the palms to the beach beyond. She hadn’t known this place existed.
‘So this is why you came,’ she whispered, staring around her with increasing delight. The sun was hanging on the horizon, a crimson ball casting a soft pink tinge over the whitewashed hospital. Every window in the place was wide open, and soft white curtains fluttered outward in the breeze. Dinner was being served on the verandas—all mobile patients were outside eating their meal while they watched the sun set over the harbour.
It was truly spectacular. The land between the hospital and the sea was a mass of palm trees, with coconuts hanging in enticing bunches. Closer to the building were frangipani, their creamy yellow flowers spreading a perfume that could be smelled from where she stood.
Out on the water there were pelicans flying low—sweeping in to land, then paddling back and forth in elegant sail-pasts, for all the world like organised flotillas of luxury liners. There were currawongs carolling in the jacarandas overhead, and a host of brilliant lorikeets were stripping a brilliant scarlet bougainvillea.
It was…magic.
‘How long have you been here?’ she whispered, her face reflecting her delight.
‘Five years.’ The set look on Alistair’s face should have stopped her right there, but minding her own business had never been Sarah’s strong point. Heaven knew, she’d intended to stay impersonal, but before she could stop herself the question was out.
‘Since your mother died?’
Whoa. Wrong thing to say. It meant all sorts of things. It told Alistair that Sarah had kept tabs—knew what had happened to the old couple after they’d buried their son. Old Doug Benn had suffered a massive stroke only three weeks after Grant died. He’d died almost immediately, and his wife had simply faded until her death twelve months later.
‘As you say.’ Alistair’s anger was palpable. He climbed from the Land Cruiser and she could see it was all he could do not to slam the door. ‘The local policeman—Barry—is out with the searchers. I’ll introduce you to him later. Meanwhile can I show you to your quarters? Do you want dinner?’
‘I want to see the pilot first,’ she told him. ‘I’m here because this case is urgent. Let’s treat it like that.’
‘Fine by me.’
The morgue was at the rear of the hospital, but even the morgue wasn’t an unpleasant place to be. The high windows were open and the sound of the sea pervaded—the wash of surf from around the headland. Smells in morgues were unmistakeable and unavoidable, but the salt air was giving the antiseptic, clinical morgue atmosphere a run for its money.
‘Do you want to change your clothes?’ Alistair asked shortly, and Sarah shook her head.
‘Let me see him first. Then I’ll put on overalls.’
‘Fine.’ They were being scrupulously polite. Alistair cast her a glance that said he still didn’t really believe she was a pathologist, but he walked forward and pulled out the drawer containing the body.
Sarah didn’t move. She’d learned not to.
Her first task was to stand back and get an overall impression. Things were easier that way. If you glanced at someone you got an initial impression that might be superseded later by close examining. But often that impression was right. Age. Background. Where he’d fitted into life.
Jake Condor, his passport said. Aged thirty-eight. That fitted. He looked thirty-eight.
He looked like a schmuck.
He was a pilot, but he didn’t look anything like the pilot she’d just flown with on the way here. He was dressed in blue jeans, with elastic-sided boots that shone with almost astonishing brightness. His jeans were of the far-too-tight variety—designed for maximum impact on the opposite sex. Jeans like that never had the desired effect, Sarah thought, but she knew plenty of guys who wore them. They were the sort of guy who’d try to pick you up and react with total disbelief when turned down.
It was a lot to extrapolate from one pair of jeans, but Sarah was accustomed to forming impressions fast. Sometimes those impressions helped.
What else? A T-shirt with a slogan on it for some Thai beer. Interesting. That T-shirt had definitely come from overseas and it looked new. It fitted with what she’d been told.
The man had tattoos running down arms that were a bit too thin. His arms had been brawny when the tattoos had been applied, she thought. That dragon had definitely shrunk.
He was wearing a Rolex watch. Real? Maybe.
He was wearing something else that caught her attention. She walked around the table to see the leather pouch attached to his belt and glanced back at Alistair. ‘It looks like a gun holster. Was there a gun?’
‘No. We looked. When we saw the holster Barry did a thorough search of the plane, but there was nothing.’
‘You did check the body for bullet holes?’
‘We checked,’ he said wryly. ‘It seemed sensible.’
She nodded, moving on. The man was clean-shaven. Deeply tanned. A bit…oily, she thought. She walked forward and sniffed and was rewarded by the scent of cheap after-shave.
And his hair… His hair was horrid. It was long, black, and curling in oily strands to his shoulders. It looked as if it had been hauled back in a too tight ponytail and then released. Maybe that had happened in the accident?
His hairline was receding. Balding with a ponytail. Not Sarah’s favourite look.
‘He looks like a right Casanova,’ Alistair said, and she glanced up at him again, surprised in a way that he was still here. Work had the capacity to block out all else. It had always been that way and was her saving grace.
A right Casanova. Yeah. ‘You have that impression, too?’
‘He looks a type.’
‘We learn not to make judgements,’ she said, in a voice that was too prim, and she surprised a smile out of him.
‘I thought your job was all about judgements.’
‘In the face of evidence.’ She moved so she could see the man’s face from both sides. ‘That bump didn’t kill him.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. He looks like he’s got a broken nose. The guys who reached the plane first wiped him off, trying to see if there was any sign of life, but it’s bled.’
She glanced down at the T-shirt and nodded. The beer slogan was spattered. Okay. He’d been hit on the nose in the crash and then he bled. It meant that he’d still been alive when the plane hit. She looked more closely at the nose. Surely after a bump like that it should have bled more?
It wouldn’t have bled if the heart had stopped pumping. Death must have been fast.
‘Mmm.’ She wasn’t moving him—still simply looking. ‘Is there any damage to the back of his head?’
‘Not that I can see. I had a good look when we put him on the stretcher to bring him in.’
‘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.