The Police Doctor’s Secret

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.

‘You’ll be bored to snores,’ he’d told her. ‘Mum and Dad are simple farmers and Alistair’s not much better-a country doctor, for heaven’s sake. But they do a good Christmas dinner and you’ll keep me entertained.’

She hadn’t kept Grant entertained. How could she have? He’d been bored with the farm-with his family-but whereas Grant had been bored, the farm had entranced Sarah. The family had entranced her. The warmth of Grant’s parents, the laughter, the love, the ease with which they accepted each other. Alistair had been there the whole time. They had been raking hay, and she remembered that summer harvest and Christmas time as being one of the happiest of her life.

Grant had come and gone-he’d made two trips back to the city while she’d been there-but she’d stayed on. She’d relished every minute of her stay and afterwards, when Grant had asked her to marry him, she’d said yes.

Of course she’d said yes. For Sarah, who’d never known such a family, the thought had been irresistible. She’d loved them. She could never have hurt them.

She’d hurt Alistair now. Hurt him beyond bearing.

She stared at the ceiling some more and tried to get her thoughts to focus. They wouldn’t, and when the door opened just a crack she almost welcomed it.

‘Sarah? Are you asleep?’

‘What do you think?’ She pushed herself up on the pillows and swiped her hair behind her ears. Her cheeks were wet, she noticed with an almost dispassionate interest. Had she been crying?

The door was wide then. Alistair stood there, as if uncertain. He was still in his day gear-maybe he hadn’t been to bed.

‘I’ve been walking.’

‘That’s a stupid thing to do,’ she told him. ‘The night’s for sleeping.’

‘So I’m stupid. What else is new?’

‘Go to bed, Alistair,’ she told him.

But he wasn’t listening. He was a dark shadow in the doorway. Motionless. Almost formless.

‘Do you know,’ he said softly, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘If Grant hadn’t died then I wouldn’t have believed him. I wouldn’t have accepted his word that the accident was your fault. Believe it or not, I’d stopped believing Grant a long time before he died. And I shouldn’t have believed him even then. I saw the car. The wrecker rang and said there were things left in the trunk. I went round to collect them and I saw the thing. But I was so shocked. I saw the passenger side was damaged and I saw the driver’s side was fine. But Grant was dead. My father had collapsed. My head didn’t do the sums. My head didn’t even think about doing the sums.’

‘Go to bed, Alistair,’ she said again. ‘Don’t do this to yourself. I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry.’

‘No,’ he told her, and then more forcibly, ‘No!’ He walked forward, the formless shadow became the man, and before she knew what he was about he’d taken her shoulders in his hands, gripping hard. She could feel his anger now, as well as hear it.

‘Don’t you dare be sorry,’ he told her. ‘Don’t you think about it for a minute longer. You didn’t do this to me. Grant did this. He lied and he cheated and he risked your life. This was Grant’s doing and I can’t help that you loved him. You have to see… Sarah, you have to see that he’s not worth protecting. He’s dead, Sarah. He’s gone. Don’t you dare apologise to me for what he did to you.’

She didn’t know what to say. His hands shifted to grip her hands. Urgent with the need to convince. His words echoed around her head.

And inside her she felt a knot unfasten. Loosen. Release. It was a knot of pain so great and so hard that she could hardly believe it was going. It was as if half of her was being torn away.

And, confusingly, she felt naked without it-exposed. For so long she’d lived with this thing.

‘Alistair…’

‘You let my parents die thinking ill of you,’ he said, and the fury was still there. ‘I can’t bear it.’

‘Your parents-’

‘My parents loved you. You stayed with us a week and in that week you became part of our lives. And then…nothing. You and Grant didn’t go near them for months. How do you think they felt? Thinking that they’d misjudged you so badly? Thinking that you’d killed Grant?’

‘I-’

But he hadn’t finished. ‘They hated it. They’d hoped, like I had, that at last Grant had found himself something beautiful, something worthwhile, someone worth loving. And he had. We all had. And you gave us that gift. The gift of thinking Grant wasn’t as worthless as we’d feared.’

‘He wasn’t-’

‘He was.’ His grip tightened. ‘I can’t bear it,’ he said again, in a voice that was thick with anger-and more. Thick with…passion? ‘I can’t bear that you did this thing to yourself. I can’t bear that you protected him.’ And then, more softly, ‘I can’t bear it that you loved him.’

He couldn’t bear it? How could she? ‘Leave it,’ she whispered.

‘How can I leave it?’

‘It’s over,’ she said, her voice flat and dead. Trying to kill something, she was starting to learn, was capable of hurting even more than the pain she felt for Grant.

‘How can it be over?’ he demanded. ‘How can it be over when I feel for you as I feel? When I feel for you like this?’

Like…?

But she didn’t have to ask like what. It was a stupid question, only half formed in her mind and never voiced.

She knew what he felt. Because she felt it, too.

As if they were two halves of a whole.

This man…

She remembered the first time she’d seen him, walking into the ward at the children’s hospital. The next minute he’d been down on the floor, being a crab with her and with the children who’d so desperately needed to laugh. Losing his dignity as Grant never, ever would have.

She’d fallen in love right there. She hadn’t realised it. She’d thought it was an extension of what she’d felt for Grant.

Grant. She had loved him. She’d loved his family.

She couldn’t have his family. She’d have Grant.

No. She couldn’t have Alistair. She’d have Grant.

How long ago had she realised that it was love for Alistair that was keeping her tied to Grant? How long before she’d accepted the truth and given Grant back his ring?

Not very long, she thought bleakly. She’d broken off the engagement well before that awful night, but he had still been interested, still persistent, and in extremis, when she’d desperately needed someone, he’d been there.

But it was Alistair she’d wanted. Alistair-who’d been going out with someone else, who didn’t have a clue how she felt…

This man.

This man who was sitting before her in the moonlight. He was gripping her hands so tightly they hurt. He was so close…

He was pulling her into his arms where she belonged…

She was so lovely. She was everything he wanted in a woman. She was Sarah.

Sarah.

She was melting into his arms. Her face was turning up to his. Her lips were against his and he could feel the soft sweetness of her. He could taste the loveliness of her.

Sarah.

His senses shut down. Everything shut down.

There was only Sarah.

How long could the moment last? How far could they go? Alistair had no idea, but when it ended it was as if they both expected it. This joy wasn’t rightfully theirs. It was unbelievable. Unattainable.

This woman had loved Grant. His brother.

She had no place with him.

So when the sound of the phone jarred in the silence it was as if both expected it, and when they pulled away he could see that she had known it would happen.

There was no joy in her eyes. No love. Instead her face looked bruised. Frightened. She’d been weeping, he thought, and he swore and put a finger up to trace the path of a teardrop down her cheek.

‘Sarah, don’t. I can’t bear it. I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

‘You didn’t. You couldn’t…’ She was almost incoherent.

The phone was ringing still, but they ignored it. Some things were too important even for the imperatives of medicine to interrupt.

‘I love you,’ he whispered, but he knew at once that it was a mistake. He felt the sudden rigidity of her body. He felt the shock wave running through her slight frame and he knew there was no joy here this night. ‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘Grant,’ she said, then faltered, and the tension in her body was suddenly matched by his. ‘I can’t… Because of Grant… Don’t say you love me, Alistair. I was your twin’s fiancée and this night I’ve shocked you to the core. You don’t know what you’re saying. You feel sorry for me, Alistair, and I can’t get past that. Not yet. Not now. Do you think I’d let you make love with me now-when there’s this between us?’

‘No, but-’

‘I knew how it’d be,’ she said bleakly. ‘I desperately didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to give you this guilt.’

‘I’m not wearing guilt.’

‘You’re saying if this hadn’t happened you’d be kissing me? This isn’t love, Alistair. This is shock. Passion of anger and pain and distress.’ Then, as he hesitated, she pulled away from him completely. ‘Answer the phone, Alistair,’ she whispered. ‘You need to.’

‘I don’t want-’

‘You don’t know what you want and neither do I. Answer the phone.’

He stared at her, balked. Frustrated. Her face had shuttered. Her eyes were blank and weary.

‘It’s too late,’ she said, turning away from him. ‘Or too early. It’s almost dawn. And I can’t face you. Not yet. Not now. I can’t take this forward. Just go and answer the phone, Alistair, and leave me be.’

How could he leave her? He couldn’t. But of course, as always, there were medical imperatives. Howard was awake and writhing with pain. One of the stones must be pushing through. He needed to increase the morphine dose and give the man some reassurance that he wasn’t dying.

He had to go. Like it or not.

‘We’ll leave it for now, but we can’t leave this for ever,’ he told her.

He’d answered the phone set up in the hall so he was standing in her doorway again, with Sarah a shadow silhouetted against the moonlight in the window.

‘We’ll leave it till morning,’ she whispered, almost grateful ‘Meanwhile…go and see to Howard. Let me think.’

It wasn’t only pain and fear of his illness keeping Howard awake. Alistair increased his morphine dose, but before he could leave the man gripped his arm and started pleading.

‘I’m not responsible. I dunno who all these people are.’

Alistair nodded. He wanted to go back to Sarah. He desperately wanted to get back to Sarah. There was so much left unsaid.

But there were other imperatives. Deadly imperatives. He knew that. If staying here could get them information…

‘You’ve had lots of people through the property?’

‘Heaps,’ Howard told him. He’d obviously been lying in the dark, in pain, and had decided the only way through this was to be helpful. ‘But I never knew who any of them were. Most from those places with funny names like Iran and Iraq or Kurb… Kurb… Anyway, places like that. They never said anything. The pilots would drop them off, I’d feed them and give them the passports and stuff, show ’em a few videos about living here, and in a few days a truck’d come and fetch them.’

‘A truck?’

‘They’d go on one of the transporters that take the cattle down south. It was all paid for. The truck drivers didn’t know nothing, either. No one did.’

‘You know that the pilot died?’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t know him. He was a newbie. We’d had the same pilot for two years but he got cold feet. The boss said he was sending someone out from Thailand to take over the run.’

‘The boss?’

Howard chewed his lip. ‘Yeah. The boss. I’m not supposed to know who he is.’

‘But you do?’

‘I might.’

‘Can you contact him?’

‘Maybe.’ Howard shifted in his bed and winced. ‘I’m not supposed to know anything at all. But he came here once to check the place out and…well, I checked his wallet when he was in the shower. I’m no happier to work in the dark than the next man.’

‘He’s Australian?’

‘Yeah. Do you reckon if I fingered him they’d be easier on me?’

‘I’m sure they would,’ Alistair told him. He was focused now, knowing this could be vital information. His own personal needs-what lay between him and Sarah-had to be put aside for this. It must. ‘Do you want me to ask the senior detective to talk to you?’

‘What’d’you reckon?’

‘I reckon it might help. And that has to count for something.’

It might well help. More than anything right now he wanted to go back to Sarah, but he knew enough of human nature to know that Howard was likely to change his mind at any minute. If he clammed up, this opportunity could well be lost.

‘I’ll phone the detective now,’ he told Howard, and Howard nodded.

‘You stay, though,’ he told Alistair. ‘They put words in a man’s mouth, these coppers. You stay with us while he’s here or I’m saying nothing.’

Alistair nodded. It meant he couldn’t go back to Sarah. It meant he might be stuck here for an hour.

Maybe it was just as well.

How could she think?

Sarah couldn’t. She lay and stared at the ceiling until the first glimmers of dawn lit the room. Four a.m. Four-thirty. Enough. Alistair wasn’t returning and she was going crazy.

She needed a walk. She needed to do anything but lie here and go crazy. Silently she rose and dressed, hauling on jeans and sweatshirt and trainers. Then she walked out into the dawn, closing the door firmly on Flotsam as he tried to follow.

‘No, boy. Not this morning. I need my own company.’

And how lonely was that?

She couldn’t answer her question. There was so much happening. So much…

She walked. She walked for miles along the sea-washed beach. But it didn’t help. Nothing helped, and finally she turned. She knew she had to return to the house. To Alistair.

To sort out for ever what lay between them.

To somehow forge a way forward.

Who was she kidding? There was no way forward.

She was alone for ever.

Dolphin Creek’s tiny police station was on the main street. Barry usually slept out on the veranda-it was cooler that way-and right now he appreciated it. Right now he needed as much cooling as he could get.

He was suspended. Suspended pending investigation.

He knew what that meant. The end of his police career.

But why? For the life of him he couldn’t appreciate why everyone was so worried about the low-life criminal element he dealt with. And he was a good cop. He knew he was. Much better than the mealy-mouthed, psychology-trained cadets coming into the force these days.

He didn’t like the direction the force was taking. Maybe it was time he moved on.

But he had no wish to move on. Despite the hassles he’d had over the last couple of years, despite the implied demotion in being sent to Dolphin Creek, he liked being a policeman. He liked wearing a gun on his hip and having people treat him with the respect he deserved. He liked neatness and order, and he liked people paying the penalty if they flouted that sense of order.

So what was happening to him right now made no sense at all to the aggrieved police officer. He’d shot an illegal refugee-a criminal. A person of no worth at all. And now he was going to lose his career because of it.

His anger was building all through the night. He lay awake and stared out at the deserted street and thought about it. And fumed. And somewhere in the time between darkness and dawn the fine line between reason and irrational fury was crossed.

That was how he was when he saw the woman. She was a ragged figure, carting what looked like the doc’s big medical bag down the street, darting from shadow to shadow.

He did nothing. Who gave a toss? he thought sourly. He could bring her in. That’d please them. But then, why should he lift a finger to help? Damn them all. They could go chase their tails.

He was suspended.

Only then he saw her go past again, a stooped figure pushing Florence Trotman’s wheelbarrow. She was still darting from shadow to shadow, pushing the barrow before her.

He watched for a while and saw her for a third time. This time her barrow was loaded, not just with the doctor’s bag, but also with a pile of things that looked from this distance like basic supplies. Mounds of bottled water. Bread.

Petty pilfering. Why should he care?

She didn’t look anything, he thought. Certainly not the hardened criminal he’d thought was probably behind this whole thing. She looked…pathetic. Maybe she was a stooge, expendable, being sent into town to fetch.

Taking her out would achieve nothing. There must be someone behind her.

She was headed north.

Were they hiding north, then? Despite his determination not to get involved, he couldn’t prevent a rousing interest. He lay back on his bunk and tried to figure it out. Who would have thought that they’d hide out north of the town? They must have skirted the town’s boundaries, maybe coming close so they could steal.

Where would they hide within wheelbarrow-pushing distance north of the town? The land out there was barren. Empty. There were only the cliffs.

The caves. If they’d come down from the hills looking for supplies then the closest place to hide would be the caves.

Stuff it, he wasn’t going to help. He was suspended.

He lay still. But his mind wouldn’t cease thinking.

Sarah was quickening her steps as she walked back towards town. She’d come too far. Soon the team would be heading out to the wreck and she needed to go with them.

But still nothing was resolved. The ache in her heart was as dreadful as ever.

No matter. Only work mattered. Work was her salvation. Not this deserted beach. Not this time.

Not Alistair.

Reluctantly she walked on-and then she paused. There was a figure coming down the sand-hills towards her.

For a moment she thought it could be Alistair and she felt a jolt of pure wild hope. Stupid hope.

Was it? She shaded her eyes. The sun had crept over the horizon now, and was a low, golden ball in the morning sky.

Who was it?

Not Alistair. No.

She walked a little further and the figure turned into a woman: a woman dressed in something that might once have been some sort of Eastern European gown but was now ripped and ragged. A bloodstained rag was tied around her wrist. The woman was walking haltingly, staggering a little on the soft sand.

Sarah stopped. Her heart rose almost into her mouth. Dear God…

‘Noa?’ Her voice was a whisper. She raised it a little. ‘Are you Noa?’

The woman didn’t respond. She kept walking towards her, each step deliberate, her eyes on Sarah’s face. One hand was held behind her back, the other was held out almost in entreaty.

She neared her. Three yards. Two.

Her hand came out from behind her ragged gown. A gun pointed straight at Sarah.

Both women stopped. The gun stayed rock-steady.

‘Come with me,’ the woman said. ‘Come with me now. Your people have killed my husband. Now you save my son or you die.’