The Police Doctor’s Secret

by Marion Lennox

  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.

  ‘As you say.’ Alistair’s anger was palpable. He climbed from the Land Cruiser and she could see it was all he could do not to slam the door. ‘The local policeman-Barry-is out with the searchers. I’ll introduce you to him later. Meanwhile can I show you to your quarters? Do you want dinner?’

  ‘I want to see the pilot first,’ she told him. ‘I’m here because this case is urgent. Let’s treat it like that.’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  The morgue was at the rear of the hospital, but even the morgue wasn’t an unpleasant place to be. The high windows were open and the sound of the sea pervaded-the wash of surf from around the headland. Smells in morgues were unmistakeable and unavoidable, but the salt air was giving the antiseptic, clinical morgue atmosphere a run for its money.

  ‘Do you want to change your clothes?’ Alistair asked shortly, and Sarah shook her head.

  ‘Let me see him first. Then I’ll put on overalls.’

  ‘Fine.’ They were being scrupulously polite. Alistair cast her a glance that said he still didn’t really believe she was a pathologist, but he walked forward and pulled out the drawer containing the body.

  Sarah didn’t move. She’d learned not to.

  Her first task was to stand back and get an overall impression. Things were easier that way. If you glanced at someone you got an initial impression that might be superseded later by close examining. But often that impression was right. Age. Background. Where he’d fitted into life.

  Jake Condor, his passport said. Aged thirty-eight. That fitted. He looked thirty-eight.

  He looked like a schmuck.

  He was a pilot, but he didn’t look anything like the pilot she’d just flown with on the way here. He was dressed in blue jeans, with elastic-sided boots that shone with almost astonishing brightness. His jeans were of the far-too-tight variety-designed for maximum impact on the opposite sex. Jeans like that never had the desired effect, Sarah thought, but she knew plenty of guys who wore them. They were the sort of guy who’d try to pick you up and react with total disbelief when turned down.

  It was a lot to extrapolate from one pair of jeans, but Sarah was accustomed to forming impressions fast. Sometimes those impressions helped.

  What else? A T-shirt with a slogan on it fo
r some Thai beer. Interesting. That T-shirt had definitely come from overseas and it looked new. It fitted with what she’d been told.

  The man had tattoos running down arms that were a bit too thin. His arms had been brawny when the tattoos had been applied, she thought. That dragon had definitely shrunk.

  He was wearing a Rolex watch. Real? Maybe.

  He was wearing something else that caught her attention. She walked around the table to see the leather pouch attached to his belt and glanced back at Alistair. ‘It looks like a gun holster. Was there a gun?’

  ‘No. We looked. When we saw the holster Barry did a thorough search of the plane, but there was nothing.’

  ‘You did check the body for bullet holes?’

  ‘We checked,’ he said wryly. ‘It seemed sensible.’

  She nodded, moving on. The man was clean-shaven. Deeply tanned. A bit…oily, she thought. She walked forward and sniffed and was rewarded by the scent of cheap after-shave.

  And his hair… His hair was horrid. It was long, black, and curling in oily strands to his shoulders. It looked as if it had been hauled back in a too tight ponytail and then released. Maybe that had happened in the accident?

  His hairline was receding. Balding with a ponytail. Not Sarah’s favourite look.

  ‘He looks like a right Casanova,’ Alistair said, and she glanced up at him again, surprised in a way that he was still here. Work had the capacity to block out all else. It had always been that way and was her saving grace.

  A right Casanova. Yeah. ‘You have that impression, too?’

  ‘He looks a type.’

  ‘We learn not to make judgements,’ she said, in a voice that was too prim, and she surprised a smile out of him.

  ‘I thought your job was all about judgements.’

  ‘In the face of evidence.’ She moved so she could see the man’s face from both sides. ‘That bump didn’t kill him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. He looks like he’s got a broken nose. The guys who reached the plane first wiped him off, trying to see if there was any sign of life, but it’s bled.’

  She glanced down at the T-shirt and nodded. The beer slogan was spattered. Okay. He’d been hit on the nose in the crash and then he bled. It meant that he’d still been alive when the plane hit. She looked more closely at the nose. Surely after a bump like that it should have bled more?

  It wouldn’t have bled if the heart had stopped pumping. Death must have been fast.

  ‘Mmm.’ She wasn’t moving him-still simply looking. ‘Is there any damage to the back of his head?’

  ‘Not that I can see. I had a good look when we put him on the stretcher to bring him in.’

  ‘And you said there are no needle tracks?’ She was looking closely now at the man’s forearms. Not touching. Just looking. ‘If he was a user he’d have signs.’

  ‘I didn’t find syringe marks, though they wouldn’t necessarily be obvious if he had only an occasional hit.’

  ‘That makes less sense. An occasional user taking that amount when he was in control of the plane? He’d have to have been suicidal.’ She stared down at the man on the table and came to a decision. Pushing her curls back from her face, she straightened. Moved right into work mode. ‘Do you have a decent camera?’ she asked. ‘One that can do close-ups?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then can you show me where to change and then fetch the camera while I prepare?’ she asked. ‘I want to go in.’

  ‘You mean, perform an autopsy? Here?’

  ‘I know it’s not perfect,’ she told him. ‘I’d far rather take him back to Cairns and do it where I have specialist equipment. But I do know how to do an autopsy without destroying evidence, and if you’re willing to stay present all the time and document as I go then I’ll do it now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because why he died will be tied up with the missing people,’ she told him. ‘It has to be. If there’s injured people missing we may well be running out of time, Alistair. I assume that’s why you called me in instead of sending the body out? I agree. It’s important. So let’s move.’

  He gazed at her and she gazed back, unflinching. She was right and he knew it.

  There was nothing for it.

  He moved.

  It had been years since Alistair had performed an autopsy. If there was a coroner’s inquest required, Dolphin Cove’s deceased were generally moved to Cairns for examination, which suited Alistair fine. He didn’t miss the experience one bit. This community was tight knit, the line between patient and friend in this remote place always blurred, and to do an autopsy on a friend was unthinkable.

  But back in basic training he’d learned to do them. He knew the rules, which were even more important if there was a hint of foul play. Still, he was more than happy to let Sarah take centre stage. She knew her stuff and, dressed for work, looked every bit the efficient pathologist. Enveloped in white overalls and white rubber boots, with her flaming hair tucked tightly under a surgical cap and her face masked for good measure, she almost wasn’t Sarah.

  Only those speaking eyes stayed with him. Alistair operated the camera and took notes as she dictated, moving with Sarah every step of the way, but he was so aware of those eyes…

  Where had she learned these skills?

  Why had she decided on pathology?

  What a waste, he thought suddenly, remembering how he’d first seen her. She’d been at the huge city children’s hospital, where she’d started her paediatric training.

  ‘Go and say hi to Sarah if you’re in the vicinity,’ Grant had told him. ‘After all, we’re almost family. Or I hope we will be.’

  So he had. He’d walked into the ward and seen her on the floor with a toddler. The bed-card-that and the ward he’d entered-had told him the little boy was suffering from leukaemia, a treatable illness in children and with a reasonable cure rate, but the treatment was just plain cruel. The little boy Sarah had been holding was bald and emaciated, and strung up to every conceivable form of tubing and monitor. He’d seemed the sort of child it was impossible to touch without hurting.

  But Sarah had been touching. She’d had him in her arms, playing at being a crab. Playing at crawling-slithering over the shiny linoleum of the ward floor. Clutching the little boy in her arms and lying flat on her back, she’d been using her legs not only to manoeuvre the drip stand but to sweep them both around the floor. As they had giggled in tandem, it had been hard to say who was the most delighted-the child or Sarah. The little girl in the next bed had been almost pop-eyed with jealous delight.

  Alistair had watched, stunned. Sarah had had no dignity at all. Nor had she cared. Her white pants and surgical coat had gathered dust as she swept the floor but she hadn’t seemed to notice. When she’d looked up and found Alistair looking down at them she’d reacted first with astonishment that he’d looked so like Grant, and then with delight.

  ‘See, Jonathon? We have an audience. Maybe we can organise a race? What do you say, Dr Benn? Will you be another crab? Choose a crab name immediately. Our crab name is Horace. Kylie’s in the next bed and she needs a crab carriage as well, so bring her down here. Don’t just stand there. Come and race us.’

  What could he have said? He’d come to town for a conference, he’d been wearing a suit and tie, but in two minutes she’d had him labelled Henrietta Crab. He’d spent the next half-hour crab-racing, with three-year-old Kylie from the next bed perched on his stomach and close to hysterical with glee.

  He’d gone home with aching shoulder muscles, still grinning, and thinking that for once Grant had made a decidedly good call.

  That initial impression had deepened.

  Grant had brought Sarah home for Christmas that year. She’d spent a week on the farm and she’d made them all laugh. Grant had needed to leave-of course-but Sarah had stayed on and she and Alistair had spent the week helping his elderly father harvest the hay. And at the end of the week Alistair had come close to believing he was in love himself.
Dangerously close.

  But that had been before. Before…

  Don’t think about that, he told himself fiercely. Think instead about why on earth she made the change from paediatrics to pathology.

  Maybe it was pathology he needed to focus on.

  ‘Take a shot of his fingernails,’ she told him. She was lifting the dead man’s hands, inspecting them with care and holding them so he could photograph. ‘There’s nothing here. This guy is a serious groomer. Not only does he slick his hair, he files his nails. I want a photograph of both hands, close up. It’s important to establish that there’s no sign of any struggle. If anyone murdered him they must have done it while he was unconscious. There’s nothing to suggest that sort of injury anywhere.’

  She stood back and looked again, still assessing. She’d carefully removed the man’s clothes, and what they had was a five-feet-eight-inch thin male, fussy dresser, clean, well-groomed, tanned above the collar and sleeves but white elsewhere.

  ‘I’m going to do the autopsy now,’ she told him. ‘You got a strong stomach? You know everything has to be witnessed and double-checked?’

  ‘I can do it.’

  ‘Yeah, well get me another witness before you pass out,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want this stuffed for lack of professionalism.’

  ‘Just do it.’

  And fifteen minutes later they had their answer. Sarah was examining the contents of the man’s colon with increasing incredulity.

  ‘I’ve read about this,’ she said. ‘One of my colleagues found it once and I thought-given the amount of heroin in his blood-it had to be something similar. But to try and fly a plane…’

  ‘What?’ Alistair said, and she cast him a glance that said she’d almost forgotten he was there.

  ‘Condoms.’

  ‘Condoms?’

  ‘Look. I need these photographed.’ She winced and he could see the look of distaste behind the mask. ‘The man’s a serious twit. He’s come from Thailand, right? Well, he’s come bearing drugs. Drugs are still possible to obtain up in the border areas, only Customs are tight, both here and in the major Thai cities. If he’s caught over there it’s the death penalty, and the jail term here is pretty much equivalent. But the money is amazing. The street value of what we have here is in the tens of thousands. So Jake here has decided to go down a road that many have tried before. He packs condoms with heroin and he swallows them.’