Marion Lennox - The Police Doctor’s Secret

‘Neither did I.’

‘It’s those pyjamas.’

‘It’s because you look like Grant.’

Yeah. There it was.

Grant.

He lay between them like a physical barrier that they could never overcome. Alistair’s twin. The other half of his whole.

Sarah’s fiancée.

‘I need to go to bed,’ she whispered, and he nodded.

‘So do I.’

‘Goodnight.’ And she didn’t wait for an answer. She turned and she fled.

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?’