#YouToo Read online

  Title page

  #YouToo

  Book 3 in the Jocasta Hughes Mysteries

  by

  Candy Denman

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Copyright

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  #YouToo © Candy Denman

  ISBN 978-1-9125631-4-2

  eISBN 978-1-9125631-5-9

  Published in 2019 by Crime Scene Books

  The right of Candy Denman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP record of this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

  Cover design by blacksheep-uk.com

  Crime Scene Books is an imprint of Harding Book Publishing Company Ltd

  Dedication

  For Bob, I really don’t want to know where you get your ideas from...

  Acknowledgements

  With thanks to everyone at Crime Scene Books for publishing this third outing for Dr Jocasta Hughes and especially to Sarah for setting me on the right path when I strayed and for not nagging too much when I missed deadlines.

  Thanks also to my excellent beta readers, Bob, Chris and Alex without whom this book would have considerably more mistakes, and also thanks to Dick Cartmel for his advice on GP procedures and coroners.

  Lastly, I would thank my family for encouraging me to write so often, although I rather think it’s because they enjoy the peace and quiet it gives them.

  Prologue

  He stops to adjust the strap of the leather harness that is cutting into his shoulder and distracting him from his pleasure. Finally satisfied that everything is perfect, he hangs suspended from a hook on the back of the solid wood door, with a studded belt around his neck. The belt is cutting in and reducing the flow of oxygen to his brain, not completely, but enough to enhance the length and depth of an orgasm. He has the segment of orange in his mouth, gripped between his teeth, already primed with amyl nitrate, and ready to bite and suck when he climaxes. He is close now. He grunts as he masturbates, slowly increasing the pace. He is nearly there. As his orgasm reaches its peak, he leans forward to tighten the belt around his neck, cutting off the blood supply to his brain even more and then bites down on the orange segment. He writhes in ecstasy as his hand reaches up to the release clip on the harness, just aware enough to know he needs to free himself the moment the orgasm ends. At last it begins to subside. He is on the verge of losing consciousness as his fingers close around the clasp, pressing the release button. It doesn’t open. He panics, struggles to stand, trying to release the pressure on his neck, but his legs have gone soft, they no longer have the power to raise his body and take the weight off the belt around his neck. He tries one more time, fingers scrabbling at the unresponsive clip, body jerking with the effort of trying to stand up, before he gives up, and slumps, defeated, fading into unconsciousness as nature take its course, and his life.

  Chapter 1

  Over the buzz of her electric toothbrush, Jo heard the strains of Mozart’s 40th and realised that her mobile must be ringing somewhere in the flat. She hurriedly spat in the basin, grabbed a hand towel and went into the living room, wiping her mouth as she ran.

  ‘Dr Hughes speaking,’ she said as soon as she had swiped to accept the call and then caught her breath. Clamping the phone in place with her shoulder, she pulled her dressing gown more closely round her and tightened the knotted belt, not because she was worried about anyone catching a glimpse of her body, her windows were not overlooked, but more because it made her feel more professional to be, if not properly dressed, at least decent. Ready for whatever work the day brought.

  ‘Mike Parton here, Dr Hughes. We’ve had a sudden death reported at 20 B, Winslow Gardens, St Leonards.’

  Mike Parton was the Coroner’s Officer. An ex-policeman, who al- ways wore a plain black suit and matching black tie, so that his clothing, as well as his demeanour, was like that of a funeral director. He was undeniably well-suited to his work.

  ‘Any other information?’ she asked and there was a slight pause. She knew Mike hated to tell her anything; that he wanted her to arrive at the location without any preconceived ideas, but Jo found it helped to prepare mentally for whatever she was about to see. It also gave her the chance to make sure she had all the necessary equipment, like menthol rub to cover the smell of decomposition from an over-ripe corpse.

  ‘Probable auto-erotic asphyxiation last night.’

  Jo grimaced, but at least the body was fresh. In general, she was fine with the macabre and distressing details of a sudden death. It was the family that always got to her. The people left behind, shocked and unprepared. At times there would be bewilderment: Why? How? At others, intense grief, or worse, indifference, but almost always there would be some loss of dignity, for both the deceased and their survivors. There had to be a post mortem, and an inquest, often with as- pects of the deceased’s life that would have been better kept hidden than being paraded for all to hear, and then printed in the local newspaper for anyone who had missed it to read. Sudden death usually caught people at a bad moment, but sudden death during sex, whilst many would argue that it was a good way to go, definitely caught you at a very bad moment. There was little room for dignity, particularly if it was during an unnatural or unusual sexual act. There was little chance that it could be kept out of the press. The last actions of this poor man were going to be headline news for weeks to come, dying down eventually, only to be brought back up again, resurrected and rehashed, at the inquest. His surviving relatives, friends and colleagues were going to have a very difficult time ahead.

  Sex was also the one area of her work as a forensic physician that could still make Jo feel uncomfortable, embarrassed and angry at her colleagues. It wasn’t that she had a problem with sex, far from it, it was just that most policemen, when confronted with the heady mix of sex and death, would use it as an opportunity to wheel out every crass, sexist and/or homophobic bad joke in their repertoire. Jo knew Mike felt the same and she hoped that he would have the policeman under strict control by the time she arrived.

  ‘I’ll meet you there,’ she told him and ended the call before im- mediately going to her contacts to find the number she wanted. It was number one on her speed dial. There were only two numbers she called regularly enough to be allocated a speed dial code, her day job and her best friend Kate.

  ‘Hi Linda, it’s Jo.’

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. It�
��s a sudden death. Hopefully won’t be too late, but…’ Jo listened to the long and heart-felt sigh coming from Linda’s end of the phone. Crying off a fully booked surgery because of her other work with the police was an unfortunately too frequent occur- rence, and she knew it. At least examining a prisoner’s injuries could be made to fit round a surgery, checking they were fit to interview was a quick in-and-out, while taking blood from drunk drivers usually happened out of surgery hours. However, a sudden death was different. It might take half an hour, or it might take much, much longer. ‘Sorry,’ she said again, even though she knew it didn’t help, at all. ‘I’ll cancel as many as I can and see who I can palm the others off on.’ Linda sounded resigned to the inevitable. She was a good practice manager, but it was a hard job, and Jo certainly didn’t make it any easier.

  ‘Thanks, and tell Gauri I’ll take some of her visits to make up for it.’ Jo knew that Dr Sinha was the only one of her colleagues who would agree to take any of her patients; the others all resented being asked to help when she was called out by the Coroner’s office. They wanted her to give up her part-time hobby, as they saw it, and concentrate fully on her job as a real doctor, a local General Practitioner, with all the responsibilities that brought with it: her patients, her colleagues, her staff. Jo knew they were right. Every time she ditched them in favour of a corpse, she was letting them down, all of them, but what could she say? She loved the buzz.

  When she arrived at the address Mike had given her, and parked in the space he had thoughtfully saved for her with a traffic cone, Jo saw that it was part of an elegant Victorian terrace. The majority of the houses had long-since been split into flats, and as she was looking for number 20 B, she had guessed that the house she was looking for was one of them. She smoothed down her tailored shirt and made sure it was securely tucked into her suit trousers. She had already removed her jacket and intended to leave it safely in her car. She had deliber- ately dressed in clothing that was machine washable, but she would still try her best to keep it uncontaminated by death, or at least bodily fluids. She pulled her long blonde hair back into a clip and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. Not only did she mean to get as little of the scene as possible onto herself, she wanted to prevent any transfer of herself onto the scene. She never knew when a supposedly natural death could turn out to be anything but. That was what she was there for, to make that first call on the death: natural, if unexpected, or suspicious. Once she gave her opinion that an apparently natural death might be suspicious, then the full forensic circus was wheeled out, with all its subsequent cost implications for the police, so she had to be careful, careful not to instigate full investigations for too many innocent and natural deaths but equally careful not to miss any possible murders or manslaughters.

  Dr Jocasta Harriet Hughes MBChB MRCGP DipFMS, part-time local General Practitioner and part-time Forensic Physician for the Hastings police. Dr Hughes to her patients, and Jo to her friends, never Jock. Absolutely, categorically never Jock. Tall and slim, elegant, in an understated, natural way; her straight, shoulder-length, blonde hair kept neatly away from her face with a clip. Cool, precise, well-ordered, in looks and in life. With just a hint of fire, a slight glint in her eye, a slight twitch at the corner of her mouth, that let you know there was a lot more going on than she was prepared to let out from under that steely exterior.

  She rang the bell marked B and noted that the house appeared to have been split into only three flats, whereas some she had passed had five or six bells next to the front door. She was let into the front hall by a young constable she didn’t recognise and then a woman who looked to be in her late thirties, overweight and dressed in the sort of clothes that were made for comfort rather than looks, appeared out from the ground floor flat holding a mug of tea and a plate of chocolate biscuits. The constable hesitated and Jo realised that he was uncertain whether he should accept them in front of her.

  ‘Don’t mind me. It could be a long morning.’

  He gratefully took the tea and a couple of the biscuits, nodding his thanks to the woman as he shoved in most of a hobnob.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ The woman asked Jo, who politely declined.

  ‘I’d better go on up.’ Jo looked questioningly at the constable.

  ‘It’s on the first floor.’ He indicated the stairs, trying not to choke on the biscuit, but clearly not intending to follow her up. ‘They’re ex- pecting you. I’d better stay with the lady who found the body,’ he ex- plained, glancing into the ground floor flat where Jo could see a tearful young woman clasping a mug to her chest as the older woman fussed around her. Jo was glad the constable was staying in the hall, even if it was only because the young woman was pretty and distressed. At least she wouldn’t have too big an audience inside the flat and it was only as she mounted the stairs, she wondered who he was referring to when he said ‘they’.

  At the top of the stairs, the large and solid original door from the hallway was open and she went into the drawing room and looked around. It was always good to get a feel for a place before examining the body. The room was high-ceilinged and elegant, in both the archi- tecture and furnishing style. This was an expensively tasteful home, if a little old-fashioned in style. Her gaze moved round, taking in the orig- inal but uninspired artwork on the walls, the heavy brocade curtains, Mike, standing by a second doorway talking to Detective Inspector Steve Miller. Jo hesitated as she felt a sudden lurch in her stomach. Whatever else, she hadn’t expected to see Steve here, and wherever Steve was -

  ‘Looks like one of them rubber chickens you see in joke shops.’ Detective Sergeant Bob Jeffries came through the doorway, older than his boss, with his ginger hair now grey, Jeffries had no time for political correctness or diplomacy and knew that he would never be promoted as a result. ‘Proper trussed up like one, and all, boss. Oh, hello, Dr Hughes,’ he said with a grin as he noticed Jo. ‘Prepare yourself, the pervert’s not a pretty sight.’

  Steve Miller and Mike Parton both turned to look at her and Jo could feel the burning sensation rising up from her chest, the hot flush of red climbing up her neck and, yes, finally reaching her cheeks. If Steve Miller managed to make her feel like a schoolgirl with a crush, his constantly politically incorrect bagman, and sergeant, Bob Jeffries, was guaranteed to get even further under her skin. And not in a good way.

  ‘What are you two doing here?’ she asked, rather too curtly, in an attempt to hide her embarrassment.

  ‘What’s the matter, Doc? Aren’t you pleased to see us?’ Jeffries asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Hughes,’ Mike Parton quickly cut in, coming towards her. ‘But once the location was out, this was bound to happen.’ ‘He’s known to the police then?’ she directed her question to Mike, rather than either of the two detectives; she wasn’t ready to speak to them just yet. She needed more time to prepare herself, and to get her head straight.

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s well-known to us.’ Miller was speaking to her, so she had no choice but to turn and look at him. He was just as handsome as she remembered; the slight bend in his nose, the result of an ancient rugby injury, the feathery lines around each eye, irises a deep, rich ha- zel with a touch of amber, the slight dimple at each side of his mouth. He was looking at her, as intently as she was looking at him, concern written all over his face. Jo gave herself a mental shake and brought herself back to the scene. She could not let him see that finding him here, meeting him when she was unprepared, was in any way a problem. She had to work with the man and still maintain her professionalism, if nothing else. She took a deep breath.

  ‘This isn’t the sort of place I’d expect an old lag to live.’ She ges- tured at the opulent room.

  ‘No, but it’s exactly the sort of place you’d expect a lying bastard criminal defence lawyer to own.’ It was Jeffries who answered her, inevitably. ‘I had to come and check he was really dead.’

  In the bedroom, Jo approached the body. It was hanging by the neck from a short chain attached to a solid-look
ing hook on the back of the door that lead into the bathroom. She tried to hide her disgust as she checked the dead man for a radial pulse. She couldn’t get to the carot- ids because of what looked like a studded leather dog collar around his neck and attached to his bondage harness. There was no pulse and she let his arm drop, accidentally setting the body into motion. It was hard to ignore the slight wave of his genitalia hanging flaccidly from the open crotch of his tight PVC shorts as the body swayed, or the smell of body fluids released at the moment of death that wafted from them. She was just glad that it wasn’t her job to undress him for the Post Mortem. She took out her stethoscope and found a place between the straps and paraphernalia where she could listen to his chest whilst steadying his body with her other hand. She could hear no heart beat or breath sounds.

  ‘Death confirmed,’ she said quietly. Mike took out his notebook, writing down the time death was pronounced and who by, for the record.

  ‘I think I could’ve told you that.’ Jeffries said as Mike gave him a reproving look, but there was no stopping Jeffries’ mouth, as Jo knew only too well.

  She stepped back, away from the smell, and looked at the body in situ. It was hard to see his face under the rubber mask, but judging by the greying hair and the incipient paunch hanging over the waistband of his shorts, he was a well-nourished, middle-aged man. His home was spacious and expensively furnished, situated in by no means the cheap end of town. What made an obviously successful and otherwise intelligent man do stuff like this? Jo asked herself. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the answer.

  As soon as she had pronounced death and stepped back, the pho- tographer had gone back to work, taking pictures not only of the body, but also of a segment of orange, slightly chewed, that was lying on the floor, just below him.