She was still excited by the news, even if Billy seemed less so.
“He could have been one of the smugglers,” she said. “Perhaps he was supposed to steer the boat, get them safely to the shore.”
“It’s possible, I suppose, and in which case he didn’t do a very good job.”
“Have any of the others had tattoos?”
“A couple. Just bits of the Koran, that sort of thing. Nothing easily identifiable like family names.”
Billy yawned.
“Well, if you’ve suggested they check mispers, that’s the best we can do for now.” She stroked his shoulder. There was no way she’d manage to get to sleep with all these thoughts whirring through her head, not unless she had something to distract her.
“Time for bed?” she asked. “Or are you too tired?”
“Never,” he said, and grinned.
* * *
Callie spent a long and boring Sunday morning cleaning her flat and sorting her laundry whilst Billy was back at work writing his reports on the post-mortems he had performed the day before. Cleaning always helped Callie organise her thoughts. The repetitive and simple tasks allowed her mind to wander, and wander it did.
The tattoo on body number nine’s leg bothered her, that and Kate’s query about why he had been found further to the west than expected. Her glib explanation that he must have been caught on the rocks and had been there a couple of days, now seemed something of an assumption.
Bathroom sparkling and fresh sheets on the bed, Callie stopped her cleaning to make a call to the incident room. She knew there would be someone there, the team were working flat out to try and find and identify the bodies being washed up, not to mention the smugglers who had left them to die.
To Callie’s relief, Jayne Hales, a detective sergeant she had worked with on a number of occasions, picked up the phone.
“Hi, Jayne, it’s Callie. I just wondered if I could get a couple of details for my report on the body found at Fairlight? I seem to have forgotten to get them at the time.”
“Sure, fire away, Doc.” Jayne was her usual helpful self and Callie quickly had the name and contact details of the man who had found the body.
“He was out beachcombing and found a little more than he bargained for,” Jayne told her.
That was something of an understatement, Callie thought.
When she called him, the beachcomber sounded like he had already been drinking and Callie couldn’t blame him, finding the body must have been distressing. It was always hard, even for someone like her, who was used to death.
“It was just awful,” he told her. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go there again.”
Callie could sympathise with that.
“Did you walk there often?” she asked. “Before that evening?”
“Of course. That’s my bit of beach. Everyone knows that.”
“Your bit?”
“For detecting. Pett Level to Fairlight Cove. I’m part of a group of local detectorists, we all have our own areas, so we don’t tread on each other’s toes, so to speak. That was mine. I’ll have to ask if I can change. Perhaps they’ll give me a sandier bit, you find more on sandy bits, generally. Coins and rings and that, and it’s easier going, so you can cover a larger area.”
Callie had no idea that the people she often saw out on the beaches with their metal detectors were that organised, but it was probably a good thing. She was in favour of anything that reduced conflicts.
“So, how often do, did, you walk that stretch?”
“Every day, of course. You’d be amazed at what you can find.”
Like bodies, she thought, only you didn’t usually need a metal detector to find them.
“You had walked that stretch of coast the day before?”
“That’s right. Every day.”
“And the body wasn’t there then?”
“No. Of course not.” He sounded suitably scandalised at the suggestion. “I’d have reported it then, if it was.”
Callie hesitated before asking her next question, she didn’t want to upset the man after all.
“Are you absolutely sure you would have seen it? Could you have missed it?”
“Never! I am very thorough! I make sure I cover every inch of the shoreline.”
Oh dear, she really had upset him.
Once she had placated the poor man, and assured him that she wasn’t in any way insinuating that he was slipshod, Callie grabbed her jacket and headed down to the seafront, or more specifically, the net huts.
These tall, black-painted, wooden buildings were the traditional places for fisherman to dry their nets and were a feature of the old town. As she wound her way through the tourists taking photographs and buying fresh fish, Callie looked for Old George, a man who epitomised old Hastings and its fishing industry. He had worked on the boats from a very young age, much younger than was legal even in those days, but now in his eighties, he just sat by his hut, telling stories to anyone who would listen.
“Hello, George,” Callie said as she sat on a rickety chair beside him. She had come prepared with two cups of takeaway tea, one laced with a liberal amount of sugar. She pretended not to notice when he took the cup and added a slug of brown liquid from a bottle by his side. With all the sugar and alcohol in the cup, it was a wonder he could taste the tea at all.
After ten minutes or so of polite conversation, asking about his health, his family and allowing him to tell one his interminable stories about the bad old days, Callie got down to business.
“These bodies washing up on the beach, George.”
“Terrible thing that. Terrible.”
“Yes,” she
