Callie disagreed about that, but DS Hales was not the person to complain to, she’d save it for when she next saw Miller.
“What about the girl?”
“Well, clearly she wasn’t on the boat, because she was found so much later,” Jayne conceded. “And she didn’t drown. Dead before she went in the water.”
“You’ve had the PM report back already?”
“No, just a brief phone call with that news.”
“So, what’s the theory?” Callie couldn’t hide her interest. “Had she fallen or been pushed off the cliff then?”
“Well–” The policewoman hesitated. “No, they don’t think so. She had no injuries apart from the ones to the head which killed her and the pathologist said there would be more if she had reached the beach that way. Plus, she had definitely been in the sea, so the working theory is that she was dumped overboard from a boat.”
“Like her boyfriend.”
“Yes.”
“It can’t be from the same boat if he came in with the migrants because you have that boat, well, what’s left of it, anyway.”
“Exactly. We’re checking the movement of every fishing and leisure boat along the coast in the forty-eight hours before she was found, as that would cover the probable time of death.”
Callie finally let the sergeant go, she had a lot of work to do, after all, tracking down all the trawlers and yachts that had been out and about that night. But what if the boat didn’t have its transponder switched on, like the boat that dropped off the migrants? Callie knew it was a risk that the coastguard might be sent out to check on them under those circumstances, but if they were not out for long, they might have been able to get there and back, and that was always supposing she had been dumped from a boat big enough to have a transponder. If it was just a small RIB or tender, meant for inshore use, it wouldn’t have one at all.
Callie just had to hope that they were able to track even small boats on the coastguard radar and might be able to see where the boat had come from, if that was the case, but she wasn’t sure that they would.
* * *
Friday, with the promise of a weekend off to look forward to, plus seeing Billy that night and plans to meet Kate at some point, meant that Callie was in a particularly good mood. As she walked towards her consulting room, the last person she had expected to see in the waiting room was Lisa Furnow. Callie was pretty sure she wasn’t even a patient at the practice.
Lisa stood as she saw Callie, so she had been clearly waiting to see her and not anyone else.
“Hi.” Callie glanced at her watch, her first patient was Mr Herring, inevitably, and she could see he was already waiting and watching closely lest someone be given preferential treatment and get in before him. “Follow me,” she said to the crime scene photographer and couldn’t suppress a little smile of satisfaction as she saw the look of outrage on Mr Herring’s face.
“Thank you for seeing me, Dr Hughes,” Lisa said as soon as they were in Callie’s consulting room and the door was closed.
“Not at all, thank you for doing that photograph for me. It really helped.”
“I thought no one recognised it.”
“Well, no, but it helped in that it eliminated him as a local.”
“Okay, good.” Lisa didn’t seem sure how to proceed.
“Although putting the picture on the news hasn’t helped either.”
“So, I heard.”
There were a few moments of silence.
“Tell me what you want to say, Lisa, I have a waiting room full of patients out there.” Not strictly true, but Callie felt she had to hurry things up.
“I’m not a racist,” Lisa blurted out, and Callie resisted the urge to reply that all racists say that. “I was at the rally, just to find out what was going on,” she continued.
“It’s none of my business why you were there, Lisa. I don’t have to remind you that I was there too.”
“Yes, but everyone knows you’ve got an Asian boyfriend, so no one’s going to think you were there that night because you’re a member of the FNM.”
Callie wasn’t surprised it was common knowledge that she was going out with Billy Iqbal.
“Whereas anyone who knows you were there, would?”
Lisa nodded and then shook her head, as well.
“Close friends would know I’m not racist, but others, at work, might think I was. I don’t advertise my views and some of them are… you know, they might think I agreed with them.”
The suggestion seemed to be that there were some FNM sympathisers in the lab, which concerned Callie. If there was a culture of racism, it could affect their work, not to mention any colleagues that were people of colour.
Callie would have liked to ask for more details but Lisa looked miserable and Callie took pity on her. For now.
“So why were you there? What were you hoping to find out?”
“If they had any connections to Claybourne.” Lisa almost spat out the name.
“The FNM? What makes you think he has anything to do with them? Apart from the fact he was at the rally.”
“Because Claybourne’s an evil bastard.”
“Much as I might agree that he’s no saint, why do you think he’s evil? I mean, that’s a very strong word.”
“It’s the only word for him.” Lisa closed her eyes and shook her head, before deciding to tell Callie. “He and my dad were in business together, back when I was a kid. Claybourne tricked my dad out of his half of the arcade. He told everyone he bought my dad out, but he didn’t. My dad got nothing. It ruined him, cost him his marriage
