The Police Doctor’s Secret

by Marion Lennox

  Alistair flinched. He leaned forward and angled the camera, disbelief warring with nausea. ‘How many condoms? The man must have been a lunatic.’

  ‘It’ll only work if you get rid of them fast,’ Sarah said thoughtfully. ‘The digestive process wears away at the rubber. This guy’s eaten too many for his system to cope with. I’d imagine we’re looking at a constipating of his whole system. So he arrives in the country, maybe worried that he’s not passed them. He’ll be in increasing discomfort, maybe he’ll even give himself a purge-which might well make everything worse as it increases the pressure on the rubber. So he’s flying a small plane with a couple or a few extra people as cargo. Somewhere up there a condom bursts. He suffers a massive overdose, and I mean massive. It’s a miracle he managed to get the plane down at all.’

  Alistair nodded, his face grim. As a scenario it was all too plausible-but horrid. He took the photographs they needed and then stood back from the table, trying to take it in. Crime like this-stupidity like this-wasn’t in his ken. ‘Anything else?’ he asked, and she cast him a look that said she knew how badly he was disconcerted.

  ‘I’ll finish what I’ve started, but we have the answers to our questions. If you can find the local police sergeant for me I’ll make a statement.’

  ‘But the rest…the other passengers.’

  ‘I don’t have any answers there. I hope to heaven they haven’t been eating the same diet, but according to you there’s nothing we can do about that tonight. For now…’ She compressed her lips. ‘For now we have as much information as Jake’s going to give us. I’ll finish up here. Then dinner, and test the blood samples when they come in, and then bed. We worry tomorrow.’

  Which was just fine, Alistair thought as he watched her work. But…dinner and bed? These were other things to worry about, besides missing drug-runners.

  When he’d rung and asked for a forensic pathologist to be flown up he’d made an offer. ‘The accommodation in town’s pretty rough-the pub’s not suitable, especially if whoever you send is female. But there’s a spare bedroom in the doctor’s quarters.’

  The doctor’s quarters. His quarters. Dinner and bed might end up being very strained indeed.

  It couldn’t be helped. They had missing bodies. Crime. Mystery. Personal drama had to take a back seat.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE doctor’s quarters were comfortably furnished and as beautiful as everything else around this place. Sarah was given time to explore them fully. Alistair led her around to the far side of the hospital, ushered her into the spare room, and then excused himself.

  ‘I have ward rounds to do before dinner,’ he told her. ‘Mrs Granson will have left us a casserole in the oven. If you get hungry before I get back, go ahead. Please.’

  She was left in no doubt he’d prefer not to eat with her. Which was fine. That was the way she wanted it, too. Wasn’t it?

  Uncertain, though, she took a long shower, soaking off the grime of the plane journey and the memory of the autopsy. Then she hauled on a soft pink leisure suit-a cross between day-dress and pyjamas-and explored Alistair’s domain.

  It was simple, but gorgeous. There was one vast living area, with an expansive kitchenette at one end and two bedrooms leading off the other. All the rooms opened out to the beach beyond. The hospital and associated buildings had been built in a vast line, so every room could soak in the sea.

  It was still too warm for comfort. The windows, though, were wide open, and the sounds of the sea were everywhere. Sarah prowled around the little apartment, trying to figure out whether to eat or not.

  She wasn’t hungry.

  She opened the French windows onto the veranda. A small nondescript terrier, black and white, with one leg seemingly weaker than the rest and a big black patch around one eye, roused himself from an ancient settee where he’d been snoozing. He welcomed her with total politeness and then walked definitely into the room she’d just come from-as if to say, Well, you’re welcome, and I’m very grateful that you’re useful. Thank you for opening the door for me.

  ‘I hope you belong to Alistair,’ Sarah said doubtfully, and then grinned as the little dog stalked straight to the refrigerator and wagged his tail. Okay, he belonged.

  But it still didn’t fit. Nothing seemed right about this, she thought, and the long-set-aside confusion came flooding back. Grant would never have been seen dead with a dog like this, and as far as she was concerned Alistair had higher standards than Grant.

  But Grant had told her that. And Grant…

  Grant had been nothing but a liar.

  There was a stack of bookshelves lining the far wall and she turned her attention from the little dog’s pleading eyes-and tail-to the shelves. Alistair lived to read, she remembered Grant saying. She also remembered Grant had teased him about it. ‘I live life,’ he’d told her. ‘Alistair reads about it.’

  Yeah, right.

  So many things she didn’t understand. So many things she’d got wrong.

  She fingered the books and then moved on.

  On one shelf there was a photograph in a simple wooden frame. It was all alone, as if the owner of this place didn’t really want any memorabilia but hadn’t been able to resist this one.

  It was a photograph of Sheila and Doug Benn. Alistair and Grant’s parents. They’d been at least twenty years older than this when Sarah had met them, she decided, but she still recognised them. They were on a beach somewhere. Dressed in old-fashioned bathing costumes, they stood arm in arm, laughing at the antics of their twin sons.

  The twins looked about ten years old.

  She could pick them still. They might be identical, but they’d been different even then. Grant would be the one doing the headstand, Sarah thought, looking at the photograph of her ex-fiancé grinning widely at the camera from upside down. Alistair was smiling down at him.

  They were all smiling at Grant. That would have pleased him, Sarah thought, picking up the frame and fingering Grant’s face. Grant had always had to be the centre of attention.

  ‘Will you leave my things alone?’

  She nearly dropped the photograph. She hadn’t heard him come in. She whirled and Alistair was standing in the doorway, his face forbidding.

  ‘I’m…I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’d imagine you have photos of your own.’

  ‘I do.’ She put the photograph back on the shelf so fast that it fell face down. Then she had to adjust it, and her colour mounted all the time. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

  He stared at her for a long moment-but then he shrugged. Whatever he’d wanted to say had clearly been deemed not worth the effort.

  ‘Okay.’ He took a deep breath and seemed to come to some sort of decision. ‘Look, we’re both stuck with this. Just…we need to keep the whole thing impersonal.’

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ she managed, and he nodded.

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I thought I’d wait for you.’

  ‘Muriel’s casseroles don’t improve with keeping.’ He crossed to the kitchenette and hauled two plates out of the cupboard to lay them on the bench. Then he looked down to where the little terrier was rubbing himself ecstatically on his ankle. He smiled.

  ‘How about you, Flotsam?’ he asked the little dog. ‘Has she fed you?’

  ‘She being the cat’s mother?’ Sarah snapped before she could stop herself, and Alistair’s smile widened. It was a great smile, Sarah thought wistfully. A killer smile.

  It would never be directed at her.

  ‘She said it, not me,’ he told Flotsam. ‘The cat’s mother, eh?’

  But Sarah was distracted. ‘Um… Flotsam?’

  ‘Because of the way I found him. Flotsam and jetsam-washed up on the beach. I haven’t found Jetsam yet, but I guess it’ll happen.’

  She was intrigued. This was so far from her preconception of Alistair that she had to probe further. ‘You found him?’

&nb
sp; ‘You don’t think I’d go out and choose a dog like Flotsam, do you?’ Alistair asked. He was concentrating on lifting the casserole from the oven, and she couldn’t see his face, but she thought he sounded as if he was smiling. That’d make a change.

  ‘I guess I didn’t think that.’ She stooped and fondled the dog’s scruffy ears, and he reached out a scratchy tongue and licked the back of her hand. He was a seriously enchanting little mutt. No, she hadn’t thought he’d choose a dog like this. But neither had she thought a man like Alistair would have a dog like this foisted on him. Or a man like Grant.

  She needed to separate the two. Desperately.

  ‘So how did you find him?’ she managed.

  ‘He was washed up after a storm,’ Alistair told her, seeming not to notice her discomfort. ‘There was a cyclone here a few months back. A boat was smashed up on the rocks. Indonesian. A couple of sailors were injured and ended up in hospital. The cargo was fish. We suspect it was taken illegally from Australian waters. Anyway, I walked down to the beach a day after the storm and the smell was unbelievable. Tons and tons of tuna, swept up on the beach and left to rot. Our local fisheries officer was taking photographs as evidence, and while he was photographing a pile of fish, the pile moved.’

  ‘It moved?’ Sarah was still rubbing the little dog’s ears. Flotsam looked up at her with eyes that said, Oh, isn’t this the most pathetic story-rub me some more! ‘You mean- Flotsam was underneath?’

  ‘He was crushed under a load of rotten fish. Heaven knows how he managed to survive. At that stage the boat had been broken up for forty-eight hours. Anyway, Flotsam’s leg was badly broken and he was barely alive, but I hauled off a fish and he looked at me…’

  ‘With his patched eye?’

  ‘It’s a great eye,’ Alistair said, and there was no doubting the genuine affection in his voice as he looked at the little dog-who was rubbing himself round and round Sarah’s hand so every inch of his scruffy little head was covered. ‘Sam-the fisheries officer-said he was probably an Indonesian dog, was breaking all sorts of immigration laws by being here, and would have to be quarantined for six months if he was to stay. The best thing would be to put him down. But still that crazy eye looked at me. So I went back to the hospital and asked the wounded sailors if they knew him. They all swore they knew nothing about a dog. By the time I returned the eye had worked on Sam as well. So Sam and I declared him officially an Australian dog who’d obviously been walking along the beach minding his own business when two tons of tuna landed on his head.’

  Sarah stared-and then choked. ‘Oh, of course. That’s the obvious thing to think, isn’t it?’

  ‘It was the obvious thing to think if we didn’t want to put him down,’ Alistair told her, deadpan. ‘Anyway, we treated his leg-and a tricky little piece of surgery it was, too. Broken tib and fib with resultant complications. Then he had to stay here in these quarters just in case quarantine was called for, and afterwards…’

  ‘You couldn’t get rid of him,’ Sarah said on a note of something akin to amazement, and Alistair scooped casserole onto three plates and managed a rueful smile.

  ‘See? I’m not always the evil twin. And as for putting him down…could you?’

  ‘No.’ She looked doubtfully at the dinner plates. And then at Flotsam, whose short, stumpy tail was doing helicopter rotations.

  I’m not always the evil twin.

  Did he know what Grant used to say about him?

  It didn’t matter. Not any more. She had a job to do here, and a little dog to concentrate on to break the tension. ‘Does he sit up at the dinner table, too?’

  ‘He’s fussy who he dines with,’ Alistair said ambiguously, and carried the dog’s plate through the screen door out to the veranda. He set it down on the step while Sarah watched through the screen. ‘Here, mate-you can eat in privacy out here.’

  Sarah stared. And felt her anger build. Whew. There was only one way to meet this hostility, she decided. Head-on. ‘Are you suggesting you’d rather eat out there, too?’ she demanded, and Alistair appeared to think about it.

  ‘Maybe. But I’m hungry. I’ll eat fast.’

  ‘Meaning you want as little contamination from me as possible?’

  ‘You said it, not me, lady,’ Alistair told her. ‘But let’s just leave it there.’

  The silence was deafening. They ate, and the tension was growing all the time. Sarah stirred the casserole-which was some sort of indiscriminate stew-and wished she could be anywhere but here.

  One mistake…

  No. It had been more than one mistake. She’d been hauled into Grant’s world. She’d been caught in the bright bubble of laughter and excitement and sheer buzz, and she hadn’t looked below the surface until it was far, far too late.

  She’d met his family.

  She remembered the night Grant had given her the engagement ring. He’d taken her up to the top of the Rialto Tower in Melbourne, where the lights of all the world had spread out beneath them.

  ‘Now, when all the world is at our feet, I’m at your feet,’ he’d told her, and he’d knelt and given her the most exquisite diamond.

  The moment had been something out of a fairytale. It had seemed…fantastic. But she’d looked down at that gorgeous laughing face and she’d felt a stir of disquiet. It had happened so fast-it had been as if they were playacting. Was there any substance there?

  But she’d accepted. Of course she’d accepted. He had to be special. After that wonderful Christmas she’d wanted so much to be a part of his world. So she’d worn his ring, and she’d loved him and laughed at his jokes and been carried along in his world, until reality had finally hit and she’d seen what really lay beneath. And she’d realised the real reason she’d agreed to marry Grant.

  Loving one twin was no basis for marriage to another.

  Crazy thought. It was a crazy time, long past. She needed to focus on now. On what Alistair was saying.

  ‘You don’t wear his ring.’

  Alistair was watching her from the other side of the table. His voice was carefully neutral-neither approving nor disapproving.

  ‘I thought you wanted to stay impersonal.’

  ‘So I do.’ His eyes stayed calm-watchful and appraising. ‘But I’m still wondering.’

  ‘I’m not in another relationship, if that’s what you mean,’ she told him. ‘But, no, I’m not still pining for Grant. I’ve moved on. Don’t you think it’s time you did, too?’

  ‘I don’t think you can move on from Grant.’

  ‘He’d have liked to hear you say that,’ she said, and there was no way she could keep the note of bitterness from her voice. ‘He had us all dancing from his strings. You included.’

  ‘I never did what he wanted.’

  ‘No, but you judged on his behalf.’

  ‘You killed him.’

  It was like a punch to the face. Dear God…

  She took a great lungful of air and it wasn’t enough. She found her eyes filling. Numbly, blindly, she stood.

  What had she told him? That she’d moved on?

  She’d done no such thing. The pain was right there, waiting to slam back. And it slammed back now.

  She was not going to let this man see her cry.

  ‘Are…are the blood samples here yet?’ she whispered, turning away so he couldn’t see her face. Taking her plate to the sink. Avoiding his gaze.

  ‘Not yet.’ The brief flash of fury had faded. There was a trace of something else in his voice now. Confusion? She didn’t know. She couldn’t care. ‘They won’t be here until the searchers return to town.’

  ‘When will they be back?’ she managed.

  ‘Any time. I’d assumed they’d be in by now.’

  ‘Then I’ll wait in my bedroom,’ she told him. ‘Thank you for dinner. It was better than the company. Let me know when the blood samples arrive.’

  Enough. Her voice wobbled dangerously and she turned before the first tear could fall. She was moving out through th
e door before he could speak.

  ‘Sarah…’ It was a tentative call of her name. He sounded unsure. Concerned.

  But she didn’t turn. She couldn’t. She had to get out of here right now.

  As Alistair cleared up the casserole he swore. Over and over again. What was going on here? What had Sarah said? That the casserole was better than the company.

  Maybe she was right.

  He really had to do something about Mrs Granson’s housekeeping, he told himself, in a vain attempt to distract himself from what was really important. The casserole was disgusting.

  Right. The casserole was disgusting. Which made him…what? Even more disgusting?

  No. He refused to accept judgement from someone like Sarah. What right did she have to criticise?

  What right did she have to look as she did? As if he’d struck her-hard.

  He thought suddenly of that last time he’d seen her. At the cemetery as they’d buried Grant. His parents had been inconsolable. And Sarah had appeared, wobbling on crutches, looking pathetic. She’d even tried to smile.

  He’d been so…wild! Wild with grief at such an appalling waste. Such an appalling loss. At what had seemed such an ultimate betrayal of how he and his parents had felt about her.

  So he’d pushed her away with his hurtful words and she’d looked just as she looked now. Like a wounded animal who’d been hurt even unto death.

  Six years ago, standing beside his brother’s open grave, he’d felt an almost unbearable urge to recant. To take back what had been said. To follow her and take her into his arms.

  He hadn’t done it then and he was darned if he’d do it now. But once again that urge was there.