The Police Doctor’s Secret

by Marion Lennox

‘There are assumptions all over the place there,’ he said slowly, and she nodded.

  ‘There are. But assumptions are what I do. Acting on scientific evidence, I best-guess and hypothesise. I try and keep an open mind for as long as I can, but when people are depending on me for answers sometimes I just have to guess. I always state absolutely that it’s a guess, but it’s still a guess, for all that.’

  ‘So what have you guessed?’ he asked, and she flinched.

  ‘You sound…sardonic. As far as I know I don’t have to answer to you.’

  ‘No.’ He was silent for a moment, and then added in a different tone, ‘No, you don’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound sardonic. I would like to know what you’ve guessed.’

  She stared out to sea for a long moment, as if she was considering whether to speak or not. In truth she wasn’t being difficult. She just needed time to adjust-to adjust to the feel of him sitting beside her. The sensation of the night.

  The sensation of him.

  But finally she spoke, forcing her mind to track again through what it had tracked over and over again over the last days. What she’d expounded to Larry as the most probable course of events.

  ‘We have a smuggling ring,’ she told him. ‘A team set up to take advantage of desperate people who, for whatever reason, can’t use or don’t know about the normal refugee channels. Amal looks Middle Eastern, and we know how much unrest is over there. So for some reason he was in serious trouble. He needed to get his family out of the country fast. He looks as if he’s been well dressed, his hands are those of a professional, rather than a manual worker, and his clothes aren’t cheap. So let’s say he had money.’

  ‘Assumptions.’

  ‘Do you want to hear this or do you want to leave me to my beach? Alone.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He held his hands up, placating. Asking her to proceed.

  ‘Fine,’ she snapped. She tugged Flotsam to her and hugged him. She was wearing shorts and T-shirt; the night wind was soft and warm and she wasn’t cold, but still she shivered. She had need of Flotsam.

  ‘Okay,’ she continued finally. ‘Our people paid through the nose to be taken out of the country-say to some nice safe country like Australia. They were kept well clear of normal channels of transport. Normal refugee channels. They were taken overland, or by cheap flights to Asia, then onward by boat and landed on a remote beach somewhere up north. Then our pilot picked them up, only he was a fool, with a plan for more easy cash, and he died. They crashed.’

  ‘I’ve figured this out-’

  ‘Bear with me,’ she snapped. ‘I’m thinking out loud, and it helps if I do the whole scenario. So they crashed. The child was badly wounded-a lot of blood. The mother was slightly wounded.’

  ‘You don’t know-’

  ‘Wait.’ She glowered. ‘As I said, it’s assumption. But we have a dreadfully wounded child, a slightly wounded mother, and a father who’s okay. He’d have got them all out of the plane. His attention would have been on the child. But what was his next action?’

  ‘Check the pilot?’

  ‘Yeah. But the kid needed him. His wife maybe had a bleeding hand-something-not too much. So he’d have told her to check. She climbed up, leaving blood. She saw that the pilot was dead. And she saw the gun. She was in the middle of nowhere. Scared silly. Terrified. Of course she’d have taken the gun.’

  ‘So why didn’t he bring it?’ Alistair said slowly. ‘When he came to rob the store?’

  ‘Two reasons I can think of,’ Sarah said. ‘Either he doesn’t know she has it, or he’s left it with her. To defend herself. And neither scenario appeals. What we’re left with is a terrified, desperate woman with a gun.’

  ‘Hell,’ Alistair said softly, and Sarah nodded.

  ‘It is. For her it must be.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Hope Amal pulls through,’ Sarah said. ‘Hope he can tell the police in Cairns where he comes from so we can at least call out in the woman’s own language. Larry agrees that we need to remove every uniform and every gun or anything that can be remotely taken for a gun at a distance from searchers.

  If she thinks anyone’s armed it’ll make things worse. We’ll try and figure out through their names where they come from-there are people trying to do that now. As for the rest…’ She hugged Flotsam some more. ‘Nothing,’ she said bitterly. ‘Until the searchers go out tomorrow morning…nothing.’

  ‘You really care, don’t you?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  There was a long, long silence. Sarah dug her toes into the sun-warmed sand. The night was closing in on them now-the moon was full over the sea and the shimmer of its light over the far-off waves made this place look lovely. An enticing land.

  But it wasn’t, Sarah thought. It was deceiving. In a couple of hours the tide would sweep in and this would be underwater. There was no shelter. The mangrove swamps held crocodiles; there was no food; every scratch would fester in this warm, muggy climate.

  Somewhere…

  ‘Sarah?’ Alistair said, so softly that at first she thought she’d imagined it. But she looked up and he was watching her, his eyes gravely questioning.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wanted to ask you…’ He hesitated, as though not sure how to begin. Or even if he wanted to begin.

  What was he going to ask? Sarah thought, half fearful.

  And she was right to be fearful. His question, when it came, was right out of left field. He put a hand down and his finger traced the deep and jagged scar running the length of her left leg. ‘Sarah, how did you get this scar?’

  He shouldn’t have asked. Long ago he’d had an odd and occasionally silly great-aunt who’d drummed in her Rules To Live By. ‘Don’t ask questions, boy. You might get answers you don’t like, and then where would you be, hey?’

  That was how he felt now. But the question had been growing. The deep sense of unease. The feeling…

  No. He wasn’t going to begin to acknowledge the feeling he had. The foreboding. He couldn’t. Until he heard the answer.

  But he knew that he was right the moment he looked up from tracing the scar and saw her eyes. He saw the fear.

  ‘In the accident,’ she said, so softly that he had to lean forward to make sure he heard it.

  ‘In the accident-when Grant died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But…’ He was motionless. It was as if the whole world was holding its breath. He should shut up, he thought. He should back out right now. This was Grant they were talking about. It was as if he had to make a choice right now-Grant or Sarah.

  Grant was his twin.

  But Grant was dead. Six years dead. And Sarah was alive, living with consequences he could hardly bear to think about.

  ‘This is a jagged tear to the outside of your left leg,’ he said slowly, as if each word was torn from him. ‘And the only side of the car that was damaged was the passenger side.’

  ‘Well, then.’ She swallowed and tried to rise. His hand stopped her.

  ‘Sarah…’

  ‘Don’t ask, Alistair,’ she begged. ‘Grant’s your twin. You love him. Don’t ask.’

  But he didn’t have to ask. He already knew the answer.

  ‘Grant was driving,’ he whispered. ‘My God…Grant was driving. But how…? How…? Did you agree to take the blame?’ And then, as she stayed silent, he thought back. ‘You had concussion. I remember. When Grant rang he said you had concussion and lacerations. That’d fit if you were in the passenger side. But he told me that you were driving.’

  ‘We hit a tree,’ Sarah told him. ‘When the police arrived Grant had hauled me out of the car.’

  ‘That’s what he told them?’

  ‘I assume. I was unconscious.’

  ‘He’d been drinking.’ Alistair swallowed. All the old anger came flooding back. The fury. The waste of it. The sheer bloody waste. And this girl…

  ‘He’d have been over the legal alcohol limit. To save losing
his licence he dragged you out and he blamed you. Is that right, Sarah? Is that right?’

  Sarah flinched. It had never been said. It had never been faced. And now it was harder to admit than she’d thought possible.

  ‘It’s right,’ she whispered. ‘I never had the chance to ask him-to confront him-but it must have been right. To lose his driver’s licence…to have it in the newspapers that he’d crashed while driving under the influence… You know how much he’d have hated it. But me… I had sedatives in my bloodstream, but there’s no law against that. Rumours were that I’d taken all sorts of illegal drugs, but there was nothing illegal about it. Grant knew that. He knew that if he said I was driving I wouldn’t be charged.’

  ‘But…he was dying.’

  ‘He didn’t think there was anything wrong with him.’ Sarah gave a bitter laugh. ‘You know that. He mustn’t have been wearing his seat belt. Not even that. He was drunk; he wasn’t wearing his seat belt; and he thought he’d walked away from the wreck without any injury.’

  ‘And you let him… You let him accuse you.’

  ‘I had concussion,’ Sarah said. ‘I lost a lot of blood. I was taken to hospital, and as soon as I came round they gave me an anaesthetic and stitched my leg. It was a big job, so they used a general anaesthetic. I was hazy-in and out of consciousness for almost a day. And when I surfaced they told me Grant was dead. Dead. That was it. No one interviewed me. No one asked me questions. I didn’t have to tell anyone what had happened because Grant had made a full statement to the police naming me as the driver. No one even asked me to explain the traces of sedative they found in my bloodstream.’

  Alistair sat, silent. Trying to absorb it. He scarcely could. But it fitted. Dreadful as it was, it fitted.

  But Sarah… To wake like that. What must it have been like, regaining consciousness? Waking? Being told Grant was dead?

  Being told that Grant had stated that it was all her fault.

  ‘They believed it when you agreed you were the driver?’ Alistair whispered, and Sarah gave a bitter laugh.

  ‘No. I told you. They didn’t have to believe me. Not one person has ever asked me whether I was driving. No one. They believed Grant. How much easier to believe than to ask questions? The coroner’s verdict was that the car had spun out when it hit ice. An accident. No need for questions.’

  ‘But-’

  ‘Why do you think I decided to be a forensic pathologist?’ she demanded, her voice laced with the bitterness of years. ‘When the people at work shunned me because of what I’d done and I decided to change careers it was the obvious choice. I figured if I could stop one person going through what I’d gone through it’d be worthwhile. Join the police force, study forensic medicine, save the world.’ She tried to smile, but there was an obvious and dreadful pain behind the smile. A pain he couldn’t believe he’d missed until now.

  ‘They were all so stupid,’ she whispered. ‘They believed. And what was I to do?’

  ‘You could have told the truth.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You could have.’

  ‘Could I? Could I really? Could I have told the world that not only was Grant dead but he was a liar? Could I have told your parents that? Shattered their world still more? Could I have told you? I knew how unwell your father was-he was the nicest man. And you…’

  Her voice faded almost to nothing, but then she regrouped-just a little. ‘How would you have felt?’ she asked, ‘Not only was your brother dead, but he’d been driving drunk and in the few minutes when he should have been trying to stop my leg from bleeding he’d carted me around to the other side of the car and made it seem as if I was the driver. Afterwards I went to see the car, where it lay in the wrecker’s yard. If you knew what you were looking for it was so obvious. Do you know, he even wiped my blood from the passenger door? The doctors told me I almost died through blood loss. I lay bleeding while he covered his traces. But then he paid the ultimate price. He died.’

  Alistair thought it through, and thought some more. It didn’t help. His head felt as if it was close to bursting. Whichever way he looked at it he felt sick. Unbearably ill.

  He’d seen the car. He hadn’t looked. He hadn’t asked questions. And Sarah had paid the price.

  ‘You’ve carried this all this time.’

  ‘I had no choice. Grant gave me this legacy.’

  ‘But you…’ He stared at her in the moonlight, trying to see… Trying to see what? He didn’t know. ‘You were on drugs…’

  Anger flared then. Real and dreadful. ‘Does that make it easier to bear? Your brother blamed me but, hey, it’s okay, she’s just a hophead?’

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘You want to know the truth about that, too?’

  He didn’t. But he must. ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was because of my mother,’ she told him.

  She stood then, pushing herself up, walking away and looking out to sea-as if she couldn’t bear to face him.

  ‘I’ve already told you my mother was an alcoholic,’ she said. ‘She never got over my father walking out on her, and that happened before I was born. She suffered from depression, exacerbated by the alcohol. She was in and out of nursing homes from the time I was tiny-on uppers, downers, the works. She and I hadn’t had any real relationship for years, though I tried. Heaven knows I tried. Anyway, that night she rang me, when I was working at the hospital, and said I had to come around to her apartment. She had a surprise for me. Something she wanted me to share with my father. She was insistent. I had to come. God help me, she even sounded excited.’

  ‘And?’ Alistair found he was holding his breath, and he didn’t know how long he’d been holding it. For ten minutes? Longer. An eternity. He took a long, searing breath and tried to concentrate.

  ‘She’d suicided,’ Sarah said flatly. ‘Of course she had. Some things are inevitable. It was her last sick joke on the world. On me. On life. She’d planned it so I’d find her and I had to cut her down. She thought…she’d have thought that by hurting me she’d somehow hurt my father. The sick thing is that he couldn’t have cared less.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah…’

  ‘I called the police, the undertaker-everyone,’ she said. ‘A doctor arrived at some stage. I was… Well, I was in a mess. Despite everything, I still loved her. The doctor who came knew Grant, and he knew who I was. He thought I was still… Well, he knew about our relationship. So he called him and Grant came.’ She gave a shrug of her shoulders, eloquently expressive in the moonlight. ‘That sort of thing-drama, suicide, me being distraught-would have appealed to Grant. I knew him pretty well by then. Too well. Because of my father, the suicide would hit the headlines, and Grant knew that. It was what he most liked about me. My famous father. It had taken me a while to see, but I knew it then, and I never should have let him be called. If the paparazzi were nearby then Grant would relish it. Only there weren’t any paparazzi. My mother had got past the stage where the press were interested.’

  Alistair was scarcely breathing. At the time of Grant’s death he hadn’t seen either of them for a couple of months, but what she was saying made sense. Every time Grant had talked about Sarah the name of her famous father had come up.

  Would Grant have loved Sarah if her father wasn’t famous? He couldn’t ask. But he knew the answer.

  ‘Couldn’t your father come?’ he asked her, and watched as she shook her head, bleakness intensifying.

  ‘What do you think? He was in Switzerland-with another of his women. Being famous. Sure, there’d be paparazzi where my father was, but the suicide of an elderly, drunk ex-wife could be hushed up. I told Grant that was what I wanted-that things be kept quiet-and he had to agree.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you?’ she asked bleakly. ‘Do you? Because that’s how it happened. He’d been drinking, and I was too upset to think straight. He came into my mother’s apartment and he acted the real doctor. Specialist in charge. Which, of course, he was. “I’ll take charge,” he told e
veryone. He gave me sedatives and I didn’t argue. “I’ll take you home,” he said, and that was the last thing I remember.’

  ‘Why did I know nothing of this?’ Alistair felt sick. To say he was appalled… There was no way he could begin to describe how he felt. His world was shifting under his feet. Grant. Grant had done this-to Sarah. ‘Why did I know nothing about what happened to your mother?’

  ‘You didn’t ask,’ Sarah told him, weary now beyond belief. ‘I told you. Nobody asked. No one came near me. I made my decision to wear Grant’s blame because I didn’t think your parents could bear it if I didn’t. I wore it. And you all just accepted it. Because, of course, you loved Grant. Everyone loved Grant. God help me, for a short, short time I thought I did, too. But I’ve paid for that loving. It’s a long time since I loved him, but everyone else still does.’

  There was an end to it. Her voice faded to nothing. Her world seemed to fade to nothing. Or maybe it had faded a long time ago.

  Sarah stood looking out to sea for a long, long time, while Alistair stayed silent behind her.

  There was nothing to be said. Nothing to say. She’d made her decision six years ago. If she’d had a choice that decision would have been held for life. But now…

  Grant was his twin. What she’d just done to Alistair was inexcusable. But he’d asked. He’d probed as no one else ever had.

  ‘I’m going back to the house,’ she said at last, and she walked away without looking back.

  Not even Flotsam followed her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT WAS almost two in the morning before he came to her.

  She’d lain in the dark, staring at the moonlit ceiling, her mind almost blank. She’d gone past thinking.

  Once upon a time she’d made a conscious decision not to hurt these people. She remembered the time she’d spent on Grant’s family farm, so long ago. Grant had take her there for Christmas. Until then her relationship with Grant had been light, and she’d had little intention of taking it further. But when he’d discovered she had nowhere to go for Christmas-her dysfunctional family hadn’t celebrated Christmas for years-he’d insisted that she come.