The Police Doctor’s Secret

CHAPTER THREE

THE publican’s arm was harder to fix than they’d thought, though Alistair had the equipment-‘In an emergency I call in the Flying Doctor for help, and I have a fully equipped theatre with all the drugs in case there’s someone here to help me.’

He made everything ready as Sarah did a careful examination and took a history. To give an anaesthetic without doing both was stupid.

And that was where she found problems.

The man was seriously overweight. She listened to his chest and then quietly signalled to Alistair that she wanted to see him outside.

‘I need advice,’ she told him. ‘That chest almost sounds asthmatic. It’s scaring me. My anaesthetics is basic. I don’t want him dying of a dislocated shoulder.’

‘Do you want to call it off?’ Alistair asked, but she shook her head and turned to the nurse.

‘Claire, can you set up a phone link with the duty anaesthetist in Cairns?’

Two minutes later the anaesthetist from Cairns was on the line. He listened as she outlined the problem while Alistair watched on.

‘Okay.’ She asked him to repeat his instructions twice for good measure and then replaced the receiver. She thought it through. Finally she looked up at Alistair.

‘I can do this,’ she told them. ‘Now I can. I’ve gone over the dosage. It’s a really fast anaesthetic. We go in fast. Alistair, the advice is that if you have problems then we reverse the anaesthetic and give up-straight away-but we’ll give it this one shot. The anaesthetist says we should have no problems. Once the muscles are relaxed everything should fit in easily.’ Her eyes held Alistair, questioning. ‘If you’re okay with it?’

‘Believe it or not,’ he said, holding her gaze with a look that was disconcertingly direct, ‘I’m more confident now than I am before you conceded you had problems.’

They started.

She injected and started intubation. The theatre was hushed apart from the gentle whoosh-whoosh of the bagged air. The big man was unconscious, every muscle slumping.

‘Go,’ she muttered.

Alistair gave her one last questioning look. She nodded. He took the man’s arm, pulled downward, outward, twisting…

The shoulder clicked back into place.

‘Well done,’ Alistair said softly as she started the reversal, and she flushed.

‘You mean well done for not knowing what to do?’

‘No. I mean well done for admitting you were unsure before we ran into serious trouble.’ He glanced up at her and smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it of you.’

‘Was I so arrogant when you knew me?’

Her tone must have sounded…sad? Wistful? She bit her lip and turned back to her dials, but she was aware that Alistair’s eyes were on her.

‘No,’ he said softly, and his smile faded. ‘No. Grant was arrogant. I just…I always group you together.’

‘It must be nice to be so certain,’ she said shortly, and she felt rather than saw his brows come together in confusion. ‘Concentrate on your work,’ she snapped.

‘My work here is done,’ he told her, and the confusion on his face was mirrored in his voice. ‘Thanks to you.’

Finally, with the publican recovering nicely, and his wife and three of his seven kids sitting round his bedside waiting for him to wake up properly and tell them all about it, Sarah decided they were free to part. Which was what she desperately wanted.

‘I need to sort these blood samples,’ Sarah told him. She was still feeling discomfited. Alistair’s presence-what he’d said-there was too much to ignore. She wanted him to go away so she could concentrate on her work.

But it wasn’t going to happen.

‘I’ll help you.’

‘I don’t need help.’

‘If it’s a police case then you’re going to need an independent witness to verify your findings.’

‘You can look at the tarpaulin in the morning.’

‘Let’s do it now.’

Which made it worse. Not only was he disconcerting and upsetting, he was far too close.

Using the kit she’d brought with her, she worked with the scrapings and he was right at her shoulder. She found it so hard to concentrate it was almost impossible. But at least what she found was straightforward.

‘There’s been at least two bleeders,’ she told him. ‘I have an AB and an A blood group.’ She flicked through a few more slides. ‘There’s a lot more of the AB.’

‘So we have two people.’

‘We have two people who bled. We might well have half a dozen people.’

Alistair stood back and looked down at the tarpaulin. They’d spread it out over the floor. The blood spatters were all over it.

‘This isn’t minor. Someone’s lost a huge amount of blood.’

‘So maybe they’re already dead.’ Sarah turned and looked down, too. It was a mute object. A tarpaulin. It should be able to speak, she thought. How had that blood appeared? Who did it belong to and where were they now?

‘You’d think they’d consider their lives more important than a few bags of heroin,’ Alistair said, and she knew he was thinking exactly the same thing as she was.

‘Our pilot swallowed condoms full of heroin,’ she whispered. ‘What a risk…’

‘And these people are risking everything as well. By smuggling drugs.’

‘Not necessarily.’ She shook her head. She’d stayed in her theatre gown but had discarded her cap. The same with Alistair. They were robed all in green. It should have helped make this more of a professional relationship-and maybe it did-but there were still undercurrents she couldn’t do a thing about. ‘There’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘Why would they have flown right out here?’ she asked. ‘Dolphin Cove is hundreds of miles from anywhere. Let’s assume they’ve brought back a stash of heroin from Thailand. What would they want to do with it? The answer is easy. They’d want to sell it. Fast. They might want to keep it for a while and sell it in small lots, but even so…why bring it all the way to Dolphin Cove? And were they heading specifically for Dolphin Cove?’

‘No. At least, we don’t think so. They were south of the township. They must have passed almost over our runway and then flown further.’

‘But there wasn’t much fuel in the tank. Their destination must have been somewhere close by. Where?’

‘You’re asking me?’

‘I’m asking myself.’ She frowned. ‘We need serious police help here. I don’t think Barry’s going to be much use. I’ll contact headquarters and see if we can get some decent people sent up.’

‘There’s a problem with that.’

‘What?’

‘It’s the Commonwealth Heads Of State Conference in Brisbane starting tomorrow,’ Alistair told her. ‘When I was contacted to be told you were on your way, the detective who spoke to me said they’ve had terrorist threats. Every available policeman in the country is in Brisbane. Plus there’s been a bus crash south of Cairns, which is taking resources. I doubt you’ll get anyone here for at least two days. I’d imagine you would have been told that before you left.’

She had. Of course she had. She bit her lip. ‘That’s right. I forgot. Then these people…’ She stared down at the tarpaulin, frowning in concentration. As if she could make some sort of sense of the blood patterns. She couldn’t. ‘If these people aren’t already dead then they may well soon be.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Dear heaven…’

There was a long silence as they both thought through the implications. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it now,’ Alistair said at last, his voice heavy with foreboding. ‘We’ll go out to the plane ourselves tomorrow, but it’s no use beating ourselves about it now. It won’t help.’ He lifted his hand lightly to her cheek and touched her-a feather-touch. A touch of reassurance, nothing more. ‘You must be exhausted. You’ve done too much for one day, Dr Rose. It’s time you went to bed.’

‘Yes. I…’ She stared up at him, and before she could stop herself her hand lifted to trace the line where he’d touched her. As if he’d left some indelible mark.

Their gazes locked and held.

And stayed.

What was happening? She didn’t know. Sarah found herself staring up into the eyes of this big man who was so like the man she’d once thought she loved. He was so…close.

He wasn’t Grant.

And yet…and yet…

She stared up at him and her world shifted. She felt that gut-wrenching shift-the change that told her she was no longer in control. She was spinning… spinning…

And the last time that had happened to her it had ended in tragedy and death and regret for the rest of her life.

He saw it. She knew the moment he registered the horror in her eyes. His brow snapped down in concern as she took an involuntary step backward.

‘Sarah…’

‘Y…You’re right. I need to go to bed.’ Damn, there were tears behind her eyes. Tears of weakness. Tears of stupidity. ‘If there’s nothing else…?’

‘There’s nothing else.’

‘Then I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘Goodnight, Sarah.’

She blinked. She couldn’t believe the note she heard in his voice. Tenderness? Caring?

Nonsense. The Benn boys didn’t do tenderness and caring. Had she learned nothing?

‘Goodnight, Dr Benn,’ she whispered, and it was as much as she could do to turn and walk with dignity down the corridor towards the doctor’s quarters.

She wanted to run.

She woke to kisses. Not just feather-light social greetings, but long, amorous declarations of absolute devotion. Sarah opened her eyes and Flotsam was two inches away, his whole body quivering in delight. His pink tongue came out again, he launched himself forward and Sarah hauled her sheet up over her face to protect herself.

‘Ugh. Horrible dog. Go away.’

Flotsam did no such thing. He quivered and quivered, and when Sarah cautiously lifted an edge of the sheet to see, the little dog dived down, right under the bedclothes, with such practice that Sarah knew he’d done it many times before.

‘I’d have left you under the fish,’ she said. ‘Yikes! Do you mind? I happen to be ticklish.’

‘Flotsam’s a foot fetishist.’ She looked up and Alistair was smiling down at her. He was wearing casual jeans and an open-necked khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His eyes were twinkling down at her and she looked up at him and thought, Uh-oh. Here I go again.

Or did she need to go again? Had the pain ever gone away?

The Benn brothers were stunning. Amazing.

And one Benn brother was in her bedroom.

Unconsciously she hauled her sheet up to her chin-which locked Flotsam in. Flotsam did a three-sixty turn under the covers, pushed with all his might, and his nose emerged from the end of the bed. Exposing Sarah’s toes.

This wasn’t the most dignified position she’d ever been in, Sarah decided, and she could feel herself flushing.

‘Um…do you mind removing your dog?’

‘Shall I come in and get him?’

‘No! Call him from there.’ Flotsam’s tail was beating a tattoo against her legs. His delight was infectious and his fur was definitely tickling. Sarah was feeling so far out of control she might well be drowning. Alistair was grinning down at her, her toes were sticking unceremoniously out from the covers and Flotsam was deciding to lick again.

‘I’m calling you both,’ Alistair told her, but the twinkle behind those lazy brown eyes told her that he knew exactly how discomfited she was. ‘If you can be ready in thirty minutes we’re planning on going out to the wreck. The hospital’s quiet. The sickest person here is Don, and he’s awake and complaining that he’s only been given two rashers of bacon for breakfast so I’m not too worried. I’m releasing him forthwith. I thought I’d go out to the wreck with you. Maybe four eyes are better than two if we’re looking for clues.’

She looked up at him and the twinkle had died.

‘You don’t trust Barry,’ she said on a note of discovery, and he gave a rueful smile.

‘Barry won’t break any rules.’

‘But he’s macho?’

‘If someone was running,’ Alistair said carefully, ‘then Barry might think any means of stopping him was okay.’

‘But you weren’t out there with him yesterday.’

‘I had a suspected heart attack on my hands here. Les Cartier had a severe angina attack the night before last, which was why I had to come back from the wreck so fast. I didn’t like to leave him yesterday, but today he’s looking good.’

‘But if you’re needed…’

‘I’m more likely to be needed out there.’ He hesitated. ‘To be honest, Don might look a bit of a wuss, and Barry’s scathing about him, but Barry’ll keep a rein on his temper when Don’s around. Don runs a decent pub and he’s more capable than anyone I know of calming tension. But Barry alone…’

‘You don’t think I could calm things down?’

‘I don’t think Barry would even notice you’re here,’ Alistair said honestly.

‘You really are worried.’

‘I think there are people out there who are wounded. I also agree that they must be hiding.’ He hesitated. ‘We were at the crash within half an hour of the plane going down. For people to be badly wounded yet wander so far they couldn’t be found doesn’t make sense. They should have stayed on the beach. And at night… It’s pitch dark out there, but it’s not so far from town that they couldn’t see the glow from the lights. No. There’s a problem. And I don’t want Barry to find what that problem is when there’s no one around to control the worst of his excesses. Jack Christy, our local mechanic, can come out mid-morning, and he’s tough enough to do the same as me, but he’s held up until then. Someone needs be there.’

‘So you’re coming with us?’

‘Just for a couple of hours until Jack arrives. Now, do you want to get dressed?’ He grinned suddenly. ‘I’m assuming you have panties and a bra on under that sheet, but…’

She gasped. While she’d been concentrating on what Alistair was saying Flotsam had been tugging the sheet sideways. She was exposed almost to the thighs. Her legs were bare and…

She clutched. Just in time.

‘Take your dog and leave,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could muster.

‘But you’ll come with us?’

‘Of course I’ll come. But get out. Both of you.’

The trek to the wreck took over half an hour of rough climbing.

The cove where the plane had crashed was surrounded by wild, rock-strewn hills and rough bushland. It was tough, inhospitable country. There were better beaches closer to the town, so no one ever felt the need to go there and so there was no established track. To reach the plane they needed to bush-bash through dense countryside, and by the time they’d walked for fifteen minutes Sarah’s face and arms were covered with a myriad of minor scratches.

She’d been warned and she’d come prepared. Knowing there was a plane wreck in rough terrain before she’d left the city, she’d packed sensible bushwalking gear-baggy pants, loose shirt and sensible hiking boots-but no one could escape the scratches completely. The lawyer vine that lined the track, looping its way round trees and undergrowth, had savage prickles that couldn’t be avoided.

If Alistair hadn’t been hiking right behind her she might have complained. But she didn’t. She trudged on, aware that Barry was being condescendingly slow on her behalf. And for some reason he was also being malicious. They trekked in silence, and only Flotsam’s cheerful antics as he dashed madly in front and then rushed back to ensure they were still following kept her spirits from being right down in her hiking boots.

Their party was five in total-Alistair, Sarah, Barry, and two local women who were experienced bushwalkers and were here solely for the search. There was another team already out at the cove, already searching. A light plane had been organised to comb the area as well, and they could see it working its way methodically back and forth as they walked,

‘Fat lot of good that’ll do, though,’ Barry told them. ‘These guys don’t want to be found.’

‘Surely if they’re hurt they’ll come searching for help,’ Sarah said mildly. She flinched as a rock Barry had just trodden on rolled backwards under her feet. Surely he hadn’t needed to dislodge it?

‘No way,’ Barry snapped, as if she was being thick.

‘Why not?’

‘They’ll be hiding drugs.’

‘Okay,’ she conceded.

Alistair was walking behind her and she was absurdly aware of his presence-and his silence-but she had to make her mind stay on the job. She was here as an investigative pathologist, and as such she had to think through every angle, even if it did come outside her specialist medical frame of reference.

‘Let’s assume they did have a load of drugs as cargo,’ she said thoughtfully, wincing as a branch Barry had pulled aside slapped back and hit her in the face. Barry was walking straight ahead of her and making no concessions to the fact that anyone was following. More and more she was starting to think his actions were deliberate. ‘Let’s assume they managed to get drugs out of the plane. Why don’t they hide the drugs and then come for help? There’s heaps of places here they could hide things. They can’t know they’ll be treated as criminals. They can’t have known the pilot had a gut full of drugs-they wouldn’t have been stupid enough to fly with him if they’d known.’

‘It makes sense to me,’ Alistair said mildly, but Barry obviously disagreed.

‘Criminals are stupid,’ Barry snapped, but Sarah frowned to herself as she trudged on. The jigsaw pieces weren’t fitting at all, and she didn’t like it.

Another rock rolled back.

Another branch hit her in the face.

‘They must be dead,’ Alistair said from behind her, and she knew he was thinking exactly what she was thinking. Drugs might be important, but no one would choose profit over life.

‘It’d make our work a lot easier if they are,’ Barry said, and Sarah winced. She really didn’t like this man.

She didn’t like Alistair, but she didn’t like Barry more. And he was pulling another branch aside.

The man was a git.

Enough was enough. As a forensic pathologist Sarah moved in a world peopled by tough guys-criminals as well as cops-and she’d become used to holding her own. Barry might be tough, but so was she.

‘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!’