#YouToo Page 6

  Chapter 6

  Jo was deeply asleep when the phone next to her bed rang, and it took several rings before she realised that the sound was real, not part of her dream. She reached out, groggily, and pulled the receiver under the covers without even opening her eyes. After years of disturbed nights, some doctors perfected the art of becoming immediately fully awake and alert, but not Jo. She was never going to get used to being woken in the middle of the night.

  ‘Yes?’ was all she managed to say, and even that was muffled by the bedclothes.

  ‘Dr Hughes?’ the caller clearly wasn’t sure who had answered, or even that it was human.

  ‘Yes?’ Jo sighed, and struggled to sit up. This wasn’t a wrong number or drunken friend she could cut off. This was work, so she could give up any idea of going back to sleep.

  ‘There’s been a sudden death out at Cazeley Village. A drowning at a house called Compton Cazeley in Barn Lane.’

  ‘Drowning?’

  ‘In the swimming pool.’

  ‘Oh.’ That was unusual in itself; Hastings was not the sort of area where swimming pools were commonplace. ‘Have you called the Coroner’s Officer?’

  ‘Yes, he’s already on his way but he asked me to wait until a civilised hour before giving you a call, let you get a bit more sleep.’

  Jo managed to get the receiver back in the cradle, checked the clock, and lay there for a moment or two, muttering and collecting her thoughts. It was a Saturday morning, for goodness sake. How could they call six o’clock a civilised hour, even if she could see from the dawn light creeping through the chink in the curtains that the sun was pretty much up, and she could hear the infuriatingly cheerful singing of the birds? Or rather, the awful squawking of the seagulls. At least she didn’t have a morning surgery booked. If cancelling a clinic during the week made her unpopular, then missing a Saturday one caused serious upset. Even a home-made cake, always supposing she knew how to make one, wouldn’t be enough to placate her colleagues. With a groan, she threw the duvet back and crawled out of bed.

  Compton Cazeley turned out to be an impressive, detached, nine- teen-thirties house, in a quiet spot outside the picturesque village of Cazeley. There were three cars parked in the ample driveway as Jo drove in: a small black and silver, almost feminine 4x4, a ‘look-at-me- I’m-richer-than-you’ silver Bentley, waxed and buffed to shiny perfection, and an even less discreet marked police car. There was also an ambulance, with its rear doors open, but no one inside. Mike Parton’s car was furthest from the house and Jo parked next to him. She checked her face in the mirror before getting out, just to be sure that every hair was in the right place despite the early hour and the rush. There was nothing she hated more than to look in any way dishevelled in public. She liked everything just so. Happy with her hair, she checked her teeth and then got out, smoothing and straightening her dark brown linen-mix trousers as she did so. Jo wasn’t sure whether or not to go to the front door, but saw Mike waiting for her by an open gate to the back garden and followed him through it.

  There were a cluster of people around the swimming pool as Jo walked round the side of the house with Mike. A constable was stand- ing next to a man in his early sixties, Jo guessed, who either had a problem with his blood pressure or was extremely angry. Or both. The two ambulance men stood a little apart, probably waiting for someone to tell them they could go, because it was clear that they were no longer needed. A second constable, a very capable-looking young woman, was standing next to the body of a man lying face up next to the pool. The day was already warm for the time of year and the sun was quickly evaporating any water around the corpse, and the tiles were only faintly darker underneath him. Jo began her examination as she walked towards the body. She could see that he was a small man, verging on the under-weight and completely naked, the area usually covered by swimming trunks pale in comparison to his well-tanned torso. She continued her visual check as she crouched down beside the man. Mike and the female constable moved a few steps away, to give her space and so that Mike could be briefed on what had already been established. The constable swiftly took out her notebook out in case she needed to refer to it as she made her report.

  ‘The victim is a Mr Adrian Cole, age forty four according to the house owner, Mr Wendlesham.’ The constable nodded towards the choleric man.

  ‘Sir.’ He said sharply. ‘I’m Sir Geoffrey Wendlesham, not Mr.’

  ‘Sir Geoffrey Wendlesham,’ the constable corrected herself in a long-suffering voice.

  ‘And he was staying here?’ Mike asked.

  ‘No! He bloody well wasn’t staying here.’ Sir Geoffrey interjected, unable to keep quiet any longer. ‘He’s just done this to embarrass me, as if he hadn’t already done that.’

  Mike raised an eyebrow and Jo went back to the body, as the ambulance personnel listened intently to the conversation. This was obviously a more interesting start to the day than they had been expecting. ‘I sacked him last week for gross misconduct. Had to come back from Antigua to do it. Good job my wife stayed over there, wouldn’t want her to see this.’ He paused for a moment to look at the body in disgust. ‘He knew he’d never work again, at least not in the financial sector, not after what he did. So, it is entirely understandable that he chose to commit suicide, but he didn’t have to bloody well do it in my swimming pool!’

  ‘Right, Sir Geoffrey, if you could go inside with the constable,’ Mike nodded at the policeman standing next to him, ‘I’ll be with you in a moment to take a statement.’ Mike took control of the situation and surprisingly, Wendlesham went with the constable with only a slight harrumph to signify his disgust at the situation he had woken to find himself in.

  ‘Constable? If you could continue your report, please.’ Mike said once the house owner was out of earshot.

  ‘Mr, Sir, Wendlesham,’ Sir Geoffrey’s correction seemed to have flustered the poor woman, ‘came out onto the terrace at oh five hundred hours and spotted something floating in the pool. When he got a bit closer, he could see it was a body and he used a pole to steer the body to the side and pulled it out of the pool. Once he realised the man was dead he called us and the ambulance. That was at oh five fifteen.’

  Jo had finished her visual check and was pulling on some gloves. ‘Why did you call out the doc?’ Mike asked the constable. ‘The ambulance crew could have pronounced death.’

  ‘Yes, but when there’s going to be an inquest, I just thought it would be best to be sure there wasn’t anything untoward.’ She explained and Mike nodded approvingly, even though it was more likely her concern about Sir Geoffrey that was the cause of her caution.

  ‘Okay. That’s good. You can never be too careful.’

  ‘Can you give me a hand please?’ Jo asked and they both turned to look at her. She had pulled the body towards her, so that she could check the back. Mike came over and held the body steady so that Jo could get a closer look at something she had seen.

  ‘I think we need to get a team out here,’ she told him pointing to visible cuts and scratches on the shoulders and back of the legs.

  Mike hesitated.

  ‘Couldn’t that have happened when he was pulled out of the pool?’

  ‘It’s possible, but there’s some dirt in the deeper cuts, and he’s had some facial trauma too. It looks as though it all occurred post mortem but you how it is, Mike,’ she told him firmly as she pulled off her gloves. ‘Just in case he didn’t go voluntarily into the pool, or there was some kind of fight. This could end up getting messy with blame being hurled in all directions. We’re going to need a full forensic work-up for the inquest, no matter what.’

  Mike sighed and nodded his agreement to the PC who walked towards the front of the house, reaching for her radio as she walked.

  ‘I’ll ring the mortuary, give them the heads-up and make sure they do a full tox screen as well, if you want to let Sir Geoffrey know what’s going on,’ Jo continued. Mike nodded again and reluctantly went over to the house to break the news
that there would soon be a full team of crime scene examiners and several more policemen stomping all over the garden and, quite possibly, the house as well.

  Sir Geoffrey had clearly not taken the news well. Jo could hear his raised voice from the front of the house, as she leant against her car and waited for the crime scene team and CID to arrive.

  ‘What do you mean we can’t refuse permission?’ rang out from the open windows.

  She couldn’t make out Mike’s quieter, more measured response, but the:

  ‘That’s bloody ridiculous, I’m getting onto my solicitor. And the Chief Constable. He’s a personal friend, you know,’ he got in response was loud and clear, and she heard the door bang as they presumably went further inside the house. The two ambulance men pulled a face at her and closed the rear doors of their vehicle, happy that there was nothing for them to do and they could go back to the ambulance station and clock off their shift only a little later than they should have done and with a great story to tell their colleagues. There was no doubt, if Mr Cole had committed suicide in his boss’s pool to wind him up, he had succeeded.

  As she watched the ambulance pull out of the driveway, and the white forensics van pull in, Jo wondered who would come from CID. Realistically, she knew that it was unlikely to be anyone senior; this was probably a very minor case, with the damage to the body being post mortem, possibly caused by rough handling as he was pulled from the pool, and would warrant no further action. But if all was quiet, or Sir Geoffrey rattled enough cages, they might get someone senior, someone like Detective Inspector Steve Miller. She wasn’t sure if she was wanted it to be Steve Miller or not after the embarrassment of seeing him at the auto-asphyxiation. That said, she had butterflies in her tummy just thinking about seeing him again. It was ridiculous, she told herself; she wasn’t some love-struck teenager, she was a grown woman and he was a married man. Nothing was ever going to come of it, so it would probably be better if they never saw each other again. The problem was, their jobs threw them together and neither was likely to give up their careers, or even change specialty or move away, so they had to get on with it, with their lives, even if every time they saw each other, over one corpse or another, it felt like a knife was be- ing twisted in her heart. She couldn’t help but hope that it hurt him as much as it hurt her, ridiculous as that was. She heard the sound of a car approaching and turned to see Miller’s silver Avensis turn into the drive. As soon as it had stopped, the passenger door opened and Jeffries got out.

  ‘Watcha got for us then, Doc?’

  Jo sighed. One thing was certain, she might miss Miller if she never saw him again, but she wouldn’t miss Bob Jeffries.

  ‘Male Caucasian. Probable death by drowning, maybe suicide but there are some complicating factors,’ she said as she approached the car.

  ‘Like what?’ Miller asked as he too got out of the car and joined them. Jo turned and led them towards the swimming pool, where the female constable was setting up a perimeter using crime scene tape to prevent anyone else from approaching the body until the crime scene investigators had finished work on the sight. There were flashes be- hind her as photographs were taken of the body in situ.

  ‘Signs that the body has been manhandled. It looks as though it happened after death, and the injuries may even have occurred when the body was hauled out of the pool, but I can’t rule out the possibility of them having happened around the time of death.’

  They had reached the edge of the taped-off area and Colin Brew- er, the crime scene manager, dressed in his full forensic outfit, came over to them. Possibly to speak to Miller but Jo suspected it was more to make sure they didn’t come any closer without suiting up. Mike Parton joined them, having left Sir Geoffrey to make another call of complaint.

  ‘If you could just let us finish, Sir, then you can get a closer look at the body.’

  Miller nodded and turned to Jo. ‘Is there a note, do you know?’

  She shrugged and looked at Colin and Mike.

  ‘There isn’t one here, but he may have left one at his home,’ Colin added.

  ‘This isn’t where he lived then?’ Miller asked, surprised.

  ‘Er, no. And thereby hangs another complication,’ Jo told him. ‘This is the home of his CEO, or ex-CEO, who sacked our victim a few days ago.’

  ‘Explains a lot,’ Jeffries said.

  ‘He could have left a note on his laptop, or phone,’ Jo said.

  ‘An email maybe, as it was some outrageous emails, according to Sir Geoffrey, that got him sacked.’

  ‘No note, no phone and no clothes with his body,’ Colin said. Jo kicked herself; she hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘In his car?’ she suggested.

  ‘And no car that we’ve found yet. ‘Course it could be out there, parked in the lanes somewhere, with his clothes, as you suggest Dr Hughes.’ He indicated the surrounding countryside.

  ‘And he walked here in the buff?’ Jeffries queried.

  ‘Or someone dropped him here and left.’ Miller added as he looked round. ‘Either way, we’ll need to search the area. Colin, do you have any idea how he got into the grounds?’

  Colin pointed to a hedge where some white suited crime scene examiners were working.

  ‘It’s possible he came through there, some of the branches have been broken as if someone has forced their way through.’

  At that moment, they heard another car arriving and turned around. To Jo’s dismay she recognised a local reporter getting out of the battered car. Sir Geoffrey was definitely not going to like that. Miller sent the constable to make sure the journalist didn’t get anywhere near the scene.

  ‘How on earth did he get here so fast?’ Jo asked.

  ‘Tipped off by one of the neighbours, I wouldn’t wonder,’ Colin said, but Jo couldn’t see any neighbours who would be close enough to know anything was going on. She turned back just as the crime scene tech who had been taking photographs of Cole’s body stepped away, giving Miller and Jeffries a clear view of the dead man for the first time.

  ‘Blimey, he didn’t have much to write home about, did he?’ Jeffries was clearly looking at the genital area. ‘No wonder he topped himself.’

  Chapter 7

  The Old Vicarage, Jo’s childhood home, was a beautiful house, sym- metrical and graceful. Now that it was spring, its dove grey stucco was festooned with pale, lilac-blue Wisteria blossoms, which Jo loved much more than the twisted, woody stems that clung to the walls around the front door and ground floor windows, covered with the lime green leaf sprays and silver, velvety seed pods all summer. There were two cars parked outside; her father’s aging Volvo, and her moth- er’s Honda Civic, a car she religiously changed for a new one, same model and even, usually, the same colour, every year. Jo stopped her sporty little Audi TT next to it and paused for a moment before get- ting out. Jo had always loved this house, if not all the memories from her childhood. In moments when she chose to be fair, she acknowl- edged that her relationship with her mother had only become a bat- tleground once she hit her teenage years and began to rebel against the relentless drip, drip of hints about how to catch a good husband: make the most of your looks, darling, try not to be too clever, make sure you can cook and keep house, and, whatever you do, don’t sleep with them on the first date. The list seemed endless and over the years Jo had broken almost every one of her mother’s rules, so perhaps it was not so surprising that she was still single.

  With a sigh, she got out of the car and headed for the front door. Dinner with her parents, and even worse, being set up as an almost blind date with a neighbour’s son, was not how Jo wanted to spend her Saturday evening, but she knew she had to put a brave face on it or suffer the consequential wrath of her mother.

  She had taken the precaution of coming armed with a bunch of freesias, her mother’s favourite flowers, and a box of chocolates. She had also made sure she was a little early so that she could offer to help; not that her mother would need it. Diana Hughes always had abso- lu
tely everything under perfect control. Jo wondered if she would ever be the same, or at least be able to have a dinner party and not manage to forget a vital ingredient or burn the main course. Jo was by no means a domestic goddess, particularly where cooking was concerned. Or flower arranging. Both essential skills for a wife, according to her mother.

  ‘Darling, how lovely, my favourite.’ Diana air-kissed Jo on each cheek, so that she could avoid smudging her make-up. ‘Can you put them in a vase for me? Charles, get the poor girl a drink.’

  Diana hurried back into the kitchen to stir something and Jo smiled at her father. He was looking better than he had in years. Perhaps he was finally over the shock of no longer being a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and settling into his well-earned retirement.

  ‘How are you, Dad?’ she asked. ‘You’re looking well.’

  ‘Oh, I’m full of beans, thanks. How about you? Here, let me take those.’ He took the chocolates and followed her into the utility room where she grabbed a vase, added water and dumped the flowers into it. She could have tried to arrange them nicely, but she knew that what- ever she did, her mother would rearrange them, so she might as well save herself the bother.

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  Once Jo had found a place for the flowers in the living room and made her obligatory offer to help in the kitchen and it had been re- fused, she settled in the immaculate living room with her father and a glass of perfectly chilled white wine. Despite her parents living in an elegant old rectory and not a tiny sixteenth-century terraced cottage, the room still reminded her of June Springfield’s, with its similar level of cleanliness and order, the polished silver, family photos and tradi- tional décor.