Marion Lennox: The Police Doctor’s Secret

‘I can’t. As I said, he’s a bit battered. An entry may be hidden by injury. But surely no one’s going to stick a needle into a pilot flying a plane, causing it to crash?’

‘So maybe it crashed and then he was murdered?’

‘Right.’

‘You don’t believe it?’ she asked, and watched his face.

‘Well, you’re the expert. But there was no reason for the plane to crash-or not that we can see. The pilot of the mail plane had a look at the crash site before he left last night. Harry knows his stuff. He said the plane was low on fuel, but not so low that it’d crash-the low fuel levels would be the reason it didn’t explode. But everything else seems to be mechanically sound. In fact, Harry reckoned he could probably haul it off the rocks, do a bit of superficial work and have her flying again.’

‘But the injuries…?’

‘A bit of the cliff face came through the windscreen, hitting the pilot. Not badly-just enough to give him cuts and abrasions. Maybe it was enough to make him lose consciousness, but I doubt it. That’s another thing that doesn’t fit with him being murdered. He hasn’t shifted from where he was when the plane hit and there’s nothing that would have stopped him moving. He was securely belted in. The people in the cargo hold, though… As I said, they must have been flying without seat belts.’

‘So where are they? And how many?’

‘We don’t know. We’re hoping you might be able to tell us.’

‘Right.’ Could she? She sat back and thought about it.

Dr Sarah Rose was good at her job. She liked it. Forensic medicine hadn’t been her first choice, but since she’d taken it on she’d found it more and more satisfying. Solving mysteries through medicine. Keeping away from people…

No. Don’t go down that road.

She looked out of the Land Cruiser window at the dying light, but she wasn’t seeing the scenery. Her mind was on injured people lost in the bush. People who were depending on her to solve a mystery.

She needed to concentrate on work, which was just the way she wanted it. Especially now. Especially when she wanted so badly to keep her mind from the man beside her.

‘Do we know who the pilot is?’

‘We have his wallet,’ Alistair told her. ‘There was a passport in the cockpit cabin.’

‘What did that tell you?’

‘His name’s Jake Condor. Thirty-eight years old. Australian. He hasn’t got anyone listed as a dependant. His occupation is listed as pilot. The police have enquiries out now, trying to find where he fits. But one thing we do know-according to his passport he flew in from Thailand yesterday morning on a commercial flight. He landed in Cairns. Then he must have picked up the light plane-which is a hire plane, by the way-and come on here. With a detour. His flight plan logged at Cairns airport shows he flew north almost to Cape Tribulation and then came west, but his flying time suggests he stopped somewhere on the way. Then he flew until he crashed.’

She frowned. It wasn’t making much sense. It was a jigsaw with pieces scattered and pieces missing. That was how it always was at the beginning of a case, she thought, and often-too often for comfort-those missing pieces were never found. Especially when she was called in late. And here it was twenty-four hours after the event.

‘Is it too late to take me out to the plane tonight?’ she asked, without much hope. Her fears were confirmed.

‘Yes,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s rough country out there, and the last section has to be done on foot. We can’t go by sea because the reefs around there are too treacherous to beach a boat. That’s why the fishing crew who saw the plane crash couldn’t get near it to help. Rescuers had to make the trek overland and it’s about a mile of rough country. We have people out there now, looking still, but they’ll give up at nightfall. It’s just too dangerous.’

‘But there’s definitely blood in the back of the plane-and the pilot was in the front?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t think to take samples?’

There was a momentary silence and Alistair’s knuckles on the steering wheel tightened. Whoa… She was going to have to tread softly here.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t. I went with the searchers, saw the pilot was dead and the rest were missing, then got a call to say one of my old fishermen patients was having a heart attack back here. So I came back with the body. Without thinking about blood samples.’

‘Alistair, you’re a family doctor,’ Sarah said, her voice softening a little. ‘No one’s expecting you to be a pathologist.’

‘Yeah, but I should have thought…’

‘Are you completely on your own here?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you cope?’

‘As you can see,’ he said grimly. ‘I don’t very well. I don’t think of blood samples.’

‘Maybe if I was having a heart attack I’d want my doctor to focus on that rather than blood samples myself,’ Sarah admitted. ‘And there’s still time to analyse them. Can we get them tonight? The searchers out there…do you think there’s anything that can be brought in with blood traces on it?’

‘There might be.’ Alistair still sounded tense, but at least he was moving on. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. ‘If I radio now I’ll catch the search team before they call the search off for the night. But it’ll be a couple of hours before they’re back in town.’

‘Then I’ll look at the pilot first,’ she said. ‘And-given the fact that we might have serious injuries on our hands and missing people-let’s do it now.’

Dolphin Cove Hospital was lovely. The tiny settlement had grown wealthy from pearl fishing in the previous century, and the pearl fishers had looked after their own. They’d endowed a fantastic little hospital that was envied all round the country-by those who knew about it.

In truth, no one much knew about it. Sarah gazed in astonishment at the wide verandas, with windows looking out through the palms to the beach beyond. She hadn’t known this place existed.

‘So this is why you came,’ she whispered, staring around her with increasing delight. The sun was hanging on the horizon, a crimson ball casting a soft pink tinge over the whitewashed hospital. Every window in the place was wide open, and soft white curtains fluttered outward in the breeze. Dinner was being served on the verandas-all mobile patients were outside eating their meal while they watched the sun set over the harbour.

It was truly spectacular. The land between the hospital and the sea was a mass of palm trees, with coconuts hanging in enticing bunches. Closer to the building were frangipani, their creamy yellow flowers spreading a perfume that could be smelled from where she stood.

Out on the water there were pelicans flying low-sweeping in to land, then paddling back and forth in elegant sail-pasts, for all the world like organised flotillas of luxury liners. There were currawongs carolling in the jacarandas overhead, and a host of brilliant lorikeets were stripping a brilliant scarlet bougainvillea.

It was…magic.

‘How long have you been here?’ she whispered, her face reflecting her delight.

‘Five years.’ The set look on Alistair’s face should have stopped her right there, but minding her own business had never been Sarah’s strong point. Heaven knew, she’d intended to stay impersonal, but before she could stop herself the question was out.

‘Since your mother died?’

Whoa. Wrong thing to say. It meant all sorts of things. It told Alistair that Sarah had kept tabs-knew what had happened to the old couple after they’d buried their son. Old Doug Benn had suffered a massive stroke only three weeks after Grant died. He’d died almost immediately, and his wife had simply faded until her death twelve months later.