‘Sergeant, if you let one more branch fly back and hit me in the face I’m going to have you up for assault,’ she murmured, and the policeman turned around and stared at her. In his face she saw the confirmation of what she’d suspected.
She was a woman, she was a professional, and she was his superior. The combination of the three had brought out the worst of his antagonism. It wasn’t worth trying to placate him, she thought ruefully. She’d worked with this type before. Placating would make her seem weak in his eyes, and it’d just make him worse.
‘Sergeant, our priority is first and foremost to keep people alive,’ she told him. ‘Sure, we may have a crime on our hands, but right now we have one dead pilot who’s smuggled a bit of heroin and died for his pains. We also have missing people who, as far as we know, have done nothing illegal. They might be dying right at this minute. That’s our job, Sergeant. To find them. Alive. As fast as we can. Right?’
He stared at her, belligerence and suspicion warring on his face. But the bottom line was that he was a policeman. There were witnesses to this conversation, and no matter how much he might disagree with her he didn’t want to lose his job.
He had to follow orders.
‘Right,’ he said, and he turned away from her. The branch he’d pushed aside was lowered carefully so it didn’t hit her.
But his hand went again to his gun.
Sarah hesitated. She turned and found Alistair watching her, and by the look in his eyes she could see he was as worried as she was.
By mutual consent they fell back from Barry-just a little.
‘Don’t worry too much,’ Alistair murmured, so low Barry couldn’t hear. He motioned to the two women bushwalkers who were striding ahead in the manner of people who could go even faster than Flotsam. ‘Daphne and Susan are two really sensible women. I’ve primed them.’
‘You’ve primed them?’
‘When we leave today they’ll stay around, and when Jack comes out he’ll join them. I’ve asked them to stick close to Barry. We both know he’s a loose cannon, but he’s not a crazy loose cannon. He’ll stick to the law-especially if he has witnesses. I’ve organised that he always has witnesses.’
‘Thank you.’ Sarah took a deep breath. This man was good. He knew his people.
Maybe that was what being a country doctor was all about.
She thought back to the things she remembered Grant saying about him-‘My brother, who intends to spend his life treating bunions and coughs and colds and all the imaginary ills of a pack of hayseeds.’
Grant had been wrong. This man was much more than that.
Alistair…the dull twin? She didn’t think so.
She’d never thought so. And that was the trouble.
They hiked the rest of the way in uneasy silence, which suited Sarah perfectly. Barry had stopped his condescending slowness and now she was having trouble keeping up, but there was no way she was asking him to slow down on her behalf. She concentrated on her breathing and concentrated on her footing, and when she finally stumbled out onto the little beach where the plane lay Alistair touched her arm and smiled.
‘Well done,’ he said in an undervoice.
He didn’t like her, she thought, but apparently he’d decided to put aside their antagonism in the face of a mutual enemy. She could cope with that. She could almost be grateful for it. She’d worked with difficult cops before, but never when the officer causing difficulties was the sole representative of the force. She gave Alistair an uneasy smile in response and the look on his face said he understood exactly.
His expression unnerved her. It was almost as if he had the capacity to read her mind, and she found-increasingly-that it was a really disturbing sensation.
The job. Concentrate on the job.
The plane had crashed into the rockface but there was minimal damage. Blocking out everyone else, Sarah circled the tiny aeroplane until she was sure she understood what had happened. There should be flight investigators here, she thought-they’d come, but this was such a remote area the initial assessment had to be up to her.
What had happened seemed obvious. There were deep wheel marks gouged into the beach from the high tide mark. The pilot had intended to land. He’d been aware enough to get the plane down at the point where he’d had maximum run, and given luck he could have made it. He almost had.
While the others watched on-Barry with a look of truculence on his big face and the others expressionless-Sarah climbed into the cockpit. She stared around her. Things here were almost intact. Only the windscreen had been smashed. She could see how the pilot had sustained an injury to his face. She stared around, wanting more, but there was nothing else. A pile of girlie magazines had obviously been lying on the passenger seat. They’d slid off on impact, though a few had caught in the seat belt. That was all. There was no blood, apart from a slight smear on one of the magazines. No vomit. Nothing to suggest human distress of any kind.
Alistair was right behind her. Just outside the aeroplane. Waiting.
‘The heroin hit must have been so fast,’ she murmured, carefully collecting the magazine with the blood sample and slipping it into a plastic keeper. ‘I’m wondering now whether the condom did burst in mid-air. It seems more likely that the build-up of material in his gut made him feel so ill that he had to land. He did have a real chance of getting down here. But as the plane hit the rockface the pressure of the seat belt would have burst the condom.’ She frowned and looked around her once more. ‘Either way, death would have been fast.’
‘But not for the passengers,’ Alistair said grimly, standing aside to let her climb from the cockpit and move to the cargo area.
She glanced at the ground-at the mass of footmarks. ‘Site preservation?’
‘There were people here before me,’ Barry said a trifle belligerently. ‘They hauled open the back doors.’
‘The doors were all closed?’
‘I think so.’
‘Can you check? And see if anyone noticed whether there were any footmarks around the plane?’ It would have been so easy if she’d been on hand straight away, she thought ruefully. All it would have needed was a look to see if there were footprints leading away from the plane, and they would have been easy to decipher in such soft sand. But to come in thirty-six hours after the event…
‘Barry was the only one to go into the rear of the plane,’ Alistair told her. ‘After he saw the empty gun holster he had to, to see if there was a gun. I arrived about ten minutes after the first group-we sent the fastest walkers first-but already the scene was compromised.’
‘You noticed?’
‘I noticed that the scene was compromised. There were footprints everywhere. But no one but Barry went into the cargo area. It’s too unpleasant.’
He was right there. Alistair hauled open the door into the back of the plane and she only needed a glance to know there’d been real human suffering here.
Someone had been ill. She could smell the vomit. And the blood.
‘Major blood vessel,’ she said softly. ‘And the vomit… Airsick, maybe?’
‘It looks like it,’ Alistair told her.
‘Mmm.’ She stood at the entrance, taking careful note. Heaving her backpack from her shoulders, she retrieved a flashlight, then shone it carefully, meticulously, around every section of the cabin.
‘Someone lay there and bled,’ she said, staring down at a dark, pooled stain. ‘Why?’ Then her eyebrows furrowed. ‘Let’s assume they were sitting down against the sides as they flew. People do. It gives them better balance. They usually don’t sit in the middle of the aircraft. This is a small area, but assuming we don’t have many people they’ll have been sitting leaning against the sides. It fits with where the vomit is. As the plane came in to land they wouldn’t have got to their feet. Maybe they’d have known enough to go into brace position. So what have we got that could have cut them? Caused this amount of damage?’
‘They could have had a bloody nose like our pilot.
’
‘Too much blood. This is a major blood vessel. Our AB passenger hit himself on something sharp. Like…’ She stared around some more and her eyes rested on a metal box. The thing looked as if it had been used as some sort of suitcase, but it was open and its edges were raw metal. Sarah leaned forward and ran her flashlight around the rim. And winced at what she saw. A tiny fragment of ripped cloth, what looked like skin and a dark smear of blood.
‘I’m guessing here’s our culprit. We have our passengers in brace position, or similar, but with nothing to hold on to as our plane crashed. They’re feeling bad. These things are appalling to fly in even when they’ve got seats. So they come in to crash land. We have this thing free to fly around at will. My guess is that it’s hit legs. More than one leg. Or a hip maybe. Whatever. Can we bag the whole thing and bring it back for examination?’ Her flashlight kept searching.
‘So we’re looking for bodies?’ Alistair asked.
‘Maybe not.’ Her flashlight was carefully inspecting the floor of the cabin. ‘Where was the tarpaulin-does anyone know? Barry?’
The policeman came up behind them and stared in at the mess over her shoulder, reluctantly co-operative. ‘The tarp was over in the far corner.’
‘Not near the door?’
‘No.’
She nodded. ‘So there’s been no major bleeding near the door. If our man was bleeding to death and intent on getting out of the plane there’ll have been a trail of blood leading out the door. The area around the door is almost clean.’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘What do you reckon was in that metal case?’
‘Drugs,’ the policeman said promptly, but Sarah shook her head.
‘I doubt it.’ She ran her flashlight over it once more. ‘It looks to me like it’s been used as a suitcase. My grandmother had one just like it. They’re cheap and nasty-this one hasn’t got a lock. It’ll have been thrown open as the plane hit and the contents strewn everywhere. And what’s in suitcases-usually-is clothes.’
‘So?’ said Barry, and there was no mistaking the note of belligerence in his voice. He obviously didn’t hold with lady doctors telling him stuff he could well work out himself.
‘So the clothes may well have been used to pad and bind wounds. To provide pressure. You say it took half an hour to get to the wreck? That’s time for someone who knew what they were doing to fashion pressure pads and tie them in place, staunch the bleeding as best they could and then get the heck out of here. That’s the only scenario I can think of that fits.’
‘Which explains the empty case,’ Alistair said thoughtfully, and she nodded.
‘Then they’re still alive.’ Barry turned and stared up at the surrounding hills.
‘But without drugs,’ Sarah told him.
‘Maybe.’
‘And there’s no signs of weapons,’ Alistair added. ‘I’d be happier if you put that damned pistol aside, Barry.’
‘There was a gun. If they’re drug-dealers…’
‘Then they’re drug-dealers who are in deep trouble,’ Sarah snapped. She was starting to feel hugely uneasy about this man. Uneasy enough to radio headquarters and voice her concerns? Maybe. Or maybe she needed to, but not now. She’d wait until she got back to Dolphin Cove, she decided. The sooner they had another member of the police force here the better, no matter how many Heads of Commonwealth meetings there were. ‘With this amount of bleeding, someone is near death,’ she told him. ‘We may well have someone in a coma on our hands. This is major injury, Barry.’
He shrugged. Clearly the idea of a few drug runners dying on his patch didn’t unduly worry him.
‘So how many?’ he demanded.
‘At least two.’ Sarah played the flashlight over the floor of the cabin once more. And faltered. Her beam raked the floor again, and once again it stopped. ‘Oh, no…’
‘What?’ Alistair was following her beam but not seeing.
‘Barry, are you sure you’re the only person who’s been in here?’ she demanded, and the policeman nodded.
‘I’m sure.’
‘No children came with you in the initial rescue team?’
‘No.’
‘I might be wrong, but there… Is it a child’s footprint?’ she whispered. ‘See those smudges? It seems everyone has crawled out, leaving no identifying trace, and most footprints have been overlaid by Barry’s. But there, against the wall…’ She took a deep breath and refocussed. ‘Can you hold my hand, Alistair? Support me while I lean in? I don’t want to compromise this further.’
She climbed up into the cabin, stood just inside the doorway but didn’t enter, reluctant to disturb the scene more than it had been already. But balancing just within, leaning inward and letting Alistair take all her weight, she could reach right into the cabin without disturbing the blood or the pattern of the smudged knee and footmarks.
She leaned until she was right over the place where she’d directed the torch. For a long moment she stared down, and the look on her face was grim as death.
‘What is it?’ Alistair said gently, and she knew he’d seen from her expression how deeply disturbed she was.
‘It’s definitely a child’s,’ she whispered. She was following the outlines with her torch, but the more she looked at it the more she knew she was right. ‘It’s the outline of a sandal, or something similar, and it’s tiny. By the look of it we’re looking at the print of a four or five-year-old.’
It changed things. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it did. There was a deathly silence while they all took in this new piece of horror.
Finally Alistair eased her out. Sarah jumped down onto the soft sand and pushed her curls out of her eyes with an expression of intense weariness.
‘I can’t tell what’s happened,’ she said. ‘I don’t have the skills. But there are people who do. Footprints can give us age and weight, maybe even things like country of origin if the footwear is specific enough, but there’ll be more evidence than footprints. DNA can be isolated for everyone who was on this plane. Meanwhile I don’t know who they are or what they’ve done but I want them found. Barry, you might be right that they’re hiding, but no matter what you think about their motives this fact is absolute: we have a child, probably badly injured, who for whatever reason is somewhere in the hills around here. I don’t care what the security arrangements are for the Heads of Commonwealth. I’ll ask for experts. I want this place analysed by the best forensic team we have and I want it done now. Or sooner!’
CHAPTER FOUR
SARAH made a careful inspection of the site, but there was nothing else it could tell her. She roped off the plane so no one else could go near, but she knew it was futile. ‘It’s like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted, but it’s all I can do. I want technicians up here to take fingerprints. Anything. There’s been so much messed up already…’
‘I’m sorry,’ Alistair said ruefully as they left the beach.
There was no point in their staying. Jack, the capable mechanic Alistair had spoken of, had arrived. He was primed to stay close to Barry. Alistair needed to be back at the hospital and Sarah needed to set wheels in motion-wheels that required a phone and a lot of explanation.
‘To be honest, I wasn’t thinking about compromising the scene,’ Alistair told her. ‘I had a dead pilot on my hands, and almost the moment I saw him there were people demanding I get back to town fast to cope with the suspected coronary. I thought…’
‘You thought Barry might be depended on to preserve the site?’
‘Yes.’
She considered. ‘So, when he said there were others at the plane before him who messed with the footprints…’
‘There weren’t. He went out with the first group. I was following soon after, but Barry would have been first on the scene.’
‘So he just didn’t notice whether there were prints leading out of the plane before everyone else had stomped all over them.’ She sighed. ‘The man’s a liar as well as a fool.’
‘His mind’s
not exactly on the job. He doesn’t want to be here.’
‘The easiest way for him to get out is to learn to be a decent cop,’ she said ruefully. ‘What are the authorities about, sending someone like this to be a sole policeman in this remote place? Professionals without back-up have to be the best.’
‘That’s not something Grant would have said.’
She cast him a look that was disturbed. Professionals without back-up having to be the best? Alistair was right. Grant would never have conceded that. Even if it meant criticising his brother.
Grant had done nothing but look down with disparagement on his twin, Sarah thought. How much had that hurt?
‘We were very young,’ she said softly.
He said nothing.
They walked on. She had to concentrate. The path was really rough. But it was easier returning than going. Alistair was walking behind her but he was moving branches aside, holding them. Making the way easier for her.
Why was he suddenly being nice?
She and Grant…they’d been so conceited. At first she’d even gone along with Grant’s disparagement of his family. Sure, she hadn’t disparaged them herself, but she’d laughed at Grant’s hayseed jokes.
Until she’d spent time with them.
Until she’d discovered what Alistair was really like.
‘What do we do now?’ Alistair asked, and she hauled herself back to the job at hand.
‘Worry,’ she said, trying to keep it light. ‘It’s what I’m principally good at.’
‘Yet you decided not to stay at the plane with Barry?’
‘I don’t think they’ll find them.’
‘Why not?’
She hesitated. Why not? Gut instinct? No. Something more.
‘They’re running,’ she said. ‘There are at least two blood groups there, which means at least two people. But there’s a child. I’m going to be really presumptuous here and assume if one’s a child then there’ll be parents. Why on earth would parents take an injured child and hide?’
The Police Doctor’s Secret Page 6
