The Police Doctor's Secret

‘And you said there are no needle tracks?’ She was looking closely now at the man’s forearms. Not touching. Just looking. ‘If he was a user he’d have signs.’

‘I didn’t find syringe marks, though they wouldn’t necessarily be obvious if he had only an occasional hit.’

‘That makes less sense. An occasional user taking that amount when he was in control of the plane? He’d have to have been suicidal.’ She stared down at the man on the table and came to a decision. Pushing her curls back from her face, she straightened. Moved right into work mode. ‘Do you have a decent camera?’ she asked. ‘One that can do close-ups?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then can you show me where to change and then fetch the camera while I prepare?’ she asked. ‘I want to go in.’

‘You mean, perform an autopsy? Here?’

‘I know it’s not perfect,’ she told him. ‘I’d far rather take him back to Cairns and do it where I have specialist equipment. But I do know how to do an autopsy without destroying evidence, and if you’re willing to stay present all the time and document as I go then I’ll do it now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because why he died will be tied up with the missing people,’ she told him. ‘It has to be. If there’s injured people missing we may well be running out of time, Alistair. I assume that’s why you called me in instead of sending the body out? I agree. It’s important. So let’s move.’

He gazed at her and she gazed back, unflinching. She was right and he knew it.

There was nothing for it.

He moved.

It had been years since Alistair had performed an autopsy. If there was a coroner’s inquest required, Dolphin Cove’s deceased were generally moved to Cairns for examination, which suited Alistair fine. He didn’t miss the experience one bit. This community was tight knit, the line between patient and friend in this remote place always blurred, and to do an autopsy on a friend was unthinkable.

But back in basic training he’d learned to do them. He knew the rules, which were even more important if there was a hint of foul play. Still, he was more than happy to let Sarah take centre stage. She knew her stuff and, dressed for work, looked every bit the efficient pathologist. Enveloped in white overalls and white rubber boots, with her flaming hair tucked tightly under a surgical cap and her face masked for good measure, she almost wasn’t Sarah.

Only those speaking eyes stayed with him. Alistair operated the camera and took notes as she dictated, moving with Sarah every step of the way, but he was so aware of those eyes…

Where had she learned these skills?

Why had she decided on pathology?

What a waste, he thought suddenly, remembering how he’d first seen her. She’d been at the huge city children’s hospital, where she’d started her paediatric training.

‘Go and say hi to Sarah if you’re in the vicinity,’ Grant had told him. ‘After all, we’re almost family. Or I hope we will be.’

So he had. He’d walked into the ward and seen her on the floor with a toddler. The bed-card—that and the ward he’d entered—had told him the little boy was suffering from leukaemia, a treatable illness in children and with a reasonable cure rate, but the treatment was just plain cruel. The little boy Sarah had been holding was bald and emaciated, and strung up to every conceivable form of tubing and monitor. He’d seemed the sort of child it was impossible to touch without hurting.

But Sarah had been touching. She’d had him in her arms, playing at being a crab. Playing at crawling—slithering over the shiny linoleum of the ward floor. Clutching the little boy in her arms and lying flat on her back, she’d been using her legs not only to manoeuvre the drip stand but to sweep them both around the floor. As they had giggled in tandem, it had been hard to say who was the most delighted—the child or Sarah. The little girl in the next bed had been almost pop-eyed with jealous delight.

Alistair had watched, stunned. Sarah had had no dignity at all. Nor had she cared. Her white pants and surgical coat had gathered dust as she swept the floor but she hadn’t seemed to notice. When she’d looked up and found Alistair looking down at them she’d reacted first with astonishment that he’d looked so like Grant, and then with delight.

‘See, Jonathon? We have an audience. Maybe we can organise a race? What do you say, Dr Benn? Will you be another crab? Choose a crab name immediately. Our crab name is Horace. Kylie’s in the next bed and she needs a crab carriage as well, so bring her down here. Don’t just stand there. Come and race us.’

What could he have said? He’d come to town for a conference, he’d been wearing a suit and tie, but in two minutes she’d had him labelled Henrietta Crab. He’d spent the next half-hour crab-racing, with three-year-old Kylie from the next bed perched on his stomach and close to hysterical with glee.

He’d gone home with aching shoulder muscles, still grinning, and thinking that for once Grant had made a decidedly good call.

That initial impression had deepened.

Grant had brought Sarah home for Christmas that year. She’d spent a week on the farm and she’d made them all laugh. Grant had needed to leave—of course—but Sarah had stayed on and she and Alistair had spent the week helping his elderly father harvest the hay. And at the end of the week Alistair had come close to believing he was in love himself. Dangerously close.

But that had been before. Before…

Don’t think about that, he told himself fiercely. Think instead about why on earth she made the change from paediatrics to pathology.

Maybe it was pathology he needed to focus on.

‘Take a shot of his fingernails,’ she told him. She was lifting the dead man’s hands, inspecting them with care and holding them so he could photograph. ‘There’s nothing here. This guy is a serious groomer. Not only does he slick his hair, he files his nails. I want a photograph of both hands, close up. It’s important to establish that there’s no sign of any struggle. If anyone murdered him they must have done it while he was unconscious. There’s nothing to suggest that sort of injury anywhere.’

She stood back and looked again, still assessing. She’d carefully removed the man’s clothes, and what they had was a five-feet-eight-inch thin male, fussy dresser, clean, well-groomed, tanned above the collar and sleeves but white elsewhere.

‘I’m going to do the autopsy now,’ she told him. ‘You got a strong stomach? You know everything has to be witnessed and double-checked?’

‘I can do it.’

‘Yeah, well get me another witness before you pass out,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want this stuffed for lack of professionalism.’

‘Just do it.’

And fifteen minutes later they had their answer. Sarah was examining the contents of the man’s colon with increasing incredulity.

‘I’ve read about this,’ she said. ‘One of my colleagues found it once and I thought—given the amount of heroin in his blood—it had to be something similar. But to try and fly a plane…’

‘What?’ Alistair said, and she cast him a glance that said she’d almost forgotten he was there.

‘Condoms.’

‘Condoms?’

‘Look. I need these photographed.’ She winced and he could see the look of distaste behind the mask. ‘The man’s a serious twit. He’s come from Thailand, right? Well, he’s come bearing drugs. Drugs are still possible to obtain up in the border areas, only Customs are tight, both here and in the major Thai cities. If he’s caught over there it’s the death penalty, and the jail term here is pretty much equivalent. But the money is amazing. The street value of what we have here is in the tens of thousands. So Jake here has decided to go down a road that many have tried before. He packs condoms with heroin and he swallows them.’

Alistair flinched. He leaned forward and angled the camera, disbelief warring with nausea. ‘How many condoms? The man must have been a lunatic.’

‘It’ll only work if you get rid of them fast,’ Sarah said thoughtfully. ‘The digestive process wears away at the rubber. This guy’s eaten too many for his system to cope with. I’d imagine we’re looking at a constipating of his whole system. So he arrives in the country, maybe worried that he’s not passed them. He’ll be in increasing discomfort, maybe he’ll even give himself a purge—which might well make everything worse as it increases the pressure on the rubber. So he’s flying a small plane with a couple or a few extra people as cargo. Somewhere up there a condom bursts. He suffers a massive overdose, and I mean massive. It’s a miracle he managed to get the plane down at all.’

Alistair nodded, his face grim. As a scenario it was all too plausible—but horrid. He took the photographs they needed and then stood back from the table, trying to take it in. Crime like this—stupidity like this—wasn’t in his ken. ‘Anything else?’ he asked, and she cast him a look that said she knew how badly he was disconcerted.

‘I’ll finish what I’ve started, but we have the answers to our questions. If you can find the local police sergeant for me I’ll make a statement.’

‘But the rest…the other passengers.’

‘I don’t have any answers there. I hope to heaven they haven’t been eating the same diet, but according to you there’s nothing we can do about that tonight. For now…’ She compressed her lips. ‘For now we have as much information as Jake’s going to give us. I’ll finish up here. Then dinner, and test the blood samples when they come in, and then bed. We worry tomorrow.’

Which was just fine, Alistair thought as he watched her work. But…dinner and bed? These were other things to worry about, besides missing drug-runners.

When he’d rung and asked for a forensic pathologist to be flown up he’d made an offer. ‘The accommodation in town’s pretty rough—the pub’s not suitable, especially if whoever you send is female. But there’s a spare bedroom in the doctor’s quarters.’