Her Dr. Wright

by Meredith Webber

  And was she mentally substituting the word ‘perpetrator’ for ‘murderer’ because she might be describing David?

  She looked down at the pathetic collection of bones and asked herself how well she knew David.

  As well as anyone knew another human being, she’d have said yesterday. He’d been a student with her—best friend of her first lover, Lucy’s father. David had been her strength when Lucy’s father had been killed. He’d shared her grief, stood by her through her lonely pregnancy, gladly accepted a role as godfather to Lucy, and over the years had kept in touch, by phone, letter and, these days, email.

  For him to shoot someone was unthinkable, but to then fold the slight, lifeless body of a woman he had loved into a trunk? Sarah’s head couldn’t get around the concept—though, in truth, she had difficulty imagining anyone doing such a thing.

  The two policemen, suitably gloved, were lifting the trunk—fairly effortlessly, considering what it contained. She studied it more closely as they moved towards their vehicle and realised that though she’d still been thinking trunk and assuming it to be one of the heavy, old-fashioned steamer trunks, it was, in fact, a more modern container, like a metal toolbox.

  She looked back at the packed earth on the floor of the shed, not to where the trunk had been when she’d come in but further into the pyramids of junk. A dark rectangle showed the trunk’s original position before David and ‘the man’—Paul—had lifted it clear. If scene of crime officers were here, they’d vacuum up the dirt so the lab could have a look at it. Should she take it on herself to suggest it to Barry?

  Before she could decide he returned, holding the small vacuum cleaner used for this purpose.

  ‘Just in case,’ he said. ‘If I don’t someone will ask for it. Funny lot, those lab fellows. I’ve seen some’d go silly over a few grains of dirt.’

  He vacuumed efficiently around the outer edges of the original rectangle, then removed one paper bag, sealed it and labelled it carefully to show where the contents had been gathered, and replaced it with a second one. Taking even more care, he now swept the little machine back and forth across the place where the trunk had been.

  A third bag collected the dirt from where the trunk had rested temporarily.

  ‘What next?’ he said to Sarah, squatting back on his heels and looking around the crammed shed. ‘Anything else we should do right now?’

  Sarah also allowed her gaze to roam. She began to hope the body was complete. There were so many hiding places in here, it could take a month to search for missing bones.

  ‘Keep people away?’ she said. ‘Can you do it successfully, given you’re a two-man force and you probably have other work to do? For a start, you should watch me as I take the body out. I don’t think that’s a job for the young fellow.’

  ‘I can grab some volunteers to keep an eye on the place, though if the vic’s been missing for four years, I don’t know what a search now is going to yield.’

  Sarah looked around again, mentally translating the slang word for ‘victim’. Vics and perps—the perpetrator—were linked inextricably in the police vocabulary.

  ‘A murder weapon?’ she suggested, thinking aloud. ‘Though surely it would have been disposed of long ago. And the place must have been gone over thoroughly four years ago. Mrs Wright disappeared on the island, so wouldn’t the search for her have begun right here?’

  Barry shook his head.

  ‘Before my time, I’m afraid, though the records of what took place will be in the office. But, yes, you’re right, after the house and yard, they’d have had to go through all this stuff. Including, you’d think, any trunks and boxes.’

  His look told Sarah he didn’t relish repeating the exercise, but she was thinking of something else—of a woman going missing.

  ‘How hard would they have searched? Do the police take missing persons’ reports of adults all that seriously?’

  Barry shrugged.

  ‘It’s not something they spend a lot of time on, not in the city. People leave their partners all the time, teenage kids run away. The police put out a bulletin advising the person’s gone, but active searches?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Not for adults—not straight away.’

  ‘But here it must have been different, surely?’ Sarah persisted. ‘After all, she came to the island—everyone knew that—but she didn’t leave.’

  Barry nodded this time, a very small nod, and Sarah didn’t know him well enough to read the nuances of his body language.

  ‘They’d have searched. In fact, I remember enough about it to know they did. Anyway, someone goes missing on the island, you’ve got to look. Might be lying injured somewhere.’

  He frowned, looking down at the mark in the dirt where the trunk had been lying.

  ‘But they didn’t find her, did they?’ he said. ‘Not then, they didn’t.’

  He picked up his evidence bags, tucked the little vacuum cleaner under his arm and strode towards the door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ROWENA carried the coffee and biscuits into David’s consulting room. He was sitting at the desk, elbows on the pile of files, head resting on his hands.

  ‘Here, drink this,’ she said brusquely. ‘I can cancel the afternoon patients. I don’t think you’re fit to see anyone.’

  He lifted his head and looked at her, as if trying to place where the noise was coming from, then his eyelids drifted down over his eyes and he dropped his head to his hands again.

  The pain she’d seen in that telling moment made Rowena wince.

  The agonising depth of it made her wonder if he would ever get over the death of his wife—ever recover enough to love again!

  Though she’d once thought she wouldn’t…

  ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ he said at last, raising his head again, only this time looking past her towards the door. ‘A hot drink—panacea for most ills. Give me five minutes to drink it, then show the Carters in. I’d better see as many people as possible before word gets around. They sure as hell won’t want to see me afterwards, and Sarah could be caught up with the police.’

  His voice was harsh, like talons scraping across wood. Much as Rowena longed to offer words of comfort or support, she couldn’t think of any to fit the situation. She nodded and walked away, so heart-sore she was surprised to find she could still function normally—to all outward appearances anyway.

  ‘David will only be a few minutes longer,’ she told the Carters. ‘He’s taking over for the afternoon as his locum was called away.’

  ‘Someone sick somewhere, was there?’ Mrs Carter asked.

  It was a predictable question. With only one doctor on the island, the patients were used to having to wait, or even come back later, when David was called to an emergency. But now Rowena found herself unable to answer. Even nodding would be tantamount to a lie, and as the news would undoubtedly spread like wildfire, the couple would soon know it for what it was.

  Rejecting total honesty as an option—unsure what story might spread—she simply smiled at the elderly pair and said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t talk about it—though, no doubt, everyone will know soon enough.’

  Wrong move! she realised as they immediately began speculating, casting sidelong glances in her direction with each guess to see if they could catch a reaction. It was obvious from some of the comments that they knew Mary-Ellen was back on Three Ships and inevitably tied her into things.

  ‘Though,’ Mrs Carter said, ‘if it was to do with her and her sister, it would be David gone, not the new lady.’

  ‘Stop right now!’ Rowena told them. ‘Heavens! Gossip in this place must fly through the air. With two thousand people and seven hundred households, I’m sure it couldn’t be communicated so quickly by word of mouth.’

  The pleased look on Mrs Carter’s face told Rowena she’d made a mistake, interrupting at that stage, but behind her she heard the consulting-room door open and knew David was ready.

  ‘Go on in,’ she s
aid, biting back an urge to warn them not to ask questions—to beg them to be nice to him.

  However, knowing it would only provoke more speculation, she held her tongue, closed the door behind them and turned to greet the next patient, who’d come in, late, with Bessie Jenkins from the school tuckshop.

  ‘Thought if you wanted to do your vampire thing on me I might as well get it over and done with straight away,’ Bessie said, while Margo Ryan, the policeman’s wife and heavily pregnant with her first child, waddled to a chair and settled into it.

  ‘Sorry I’m late but I was asleep,’ Margo explained. ‘My back’s been aching and I couldn’t get comfortable last night.’

  Rowena looked at the young woman and wondered if she’d have the same difficulties this coming night, though for different reasons.

  After offering Margo a drink of water, which was refused, Rowena took Bessie into the treatment room where she took two vials of blood. If the plane came in the following day, they would be sent away to test for hepatitis—if not, they would have to wait. Although David could and did do his own simple blood tests here on the island. Would Sarah continue the practice during her tenure?

  Rowena chatted to Bessie as she worked, although her heart wasn’t in the conversation. Too busy worrying about David, and how he was handling the Carters’ curiosity.

  ‘Whatever the tests show, would you mind asking all the parents who help at the tuckshop to wear gloves all the time they’re handling food? And make sure there’s someone appointed to handle the money and nothing else. Let the kids queue up to pay at the cash register like you do in a cafeteria.’

  ‘But it takes far longer than having whoever serves them handling the money,’ Bessie pointed out. ‘And we all know enough to take a glove off for the money.’

  ‘Maybe your helpers don’t all follow the rules,’ Rowena suggested, though she suspected it might be Bessie herself, used to the way she’d always done things, who occasionally ‘forgot’ the gloves.

  ‘Are you going to test all the helpers?’ the older woman demanded, when Rowena failed to agree and reassure her.

  ‘I only take the blood,’ she said, using delegation of responsibility as an excuse. ‘It’s up to the doctors to decide who to test.’

  ‘Hmmph!’ Bessie muttered, although she obediently held the cotton ball over the needle puncture, then held out her arm for Rowena to tape the dressing in place.

  They were just leaving the treatment room when Margo gave a loud cry and slid into an uncomfortable crouch on the floor.

  The Carters, who had timed their departure to perfection, reached her first, Mrs Carter bending down as if to help Margo to her feet.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Bessie said, hurrying out so the ringing of the bell punctuated Margo’s distress.

  ‘Let her be for a minute,’ Rowena warned the older couple, crossing the room and kneeling on the opposite side of the young woman.

  ‘Was it a strong pain or just unexpected?’ she asked when the sheen on Margo’s upper lip confirmed it had been a pain-generated cry.

  ‘Oh, it hurt!’ Margo moaned.

  ‘Has it gone now?’ Rowena asked, glancing up in time to see David take in the scene then cross to the phone.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want to move in case it hurts again,’ the young woman said.

  Rowena hid a sigh. With some women, all the childbirth lectures and exercises in the world wouldn’t prepare them for the pain and discomfort of giving birth.

  ‘OK, let’s have a look,’ David said, crossing the room with his long, confident stride.

  ‘I’ll just get you to sign a Medicare form,’ Rowena said to Mr Carter. ‘If you could both come over here.’

  She led the interested onlookers away, though her thoughts were with the man who now squatted beside Margo, murmuring soothingly to her, assuring her she’d be all right.

  ‘I’ve phoned Nell and left a message on her answering machine to let her know you’ve started labour,’ he told her, mentioning the midwife who had delivered the island’s babies for the last three decades. ‘But this pain is probably only an early warning, so how about I help you up, then have a look at you? Once we know what’s happening, you can decide whether you want to go home and wait for a while or go straight to the hospital.’

  ‘I want Barry,’ Margo said tearfully. She was standing now, clutching David’s arm as if he were the only thing keeping her afloat in a sea of confusion.

  ‘We’ll let him know what’s happening and I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as possible.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ Mrs Carter asked, far too eagerly. ‘We could go and tell him.’

  She stepped towards Margo as if to shake the truth out of her.

  ‘He went out to—’ Margo began, but Rowena stepped between them.

  ‘I think it’s best if we tell him,’ she said to the Carters. ‘If he’s not within mobile range, we can get him on the two-way. Now, Mrs Carter, do you want me to put you down for another appointment? Did David say he wants to see you again?’

  She hustled the inquisitive pair away, and was relieved when David helped Margo to her feet and led her towards the consulting room.

  ‘We have to come again next week,’ Mrs Carter said. ‘I do hope the lady doctor’s back here by then.’

  ‘I’m sure she will be,’ Rowena assured her.

  She waited until they’d departed, then followed David into the consulting room.

  Margo was sitting on the examination table, and though her eyes were now relatively free of tears, Rowena guessed it wouldn’t be long before she was crying again.

  ‘I think I’ll go to the hospital,’ Margo told David. ‘I’ll feel better there. Safer.’

  ‘Well, just bear in mind you won’t be in true labour for many hours yet and you might get bored at the hospital,’ David said. His face was pale, and his voice tight with tension, but the hand he rested on Margo’s shoulder was gently comforting.

  The patient’s eyes brimmed again, and he added, ‘But if it’s what you want to do.’

  He turned towards Rowena and she felt actual pain when she read the depths of the despair in his usually gentle brown eyes. His life was in turmoil but his compassion for his patients remained. She wanted to hold him, to warm him with her body and protect him with her arms, but she had no rights as far as he was concerned.

  None but her love, which he’d already rejected.

  ‘Are you busy or could you go back to Margo’s place with her while she gets her things?’ he asked, and Rowena realised he was acting far more professionally than she was, although he’d had by far the greater shock.

  She switched her mind back to ‘nurse’ mode.

  ‘No problem. There are three more patients due, but you can let them in yourself.’ She moved forward, but the switch hadn’t worked properly because she couldn’t resist an urge to touch him, to rest her hand briefly on his forearm.

  ‘You’ll know where I am,’ she told him, hoping he’d remember the words she’d spoken the previous afternoon when she’d promised to do whatever she could. Hoping he’d realise they still applied.

  She felt his muscles tense beneath her fingers, and the air between them seemed to hum with tension. Then David moved his arm away—a slight shift in body angle, nothing more—and she took the hint, hid her hurt and turned to their patient.

  ‘Come on, Margo. Have you got your hospital bag packed? Were you ready for this?’

  Margo immediately launched into a long explanation which began with the information that her mother had always gone over her due dates, drifted through the welter of indecision she’d suffered over whether she’d have the babe at the hospital or at home, before she finally admitted she’d bought some new nightdresses last time she’d been on the mainland but, no, hadn’t exactly packed anything for hospital.

  David walked behind them, watching the way Rowena moved, wondering how the human psyche worked, that he could be thinking how attractive she was while his
world was falling apart. His next patient was helping himself to a glass of water from the fountain in the corner.

  David recognised him with a feeling of relief.

  ‘Ted. I didn’t know you were on the list for today. What brings you here?’

  He crossed the room to shake hands with his friend, then led him back to the consulting room.

  Ted drained the small paper cup and tossed it into David’s waste-paper basket. He ignored the chair David offered and did a turn around the room, showing sufficient agitation for David to forget a little about his own problems while he worried about Ted’s.

  ‘Actually, I didn’t think you’d be here,’ Ted finally admitted.

  ‘You didn’t want to see me about a medical problem? You’d prefer to see a woman?’

  ‘No way—not for me, mate,’ Ted assured him, then he added, ‘It’s Kelly.’ He turned and paced one more length before finally deciding he could do this sitting down.

  David propped himself against the desk and waited.

  ‘I think she’s sick of the island—well, I hope it’s the island and not me. She’s restless and not herself at all. Not unhappy if you gauge unhappiness on tears—she doesn’t sit around and cry all day. It’s more like she’s distracted. As if she’s distancing herself from me, and I can’t seem to get her back.’

  David pictured Kelly Withers in his mind—saw the rich dark red hair flowing in waves across her shoulders, and the bright, red-brown eyes which sparkled with wit and wisdom.

  ‘Kelly unhappy?’ It seemed impossible. ‘Why now? Has something happened recently? Something changed in your lives?’

  Ted shook his head.

  ‘Nothing! We’re doing well, we didn’t suffer any damage in the fires, the eco tours Kelly’s been running kept her busy through summer, and the plans for next season’s tours are under way. She’s thinking of including Barrett’s Beach but, though she usually gets excited about the new plans, even that’s not giving her much pleasure.’

  He paused, then said in a doom-laden voice, ‘I think she’s fed up with the island. People get that way, you know. Especially city-bred folk like Kelly.’