#YouToo

by Candy Denman

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ she said. ‘And seen the video. Could he have been-‘

  ‘Yes,’ Miller interrupted, anticipating her question. ‘It’s looking a distinct possibility that he was framed.’ He paused as his tea arrived and the waitress set down cutlery in readiness for his food. ‘Not definitely,’ he said quickly when he saw that Jo was about to jump in, ‘the techies have only done a very quick look at the account that he was apparently using to speak to this underage girl and they say he could have set up the account himself, but that it could also have been done by someone else quite easily, and there’s no trace of it on any of his home or work computers, or of any other material relating to under- age girls.’

  Miller’s breakfast arrived and Jo tried not to wince as he poured rather than sprinkled salt over it.

  ‘But supposing that this is some sort of a set-up, how did the per- son who did it get them all to the car park at the agreed time?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Bartlett is quite open about that, he says he was contact- ed by someone who said they had information about Giles Townsend that would implicate the firm in illegal use of client funds. He was meeting them to see the evidence, or so he says.’

  ‘And you think he was being blackmailed and was hoping to pay them off.’

  ‘Absolutely. He’s shown us the emails, clearly he’d rather be done for misuse of client funds than for paedophilia, although with the vid- eo all over YouTube, he’s as good as been found guilty of that by the general population, anyway. Almost makes me feel sorry for the guy.’ The guilt clearly didn’t mean Miller had lost his appetite, Jo observed, as he shovelled the food into his mouth with alarming speed.

  ‘So, in both cases they were called to a meeting in the car park, Mervyn to meet a blackmailer and the paedophile hunters thinking he was there to meet a young girl.’

  Miller nodded.

  ‘The email account used to contact Bartlett about the blackmail was arranged in a similar way to the one that was used to access the kid’s chatrooms.’

  Jo waited as Miller finished his breakfast.

  ‘If Mervyn was targeted by someone, then…?’

  Miller sighed and washed his breakfast down with a large gulp of tea.

  ‘There could be some sort of vendetta going on yes. But,’ once again he stopped her from butting in with an ‘I told you so’. ‘But whilst there are one or two factors that also suggest Doreen Ponting was set up, they, and we, have found no links to the chap in his boss’s pool or that man who collapsed in a sauna.’

  ‘But they are looking into it? I mean Adrian Cole was supposed to have sent a bunch of emails just before he died as well.’

  ‘Yes, but the tech department says that was a completely differ- ent situation, because they were definitely sent from his own account, from his phone, which was fingerprint protected.’

  Jo sat back, disappointed.

  ‘And there were no emails involved with the sauna guy, and any- way, he didn’t look into sexual harassment complaints. He worked strictly in financial fraud as that was his background. And,’ Miller stood and fished around in his pocket for some money, ‘he wasn’t even with the Solicitors regulatory thingy when they investigated the com- plaint against Townsend when he was with that other firm in Tun- bridge Wells. I can also tell you that there were no further complaints to them, at least, so he really can’t be involved, although there was...’ he was stopped from finishing his sentence by his phone ringing. He put some money on the table, answered the phone and sketched a vague wave of apology and goodbye as he walked away.

  Once he had gone, Jo sat back and wondered what he had been about to say. It was gratifying that he had given credence to her con- spiracy theory, at least to the point of investigating it to rule it out, and he seemed to accept that there was some kind of connection between events, if only as far as Townsend Bartlett and the CPS were con- cerned. The technical department, Miller and the Hampshire police were going to be looking at how that had been organised, and by who, even if the wider conspiracy involving the other two lawyers didn’t interest them and looked to be being dismissed.

  Perhaps Miller was right and it was just a local thing, someone with a grudge against Townsend Bartlett and Doreen Ponting. She had to concede that if that was the case, then it could well be a criminal who felt he had been let down by his legal counsel and persecuted by the CPS. With access to all the records, the police were definitely better able to investigate and find anyone who might feel that way and could have committed the crimes. But Jo was sure the other lawyers were involved some way. And what about the woman in the downstairs flat? Paula Davison? How did she fit in? Perhaps she had got it wrong and this wasn’t about sexual harassment, perhaps it was all about financial fraud. That could involve John Dixon and possibly Cole, as he was working in corporate law with a finance company.

  Jo’s thoughts were interrupted by her own mobile phone ringing. ‘Hello,’ she answered it as the waitress approached with the bill.

  Miller had, as usual, left far too much money to cover just his break- fast. In fact, it was more than enough to cover hers as well.

  Jo handed the money to the waitress and waved away the change as she listened to her call.

  ‘Jo? it’s Linda. We’ve had a call from Mr Herring…’

  Chapter 21

  Jo had been to Mr Herring’s meagre, worn, but always meticulously clean and tidy flat on many occasions, but this was the first time she had been met at the door by anyone other than her patient.

  ‘Hello dear, are you the doctor?’ a frail elderly woman asked as she showed Jo into the living room. ‘I’m a neighbour. Gordon’s in the bedroom. He’s not well enough to get up, I’m afraid.’

  Jo followed the woman’s pointed gesture towards a slightly open door and entered an oppressively warm bedroom. The pink candle- wick bedspread and the faded flowers on the wallpapers and curtains suggested that this had once been a woman’s bedroom – possibly Mr Herring’s mother, Jo thought – and it had presumably been preserved exactly as she had left it.

  Mr Herring was propped up on a large number of pale pink, frilly pillows and seemed to be asleep.

  ‘Hello, Mr Herring, what seems to be the problem?’ Jo laid her doctor’s bag on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. Mr Herring’s eyes fluttered open.

  ‘Dr Hughes. Thank you so much for coming to see me,’ he said weakly. ‘I feel absolutely terrible. Terrible.’ His eyes closed again and Jo had to concede he did look pretty awful. She opened her case and got out her sphygmomanometer and stethoscope, tourniquet and blood tubes, and set about examining her patient.

  ‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea, doctor,’ the neighbour said while Jo was listening to Mr Herring’s chest, and she brought in a china cup and saucer, managing to spill most of the tea into the saucer as she searched for a space to put the cup down. Jo had to acknowledge that it was a problem, as every available surface seemed to be covered in a vast array of bottles and packets. Jo cleared a small space on the bed- side table for the cup.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea as well, Gordon dear?’ the neighbour asked Mr Herring, who raised a hand in a dismissive gesture.

  ‘I couldn’t, but thank you, Mrs Caldwell, you’ve been such a help,’ he said and flopped back against his pillows. Once the old lady had gone again, Jo looked at the bottles that she had moved from the table to make space for the tea cup. There were several different types of multi-vitamins marketed for different symptoms but all containing much the same ingredients. There were tablets marketed as for health and vitality, to increase energy levels and combat fatigue, for the over 50s, for men, for joints, for the immune system, for the heart, for the bones. Most were well-known makes but some, Jo was dismayed to see as she moved on to look at some of the packets and bottles on the table, seemed to be from other countries, judging by the spelling of a variety of disorders they were supposed to help. Jo examined more bottles. She was beginning to get an idea of exactly what might be wrong with he
r patient.

  ‘Do you take vitamin pills, Mr Herring?’

  ‘Of course, Doctor.’ He seemed surprised by her question. ‘I do think it’s the patient’s responsibility to do everything in their power to keep themselves as fit and well as possible. We can’t expect the NHS to look after us if we don’t look after ourselves, can we?’

  ‘No, I absolutely agree.’ Jo seemed to remember saying something very like that little speech to many of her patients at one time or an- other, and it had clearly made an impression on this one; it was just a shame it was like water off a duck’s back in most cases. ‘Perhaps we can go through these and you tell me which ones you take and how often.’

  Mr Herring looked at her as if she was mad. ‘I take all of them, of course.’

  Jo sighed, reached for her bag and got out a pad of paper and a pen.

  She picked up the first bottle and showed it to her patient.

  ‘I take one of those in the morning. That’s what it says to do on the bottle.’

  Jo carefully wrote down the dosages of the various ingredients contained in one tablet and went onto the next packet.

  ‘That’s a high dose Vitamin D tablet. I read an article in a health magazine that said we don’t get enough vitamin D, particularly in the winter.’

  Jo silenced him with a look and shook the packet.

  ‘One a day, although since I’ve been unwell I haven’t been outside so I was worried I can’t be getting enough sunlight and I’ve been taking two.’ Jo raised an eyebrow.’ You can’t buy them in health food stores because they are extra special, so you have to send for them. Over the internet.’

  Jo looked at the number of International Units contained in each tablet. These alone were giving him more than the recommended maximum daily allowance of vitamin D, even if he had taken only one tablet a day, but as almost all of the other multivitamins he was taking also contained smaller doses of vitamin D, he was well into toxic dose levels.

  By the time Jo had been through all the supplements he was taking, she calculated that he was ingesting an average of more than ten times the daily allowance of a number of vitamins and nearer fifteen times the dose of Vitamin D. Every day.

  ‘I think you have been taking too many vitamins, Mr Herring.’ Jo explained.

  ‘But they are what keep me fit and well,’ he protested.

  Jo avoided pointing out that he could hardly describe his current condition as fit and well.

  ‘I know they are good for you, but only in the recommended daily dosages. Any substance can become a poison if you take too much and you have definitely been taking too much.’

  Jo took a blood sample to formally confirm her diagnosis of Vitamin D poisoning and went out into the living room where the neigh- bour had given up pretending to clean and was openly listening.

  ‘Do you know where I would find a plastic carrier bag?’ Jo asked her. Having been pointed in the right direction, Jo took an old super- market bag from a drawer, returned to the bedroom and loaded all the bottles of pills and potions into the carrier.

  ‘I’m taking these with me,’ she told Mr Herring, firmly. ‘I don’t want you to take anything. Absolutely no vitamin pills, do you un- derstand?’ She waited for a moment, until he reluctantly nodded his agreement. ‘I want you to drink plenty and eat normally if you can and, once I have your blood test result, I’ll talk to the hospital to see if they think we need to admit you for a few days to make sure, or whether we can safely leave you at home to recover with the help of your neighbour.’

  Jo went into the kitchen and also removed a number of powders that were marketed as food supplements of one sort or another and added them to the already stuffed bag.

  She returned to the bedroom and showed Mr Herring the bag. ‘And no food supplements either. Let’s get this lot out of your

  system and then I will suggest a sensible regimen for you. Okay?’ Mr Herring was fortunately feeling too weak to argue, so he just nodded his head again and watched as Jo walked past Mrs Caldwell, who was unlikely to get any better entertainment today, and let herself out.

  Back at the surgery, and with Mr Herring’s blood samples safely on the way to the lab, Jo searched out Richard.

  ‘I’ve just been to see Mr Herring.’ She told him, unable to disguise just how cross she was.

  ‘I heard he’d been asking for a visit,’ said Richard. ‘I would have gone myself but I had a reflective practice session with Dr Grantham.’ He clearly thought that Jo was angry because he hadn’t taken the visit himself. And she was cross, as much with herself for not working it out earlier as she was with him. Although, as she pointed out to him, he had been to see Mr Herring at home so she felt he should have noticed the array of pills and potions he was taking. But mostly, she was cross with Mr Herring, for once more wasting valuable NHS time.

  ‘Vitamin D poisoning?’ Richard looked blank.

  Jo shook the carrier bag at him to show him the magnitude of the problem.

  ‘In here,’ she told him, ‘I have enough vitamin pills to kill a horse, let alone a man.’

  She handed the bag to Richard and he looked inside, then back at Jo, speechless with surprise.

  ‘Amongst other things, he was taking fifteen times the daily limit of Vitamin D. I dropped an urgent blood sample off at the lab. Can you check with the on-call medical registrar and see if we need to admit him? Or can we let him detox at home now that I’ve confiscated his drug hoard.’

  Richard merely nodded as Jo hurried off to her clinic.

  Chapter 22

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ Billy laughed. ‘He cannot seriously have taken that much Vitamin D.’

  ‘Oh, but he did. You know, it’s a common belief that if a small amount of something is good for you, then a lot must be even better.’ As the night was quite chill, they were sitting at a corner table in The Stag, a comfortable distance from the open fire, having a drink to unwind after their respective long days. Jo was getting a few odd looks from locals who seemed to think that she was being unfaithful to Kate by sitting at their favourite table with someone else, but Jo knew that Kate wouldn’t mind. In fact, she would positively encourage her friend to have a drink with a man, and preferably do a lot more than that,

  although, again preferably, not in the pub.

  ‘Yes, but this wasn’t just a lot, it was bucket loads. He must have been popping pills like crazy.’

  Jo could see the funny side too, but for her there was also a serious lesson.

  ‘It would have been hard for him to take a dose that high if he’d stuck to what is available and licensed for sale on the High Street. The problem really began when he ordered stuff online. He was able to get a formulation that was so strong, a single tablet was an overdose.’

  Billy shook his head in dismay.

  ‘There’s so little regulation. Mind you, it gives me something else to check when I’m doing a post mortem. I’ll have to remember to check vitamin levels.’

  ‘And from now on, whenever I tell a patient with a poor diet that a vitamin tablet might be a good idea, I will emphasise the fact that they should only take one!’

  Billy smiled and pointed to her nearly empty glass of wine. ‘Wine?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  While he was at the bar, Jo marvelled at how easy conversation seemed to be with Billy. There seemed to be no side to him. He said what he meant, clearly, and didn’t hint or expect her to read his mind, unlike a lot of people she knew. He had rung and asked her out for a drink. Just like that. No beating about the bush. No worrying about what people would think, how it would affect their working relation- ship. He said that he liked her company, and, she realised, she liked his, too. That didn’t stop her having anxieties about going out with someone she had to work with, though. It had caused permanent damage in the past. She could never again speak directly to the senior Obs and Gynae consultant after a disastrous affair with him, and it would remain the case for the foreseeable future – unless he decided to le
ave the area and someone new, untainted by history, took over the post. At one point, she had seriously considered leaving the area her- self until Kate, dear Kate, had talked some sense into her, persuading her that would be tantamount to running away, which was okay, and letting him win, which wasn’t.

  Jo put all these thoughts firmly out of her head when Billy returned with their wine. After all, he hadn’t even asked her out yet, not really, just for coffee and for a drink, neither of which were Jo’s idea of a proper date.

  ‘So, have you come to any more conclusions about the lawyers?’ he asked as they sipped their wine.

  ‘Not really.’ Jo gave it some thought because an idea had been slow- ly working its way around her brain and before she knew it, she was confiding in him. ‘There has to be a connection and all along the police and I have had a difference of opinion on that. They seem to think that it must have something to do with a previous criminal case and are concentrating on all the criminals that Ms Ponting has ever prosecut- ed and that Giles has defended, but I’m not so sure. The actual crimes, with the sexual elements and the humiliation involved – I think that means it must have something to do with sexual harassment and pro- fessional complaints. Particularly knowing the people involved.’

  ‘But why can’t you both be right?’ Billy asked her. ‘I mean it could be a sexual case, or even cases. We all know how hard they are to prove, or even get enough evidence to bring to court. Perhaps these persons were never even charged and your perpetrator thinks the CPS should have tried harder to do that.’

  ‘Of course!’ It was such a simple and logical explanation, Jo couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it. Or that Miller hadn’t either. Jo stood up.

  ‘You are brilliant!’ She gave a him a quick kiss and ran for the door, leaving him looking both pleased and more than a little bewildered.

  The right house was easy to recognise from the television footage on the news and as Jo approached, slightly out of breath from the brisk walk, she was pleased to see that the press had moved on. They were no longer hanging around Doreen Ponting’s home in the hope of a photograph of the fallen woman, because that was exactly the way she had been painted by the media. There was no question in any of their minds that she was some sort of a pervert and drug user. In all the news items and articles, they had left no room for discussion about the possibility of her being innocent, of having been framed. The pho- tos showed her as drunk, drugged and in a state of undress, and even worse, in a place known for dogging. That was good enough for the press to pronounce her guilty, and it certainly sold a lot of papers.