The Police Doctor’s Secret

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Maybe the child’s hiding himself? Maybe the pilot was the kid’s father?’

  ‘He didn’t look like a father.’ She gave a rueful grin. ‘I know. There’s presumption again. But the passenger seat in the cockpit wasn’t used.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘There are magazines, not only on the floor but caught in the seat belt. No one was in that seat when the plane crashed. That little plane is designed to carry a pilot, one passenger and cargo. At low altitudes. The hold isn’t pressurised. The cargo area is bare metal and there are no seats. It’ll have been truly horrible to travel in. No wonder the passengers were ill. If the child was the pilot’s son or daughter…’

  ‘He’d have given the kid the passenger seat.’ Alistair nodded. ‘Yeah. I see that.’

  ‘Or if anyone in the back was a friend he’d have had that seat. It’s a Rolls-Royce ride compared to the one they got. Yet the magazines got the ride and no one else. It screams to me that our pilot was transporting people for money. That plane won’t be licensed to carry any more passengers than one. The guy’s an idiot. He’s importing heroin in his stomach. He’s transporting passengers. In these conditions there’s no way these are pleasure flights. I’m guessing these passengers are in some sort of trouble. Major trouble.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Who knows? Given that they’ve run, I’d guess there might well be criminal convictions. Barry might be right. I need to make a few phone calls-get enquiries underway. But as there’s a child involved…’ Her voice died.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m thinking that because of how far north you are,’ she said slowly, ‘and because of the fact that the plane flew north from Cairns, maybe landed and then headed west to this side of Cape York, maybe what we have here is a case of people-smuggling.’

  ‘Illegal immigrants?’

  ‘It makes more sense than anything else I can think of. Maybe they’ve been landed on the coast somewhere on the eastern side of Cape York by a charter boat, with the arrangement that our pilot will pick them up and take them somewhere they can be processed with false passports and the like. Somewhere really remote. Somewhere near here. How much fuel did the plane have left?’

  ‘The mail run pilot said there was only enough for another half-hour in the air.’

  ‘But most pilots verge on the safe side of caution,’ she said, thinking out loud. ‘Half an hour… You know, if I was a pilot in such rough country as this I’d leave plenty of margin for error. Say even twenty minutes’ flight time. If there are cattle over the airstrip and they have to be cleared…well, anything could happen to delay landing. He’s not coming to some place where a clear run can be guaranteed.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘That we need to look at places close to here. Really close. Is there somewhere I can get a list of property owners?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m thinking…’ She frowned. ‘I’m thinking people who are involved in something as major as people-smuggling don’t usually have clean criminal records. I know it’s a longshot, but if you had a list of outlying property owners, or people who are renting or leasing, I could get a fast police check. Just to see if anything comes up.’

  She trudged on. Alistair walked silently behind. She was conscious that his eyes were on her. She was being appraised. And found wanting?

  Maybe not.

  ‘I can help with that,’ he said at last. ‘I know that there are ethical issues involved, but as we’re talking about people’s lives, I think I can square it with my conscience. We don’t have a pharmacy in Dolphin Cove. Pharmacy supplies are issued through the hospital. Through me. That means everyone who uses this town as a shopping base is registered here. I have a list of everyone who’s had so much as a tetanus shot in the last twelve months. More, we register our users on our computer as local or remote. If they’re remote we can issue people double or more supplies of prescription medication so they don’t need to make the trip into town so often. I can run you off an alphabetical list of all adults categorised as remote in the region. Will that do?’

  ‘Just like that?’ she said, startled, and he smiled.

  ‘Just like that. If you’re sure…’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted. ‘I’m not sure in the least. But it makes sense. Our pilot’s just been to Thailand, so he may well have been contracted there to do the pick-ups once our visitors reached Australia. While he was in Thailand they must have been already on their way by boat. They must have come by boat. Bringing people in illegally by plane is almost impossible-our border defence will pick them up. But landing people by boat on a remote beach is easier. Internal flights aren’t monitored, so maybe they’ll be put off the boat somewhere north of Cairns. Meanwhile our pilot comes home to Australia to pick them up. He flies as a normal passenger on a commercial airline, but on the way he decides to make a profit on the side. He swallows the condoms. Once in Australia he hires his small plane, flies north to collect his passengers, brings them almost to their destination-and then he dies. Which means out there in the bush we have a group of terrified illegal immigrants, at least one of whom is a child. They won’t come near any searchers. They’ll have invested too much in getting to this country. And they won’t know how savage this country can be.’

  ‘You’re basing a lot on supposition.’

  ‘I am,’ she agreed. ‘If there’d been any major crime in the last few days and we had fugitives on the run I’d say that’d be a better explanation. But there’s been nothing. This is the only scenario that fits with him flying north of Cairns before he came here.’

  ‘If you’re right,’ Alistair said slowly, ‘they’ll know nothing. There’s crocodiles in the freshwater streams and in the mangrove swamps. There are snakes-’

  ‘And there’s infection.’ Sarah bit her lip and quickened her pace. ‘We need to move fast. I don’t see Barry as having the push to get people up here to help, but I’ll sure as heck try. You’re going back to town to turn into being the Dolphin Cove doctor for the day. I’m going back to turn into a force to be reckoned with. I’ll have a major search and rescue unit up here, forensic scientists-the lot.’

  ‘But if they still hide…’

  ‘They’ll come out,’ Sarah said. ‘They must. Please.’

  They split when they reached the town. The tension between them had dissipated in the face of urgent professional need.

  Alistair made arrangements for Sarah to have use of phones, faxes and radio; he helped her e-mail his list of the remote population to headquarters, so it could be matched against criminal files; he organised the mail run to come earlier-Sarah wanted samples to be taken fast to Cairns for urgent analysis, as DNA matching could give her more information-and then he left her to it.

  Sarah-with Flotsam settled happily at her feet-sat on the phone for an hour. And another hour. Finally she rose and ran a hand wearily through her hair. She’d done all she could. Nothing was possible today. It would take a day to get all the resources she needed up here. It would take another few hours to do the cross-matching with population and criminal files. But at least things were in train.

  But she was so frustrated.

  What else could she do?

  She walked out onto the veranda and stood looking up into the hills. If she was right, somewhere out there was a group of desperately injured, desperately frightened people. How on earth could she make them ask for help?

  Barry wouldn’t find them. They wouldn’t let him.

  She was going nuts. There had to be something she could do.

  Walk the dog? Swim?

  A swim sounded good, but she wasn’t too sure about the beach. It looked deserted, and in her experience deserted beaches were usually deserted for a reason. It was May-too late for the worst of the nasties inhabiting tropical waters. She knew enough about box jellyfish and the like to afford them the respect they were due. She’d have to ask someone before she tried swimming.

 
She’d just wander over to the hospital.

  She showered and changed-made the transformation from scratched and filthy bushwalker into something that might approximate a doctor, donning a fresh skirt, blouse and sandals-and made her way around to the hospital entrance.

  She walked in and stopped in astonishment. There were maybe twenty people lined up on seats around the waiting area.

  Good grief!

  Claire was bustling past, carrying a specimen jar, and Sarah stopped her. ‘What’s going on? Trouble?’

  Claire shook her head. ‘Nope. Normal. Doc’s been out of town all morning, and he’s been called out again now to a place out of town-someone’s rolled a tractor-and the fleet’s in.’

  ‘The fleet’s in?’

  ‘The weather’s blowing a south-westerly,’ Claire explained, ‘That means all the fishing boats have headed back to town. Most of these guys spend three or four weeks at sea at a time and they come up with all sorts of nasties. Tropical waters. Heat. A scratch becomes septic. And they spend their spare time on board dreaming up symptoms. Not only that, but while the weather’s bad these guys have all the time in the world to sit round here waiting for a consultation. If I tell them to come back in the morning I’ll be wasting my breath. Alistair will have his hands full until midnight.’

  Sarah stared round at the waiting room, stunned. And guilty. Alistair had taken time out he could ill afford this morning, and she knew half the reason he’d come was that he was concerned about Barry’s behaviour. Which rightly was Sarah’s responsibility.

  She remembered the way he’d cleared the path for her on the way back and how he’d held her as she’d leaned into the plane. He’d made her work easier. Maybe she could do the same. She was a trained doctor, after all.

  ‘Can I help?’ she said-tentatively-and Claire grinned as if Sarah had just walked straight into a baited trap.

  ‘You surely can. I thought you’d never ask. Can you treat a septic finger?’

  ‘I really enjoy a good septic finger,’ Sarah told her, discovering she was grinning in response. The nurse’s cheerful good humour was infectious. ‘A nice little bit of ooze-it’s principally why I became a doctor.’

  Claire’s smile broadened. ‘And then you became a forensic pathologist-that’d give you more ooze that even I want to think about.’

  They were both smiling now. Claire was a woman in her early thirties-maybe a little older than Sarah, but not much. She was a squat little woman who looked competent and funny and…nice. She could be a friend, Sarah thought, and then she thought suddenly and irrationally that friendship was something she should work on. It was something that was lacking in her life. She didn’t let people close. Not since Grant…

  No. Not since Grant. So maybe friendship wasn’t a good idea. She needed to move on.

  ‘Show me a room with equipment and a prescription pad,’ she said, breaking the moment with resolution. ‘Ooze, eh? Let me at them.’

  ‘Okay.’ Claire turned Sarah round so she was facing twenty fishermen. ‘Right, you guys, here’s your new lady doctor. Sarah’s not only competent but she’s also a pathologist. That means she knows how to cut up bodies. So no one had better give her any cheek. Sarah, don’t take anything from any one of them-if they step one inch out of line offer them a place on your mortuary slab. Let’s go.’

  She worked solidly for three hours. Claire ushered patients in one after the other, and, to her astonishment, Sarah found she was enjoying herself immensely.

  This was real medicine. It was medicine she hadn’t practised for five years, and even then she’d started her initial training as a paediatrician in a city hospital. Paediatrics wasn’t this sort of medicine.

  The fishing crews were rough, tough, but underneath as worried as mothers with newborns about their myriad ills. Most of them had been at sea for weeks, and in those circumstances-three weeks of thinking of nothing but sea and fish-minor complaints had a habit of growing in the mind if not in reality. A freckle on a forearm became a melanoma. A little deafness in one ear became a tumour. Sarah found most of her time was spent in reassurance. And apart from that, there were the festering sores that had been neglected for too long…

  She worked through, being given an inquisition by each patient.

  After Claire’s good-natured injunction to behave with respect, they treated her with caution-but also with immense curiosity. ‘How can you possibly be a forensic pathologist? We’ve seen what they do on telly. Why would anyone as pretty as you want to do that stuff?’

  This community was heavily male-oriented. Single women were scarce as hen’s teeth, and she was propositioned by at least five fishermen. She ended up chuckling as she saw out the last fisherman, listening to his impassioned plea to go out with him that night as she tried to close the door behind him.

  ‘Yeah, I know we haven’t got any restaurants, but I know this great secluded little cove, and I’ll bring lobster and as much beer as we can drink.’

  She grinned at him and declined, and was still laughing when she turned to find Alistair watching her, an expression of stunned incredulity on his face.

  ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

  She didn’t stop smiling. ‘I suspect I’m protecting my virtue. If he hasn’t got more than lobster and beer on his mind then I’m a monkey’s uncle.’

  ‘I mean-’ he wasn’t smiling ‘-seeing my patients.’

  ‘It’s unethical, isn’t it?’ she agreed. ‘But Claire said you were snowed under. You needn’t worry. The people I saw only had minor worries. Anything that I was the least concerned about I saved for you, or told them to come back in the morning for a repeat consultation with a real doctor. For instance you.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he said dryly, and her smile faded.

  ‘Well, I think you should say thank you,’ she retorted. ‘I’ve saved you three hours’ work.’

  ‘While you should be out solving crime?’

  ‘As far as I know there’s no crime to solve. There are missing people I’m doing my best for, but there’s not a lot I can do but wait.’

  ‘And do nothing?’

  ‘And do your work.’ Her anger was building.

  ‘I didn’t ask you-’

  ‘I offered. I’m not incompetent, Alistair. I’m not sure why you came with me this morning, but-’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you’re incompetent, either.’

  ‘Then let’s leave it,’ she snapped. ‘We’re both competent doctors. You help me and I’ll help you. That’s fair.’

  ‘I don’t need help.’

  ‘No? You could be just starting clinic now and coping with everything else all on your own. If I was anyone else but me would you be so ungracious?’

  He hesitated. Then met her gaze square-on. ‘No,’ he admitted.

  ‘Then why-’

  ‘There’s too much history, Sarah. What you did…’

  She closed her eyes. What she did… It hung over her like a great black fog. An admission of guilt she could never escape.

  When she opened her eyes Alistair’s expression had changed. ‘Sarah…’ His brows had snapped down as if he was suddenly uncertain. That was a change, she thought bleakly. The black cap of judgement had been replaced by something that had just the faintest shade of grey about it.

  It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. What this man thought of her was totally immaterial.

  ‘I need to go through my notes with you,’ she told him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If there’s something you disagree with then you can dash out and change the medication before I kill someone else.’

  Kill someone else. It was a bleak and harsh statement and it hung. Dreadful.

  And Alistair’s face changed yet again. Acknowledging the pain she had no hope of disguising.

  ‘You’ve lived with the guilt of Grant’s death for six years,’ he said softly, and she didn’t say anything at all. Nothing. There was nothing to say.

  I
f she’d wanted to say something then the time to do that had been six years ago, she acknowledged bleakly. Not now. Not now, when it was far, far too late to change a thing.

  ‘Sarah, I-’

  ‘Leave it,’ she said, more roughly than she’d intended. ‘Alistair, we agreed to shelve it. We need to work together for the next couple of days, until we sort this out, and then we can move on. We don’t have to see each other again after this. But for now we need to be civil. The way I see it, the only way we can do that is if we avoid the subject completely.’

  ‘There are unresolved issues-’

  ‘Then they’re staying unresolved.’

  ‘Right.’ There was a moment’s silence while each of them regrouped. Figured out where to go from here. Finally…

  ‘You’re telling me you’ve done all my work?’ Alistair said cautiously, and Sarah practically groaned in relief. They were back to being medical colleagues. It was a relationship she could cope with. She couldn’t cope with anything more.

  He even sounded as if he intended to be nice again.

  Well, two could go down that path.

  ‘Yep.’ She even managed a smile. ‘Plus your ward round. Mr Carter’s heart is behaving itself. Don dropped in and had his shoulder checked-he’s doing nicely. It looks to me as if it’s only the result of his major fall-I doubt it’ll end up being a chronic problem. How’s your guy under the tractor?’

  ‘He’s okay. He was pushed into soft dirt. He had breathing trouble until we got the thing off him, but once the pressure was off he recovered almost immediately. He has two broken ribs. I’ve put him into hospital for observation but he should be fine.’

  ‘Lucky.’

  ‘He is.’ Alistair’s gaze was thoughtful. His eyes were appraising her. ‘Are you tired?’

  ‘Why should I be tired?’ She was ready to spring onto the defensive.

  But he was still in nice mode. ‘You’ve had a long day.’

  She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s only six.’

  ‘And you’ve just knocked back a dinner invitation.’