Marion Lennox: The Police Doctor’s Secret

She’d started to approach them, moving awkwardly on crutches. She’d got within five or six feet of where they’d been grouped around the open grave, and Alistair’s words had cut through her grief like a lash against raw skin.

‘We don’t wish to see you, Sarah. Can you leave my parents alone?’

He’d blamed her. They all had. Those six eyes, staring at her, with the loss of their loved son and brother etched hard in their faces. She’d stared at Alistair and she’d seen Grant-and the pain had threatened to overwhelm her. Alistair and Grant were identical twins. Had been identical twins. But now one was dead and one was left to haunt her for ever. She’d almost collapsed right then, but somehow she’d held on. She’d maintained her dignity-just-but she’d stumbled away as if physically struck.

She hadn’t seen them since.

‘Do you know what’s happened here?’

Alistair was speaking to her. She flinched at the harshness in his voice, but somehow she managed to haul herself back to the present. It was a mile’s drive into the township. Alistair’s face was set in lines of shock and anger, and she knew he was finding this forced intimacy as impossible as she was. He was staring at the road ahead-not at her.

It was late afternoon and the sun was casting long and eerie shadows along the track. The sun’s rays were deflected by the spindly gums that lined the road. A rock wallaby appeared suddenly from the undergrowth. The tiny creature stared down Alistair’s vehicle until Alistair slowed; the wallaby gazed at him a moment longer, as if revelling in its moment of power, and then it hopped away.

This was an amazing place, and in a different situation Sarah might well have been mesmerised by its beauty. Dolphin Cove was a tiny settlement hundreds of miles from anywhere. In Australia’s barren north, it had a reputation for a soft beauty that made it famous, but it was too far from civilisation for tourists to venture. It was too far for anyone to venture.

So why was Alistair here?

Alistair. He’d asked her a question. She needed to concentrate. What had he asked? Did she know what had happened? She did. Or part of it.

‘I’ve read a brief report. I was told that there was a plane crash here yesterday.’

‘That’s it.’ He still wasn’t looking at her, but concentrating instead on the track, as if he feared more wallabies. Which was probably reasonable. But it certainly augmented the tension.

‘So what do you know?’ Sarah probed, and despite the atmosphere there was no choice for him but to answer. The only way through this was to be businesslike.

‘A Cessna took off from Cairns yesterday afternoon,’ he told her. ‘The pilot lodged a flight plan that was pretty vague. As far as the authorities have figured the plane made an un-scheduled stop somewhere north of Cairns-no one’s quite sure where-and then came on over to this side of the peninsula. The plane crashed into the rocks on the beach just south of the town. One of the local fishing crews saw it go down, but if they hadn’t seen it then it might well never have been discovered. It’s wild country out here. But they were seen. The local police sergeant took a team out-including me-and we found the pilot. Dead.’

She nodded. ‘You reported that he probably wasn’t killed by the crash?’

‘That’s the odd thing.’ He shrugged, still carefully not looking at her. ‘Oh, sure, he’s been knocked about a bit, but it seems he tried to make a crash landing on the beach and he darn near succeeded. There’s a rock sticking out from the sand that he couldn’t have seen from the air. The plane’s wing caught and spun the whole thing into the cliff. So the aircraft is a bit smashed up, but not completely. He must have slowed almost to a stop before he hit.’

‘He’s lucky it didn’t burst into flames.’

‘He’s dead.’

Sarah caught herself. Right. You couldn’t get more dead than dead. Lucky didn’t come into it.

‘I guess.’

‘But maybe someone has been lucky,’ Alistair added, and she nodded again, thinking through the brief fax from the local policeman which she’d read on the way here. The report on the blood found in the back of the plane. The reason for the rush.

‘That’s the bit I don’t understand.’

‘That’s why you’re here. It’s why I called for help and why we’re trying to move fast. The local police sergeant-the police force here consists of exactly one-has called for reinforcements and a team of locals is combing the bushland around the wreck. You see, the cargo hold’s covered in blood. It looks like a massacre took place in there. But there’s no one. When we arrived the plane was still cooling. The pilot was strapped into his seat, dead. Everyone else had disappeared.’

‘Everyone else?’

‘I’d say at least two people have bled in that plane.’ He grimaced. ‘But then what would I know? You’re the expert.’

She hesitated. This was impossible.

If she’d known Alistair would be here then she would have asked a colleague to come in her stead, but she was here now. She had a job to do and she needed this man’s co-operation.

‘Alistair, we need to work together on this one.’

‘We do.’ His face was grim.

‘So can we set aside our…past…and get to work?’

‘I’ve never let anything get in the way of my work.’

‘Well, bully for you,’ she said with a sudden spurt of anger. ‘So let’s just keep it that way and leave the personal innuendos alone. Tell me about the pilot.’

‘I don’t-’

‘Just tell me about the pilot,’ she said, and there was suddenly a wealth of weariness in her voice that couldn’t be disguised. She caught herself, hauling herself tightly together. She’d learned that Alistair Benn was the doctor in charge of the Dolphin Cove hospital only when she’d already been in the plane on her way here, and it had been too late to tell the pilot to turn around and go back. She’d seen his name in the report she was reading, and then had spent the rest of the trip schooling her features in the way she wanted him to see them. She wasn’t about to drop that façade now.

No. He couldn’t see her as she so often felt-so vulnerable she felt raw. She had to turn her weariness to annoyance. ‘You’re not about to slow this investigation down, are you?’ she snapped, and watched his face tighten again.

‘Of course not.’

‘Then tell me everything,’ she said. ‘Now.’

There was another moment of tense silence. He was regrouping, too, she thought. Good. Control was the issue here. Work.

And it seemed he agreed with her as he began to speak.

‘We thought it was a regular plane crash,’ Alistair told her. ‘But, as I said, the pilot wasn’t injured badly enough to explain his death. And the blood in the rear compartment suggested someone-or more than one-had been thrown around and badly injured in the process. The rear’s been set up for storage. There are no seats. No seat belts. If anyone was sitting in the back when it crashed they’ll have been thrown about heavily. But there’s no sign of anyone. We’ve had people searching for almost twenty-four hours now.’

‘And the pilot?’

‘That’s the reason why you in particular have been called in,’ he told her. ‘We carried his body back to the hospital. Because I couldn’t figure out how he died, I ran routine blood tests on him. I sent the samples down to the city with the mail plane last night and this morning the results came back. This guy has a king-sized dose of heroin on board. Huge. He didn’t shoot this amount up unless it was a suicide attempt.’ He told her the figures and Sarah whistled.

‘So maybe someone stuck a needle into him and shot him sky-high?’ she said slowly. She frowned. ‘Murder by overdose is common. Can you see any needle stick marks?’