The Police Doctor’s Secret

CHAPTER SIX

WHAT followed was a really long night.

Sarah tossed and turned until dawn. Flotsam came and joined her in the bedroom for a while, and she was really grateful for the little dog’s company. Then the dog padded off down the corridor and she heard the bedsprings creak in the other bedroom, Alistair’s voice murmuring a greeting.

Flotsam was obviously going back and forth between the two of them.

An hour later Flotsam wuffled back. He snuggled in and Sarah thought, It’s as if he wants us to be together. Man and woman with dog between.

Yeah. Great. Really ridiculous fantasy.

She desperately wanted to get up and make a cup of tea-anything to make the night go faster-but she was afraid that Alistair would have the same idea. She heard him rise a couple of times. The phone rang once-someone looking for advice on a child with croup. Through these thin walls she could hear everything. The child was obviously on an outstation a long way from town.

She listened to Alistair’s patient, measured advice; she waited for him to hang up but then frowned to herself as he didn’t. She realised he was waiting. He was holding onto the end of the line to see if his instructions were effective.

She imagined herself as the mother, on an outstation somewhere, maybe hundreds of miles from town. Croup was just plain scary. She’d be desperately worried as the child fought for breath. In the city there’d be a brief call for advice and then a trip into hospital or a call to the ambulance.

Here the mother was obviously too far away for those things to happen. She had to cope herself-but Alistair was staying with her every step of the way.

Standing in the corridor in the middle of the night and just being with her.

There was intermittent conversation. The mother must be coming back and forth to the phone. Alistair stayed on the line for about half an hour, and by what he was saying Sarah could tell the breathing had finally eased.

She found herself relaxing. If she was alone with a sick child it’d be Alistair she’d want at the end of her phone, she realised.

He was so…good.

But so judgemental. What he thought of her…

She couldn’t bear it.

She had to bear it. She’d made a choice six years ago and she had to live with it. For ever.

The phone call had been almost welcome. In the bedroom next door Alistair had quietly been going out of his mind. When Elaine Ferran had called about Lucy with croup it had been all he could do to stop himself offering to drive the eighty miles out to the property to cope with the croup himself.

Which would have been crazy. By the time he’d got there the croup would have been so bad Lucy’s life would have been in danger or she’d have been better. Either way the obvious decision had been to treat her at the end of the telephone.

But Sarah was right through the wall. Her door was slightly ajar. Flotsam had wiggled past him in the hall and walked straight into Sarah’s bedroom. Just like that. The dog would probably right now be jumping onto Sarah’s bed and Sarah would hug him and…

Great. Get a grip, he’d told himself. Concentrate on Lucy’s croup.

He wanted an emergency. He wanted more than croup. He wanted to get away from this place, away from this time.

Away from Sarah.

They met over the breakfast table and it was apparent to both of them that neither had slept. Sarah eyed Alistair with care, and was aware that he was eying her right back.

‘The dog kept me awake,’ she said in defensive tones.

‘You could have shut the door.’

‘What were you doing looking at my door?’

‘I wasn’t looking at your door.’

‘Right.’ They were behaving like a couple of kids, she decided. She poked a piece of toast into the toaster and turned her back on the man. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked, still with her back to him. ‘Have you heard anything? Are we getting any decent trackers?’

‘There should be people arriving this afternoon,’ Alistair told her. ‘Barry phoned.’

‘Barry phoned?’

‘He’ll be round here in ten minutes,’ Alistair said. ‘He knows about the cross-matching of criminal records with locals that we did last night.’

‘Yeah, I told him I was going to do it,’ she said. ‘He is the local police after all.’

‘I don’t know whether I like him having people’s criminal histories,’ Alistair told her, and she poked her toast some more and winced. She could see why. Would Hilda’s brick-stealing be safe with Barry?

Maybe she was misjudging the man. Officially he had more right to the list than she did-and certainly a lot more than Alistair.

‘Did you tell him about Howard?’

‘I thought he should discuss any conclusions you’d come to with you and not me,’ he told her. ‘Actually, I didn’t tell him we’d gone through them. I thought it best. He phoned while you were in the shower. He asked whether the list had come through. I told him it had and he said he’d come round to discuss it with you. So there you are. Do you want me to absent myself while you discuss police business?’

‘You’ve probably got a ward round to do.’

‘I do,’ he said, and she couldn’t figure out whether he sounded regretful or relieved. ‘And a couple of phone calls to make. I had a case of croup in the night I need to check on.’

‘Lucy’s mother didn’t ring back?’

‘Were you eavesdropping?’ he asked, and she poked her toast some more. She still had her back to him, and her back was very expressive.

‘You talk loud.’

‘You listened.’

‘Not very much,’ she said untruthfully. ‘And I certainly wasn’t interested.’

What was wrong with her? She was behaving like a ninny. Alistair departed for the hospital, and she sat and ate her toast and waited for Barry and thought she was losing her mind.

She was certainly losing her dignity.

‘How soon can I get out of here?’ she asked Flotsam, and there was real desperation in her voice. ‘I’m going to miss you, boy, but I’m certainly not going to miss your master.’

Liar.

Barry sat at the table and ponderously went through the list. ‘It’s bloody supposition,’ he told her. ‘You’re saying there’s someone out here using this area as a base for bringing in illegals?’

‘You’re right, it is supposition,’ she told him. ‘But I can’t figure out any other scenario that makes sense.’

‘Whoever they are, they’ve been out in the bush for over two days now,’ he said, and there was a certain grim satisfaction in his tone. ‘I’m starting to think there’s been a falling out among thieves and they’re dead. Either that or the blood was there before the plane crashed. Maybe we’re chasing our tails and there never was anyone aboard. Maybe the whole thing’s a storm in a teacup.’

‘But you’re still searching?’

‘I’ve got a team of locals out there, but we’re wasting our time. They’re dead, or they don’t want to be found-in which case they can starve to death for all I care-or they didn’t exist in the first place.’

‘We’ve got an élite squad coming in later today,’ she told him, and he nodded.

‘Yeah. I heard you asked for that. I’m telling you it’s a waste of time. I’ve got it on the record that it’s your idea and not mine. They’ll come, they’ll search and find nothing, and then I’ll cop it for wasting their time.’

‘But if there’s people out there-’

‘Then they’re crims or illegals. Either way-’

‘Either way they’re people. There’s a child-’

‘Says you.’

‘There’s a footprint.’

‘Yeah.’ He stood up. ‘A footprint. So on the basis of a footprint you’re costing the force a fortune. Well, everyone will know it was on your say-so that extra resources have been pulled in. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got work to do. I dunno what you’re still doing here. As far as I know your job was to tell us how the pilot died. You’ve done that. Why don’t you just take off back to the city and leave this to us?’

She could. Sarah stood on the veranda and watched Barry walk back to the police station and thought, Yeah, she could. She could take the mail plane out of here tonight. She was a forensic pathologist. Barry was right. She’d come to do a job and she’d done it.

She could leave.

The phone rang behind her. She hesitated for a moment-almost tempted to leave it. Almost tempted to do what Barry suggested. Finish. Move on.

She couldn’t. There were people at risk here, and despite what Alistair thought of her-despite what she thought of herself-she cared.

She turned and picked up the phone.

‘Sarah?’ It was Alistair, and her stomach did a crazy lurch at the sound of his voice. Why did it do that? Why couldn’t she achieve better control?

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve just got a call from Howard Skinner.’

‘The Howard Skinner on the list?’

‘That’s right.’ His voice was clipped and efficient-totally business-like. The kiss last night had been an aberration. Nothing more. He’d moved on. ‘He’s in trouble.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘By the sound of it he has renal colic,’ Alistair told her. ‘He’s just phoned in saying he can’t move for pain. The symptoms sound spot-on for renal colic, and with his history of gout…’

‘The uric acid will have caused kidney stones.’

‘That’s what it sounds like. Anyway, I’m heading out there now. Do you want to come?’

Did she want to come?

This was none of her business. It was Barry who was the policeman. She was the forensic pathologist and her role was clearly delineated.

Or was it? She was a member of the police force and she was deeply concerned.

There was no choice. Of course she wanted to come. It was a heaven-sent chance to talk to someone she was really interested in.

‘I’ll let Barry know,’ she told him. ‘Maybe he’ll want to come, too.’

‘I’m not asking you as a police officer,’ Alistair snapped. ‘If you want to do any police work then that’s a separate issue. I’m asking you as a visiting doctor. I might need help.’

Right. She thought about it. Police sniffing round at this stage might do more harm than good. But as a doctor…

‘You’re right. I’ll leave my badge at home,’ she told him. ‘I’ll come, and I’m only wearing a stethoscope.’

The farm was thirty miles out of town, and the country was some of the most barren farming land Sarah had ever seen. For as far as the eye could see there was red dust, a few straggly ironbarks, and sad-looking windmills that looked as if they’d long given up on their task of trying to eke any moisture from this dusty soil. The wind was rising and tumbleweeds were rolling aimlessly in the wind.

The land up to five miles from the coast was still lush and green. But here…

‘The hills act as rain catchment,’ Alistair told her. ‘Out here the rains haven’t come for the past three years.’

‘It’s dreadful.’

‘It won’t always be dreadful. That’s why the international conglomerates hold on to their properties. There’ll be a few years of lean, and then the rains will come and this country will be some of the richest grazing land in Australia. They’ll stock it up, make a fortune from it, milk it for all they’re worth and then sit back while the dry takes over again.’

‘So Howard gets to sit and wait?’

‘He’ll be doing basic maintenance,’ Alistair told her. ‘He’ll make sure the main buildings aren’t vandalised. Once the rains arrive the place comes alive, and no one wants to waste time rebuilding ruined homesteads.’

‘But it must be the pits of a life,’ Sarah said, staring around her in dismay. ‘So lonely…’

‘There are people who love it. People who make a lifetime career of it. There’s a chap further south who’s a really well-known poet. He sits up here, takes a wage for doing minimal maintenance and has all the time in the world for his poetry.’ He smiled suddenly with that engaging smile Sarah loved so much. ‘Mind, it’s pretty bleak poetry. There’s not a lot of “hosts of golden daffodils” in this lot.’

‘I wandered lonely as a tumbleweed,’ she agreed, smiling.

He laughed, and the tension took a backseat again. Sarah found herself relaxing. No, she didn’t want to go home, she thought. She wanted to stay here until the case was solved.

She wanted to stay here by Alistair’s side for as long as she could.

‘Barry wasn’t helpful?’ Alistair asked, and she had to haul herself back to thinking of something other than the way she was reacting to this man.

‘Barry’s appalling.’

‘So put in a report when you get back.’ Alistair grimaced. ‘We need to get rid of him.’

‘You won’t get rid of him unless he puts a foot wrong. And he won’t.’

‘I hope he won’t,’ Alistair said grimly. ‘The man’s a loose cannon. I don’t trust him.’

‘He’s all you have.’

‘Yeah.’ He cast her a sideways glance. ‘He’s all I have. And it’s not much at all.’

The homestead was surprisingly pleasant. Alistair’s truck bumped over the cattle grid, and she saw there were trees lining a long driveway. They were poor excuses for trees, but they were trees for all that, and there was even the semblance of a garden around the long, low house.

‘Howard will be using bore water to keep the trees alive,’ Alistair told her. ‘When the rains come it’s important to get competent staff, and they won’t come if the place isn’t good.’

‘So Howard won’t get to stay?’

‘No, but he knows that. They all do. People usually have a reason for doing what he’s doing.’

‘It’d work,’ she said slowly, staring at the outbuildings. Everywhere looked deserted, but by the look of the small cottages scattered around the main homestead the place was built to accommodate half a dozen families. ‘As a base for accommodating people while they process papers-teaching them rudiments of language-sorting places for them to go-it’d be perfect.’

‘You really are serious?’

‘How many people come out here?’ she asked, and Alistair shrugged.

‘No one.’

‘There’s an airstrip.’ She looked over at the back of the house, where a windsock was waving wildly in the wind. ‘I’d like to see if it’s been used recently.’

‘We need to see to Howard.’

‘Yeah. Medicine first.’ She grimaced. ‘Okay, I’ve put the handcuffs away for the moment. Let’s play doctors.’

They needed to play doctors. Howard was in real trouble.

Renal colic was something that was commonly used as a ruse by drug addicts to get young and unsuspecting doctors to prescribe strong narcotics. It was a good fake diagnosis, as kidney stones caused pain that was well-nigh unbearable. The pain was distinctive, crippling, running from the loin into the groin. So drug addicts often arrived at emergency rooms screaming, doubling over in pain, swearing that they’d had kidney stones before.

But an experienced doctor could usually tell if it was real, and it wasn’t hard now.

Howard was doubled up on a bed in the back of the house. When they found him he looked up at them with eyes that were despairing.

He was a slight man in his late forties or early fifties, lean, weathered and hollow-eyed with shock. His face was drenched in sweat, he felt clammy, and his pulse-rate was up to a hundred and ten.

All symptoms almost impossible to fake.

‘I’ll give you some morphine straight away,’ Alistair told him. ‘Then we’ll get you into hospital.’

‘I don’t want to go to hospital.’ It was a whispered plea.

‘You can’t stay here,’ Alistair told him. ‘It’s the same problem that’s causing your gout. A build-up of uric acid.’ He was injecting morphine as he spoke. ‘Now the uric acid will have caused stones. We need to do something about them.’

‘Operate?’

‘If we’re lucky the stone will pass by itself. But you need a urologist, Howard. We’ll take you back to Dolphin Cove. I’ll watch for a couple of days, but if you don’t pass them then we’ll arrange an air ambulance to take you to Cairns.’

‘I can’t leave,’ he gasped. ‘I can’t.’

‘The place is dead quiet,’ Alistair said firmly. ‘You don’t have a choice.’ He signalled to Sarah, who was standing behind him. ‘This is Dr Rose, who’s assisting me for a few days. Dr Rose will back me up.’

‘I will.’ Sarah gave the man a sympathetic smile. All she had on this man were vague suspicions, and she could certainly be sympathetic until they were confirmed. And even if they were confirmed, a sentence of renal colic was cruel. ‘The good news is that renal colic is easily treatable,’ she told him. ‘You may well pass the stones in the next couple of days and be able to come straight home again.’

‘You’re a doctor, too?’

‘Sarah’s doing a bit of training with me for the next few days,’ Alistair told him. ‘She’s a city doctor-never seen places like this.’

‘Yeah?’ The man was too intent on his pain to care. ‘Can’t you just give me something to stop the pain here?’

‘I can. I am. But in four hours you’ll need more.’

‘I don’t want to be stuck in hospital.’

‘Tell you what,’ Alistair said, appearing to think it through. ‘You have a car here? What if I take you back in my truck-it’s set up so you can lie comfortably in the back-and Dr Rose follows us in your car. Then when you want to leave you can. If you pass the stone tonight you can come straight home.’

The man was trying to think. They could see the effort it took. Renal colic was one of the worst types of pain and the morphine hadn’t kicked in yet. Maybe Alistair should have waited until the painkillers took effect before planning, Sarah thought, but then she thought, No.

She was under no illusion. Alistair had suggested this plan for a reason.

‘Tell us where your house and car keys are,’ Alistair told him. ‘I’ll get you straight into hospital-get you comfortable. Dr Rose can lock up here and bring in your car in behind us.’

Howard stared up, desperation clearly written in his face. He looked from Alistair to Sarah and back again.

‘She’s a city doctor?’ he said doubtfully.

‘I can drive,’ Sarah said, in a voice that said she was a little bit unsure-maybe a little younger than she was-a little less confident. Certainly nothing like as confident as a police forensic pathologist should be. ‘If you think I can manage, Dr Benn?’

‘I think you can manage,’ Alistair told her. He turned back to the man on the bed and Sarah could see that he was trying to hide a smile. ‘She’s a real newbie,’ he told Howard. ‘But I think we can trust her to drive a car. Just go really slowly, Sarah, and don’t take any risks.’

‘No, Dr Benn.’

The thing was done.

Which was how Sarah stood on the veranda, watching Alistair’s truck disappear in the distance, holding the keys to the homestead in her hand. All the keys.

She looked down at them and grinned.

‘I won’t take any risks at all,’ she murmured.

‘Is she following?’

Howard was stretched out on the permanent bed Alistair used as often as not to transport patients. Dolphin Cove did have an ambulance, but it was old and rickety and usually it was less trouble for Alistair to use the Land Cruiser. He’d made Howard as comfortable as possible and, with the morphine kicking in, Howard was now able to think of something other than his pain. His brain might be woozy from the drug, but he obviously didn’t like the idea that he’d left someone behind with his keys.

Alistair nodded to himself. Maybe Sarah was right. Maybe Howard did have something to worry about. But he could reassure him. He looked in the rearview mirror as though he expected to see her and sighed and shook his head.

‘Nope. And I wouldn’t expect it.’ Alistair turned his truck onto the main road. ‘Speed is not our Dr Rose’s strong point. She’ll probably be trying to fit the front door key in the ignition of your car.’

‘She’s not real bright?’ Howard asked, obviously relieved at the thought.

Alistair appeared to think about it. ‘Let’s just say she’s not your ideal family doctor,’ he said at last. ‘To be honest,’ he confessed to Howard, ‘I don’t mind if she does take a while. She’s come up to the country for a stint of country medicine and she’s driving me nuts. I’ll be pleased to be shot of her for a while.’

‘That’s okay.’ Howard lay back and relaxed. A dopey female doctor posed no threat at all. ‘That’s great.’

The dopey female doctor was being anything but dopey. Left on her own at the deserted homestead, she prepared to take every advantage. Aware that she really couldn’t be more than half an hour behind Alistair without questions being raised, she worked fast.

First she headed for the airstrip-and there was the first of her questions answered. Although there was no aeroplane present, and the building obviously used as a hangar was empty, the strip had had been recently used. It must have rained a little recently-there were the first faint tinges of green shoots-but along a strip in the centre of the runway the shoots had been broken off. There was a dusty patch near the house-signs of people gathering, staying for a while in the one place?

The strip was used.

Maybe the owners came and visited. There was nothing illegal in that.

The homestead?

She looked at the house Howard had come from and decided against it. Instead she made her way to the first of the little cottages. They were obviously used for the workmen who ran this station in bustling times. Alistair had said that those times were at least three years past.

The bundle of keys in her hand was like a jigsaw. It took her five minutes of frustrated fiddling before she found the key to the first cottage, and by then she was growing nervous. The wind was whistling eerily around the buildings. She was intensely aware of being alone.

I’m a doctor, not a detective, she told herself-but she still wanted to see. And Alistair had given her the opportunity.

The key clicked into place. She walked in. And stopped.

The place was set up for human habitation. This was not somewhere that hadn’t been used for three years.

It was Spartan-two bedrooms opening from a central living room, and each bedroom holding two sets of double bunks. Each bed had a pile of folded linen and blankets at the foot-army issue grey. Nothing fancy. Serviceable.

Three beds had linen.

She stared at them, and then looked into the kitchenette.

A box of groceries lay on the bench. She walked over and checked it out. Dried milk. Biscuits. Dry pasta. Tinned meat and vegetables. Baked beans.

Sugar, coffee, tea.

There was a refrigerator, and the hum indicated it was operating. She swung the door wide.

Butter. And the freezer held bread. She checked the use-by date of the bread.

It had been bought a week ago.

She stood and stared around her. The place looked unused now, but it looked-expectant. Waiting.

Were the people in the back of the plane supposed to be coming here? Were they even now trying to make their way here?

A scratch at the door made her start. She whirled around. A tumbleweed had hurled itself at the screen door in the wind. It rolled against the flywire, was caught by another gust and was gone.

She’d never make a detective, Sarah decided. She’d turn to jelly in a minute.

She needed to concentrate. Fast. What now?

There was a folder on the table. Sarah walked forward and flipped it open with the tip of a finger.

Three passports. Australian passports.

No photographs.

She flicked each open in turn and read.

Amal Inor. Male. Aged thirty-five.

Noa Inor. Female. Aged thirty-six.

Azron Inor. Male. Aged five.

No photographs. The section for photographs was missing. These passports were waiting to be collected-by whoever was in the plane.

Mother, father and son? Amal, Noa and Azron.

Five years old?

‘Where are you?’ It was a faint whisper. She found she was staring down at the passports as if she could see their owners. All she saw was that tiny, bloody footprint.

‘Where are you?’ she whispered again, but nobody answered. If anyone was to find the answer it had to be her.

I need to find Barry, she told herself. And Alistair.

Why did she have more confidence in Alistair than she did in the local police force?