‘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 her stead, but she was here now. She had a job to do and she needed this man’s co-operation.

‘Alistair, we need to work together on this one.’

‘We do.’ His face was grim.

‘So can we set aside our…past…and get to work?’

‘I’ve never let anything get in the way of my work.’

‘Well, bully for you,’ she said with a sudden spurt of anger. ‘So let’s just keep it that way and leave the personal innuendos alone. Tell me about the pilot.’

‘I don’t-’

‘Just tell me about the pilot,’ she said, and there was suddenly a wealth of weariness in her voice that couldn’t be disguised. She caught herself, hauling herself tightly together. She’d learned that Alistair Benn was the doctor in charge of the Dolphin Cove hospital only when she’d already been in the plane on her way here, and it had been too late to tell the pilot to turn around and go back. She’d seen his name in the report she was reading, and then had spent the rest of the trip schooling her features in the way she wanted him to see them. She wasn’t about to drop that façade now.