‘I am. The report says you have a dead body, a crashed plane and a mystery. The local police officer sounds out of his depth and you lack the necessary expertise.’
Ouch. He felt his face tighten and he knew that she saw it.
‘I mean you lack the necessary expertise in forensic medicine,’ she amended, and he thought, Yeah, stick the knife in and twist. Hadn’t that always been the way? Sarah and Grant, looking down their noses at the hick country doctor.
Sarah and Grant…
There was that twist of the gut again. The pain. Would it ever go away?
He didn’t know. It was surely with him still. But for now he could only move forward, and he needed to do that now. He was stuck with Sarah, therefore the sooner they got rid of this mess the sooner he could be shot of her.
‘Let’s collect your luggage and get out of here,’ he said brusquely, and she cast him an odd look and then smiled again.
‘Fine by me. Let’s go.’
Alistair Benn was not on Sarah’s list of people she wished to work with. Or be with. Ever.
Like his twin brother, Alistair was almost stunningly good-looking. He was tall, dark and tanned, with crinkly brown eyes that spoke of constant laughter, a wide, white smile and a body to die for. Once upon a time Sarah had fallen deeply in love with this smile, with this body. But now… If Sarah could have named all the people she’d least like to see, then Alistair was right on top of her list.
I can’t imagine you ever wanting a quiet life…
Alistair’s words rang in her ears as she sat in the passenger side of his big four-wheel drive Land Cruiser and headed into town. She risked a glance across at him. His face was set and stern. Judgemental.
He’d always been judgemental, she thought. ‘A moralising prig,’ Grant had called him, and it had only been when Grant’s excesses became painfully obvious that she’d thought: maybe Alistair had his reasons.
But he’d been so harsh.
The last time she’d seen him had been at Grant’s funeral. Alistair’s twin brother. She’d just been released from hospital that morning, and there’d been no time to see Grant’s family before the service. Even if she had, there would have been no words to explain the unexplainable. So she’d simply appeared. She’d been distraught, aching with grief for a wasted life, desperately uncertain about the path she’d taken, and racked with guilt. Alistair had been there—of course—supporting his parents, who were so grief-stricken they’d barely been able to stand.
She’d started to approach them, moving awkwardly on crutches. She’d got within five or six feet of where they’d been grouped around the open grave, and Alistair’s words had cut through her grief like a lash against raw skin.
‘We don’t wish to see you, Sarah. Can you leave my parents alone?’
He’d blamed her. They all had. Those six eyes, staring at her, with the loss of their loved son and brother etched hard in their faces. She’d stared at Alistair and she’d seen Grant—and the pain had threatened to overwhelm her. Alistair and Grant were identical twins. Had been identical twins. But now one was dead and one was left to haunt her for ever. She’d almost collapsed right then, but somehow she’d held on. She’d maintained her dignity—just—but she’d stumbled away as if physically struck.
She hadn’t seen them since.
‘Do you know what’s happened here?’
Alistair was speaking to her. She flinched at the harshness in his voice, but somehow she managed to haul herself back to the present. It was a mile’s drive into the township. Alistair’s face was set in lines of shock and anger, and she knew he was finding this forced intimacy as impossible as she was. He was staring at the road ahead—not at her.
It was late afternoon and the sun was casting long and eerie shadows along the track. The sun’s rays were deflected by the spindly gums that lined the road. A rock wallaby appeared suddenly from the undergrowth. The tiny creature stared down Alistair’s vehicle until Alistair slowed; the wallaby gazed at him a moment longer, as if revelling in its moment of power, and then it hopped away.
This was an amazing place, and in a different situation Sarah might well have been mesmerised by its beauty. Dolphin Cove was a tiny settlement hundreds of miles from anywhere. In Australia’s barren north, it had a reputation for a soft beauty that made it famous, but it was too far from civilisation for tourists to venture. It was too far for anyone to venture.
So why was Alistair here?
Alistair. He’d asked her a question. She needed to concentrate. What had he asked? Did she know what had happened? She did. Or part of it.
‘I’ve read a brief report. I was told that there was a plane crash here yesterday.’
‘That’s it.’ He still wasn’t looking at her, but concentrating instead on the track, as if he feared more wallabies. Which was probably reasonable. But it certainly augmented the tension.
‘So what do you know?’ Sarah probed, and despite the atmosphere there was no choice for him but to answer. The only way through this was to be businesslike.
‘A Cessna took off from Cairns yesterday afternoon,’ he told her. ‘The pilot lodged a flight plan that was pretty vague. As far as the authorities have figured the plane made an un-scheduled stop somewhere north of Cairns—no one’s quite sure where—and then came on over to this side of the peninsula. The plane crashed into the rocks on the beach just south of the town. One of the local fishing crews saw it go down, but if they hadn’t seen it then it might well never have been discovered. It’s wild country out here. But they were seen. The local police sergeant took a team out—including me—and we found the pilot. Dead.’
She nodded. ‘You reported that he probably wasn’t killed by the crash?’
‘That’s the odd thing.’ He shrugged, still carefully not looking at her. ‘Oh, sure, he’s been knocked about a bit, but it seems he tried to make a crash landing on the beach and he darn near succeeded. There’s a rock sticking out from the sand that he couldn’t have seen from the air. The plane’s wing caught and spun the whole thing into the cliff. So the aircraft is a bit smashed up, but not completely. He must have slowed almost to a stop before he hit.’
‘He’s lucky it didn’t burst into flames.’
‘He’s dead.’
Sarah caught herself. Right. You couldn’t get more dead than dead. Lucky didn’t come into it.
‘I guess.’
‘But maybe someone has been lucky,’ Alistair added, and she nodded again, thinking through the brief fax from the local policeman which she’d read on the way here. The report on the blood found in the back of the plane. The reason for the rush.
‘That’s the bit I don’t understand.’
‘That’s why you’re here. It’s why I called for help and why we’re trying to move fast. The local police sergeant—the police force here consists of exactly one—has called for reinforcements and a team of locals is combing the bushland around the wreck. You see, the cargo hold’s covered in blood. It looks like a massacre took place in there. But there’s no one. When we arrived the plane was still cooling. The pilot was strapped into his seat, dead. Everyone else had disappeared.’
‘Everyone else?’
‘I’d say at least two people have bled in that plane.’ He grimaced. ‘But then what would I know? You’re the expert.’
She hesitated. This was impossible.
If she’d known Alistair would be here then she would have asked a colleague to come in