‘If movies were made in Iluka-yes, you should.’ He stared out the window with morbid fascination at the sheets of rain pelting against the glass. ‘I could be stuck here for months.’
‘It suits me,’ Amy said, but she’d turned back to the toaster and he couldn’t see how serious she was. Or if she was serious at all.
The Crammonds’ home was certainly not like a crime scene. It was the comfortable home of a cosy pair of grandparents and there was nothing suspicious at all.
Joss had been given the key the night before. Now the three of them, the policeman, Amy and Joss, pulled the kitchen apart.
‘It’d help if we knew what we were looking for,’ the policeman complained. ‘You don’t think they’re into illicit substances-heroin or the like?’
‘It crossed my mind last night,’ Joss admitted. ‘Not heroin, no. The symptoms of heroin overdose are very different to what happened to Emma. But I did wonder if they might be manufacturing amphetamines.’
‘The Crammonds?’ Amy’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You have to be kidding.’
‘The strangest people are into drugs,’ the policeman told her. He was inspecting canisters, one after another, poking his finger in and sniffing. ‘One of our local grannies had a quarter of an acre of cannabis planted in her vegetable patch. I only found out about it when husband became fed up with her pulling out his tomatoes. They had a full-scale domestic, the neighbour got worried and I was called.’
‘Here?’ Amy shook her head in disbelief. ‘In Iluka? Why did I never hear about it?’
‘Because I sprayed the lot with weedkiller and told her to make a donation to the Salvation Army’s drug rehabilitation programme,’ Jeff said dourly. ‘She was only growing it for herself-in fact, I suspect she hardly used the stuff and I didn’t see much point in sending her to prison.’
‘No.’ Amy was still stunned.
‘So Iluka’s a hotbed of vice.’ Joss was intrigued. ‘I thought nothing ever happened in Iluka.’
‘It’s precisely because nothing ever happens that things do happen,’ the policeman told him. ‘People get bored.’
‘Murder and mayhem?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘Yet you keep it under wraps.’
‘If I can,’ the policeman agreed. ‘No sense in airing dirty linen in public.’
Amy was sifting through the cooking cupboard, peering into packages. ‘So if they’re into amphetamine production…’
‘They’d need equipment and there’s no sign of it. And they’d be nervous. The Crammonds weren’t. They were quite happy to let us search the house and the garage.’
‘Do we know what we’re looking for?’
‘No.’
‘Great.’
But Joss was sorting through the clutter on the bench and he’d lifted the lid of the sugar bowl. Without really expecting anything, he’d taken a tiny pinch of sugar and placed it on his tongue. His face stilled.
‘Jeff…’
‘Mmm?’ The policeman crossed to his side and peered into the bowl. ‘What? It looks like normal sugar to me.’
‘Taste it.’
‘Yeah?’ He did-though the look on his face said that he might as well be eating cyanide. ‘Ugh. It’s bitter. That’s not sugar!’
‘No.’ Joss was gazing thoughtfully into the jar. ‘It’s not. They had apple pie and maybe Emma sprinkled it with what she thought was sugar. She might not have tasted it like that, and maybe her grandparents didn’t use it.’
‘But what is it?’ Jeff was poking into the white substance with his finger. ‘It’s a bit finer than sugar but…well, you wouldn’t notice it.’
‘Where do they keep the packet?’ Joss asked, and Amy poked around in the grocery cupboard under the bench until she found a half-empty sugar packet. She opened it and tasted.
‘Sugar. It’s fine.’
‘Then what…?’
‘What’s nearby?’ Joss knelt beside her-it felt good to kneel beside her, he thought, and then gave himself a mental shake. He was losing his mind here. He should be concentrating on things that were important and all he could focus on was how good Amy smelled. Fresh and clean, and there was some lingering perfume about her. It was faint-as if it was in her soap, and not applied out of a bottle-but it was unmistakable. Lily of the valley? Gorgeous.
Groceries. Poison. Get a grip, Braden.
And there it was.
The packet was white with blue lettering. It was smaller than the sugar packet, and its lettering was clear.
Speedy Cure.
‘What the heck is Speedy Cure?’ he demanded, and rose, opening the packet as he did.
It was a white powder, slightly grainy. If you didn’t know better, you could mistake it for sugar.
‘What is it?’
‘My mum used to use that,’ the policeman told them, taking the packet away from Joss and staring down at it in recognition. ‘It’s used to cure corned meats. I seem to remember it makes a great corned silverside.’
‘But what is it?’
The sergeant was turning over the packet.
‘Sodium nitrate,’ he read. ‘Could that be it, Doc?’
‘It certainly could.’ Joss stared from the packet to the sugar bowl and back again. ‘Maybe…if the sugar bowl was empty Mrs Crammond might have asked her granddaughter to fill it.’
‘And if she said the sugar’s in the cupboard…’ Amy was way ahead of him. ‘Emma would have grabbed the first package that looked like sugar.’
‘Problem solved.’ Joss grinned. ‘How very satisfactory. And you won’t have to arrest anyone, Jeff. Not that you would have, anyway.’
‘I would have at this,’ Jeff told them. ‘If a child was hurt because of drug dealing…’ He held up the packet and grimaced. ‘Mind, they should have known better than to keep this where kiddies can get near it.’
‘I think they’ll have learned their lesson.’
‘I’ll go across to your dad’s and tell them.’ Jeff grinned at them both. ‘Well done, the pair of you. You make a good team, you know.’
You make a good team…
It was a throwaway line. There was no reason for it to reverberate in Joss’s head like a vow.
Amy was taking it lightly, which was just as well. ‘We know we’re a great team,’ Amy said smugly. ‘I’m thinking of talking to the weather bureau. Arranging it so that it keeps raining and Joss will have to stay.’
‘Put in a word from me, too, then,’ Jeff told them. ‘If it meant we’d get a permanent doctor for this town then I’m all for it.’
‘Why can’t you get a doctor?’
‘Are you kidding? Bowra has enough trouble keeping Doris, and she’s impossible. There’s no specialists this side of Blairglen-the place is a desert.’
‘But it’s a beautiful place to live.’
‘Yeah. It is,’ the policeman said dourly. ‘But the only land without legal building caveats-bans on commercial building-is the land under the nursing home. The old man screwed up our lives when he set this place up and we were all too stupid to see it.’
There followed a horrid interlude with Emma’s grandparents, who were overwhelmed with guilt.
‘I asked her to fill the sugar bowl,’ Margy Crammond sobbed. ‘How could I have been so stupid? I hadn’t realised how poisonous Speedy Cure is. Harold loves his corned beef and the general store only stocks the really basic meats…’
Here was another example of how isolated this place was, Joss thought grimly. The old man really did have a lot to answer for.
‘With this population, surely there’s a way you can get shops?’
‘On what land?’ Amy shook her head. ‘No. He cheated a whole town of retirees out of a great place to live.’
‘Hmm.’
The more he saw the more it intrigued him-and the more the girl by his side intrigued him. They drove back to the nursing home in silence, both deep in their thoughts.
‘When are you and your Malcolm plann
ing on getting married?’ he asked as they pulled to a halt in the hospital car park. She looked at him, startled.
‘What on earth…?’
‘Does that have to do with me? Nothing.’ He grinned with his engaging grin, which could get him anything he wanted. Almost. ‘But I want to know. Are you waiting for six years?’
‘Maybe.’
‘How often do you see each other?’
‘He comes every second weekend-except when there are floods.’
‘Do you ever spend time at Bowra?’
‘I can’t leave Iluka.’
‘The old man’s will stipulated that you live here,’ Joss objected. ‘It didn’t say you could never leave.’
‘But with no doctor here…’ She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Mary and Sue-Ellen don’t accept much responsibility and there are always crises.’
‘What’s the population here?’
‘About two thousand.’
‘And in the district?’
‘You mean-once the bridge is rebuilt?’
‘Yes. How many live in a twenty-mile radius?’
She thought about it. ‘A lot,’ she said at last. ‘The farms here are small and close together-the rainfall’s good and farmers can make a living on a small holding.’
‘And all those farmers go to Bowra with their medical needs?’
‘You’re very curious.’
‘Indulge me.’
She gave him an odd look-but what was the harm after all? ‘They go to Blairglen mostly,’ she told him. ‘There’s no specialists at Bowra-only Doris.’
‘But Blairglen’s more than a hundred kilometres away.’
‘People travel. They must.’
She sounded odd, he thought. Strained. Well, maybe he’d asked for that. He’d kissed her. She was a perfectly respectable affianced woman. She had nothing to do with him-and he’d kissed her.
He’d really like to do it again.
Instead he sighed, climbed out of the car and walked around to help her out. She’d waited-as if she knew that he’d come and she welcomed the formality of what he intended. It was a strange little ritual and it had the effect of heightening the tension between them.
Help. When would the rain stop? When would they organise a ferry across the river? An escape route?
He needed it-because he wasn’t at all sure what was happening here. Or maybe he was sure and he didn’t know what the heck to do with it.
Their lives were worlds apart and that was the way they had to stay.
So somehow-somehow-Joss kept his hands to himself as she rose from the car and brushed past his body.
Amy was a practical, efficient, hardworking and committed nurse, he thought desperately. She wasn’t wearing anything to entice. Right now she had on faded jeans, a soft cotton blouse and a pair of casual moccasins.
She was dressed for hard work. She was dressed in clothes so old no woman of his acquaintance would have been seen dead in them!
So why did he really badly want to…?
What?
He didn’t know.
Or he did know. He just didn’t want to admit it.
The Iluka nursing home was looking more and more like an acute hospital. It was busy, bustling and alive with a sense of urgency that had never been there before. Even the front of the nursing home had more cars than usual-this was the scene of the only action in Iluka and no one, it seemed, wanted to be left out. If they didn’t have family here, the residents had friends-or maybe even just a sore toe, and maybe this charismatic young doctor could be persuaded…
This charismatic young doctor was feeling more and more out of his depth by the minute.
Bertram bounded out of the wreckage-mobile as the car drew to a halt in Amy’s parking bay. They’d collected him on the way because of the residents’ delight in him the day before, and he was greeted with even more pleasure than they were.
‘Bertram.’ Lionel Waveny’s old face creased in delight as the dog appeared, and he put a hand proprietorially in his collar. ‘Come with me, boy.’ He was grinning like a school kid given a day off. ‘Marigold’s here,’ he told them. ‘She tells me she’s probably got an overactive thyroid and she’s sleeping in the room next to mine. She’s feeling a lot better this morning but what she really needs is a visit from Bertram to cheer her up.’
‘Go right ahead,’ Joss told him, and Amy could only stare.
‘I swear… Joss, yesterday that man could hardly remember his wife’s name.’
‘Dogs do that to people.’ Joss looked at the old man’s retreating back and Bertram’s waving plume of a tail with satisfaction. ‘Pet therapy. It’s well documented. You want me to order you a dog or two as resident therapy?’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Just say the word.’
It was too much for her. Amy subsided into silence-which was just as well. They opened the doors to the sitting room and anything they said would have been drowned out straight away by baby screams. Ilona was being washed in preparation for her morning feed, and she was objecting in no uncertain terms to the violation of her small person.
The day took over.
Sue-Ellen greeted them as they walked in the door with a request for Joss to ring Emma’s parents. To have their child so ill with no way of reaching her was making them feel desperate, and they wanted their daughter’s progress given to them by a real doctor. Then Sue-Ellen handed over medical reports of all acute patients. All five of them.
This felt terrific, Amy thought contentedly as Joss read through Sue-Ellen’s change-over notes. She stared around at the buzzing sitting room. Three of her oldies were helping bathe the baby and there were a couple more looking on with pleasure. One of those watching was Jock Barnaby. Jock had stared at the floor and nothing else since his wife had died two years ago!
Amazing!
What else? The knitting club-five ladies and one gentleman in their eighties-were trying to outdo each other by finishing the first matinée jacket. Through an open door she could see a couple of her inmates sitting by Emma’s bed, just watching. Marie and Thelma were clucking over their pneumonia patient.
The place had come alive.
It could be like this all the time, she thought, dazed. It would be. If she had a doctor here. But how on earth could she ever attract anyone to practise here?
She couldn’t. In a few days Joss would leave and it would go back to being same old, same old.
But meanwhile…she was going to soak it up for all she was worth, she decided. As she looked around her, her eyes danced with laughter and delight. ‘This is great,’ she said happily. ‘Don’t you think so, Dr Braden?’
‘Just great,’ he agreed weakly, and thought, Hell, it really is, but why?
Emma was recovering nicely.
Rhonda Coutts was looking good and her breathing had eased. Her pneumonia seemed to be settling.
Marigold’s heart rate had settled after a good night’s sleep. Joss needed a blood test to be sure, but he was more and more certain that his thyroid diagnosis was right. Marigold and Lionel had Bertram on her bed and the pair were petting and cooing over the big dog like first-time parents with their baby. Bertram was soaking it up with the air of a dog who’d found his nirvana.
This was a really strange ward round, Joss thought as he went from patient to patient, and it took an effort to keep his thoughts on medicine. He must-any of them could have a significant need that might be missed if he didn’t treat this seriously-but with a nursing staff whose average age was about ninety it was a bit hard.
Amy didn’t help. She couldn’t disguise the fact that she loved what was happening around her, and her dancing eyes and bright laughter were enough to distract him all by themselves.
These people loved her. But she deserved better than to be stuck here for ever, Joss thought.
What did she deserve? A job in the city?
She’d do well in a city hospital, he decided. She was a magnificently skille
d nurse, and she had the intelligence to be even more, given the right training. If she’d had the opportunity, she could be working alongside him as a fellow doctor, he thought, and the thought made him feel…odd.
All the thoughts he was having were odd. Stupid! It was increasingly obvious that by leaving her he’d be abandoning her.
It was no such thing, he reminded himself sharply. His life wasn’t here. For heaven’s sake, he couldn’t set up medical practice in a town of geriatrics. He’d go nuts within a week.
As Amy was going nuts.
Amy had nothing to do with him.
He had one patient left to see-the new mother. By the time he reached Charlotte’s room he was so confused he didn’t know how to handle it, but somehow he put it aside. His examination of the young mother must be careful and thorough. Charlotte needed him. She was only one day post-op, and she was still suffering from her battering in the car crash.
‘Talk to her by herself,’ Amy said, leaving him at her bedroom door. ‘She’s traumatised and I don’t know why. Maybe she’ll be more willing to speak to you if you’re alone.’
Amy was sensitive as well as competent, Joss thought, watching her retreating back.
She was a woman in a million.
She had nothing to do with him, he told himself for what was surely the twentieth time this morning. Concentrate on Charlotte!
Physically Charlotte was recovering well. His medical examination finished, he replaced the dressing over her wound and hauled over a chair to the bedside. Charlotte eyed him with caution as he sat.
‘Hey, I’m not about to bite,’ he told her, and she managed a smile.
‘I didn’t say-’
‘No, but you looked.’ He’d asked for her baby-Ilona-to be brought back into the room. Now he looked into the makeshift cot and smiled. ‘Ilona’s just right for a name. She’s definitely beautiful.’
‘Yes.’
Stormbound Surgeon Page 11
