Doctor and Protector

by Meredith Webber

  ‘He doesn’t need a motive—not the kind of motive police routinely consider, like money, revenge or jealousy. He might imagine a slight of some kind and build it into something major to justify to himself what he’s doing, but equally you could be random choices.’

  Cassie was staring at him. Though she’d remained in the room, she obviously wasn’t totally absorbed by his fascinating discourse. In fact, the frown suggested she found it most unpalatable.

  Then her remark explained the frown.

  ‘You know a lot about this stuff for a bodyguard.’

  He’d given himself away and had to think quickly.

  ‘For a bodyguard doing a research project,’ he reminded her. ‘It’s about serial killers—the project. I’ve had to read a lot.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, coolly sarcastic as she moved towards the door. ‘We have such endless numbers of them in Queensland it’s just the kind of thing we should be using government money to research. But when I think how easily you lied in front of Derek, I’m not sure I can believe one single word you say.’

  She exited on this curt note, leaving McCall once again cursing Dave for not explaining exactly what ‘the bodyguard’ really did.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DISTURBED by the conversation she’d had with McCall, Cassie went to bed, but sleep was about as likely as there being no emergencies at the hospital the following day.

  She tried to think about personality disorders, but her mind drifted to the man who’d spoken of the condition. How on earth had they ended up kissing each other when they’d come back from Derek’s?

  Could she put it down to some personality disorder of her own?

  Could she blame the apprehension she’d been feeling since the second letter arrived—the first having been dismissed as a joke?

  But she’d talked to Dave about the letters and had not ended up kissing him. And though she’d never had the experience of kissing, or being kissed by, Dave, she was reasonably certain it would be about as exciting as kissing blancmange.

  Kissing McCall, on the other hand, had been a very…stimulating?…experience. OK, it had been more than stimulating—it had been practically riveting!

  Which was why, no doubt, she’d responded.

  She tried to remember responding to Ross’s kisses the same way, but couldn’t dredge up any memories of toe-curling excitement, which was what, if she was honest enough to admit it, she’d felt being kissed by McCall.

  Thank heavens Derek had phoned.

  Hazy pre-sleep thoughts, floating every which way in her head, now snagged on Derek’s phone call.

  Why had Derek phoned?

  Good grief! Had she still been so lost in the sensations generated by the kiss she couldn’t remember the phone conversation? What if it had been important? No, she’d have remembered it if it had been important.

  Wouldn’t she?

  She could feel frown lines deepening on her forehead as she fought to remember what Derek had wanted.

  Just to see how she was? But Derek wouldn’t have phoned to check on her health when he’d seen her minutes earlier!

  Yet that was as close as she could come—as far as her memory of it went.

  Perhaps he’d sensed her unease, with McCall accompanying her on what was a routine visit to Derek’s surgery.

  McCall…

  She woke to what must surely be an invasion of aliens, so loud was the commotion at the end of her bed.

  ‘Up, Cassie, up. Man’s in the kitchen.’

  ‘He’s a visitor. He’s staying here. He’s entitled to be in the kitchen,’ she muttered at the invaders—not aliens at all, but a pair of far too boisterous three-year-old boys.

  She pulled a pillow over her head to shut out any further revelations but going back to sleep wasn’t an option as the boys were now trampolining on the bottom of her bed.

  ‘Go away,’ she told the twins, who both nodded solemnly, then giggled as they continued to bounce on the bed. ‘I mean it—and stop that bouncing. You could get hurt if you fall.’

  ‘Then we could go to your hospital,’ Ethan told her, though the bouncing stopped.

  The twins, however, continued to look expectant and Cassie reran the conversation through her head.

  It was probably hunger that had forced McCall to navigate his way to the kitchen, which meant, as his hostess, she should also be in the kitchen, doing hostessy stuff like pulling a packet of cereal out of the pantry.

  ‘Is Grandma in the kitchen?’ she asked.

  Two heads shook in solemn unison.

  ‘Gwen?’

  That was clutching at straws. Gwen lived in a cottage in the garden and rarely arrived before eight.

  The heads shook again—the twins now standing by the door, obviously ready to accompany her to the kitchen to view the ‘man’.

  Dragging a towelling robe off a hook behind the door, Cassie pulled it on and left the room. Voices from the kitchen suggested either her mother or Anne had rescued him, but she’d better check.

  She made her way in that direction, the twins tagging at her heels.

  McCall was sitting at the kitchen table, spooning yoghurt onto a large bowl of cereal and laughing at something her mother must have said.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Cassie. Could you lift the boys into their highchairs? I’ve got their breakfast ready.’

  Abigail was obviously in great humour, smiling as she spoke, and, unless Cassie was mistaken, smothering the odd giggle at the same time.

  ‘Did I get up too late to miss the joke?’ she asked, as she settled Isaac into his chair, then lifted Ethan into his.

  ‘Ask McCall,’ her mother said. ‘He’s had quite a morning.’

  But as Cassie turned to question McCall, she realised just how she must look. Hair uncombed, face creased from sleep, her robe about a hundred years old and probably grubby as well. She didn’t want to ask McCall anything. She wanted to run from the room and hide, preferably for the rest of his stay, but at least until she was groomed and dressed.

  ‘I’ve been being a male influence in their lives,’ McCall explained, without her having to ask.

  ‘But it’s barely daybreak. How have you had time to be any kind of influence?’ Cassie demanded.

  ‘I think maybe the day had just broken—anyway, in the dim light I could just discern two small humans, though the noise that woke me had made me think perhaps some native fauna had got into the house—’

  ‘Did you boys go into our visitor’s room?’ Cassie demanded of her nephews.

  Two angelic faces smiled.

  ‘Wanted to see man,’ they answered in unison.

  ‘It was OK,’ McCall assured Cassie. ‘I realise I must be something of a novelty to them. Anyway, it was an opportunity to do a bit of male bonding. We talked cars, bikes and women for a while, though I think most of it went straight over their heads, their main preoccupation being the novelty of having a man in the house.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Abigail put in. ‘They came racing into my room to ask me to come and look at him—as if he was a prize exhibit at the show.’

  Abigail gave a chuckle as if the twins’ behaviour was a source of great delight.

  Cassie shook her head and left the room.

  She was heading down the hallway, the strange reaction she’d felt when she’d seen McCall in the kitchen vying with her embarrassment over how she looked, when she realised the bathroom door was shut.

  Damn! Anne had beaten her to it—now she’d have to wait for ages before she could shower. No use hoping to use Abigail’s bathroom—she always showered just before she left for work, which would be within the next few minutes.

  Cassie grumped her way back to her bedroom, where she dragged a brush through her hair and checked her face in the mirror to make sure there were no huge lumps of sleep gluing her eyelashes together. If she had breakfast now, it would give Anne plenty of time to perform all the rituals teenagers found necessary before facing their peers at school.
>
  But if she had breakfast now, it would be in the ancient—and, now she checked, not too grubby—robe.

  So?

  Unwilling to admit even to herself that she’d prefer McCall not see her—again—looking so daggy, she stormed out of the room.

  Back in the kitchen, McCall was spooning cereal into Isaac’s mouth, while her mother fed Ethan.

  ‘Your mother assures me they can do it themselves, it’s just easier on everyone if adults do the messy part,’ McCall said, presumably in response to Cassie’s protesting ‘Mum!’

  ‘I know that part, but you’re a guest, you shouldn’t have been roped into feeding duties.’

  McCall turned and smiled at her.

  ‘But I’m only too happy to help—it’s all part of loving you, you see. And your mother kindly lent me an apron to keep the worst of the mess off my “going to the hospital” clothes.’

  He stood up and Cassie saw the apron—a favourite of her mother’s, bright pink and depicting a very corpulent pig—and she had to laugh at the image he presented, when what she should have been doing was telling him not to take pretence too far. Loving her, indeed!

  ‘Here, you take over Ethan, I have to get moving.’

  Abigail handed her the bowl and spoon and left the room.

  ‘Tell me again how you voluntarily took these two monsters into your home,’ McCall said, as Isaac caught the spoon and sent cereal flying across the room.

  ‘You’re encouraging him by playing,’ Cassie snapped, her nerves wound tight, not by the situation but by McCall’s closeness. ‘And I don’t think this bodyguard thing is going to work,’ she added, murmuring the words because she knew the twins were like parrots, repeating everything they heard.

  ‘No?’

  McCall slid the last spoonful into Isaac’s mouth, then placed the bowl on the sink, found a facecloth and efficiently cleaned up the small face and hands.

  ‘Why not?’

  Cassie had been so bemused by his actions—by the naturalness of them—she’d forgotten what she’d said to prompt his question.

  ‘You’ve done this before,’ she said to him, taking the cloth to wipe Ethan’s face. ‘Are you married? Had practice with children of your own?’

  The change of expression on his face was so marked she couldn’t miss it. From cheerful, teasing, smiling openness to blankness—nothingness.

  He looked so bleak—so bereft—it was all Cassie could do to restrain herself from going to him, putting her arms around him and holding him close. Offering him the comfort of a warm, enveloping hug in the same way he’d comforted her the previous evening.

  Even though for her, the embrace had generated more than comfort…

  Gwen’s arrival broke the spell.

  ‘Ready for toast, boys?’ she said, her words coinciding with McCall’s reply to a question Cassie felt she’d asked hours earlier.

  ‘No,’ was all he said, then he added, to Gwen this time, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’

  McCall stripped off the apron, wanting only to escape the scene that had suddenly become overbearingly domestic.

  Overbearingly reminiscent…

  He was almost at the door before he realised he had all but forgotten the whole purpose of him being here. He turned back to Cassie.

  ‘What time do you want to leave?’

  She looked distressed, then puzzled, as if the question didn’t make sense, then she shrugged, the old robe she wore opening slightly to reveal a cotton nightdress, and beneath that the hint of full breasts.

  ‘Five minutes for toast and coffee, another five wheedling Anne out of the bathroom, ten for a shower—can you be ready in twenty minutes?’

  This timetable was unbelievable enough to divert his thoughts from the body beneath the robe and nightdress.

  ‘You can breakfast, shower and be ready to go in twenty minutes?’

  She lifted her head and the green eyes speared a supercilious look his way.

  ‘I can do it all in ten when necessary,’ she informed him, lofty tones matching the look. ‘Today I’m taking my time!’

  Then she smiled and he felt the frozen wasteland that had re-formed in his body only minutes earlier begin to thaw again. But as he walked away, the effect Cassie Carew had on him humming in his blood, he remembered the letter Cassie had received the previous day, and knew he had to forget about his attraction to her and concentrate on finding the person who had chosen her as his next victim.

  He found his way back to his bedroom, opened his briefcase and, because he was a pen-and-paper rather than computer person, pulled out a fresh new notepad and began writing headings for Cassie’s list.

  ‘So, let’s start with the hospital. I assume I can get staff lists from Suzy or someone else in Administration, but you’ll make it easier if you give me the names of all males within the appropriate age group working at the hospital.’

  They were in her car, right on twenty minutes later, driving towards her workplace. She slowed for a school crossing and glanced his way.

  ‘You’re assuming the letter-writer is a man. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that anonymous letter-writers are more frequently women.’

  ‘Anonymous letter-writers usually get their kick from doing just that—stirring people up with their poison. This letter-writer needs more for his or her thrills, and I’m assuming male because of the damage Dave has discovered was done to Mrs Ambrose’s car. At the risk of sounding sexist, I’d like to point out that more men than women would know how to make brakes fail in a car.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you bleed them?’ Cassie asked, her eyes on the road but her mind following his conversation. ‘Doesn’t that do something to affect whatever makes them work?

  ‘How?’

  She turned and smiled at him.

  ‘OK, you win,’ she said, pulling up in a parking space at the back of the hospital. ‘I wouldn’t have a clue. I’ve probably only remembered the “bleeding” part because of its connotations to medicine.’

  But McCall wasn’t listening. He was looking around the car park—and realising how futile his task was. How could he possibly protect this woman when right here there must be a dozen places where a murderer could lurk unseen?

  ‘Do you always park in this same space?’

  Cassie nodded and pointed to a sign which looked as if it had been repainted recently.

  ‘See—it says Medical Superintendent.’

  ‘And everyone in town would know your car. You make it too easy, Cassie. Dave’s wrong about this. He should have publicised his suspicions about the other deaths and frightened this person off.’

  ‘So he could go to another town and kill there?’

  McCall turned to her in amazement.

  ‘Has Dave talked to you about that?’

  Cassie shook her head.

  ‘No, but this isn’t like a domestic killing, where someone kills in a moment of sheer fury or loss of self-control. You were saying yourself he doesn’t even need a motive. A killer like this—one who’s killing for the thrill of it, the power it gives him—isn’t going to stop, is he? So if we chase him away, he’ll go on doing it somewhere else, won’t he?’

  McCall couldn’t argue.

  But he could insist on change.

  ‘Let’s park in the visitors’ car park today, and tomorrow we’ll change cars, but right now, before you get out of the car, give me the names I need of men working in the hospital.’

  Cassie backed out of her parking space and drove around the hospital to the shady car park on the other side.

  Refusing to think of why she was doing it, she rattled off the names of one groundsman— ‘he’s about two hundred, been here since Moses was a lad’; one assistant to him— ‘that’s Wayne, he’s not quite all there but harmless’; three porters— ‘like the groundsman, they’ve all been here for ages’; two kitchen staff and two male nurses.

  ‘That’s it?’

  She’d parked again and now she glanced towards McCall.

>   ‘We’ve a male physiotherapist who works here three days a week and a podiatrist who comes fortnightly but he doesn’t live in town, nor do the flying specialists. The mental health care unit has two male psychologists, but they come under the area health manager, not me as hospital superintendent.’

  ‘I’d better have their names anyway,’ McCall said.

  ‘Suzy will give you the list.’

  She unsnapped her seat belt and was about to get out of the car when McCall touched her arm.

  ‘Stay there. I’ll open the door for you. Anyone who notices will think I’m the old-fashioned kind.’

  She gave a small huff of laughter—more resignation than mirth—but sat and waited until he came around and opened the door, his body shielding hers as she got out.

  ‘This is stupid. Dave showed me five letters that had been sent to Mrs Ambrose—counting last night’s, I’ve only had four. One more before I have to worry. Besides, what could you do if someone took a pot-shot at me? There’d be no time to throw yourself in front of the bullet!’

  She strode away, pretending it was anger with the situation accelerating her pace when in truth it was her own reaction to his closeness. How could her body possibly be considering attraction when someone was trying to kill her?

  ‘Cassie, I need to have a word with you before the meeting today.’

  Don Trask called to Cassie as she walked through the front door. She stopped suddenly, so McCall ran into her back then stepped away, murmuring apologies.

  ‘Let’s do it now, then,’ Cassie said to Don. ‘Once I start a round, who knows what problems I’ll run into?’

  He turned and she followed him towards the room which had once been the superintendent’s office but was now designated for the sole use of the area health manager—when he happened to be in Wakefield.

  ‘And who was that?’ McCall asked when she reappeared after a less-than-usually acrimonious discussion with Don.

  ‘Area health manager,’ Cassie told him, walking purposefully towards the first of the wards.

  ‘He’s not on your list of men working at the hospital.’

  Cassie glanced over her shoulder at McCall.

  ‘He’s not here all the time. His main office is in the regional centre a hundred kilometres away but, believe me, it’s more likely I’d murder him than he’d want to murder me. He has all the power he could ever need or want over me, and he doesn’t hesitate to use it. While as for manipulating me—well, the murderer could take lessons from him. That man personifies manipulation.’