He was right, of course, but Callie didn’t want to go into why she felt uncomfortable about approaching Lisa Furnow to do more work on the photographs she had taken of the dead. Not now. So she moved onto the news about Miller’s trip to France and the theory that the migrants had been meant to land in Kent.
“Makes sense, not sure that anyone would deliberately send people to land on the beaches round here. The inshore fishing means they are more likely to be spotted apart from anything else.”
Callie agreed. The beach-launched fishing fleet working out of Hastings was the biggest in the country, but further along the coast, towards Dungeness, there were a lot of quieter and safer places to land.
They went on to talk about the cigarette smuggling, Callie anxiously checking the tables around them, making sure no one could overhear, as she told Billy about the planned raid.
“I agree that it’s great that they are about to close this bunch down, or at least that they will hopefully do that, but it’s hard to get worked up about a few smuggled cigarettes when people are being treated in the same way – as a commodity.”
“I know,” Callie agreed with a sigh. “Although, we are talking pretty large sums of money being made from the cigarettes.”
“And from the people smuggling. Not to mention that when they get over here, the migrants are indebted to the smugglers and often end up as modern-day slaves.”
Callie knew he was right, and loved the fact that he cared so much. She stroked his hand.
“Let’s hope they catch the people responsible for that as well.”
Chapter 16
Monday morning, Callie felt rested and ready for whatever the week would bring after a rare weekend off. It didn’t last long.
She arrived at the surgery to find that one of her colleagues had called in sick and Linda the practice manager was busy trying to cancel as many patients as possible and re-allocating the rest to the other doctors. Monday was never a good day for anyone to be off sick because they were quite busy enough already.
Callie could see that she had an extra two patients and a visit by her name, and what was worse, one of the appointments was for Mr Herring, a fussy little man who always had a great list of complaints, but rarely had anything actually wrong with him, at least, nothing wrong that wasn’t actually of his own making.
Waiting for her in her paperwork pile was a prescription request for Anna Thompson; she needed more inhalers, urgently. Callie left a message for Anna to come in and see her, and, reluctantly, a prescription ready for the girl to collect.
Despite her heavier than usual workload, and the usual long discussion with Mr Herring, this time about whether or not he had a gluten intolerance, Callie was not running too late as she tackled her afternoon visits. Of course, she had only found the time to eat a sandwich in her car rather than take a proper lunch break, but as she drove away from the last visit of the afternoon, she realised that she was quite close to the forensic laboratory and on a whim, she went in and asked if Lisa Furnow was back from sick leave.
“She is,” the receptionist told her. “Would you like me to let her know you are here?”
“Yes, please,” Callie replied, although she was unsure if it was the right tactic. If Lisa didn’t want to see her, it gave her ample time to nip out the back or just ask a colleague to say she had left for the day. On the other hand, Callie didn’t really have much choice, she couldn’t spend the rest of the day waiting in the car park for Lisa to come out.
To Callie’s surprise, Lisa came down to reception.
“You wanted to see me?” she said as she approached Callie. She looked worried, as well she might, Callie thought. She’d used a liberal amount of make-up but the remnants of a black eye were still visible. The natural pallor of the young woman’s skin meant that it was hard to miss, and must have been considerably worse in the first days after it happened. No wonder she had taken time off sick, it would have been hard to explain away.
“I wanted to thank you,” Callie said. “For hauling me to my feet that night.”
“It was nothing.”
“Yes, it was, I could have been trampled.”
“Is that it?” Lisa tucked a strand of her blond hair behind her ears, before remembering the black eye and looking embarrassed.
“Did you get that at the rally?” Callie asked.
“I need to get back.” Lisa turned to leave.
Callie held out a copy of the photograph Nugent had emailed her to stop her going.
“I wanted to ask for your help,” she said and gave Lisa what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I needed a sanitised photograph of the man found on Fairlight Beach, so that I can take it round and see if anyone recognises him. That” – she pointed at the photograph in Lisa’s hand – “is the best effort from the police.”
Lisa examined the poorly touched-up photo.
“It’s pretty crap,” Lisa said.
“Yes, it’s not very good, is it? I thought you could almost certainly do better.”
“I should bloody well hope so.”
“And would you do it for me?”
Lisa looked at her and hesitated before answering.
“Why are you trying to identify that particular body, Dr Hughes?”
Callie hesitated and Lisa led her over to some seats by the main door and they sat down.
“Because he doesn’t fit.”
Lisa said nothing, just sat, very still, and
