s just a misunderstanding and he isn’t a problem. I’ll forward their electronic records as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you for that, Dr Hughes. I’m obliged.”

  “Oh, and Dr Simms?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please don’t hesitate to call me if you need any clarification, particularly about Mrs Hollingsworth’s hypothyroidism.”

  “She has myxoedema?” He sounded surprised. “Her husband assured me they were both in good health.”

  Callie sighed.

  “I’ll send you a copy of the complete records directly, Dr Simms, as well as through the proper channels, and you can see for yourself.”

  Callie felt increasingly disquieted as she ended the call, which was the opposite of what she had hoped. She actually had more unanswered questions now than before. What on earth was David Hollingsworth up to? Did he have difficulty accepting that his wife had a long-term condition and needed monitoring and treatment? How did Jill feel about it? So many questions and none that Dr Simms had been able to answer, but they would have to wait, for now. She got out of her car and headed into the police station.

  She checked with the custody sergeant and found out that Mark had been charged and was being bailed to appear before the magistrates the following morning and would be released shortly. It was moderately quiet in the custody suite and the sergeant was happy to take her to the cells to see Mark and satisfy herself that he was okay. She explained to him that his psychologist would try and see him
that day and would probably want to increase his medication as well. Mark seemed indifferent to what was going on and she tried to impress upon him the need to see Lambourne but she left by no means sure that he could be bothered to go. Setting the fire seemed to have calmed him to the point of apathy.

  Back at the reception, Callie asked to speak to Miller and was escorted up to the incident room. Miller looked up as she walked in and hurried over to divert her straight into his office, clearly worried she was about to lay into him about Mark’s arrest. She let him stew for a moment or two before smiling and thanking him for letting her know her patient was in custody. He looked relieved, but Jeffries, watching surreptitiously through the window, couldn’t hide his disappointment, which pleased Callie.

  “I was just wondering how you were getting on now that you have all the contact details from SSE? Have you found a common link?”

  Callie had been expecting Miller to be enthusiastic and upbeat but instead he seemed to slump slightly.

  “I wish.” He paused, clearly wondering how much he should confide in her. “There are no contacts in common between all three women and no one connected with Mark as far as we can tell.”

  Callie felt a spasm of disappointment and anxiety.

  “I thought it would be all over as soon as you had that information. That it was only a matter of time before you made an arrest.”

  “I know, we all did. But life just isn’t that easy.”

  “No, you’re right. It’s never that easy.” She thought for a moment. “Did anyone contact more than one of the women?”

  “Yes, we have five men who each contacted two out of three. Nigel is checking them out.”

  “Good.” She smiled again, but then had a sudden thought. “Does the list include people who might have contacted the women but have left the website? I mean he might be trying to cover his tracks?”

  Miller looked thoughtful.

  “I assume so, I mean it’s a list of all the contacts they have had, but–” He got up and opened the door into the incident room. “Nigel?”