Marion Lennox: The Police Doctor’s Secret

A book in the Police Surgeons series, 2004

Dear Reader,

The Australian northern coastline is wild and fraught with danger. No one goes there unless they have good reason-or unless they’re desperate!

Last year I went on a crocodile spotting expedition at night along one of our northern rivers. I watched the yellow eyes of a crocodile watching me. (Romance writer makes tasty snack?) I gazed out at the dense mangrove swamps (romance writer sinks, never to be seen again?) and thought of all the desperate people who’d tried to make this place home.

Off I went again. Instead of obliging the crocodile, I retreated to my nice safe office and started The Police Doctor’s Secret.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did dreaming it up.

Marion Lennox

FORENSIC pathologists weren’t supposed to be cute.

Nor were they supposed to be Sarah.

Dr Alistair Benn stared at the crimson and white vision bouncing across the tarmac towards him and felt like leaving town. Now.

Leaving. Ha! As Dolphin Cove’s only doctor, Alistair was responsible for the health of the entire community. As well as that, there were the unknown passengers of a light plane found crashed just south of town. People were missing, and the signs were that they were badly hurt. To leave was impossible.

But Sarah…

Sarah was here?

He’d requested extra police, trackers and medical back-up. Real help. It hadn’t been forthcoming. There’d be someone sent from the aviation authority to check the crash site, he’d been told, but a request for additional assistance had been refused. The authorities had decided there was no evidence to justify sending such expensive help.

The decision had left him angry. He couldn’t understand why the pilot had died. He was sure the blood in the cargo area wasn’t the pilot’s. He’d asked again, with more force.

And they’d sent Sarah.

‘Hi.’ She was beaming, as if she was really pleased to see him. That concept was crazy-but she was certainly beaming. She smiled brightly at him, and then she smiled at the pilot of the plane that had brought her here. She smiled her gorgeous wide smile at the luggage carrier and he smiled right back.

She beamed at everyone and they were all totally trans-fixed.

Well, why wouldn’t they be? She was just the same as she always had been. Sarah. Five feet two in her stockinged feet and petite in every aspect.

Sarah’s diminutive appearance had never stopped her making an impact. Her auburn hair floated around her shoulders in a riot of curls. Her perpetually twinkling green eyes were huge. Her rosebud mouth complemented a cute snub nose with just the perfect amount of freckles. She wore-she’d always worn-short, short skirts and shiny, frivolous shoes. Gorgeous shoes. The spotted and high-heeled footwear she wore now was bright crimson to match her neat little business suit.

She might be wearing a business suit but she didn’t look corporate. Not in the least. She looked…

She looked like Sarah.

Alistair felt his gut clench in disbelief. And something else. Something he didn’t want to examine.

‘Aren’t you going to say hi?’ She was grasping his hand as if nothing lay between them. No history at all. Her smile said that maybe they were even old friends. His fingers automatically curved around her small soft hand and then, catching his breath in incredulity that this could possibly be happening, he released her and took an instinctive step back.

‘What do you think you’re doing here?’ As a greeting it needed some finesse, he conceded, but if he was poleaxed he might as well sound poleaxed.

‘I’m on the police force. I’m the forensic pathologist you requested.’ She was still smiling. Maybe he was imagining it, but he thought suddenly, Her smile is forced. She’s as shocked as I am.

She couldn’t be. Sarah was never shocked. She was a woman in charge of her world. She danced through life as if it was hers for the taking, leaving a wave of destruction behind her.

‘You’re supposed to be a paediatrician,’ he told her-which was also a stupid and definitely ungracious thing to say, but Sarah’s smile stayed determinedly fixed.

‘You haven’t seen me for six years, Alistair. I’ve changed direction.’

‘From paediatrics to forensic pathology?’

‘It’s a quieter life.’

‘Quieter? In the police force?’

‘Believe it or not, yes.’

He tried to think that through. Paediatrics was emotionally demanding, but police work would be anything but peaceful. And anyway, it didn’t make sense. ‘I can’t imagine you ever wanting a quiet life,’ he told her.

‘People change, Alistair.’ Her smile faded then, just a little, and the look she gave him was almost challenging. Then she seemed to regroup, bracing her shoulders and refixing that gorgeous smile. ‘Now, what have you got for me?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your accident victim,’ she told him with exaggerated patience. ‘The pilot? I assume you haven’t hauled me out to this back-of-beyond place for nothing?’

‘No.’ He took a deep breath and fought for control. ‘You are the police pathologist?’

‘I am. The report says you have a dead body, a crashed plane and a mystery. The local police officer sounds out of his depth and you lack the necessary expertise.’

Ouch. He felt his face tighten and he knew that she saw it.

‘I mean you lack the necessary expertise in forensic medicine,’ she amended, and he thought, Yeah, stick the knife in and twist. Hadn’t that always been the way? Sarah and Grant, looking down their noses at the hick country doctor.

Sarah and Grant…

There was that twist of the gut again. The pain. Would it ever go away?

He didn’t know. It was surely with him still. But for now he could only move forward, and he needed to do that now. He was stuck with Sarah, therefore the sooner they got rid of this mess the sooner he could be shot of her.

‘Let’s collect your luggage and get out of here,’ he said brusquely, and she cast him an odd look and then smiled again.

‘Fine by me. Let’s go.’

Alistair Benn was not on Sarah’s list of people she wished to work with. Or be with. Ever.

Like his twin brother, Alistair was almost stunningly good-looking. He was tall, dark and tanned, with crinkly brown eyes that spoke of constant laughter, a wide, white smile and a body to die for. Once upon a time Sarah had fallen deeply in love with this smile, with this body. But now… If Sarah could have named all the people she’d least like to see, then Alistair was right on top of her list.

I can’t imagine you ever wanting a quiet life…

Alistair’s words rang in her ears as she sat in the passenger side of his big four-wheel drive Land Cruiser and headed into town. She risked a glance across at him. His face was set and stern. Judgemental.

He’d always been judgemental, she thought. ‘A moralising prig,’ Grant had called him, and it had only been when Grant’s excesses became painfully obvious that she’d thought: maybe Alistair had his reasons.

But he’d been so harsh.

The last time she’d seen him had been at Grant’s funeral. Alistair’s twin brother. She’d just been released from hospital that morning, and there’d been no time to see Grant’s family before the service. Even if she had, there would have been no words to explain the unexplainable. So she’d simply appeared. She’d been distraught, aching with grief for a wasted life, desperately uncertain about the path she’d taken, and racked with guilt. Alistair had been there-of course-supporting his parents, who were so grief-stricken they’d barely been able to stand.