“He was the one found on Fairlight Beach, at a time when other bodies were being found further east. He was wearing clothes that could have been English in origin, and he had a tattoo of an English football club crest.”
Again, Lisa said nothing.
“He was chock full of expensive drugs: cocaine, ketamine−”
Lisa looked up, surprised by that.
“I know that none of these things mean that he is English, that he isn’t one of the migrants, necessarily, but it’s enough, together, to make me want to be sure that he really is one of them, or at least, one of the people from the boat.”
“You think he might be one of the smugglers?” Lisa asked.
Callie realised that she definitely had Lisa’s interest with that.
“I don’t know,” Callie admitted. “That’s my point. We can’t know, definitively, not unless we find the proof, and at the moment, no one is looking. DI Miller is over in France, trying to find the traffickers. Mike Parton from the coroner’s office is working with the incident team identifying the bodies, but they are working on the premise that they are all migrants.
“And what if this guy isn’t?”
“Exactly.”
“So, you think he’s one of the traffickers?”
“Not necessarily.” Callie hesitated. “What if he isn’t from the boat?” For the first time, Callie actually voiced what she had felt could be true for some time. “What if he has nothing to do with this at all?”
“What? He just happened to drown on a beach right in the middle of a major incident like this, something that has never happened before? Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Or a deliberate act.”
Lisa looked sceptical as well she might.
“Where better to hide a body than in plain sight,” Callie explained.
“You think this man” – Lisa waved the picture at Callie – “was murdered and his body just added to the ones that were being found on a daily basis anyway?”
“Yes.”
“Genius.”
Callie looked at the photographer in surprise.
“You’ve got to admit, it is bloody clever, isn’t it?” Lisa added.
“If I’m right and it is what happened, I suppose it is,” Callie said. “I hadn’t really thought about it like that.”
Lisa was studying the picture intently.
“I’ll go through my photos and see if there’s a better one to tidy up. Do we know what colour his eyes are, because I’m betting they aren’t bright blue like on here?” She waggled the photo Nugent had sent.
“I can find out for you,” Callie said, then hesitated before adding, “Lisa, about, the um, rally? Did you get in a fight?” Callie indicated her black eye. “Did one of the FNM thugs, or the police…”
Lisa looked at the floor, her lips a tight line; she clearly wasn’t going to say.
“It’s none of my business, right?”
“That’s right, Dr Hughes.” Lisa stood abruptly. “It is none of your business.”
Chapter 17
Callie was having a quiet moment between patients. A rare thing, and one to be savoured. She was leaning back in her chair, reading the local paper, drinking a mug of instant coffee and munching a plain chocolate digestive. What could be better? The news for a start, Callie thought.
The paper was full of the raid on a local shop where thousands of packets of counterfeit cigarettes should have been found. Unfortunately, none were. The shopkeepers were “helping with enquiries” but Callie was astounded, and embarrassed, that there had been nothing illegal to find in the shop. Had she been wrong? But then, it wasn’t just her who had been wrong. The information hadn’t actually come from her in the end, it had come from Kate’s client, who was now not going to be able to use it to shorten his sentence.
Kate said he was as stunned as she had been when she heard. She assumed the mere fact of his arrest had caused the smugglers to change their distribution centre. Either that or they had heard about the raid somehow. Callie quickly went over her conversation with Billy in the restaurant, but she was sure no one had overheard. If they had got wind of the raid, it seemed more likely someone in the police let it slip. She sincerely hoped it was accidental rather than Claybourne having a source there, but she wouldn’t put anything past him.
The article didn’t mention any arrests other than the owner of the shop, though, and he would be out in no time if there was no evidence. Callie took another sip of coffee and thought about that. The police were now very much involved, which was a good thing, and they would hopefully put pressure on the shopkeeper as well as the van driver to tell them where the goods came from and who was the person behind it all. She finished her biscuit with a little sigh of pleasure and chucked the paper in the bin. Even if there was no evidence against the shopkeepers and the smugglers, they had, at the very least, been inconvenienced. With a bit of luck, they might even decide to cut their losses and stop smuggling cigarettes altogether. Or they might have to step up the operation to cover the losses. Either way, there was nothing more she could do, she’d done her bit to get the cigarettes off the market, and help Kate’s client. She had to be satisfied with that.
It wasn’t until later, when she was upstairs tackling her never-ending paperwork, that her day went even further downhill.
Anna Thompson had not turned up at the asthma clinic according to Judy, and David Morris had been admitted to hospital with serious injuries including several broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.
* * *
Despite it being her afternoon off, Callie felt she needed to do two visits before heading home. First stop
