VITAL SIGNS
Bodies in the English Channel spell trouble for the stubborn doctor
CANDY DENMAN
Published by
THE BOOK FOLKS
London, 2020
© Candy Denman
Polite note to the reader
This book is written in British English except where fidelity to other languages or accents is appropriate.
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We hope you enjoy the book.
VITAL SIGNS is the fourth book by Candy Denman to feature police doctor Callie Hughes. Though part of a series, it can be fully enjoyed as a standalone.
The full list of novels in the series is as follows:
DEAD PRETTY
BODY HEAT
GUILTY PARTY
VITAL SIGNS
Further details about these books can be found at the end of this one.
All of Candy’s books are available FREE with Kindle Unlimited and in paperback.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
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Prologue
He fights and struggles, scratching and pulling, trying to free himself from the cold, cold water that keeps dragging him deeper. He kicks off his shoes, to stop them dragging him down. He is hit by something? A paddle? A person? The boat? He goes under. Which way is up? He is no longer sure. He sees a glint. Moonlight on the water? He tries to reach it but something is holding him down. He breaks free, takes a gulp of air, but is then pushed down again, losing the battle, getting weaker. So tired. He just wants to sleep. Instinct tells him to keep trying, his life depends on it, but it is too late. He has no strength left. Finally, he breathes in and water fills his empty lungs. Only then does he stop struggling completely, and allows his body and mind to drift, and the light fade. Letting go. Dying.
Chapter 1
The sun was glinting on the water and the waves lapping gently against the shore as Callie pulled herself up onto the fishing boat. It had been hauled up onto the beach like all the others, to either side, looking awkward, like fish out of water. Hastings’ fleet of beach-launched fishing boats was the largest in the country and it wasn’t the first time Callie had been called upon to pronounce death. The last time it was a crew member hit by a loose piece of equipment in a storm, this time was rather different.
Dressed in her crime scene protective suit, Callie knelt down by the nets to see what, or rather who, they had hauled up with the fish. It was a formality for her to check for a pulse, he had been dead a few days. Seaweed masked some of the damage to his head, but the fish had nibbled at softer, juicier bits – his eyes, lips and nose.
Finding no carotid pulse, she tried for a radial one, and again found none. She used a stethoscope to listen to his chest and crouched down, putting her face close to his mouth and nose, but as she expected, there were absolutely no signs of life, just as there hadn’t been on any of the bodies that had washed up on the beaches around Hastings in the last few days. All young men, some no more than boys. All cheaply dressed. All with skins darker than white, the shades varying from the deep black of this young man, to those more indicative of Eastern Mediterranean, Asian and North African origins. All with life jackets on − badly made life jackets that had little or no buoyancy and had patently failed to do their job. Half the straps on this one had broken, leaving the semi-inflated jacket lying around the man’s hips.
Having pronounced death, Callie sat back on her heels.
“Such a waste,” was all she could say.
“No argument there,” Detective Inspector Miller agreed as they both stood back to allow the crime scene photographer, Lisa Furnow, to get her photographs. She was easily recognizable, despite the protective clothing, by the paleness of what skin was visible and her almost translucently white eyebrows and lashes. Like Callie, Lisa seemed to have drawn the short straw and had photographed the scenes of all the bodies washed up in the last few days. It had been a bad week. A very bad week.
Having climbed down from the fishing boat, Miller and Callie walked up the shingle beach, pulling off their masks and gloves, heading to where a hastily constructed exclusion line had been set up. They could see further police vehicles arriving, and an outside broadcast van. The press was already in the town and knew that a collection of police vehicles near the seafront meant another body.
Callie pulled back the hood of her suit. Her blonde hair was tied back in a scrunchie and she checked that it was still in place, hair nice and tidy. She hated to look a mess anywhere, even a crime scene.
“How many is that now?” she asked, as if she didn’t know, hadn’t been counting along with everyone else.
“Eight dead, five found alive.”
“Do we know how many in total were in the boat yet?” Callie asked Miller.
He stopped and turned to her, a look of sadness on his face. As always,
