Most of the men had been wearing track suit bottoms or jeans, with T-shirts and cheap jackets. All bar one had been shoeless when found, and he had only had one cheap trainer left on. A box of shoes, clothes and other artifacts found on the beaches close to where the bodies had been washed up, revealed an assortment of footwear, mainly trainers and sandals, both male and female, some of which might possibly have belonged to the immigrants. There were also the remnants of several life jackets of a similar make to those found on the bodies, more than the number of bodies found, suggesting that not only had some lost theirs in the water, others might not have been wearing them at all. Those bodies might take a while longer to be found, if ever.
When Callie got to the box containing the clothes found on the body that she was beginning to think of as hers, body number nine, she carefully spread them out on the table. Parton stopped to watch her.
The red checked shirt was battered and torn, and the label was hard to make out. Callie was pretty sure it said ‘Atmosphere’. She hunted out the washing instruction label on the side seam. It gave both British and European sizes and the information on the garment was in a variety of European languages.
“I think Atmosphere is one of the Primark ranges,” Parton told her as he looked over her shoulder at the label.
Callie was disappointed. She knew that the make was widely available around the world, and that he could have bought or been given the shirt anywhere.
She turned her attention to the jeans. It wasn’t clear if they had been damaged by the waves or if they had been artfully torn as a fashion statement. These too were of a ubiquitous make and offered no definitive evidence for Callie to take to Miller. There was nothing to distinguish her man from the others. Even a search of the pockets proved that the forensic team had missed nothing.
With a sigh, Callie gave up. This had been a complete waste of time, both hers and that of the coroner’s officer.
“Sorry, Mike.”
“No problem, I needed to check them anyway.”
She knew he was just being polite and it made her feel worse.
As they walked back to their cars through the main reception area of the laboratory, Callie saw Lisa Furnow coming into the building from the staff parking area, looking as pale as ever.
“Hi, Lisa,” Callie called across the reception area.
Lisa looked up quickly at hearing her name, and she dropped the files she was holding in. Callie and Parton hurried over to help her collect the papers that had fallen out of them.
“Sorry,” Callie said as she picked up a number of what looked to be lab reports. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Lisa snatched the papers from Callie and Parton, jamming them into the files in no particular order.
“It’s okay. Thanks, I’ll sort it,” she said, stuffing the last few sheets of paper held out by Parton into a random file and hurrying to the staff entrance door, almost dropping the files again as she swiped her ID card and pushed through the door to the rear of the building.
Parton and Callie looked at each other and Parton shrugged.
“I’ve seen people happier to see me,” Callie said.
“Perhaps she was just in a hurry,” he suggested.
Callie thought that it was more than that, but said nothing. They began to leave again but Callie stopped. She could see a piece of paper that had travelled further than most of the others Lisa had dropped, and was now under one of the chairs by the window. She knelt down and reached under the chair, trying not to think of how inelegant she probably looked, scrabbling around on the floor. The paper was just out of reach and she had to push the chair back to get to it. Finally, she got enough of a grip on it to pull it out.
Having managed to stand up again without too much of a loss of dignity, Callie turned to take it to the reception desk so that it could be given back to Lisa. She glanced at it as she walked and then stopped in her tracks.
The top of the paper had the distinctive logo of a group known as FNM. Callie had heard of the First National Movement. It was a hate-ridden group, devoted to ‘keeping Britain British’. And white. The group had been behind a number of stunts that targeted immigrants. Their erstwhile leader, Darren Dixon, or Dazza as his hero-worshipping followers called him, was currently in prison having been found guilty of contempt of court. Callie thought that it was probably the least of his crimes.
The paper appeared to be a badly printed information sheet, detailing a meeting that was due to take place the coming weekend. It seemed that the death of the immigrants, or at least the ‘thwarting of their plot to invade the south coast’ as the leaflet put it, was a cause for celebration.
Callie, infuriated by what she read, was about to crumple the sheet up when Parton, who had got the gist of it reading over her shoulder, took it from her.
“I think Inspector Miller might be interested in this,” he said. “Forewarned is fore-armed, so to speak.”
Callie happily let him take the paper. She hoped Miller would be able to do something about it, preferably stop the meeting or at least throw everyone who turned up into jail, but she knew
