The tide was out. Miles out. She could barely see the glimmer of surf in the distance. The beach was a vast expanse of wet sand, shimmering golden in the moonlight. Waders-herons, cranes, sandpipers-were paddling in the wet sand, searching for food.
Flotsam made a half-hearted attempt to chase, but she clicked him back to her side. He came obediently and sat beside her as she hugged her knees and looked out into the lonely distance.
‘I should never have started this,’ she whispered, and Flotsam gave an anxious wuffle and huddled close.
Maybe I should get myself a dog. That was a good thought. It brought a faint smile to her face. She could do it. She could move from her hospital apartment into a bigger place, get herself a yard…
I’m away for most of the day. What sort of life is that for a dog?
No life at all. Her glimmer of pleasure faded.
What am I thinking about? She gave herself a mental swipe-or tried to give herself a mental swipe. She didn’t really need it, she decided. She felt pretty battered already.
But it’s nothing to what’s happening here, she told herself, and she turned so she was looking out at the crags and cliffs along the coastline.
Somewhere out there was a woman and a child, hiding in terror. They’d be waiting desperately for Amal to come back to them, and Amal was fighting for his life in a Cairns hospital. He was probably being operated on right now.
‘What can I do to help?’ she asked Flotsam, but there was no answer. She felt so…futile. There was nothing. She couldn’t search at night-no one could. Tomorrow there’d be a squad of highly trained professionals trawling the hills. Maybe if Amal pulled through they could at least find out his nationality. Then maybe they could pull in translators-people who could call out in the woman’s own language. Reassure her…
Oh, sure. As if she’d accept reassurance from the people who shot her husband.
‘Can I join you?’
She jumped a foot. Flotsam gave a yelp of excitement and whirled to face his master. Alistair was six feet away.
‘Stupid dog,’ Sarah managed, thoroughly flustered. ‘Great watch dog you’d make. You’re supposed to bark.’
‘He’s barking.’
‘When my attacker is right on me.’
‘Um…your attacker is the dog’s owner,’ Alistair said mildly. ‘Plus, I’m not exactly intent on rape or pillage.’
‘Yeah, but you might have been.’
‘You can be very sure I’m not.’
She hugged her knees even harder. Of course. Rape? She had to be kidding? He wouldn’t touch her. She was Grant’s fiance.
And why would she even want him to? He’d kissed her once, out of anger and frustration, and there was no way in the wild world she wanted him to do it again.
Was there?
Where were her thoughts going? All over the place. She felt as if she was splintering, disintegrating into sharp shards that hurt.
‘I came down here for some peace,’ she told him, and he nodded and sat down on the sand beside her. Obviously her definition of peace wasn’t his.
‘You’re worried about these people?’
‘Of course I’m worried about these people.’ She flashed him a glance that was pure fury. He still thought of her as a careless, stupid…criminal.
The knowledge cut like a knife.
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he said heavily, and she nodded, forcing herself to think about problems that weren’t hers.
‘I can’t think of a thing,’ she managed. ‘They must be securely hidden by now. And if she’s terrified when Amal doesn’t return…’
‘She’ll have to come out.’
‘There’s a gun,’ she said inconsequentially, and he stared.
‘A gun?’
‘The pilot was wearing a holster,’ she told him. ‘It was empty. In my experience when people wear holsters there’s usually a gun in the vicinity. We all know that. That’s why Barry searched. But there’s more than that. The smear of blood on the seat beside the pilot doesn’t belong to him. It’s AB. The pilot is O. So someone-a bleeding someone-checked the pilot before we reached the plane. Discovered he was dead. I’m deducing that whoever it was removed the gun.’
Alistair stared. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’
‘I told Larry.’
‘Does Barry know?’
‘I’d have been a fool to tell Barry,’ she said wearily. ‘At least this way he yelled three times before he shot. If he’d known for sure that he had a gun, rather than just suspected it, he might not have given him even that courtesy.’
Alistair sat and thought about it. The silence between them had changed. There was still the tension of anger, but overriding it was the thought of the unknown. A terrified, hurt group of people huddling somewhere in the hills. With a dreadfully wounded child.
‘What would you do?’ Sarah asked, almost conversationally. ‘Let’s assume your child is desperately ill. Mortally ill. Your husband goes for help and leaves you hidden. He doesn’t return. Two days. Three days. Maybe the child dies. You’re bereft in a strange country. Everything you have is gone. And you have a gun.’
‘You’re imagining things,’ Alistair said strongly. He knew where she was headed and the thought was dreadful. ‘Anyway…’ He hesitated. ‘The badly wounded one might be the mother.’
‘Would that make it better?’
‘No, but…’
‘It’s not, though,’ she told him. ‘The father’s blood group is O. Most of the blood in the back of the plane is A. There’s also a smaller amount of AB, and there’s also the blood in the cockpit. An O father and an AB mother can have an A child. An O father and an A mother can’t have an AB child.’
‘There are assumptions all over the place there,’ he said slowly, and she nodded.
‘There are. But assumptions are what I do. Acting on scientific evidence, I best-guess and hypothesise. I try and keep an open mind for as long as I can, but when people are depending on me for answers sometimes I just have to guess. I always state absolutely that it’s a guess, but it’s still a guess, for all that.’
‘So what have you guessed?’ he asked, and she flinched.
‘You sound…sardonic. As far as I know I don’t have to answer to you.’
‘No.’ He was silent for a moment, and then added in a different tone, ‘No, you don’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound sardonic. I would like to know what you’ve guessed.’
She stared out to sea for a long moment, as if she was considering whether to speak or not. In truth she wasn’t being difficult. She just needed time to adjust-to adjust to the feel of him sitting beside her. The sensation of the night.
The sensation of him.
But finally she spoke, forcing her mind to track again through what it had tracked over and over again over the last days. What she’d expounded to Larry as the most probable course of events.
‘We have a smuggling ring,’ she told him. ‘A team set up to take advantage of desperate people who, for whatever reason, can’t use or don’t know about the normal refugee channels. Amal looks Middle Eastern, and we know how much unrest is over there. So for some reason he was in serious trouble. He needed to get his family out of the country fast. He looks as if he’s been well dressed, his hands are those of a professional, rather than a manual worker, and his clothes aren’t cheap. So let’s say he had money.’
‘Assumptions.’
‘Do you want to hear this or do you want to leave me to my beach? Alone.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He held his hands up, placating. Asking her to proceed.
‘Fine,’ she snapped. She tugged Flotsam to her and hugged him. She was wearing shorts and T-shirt; the night
