‘CAITLIN O’SHEA? Wait till Mother hears I’ve a visitor with such a grand Irish name. She’ll have wedding bells ringing for sure. Do you see this, Mrs Neil? I’m to provide all help and support to a Dr O’Shea by order of the government who pays both our wages.’
Connor ignored the tiny prick of fear the fax had caused and waved the flimsy piece of fax paper towards the woman who came in once a week to clean his house. He didn’t pass it to her, being reasonably certain reading was one of the things Mrs Neil ‘preferred not to do’. Instead, he read on.
‘It says she’ll be here four to six weeks—do you suppose that means I have to house her as well?’ He spoke lightly, hoping the fear would dissipate if he pretended it wasn’t there.
Mrs Neil continued to push the vacuum cleaner across the carpet square in the centre of the room she called the lounge. Talking was another thing she preferred not to do.
‘Perhaps she could use that small house at the back of the hospital,’ Connor continued, undeterred by both the one-sidedness of the conversation and his own unwelcome reaction—now fading to a vague uneasiness.
‘That’s Matron’s house,’ Mrs Neil objected, forced into speech to defend the proprieties.
‘But Matron doesn’t live there,’ Connor pointed out. OK, so he’d overreacted to the thought of a new woman doctor in the town. Now all he had to contend with was regret that he’d felt the urge to force Mrs Neil into speech. Why couldn’t he learn to let well alone, to allow Mrs Neil to come and go without a word spoken between them?
Actually, he knew why.
When he’d first arrived in Turalla two years earlier he’d been anxious and uncertain, hiding wounds he’d hoped the locals would never guess at. Mrs Neil had been introduced as one of the hospital staff he would be seeing on a regular basis so it had seemed natural to him to develop some kind of relationship with the woman. For a start, she’d known Angie.
Two years later, ‘develop’ seemed optimistic, the ‘relationship’ was still a dream, while Angie’s name had never passed her lips. Yet every Tuesday morning he made the effort to be sociable. And every Tuesday morning was rebuffed.
He continued, ‘Matron—’ Mrs Neil hadn’t moved with the times as far as staff titles were concerned ‘—lives in a house with four bedrooms and a pool on a hill on the edge of town, which is where I should live if I had a scrap of sense.’
He muttered the last sentence to himself as he walked back to the room he called his office. He had an official office at the hospital but, as every inhabitant of the town seemed to wander at will through the building, he’d taken to keeping most of his correspondence at home.
Home was an old wooden house built high to catch the breeze. Part of the hospital complex, it was a three-minute walk—across the parking lot and through a dried-out park, with paint-chipped swings and tired-looking acacia trees—from the main building.
It was no good suggesting Mrs Neil clean the vacant house in preparation for the visitor. Mrs Neil’s chain of command began and ended with ‘Matron’, although how someone as set in her ways as his domestic help had accepted a male in this role, Connor often wondered.
Lifting the phone, he pressed the button that would put him through to Mike’s office.
He explained the situation, received assurances that the house would be made ready for a visitor, then rebuffed Mike’s final comment with, ‘No, Mike, I doubt she’ll be blonde and shapely. When did I ever get that lucky?’
The shapely blonde was, at that very moment, forcing her gritty eyes to stay open and promising her sleep-deprived body it couldn’t possibly be much further.
Both the blonde hair and the shapeliness were natural—a genetic curse, she’d decided when her effect on people had first become apparent. Women tended to label her a Barbie doll and steer clear of her company, while the word ‘bimbo’ seemed to hover in men’s heads when they first met her. The image reduced their conversation to such mundane levels that she rarely bothered to reply, so had gained a reputation for aloofness—even rudeness. Pushy, too! But women had to be pushy to climb ladders usually reserved for men.
She sighed, hating the label as much as she hated the politics and infighting in the money-starved research unit where she held her precarious tenure.
‘Another thirty minutes, and there’ll be a hot shower and a real bed somewhere in Turalla. If the hospital can’t provide them I’ll book into a motel.’
It was a pledge she’d been making to herself for the past five hundred kilometres. Ever since she’d repacked her overnight gear at three-thirty this morning and stormed out of the hotel next to the cattle yards where the mournful lowing of the unhappy beasts had added a deep counterpoint to a train engine shunting back and forth beyond her window.
At five, she’d refuelled at a truck stop, intending to grab a cup of coffee and some food. Suggestive remarks from the all-male clientele had moved her on without the food and drink, so now the end of her journey was taking on mythical proportions—the thought of that shower and a comfortable bed luring her on as surely as the sirens’ songs had lured sailors onto rocks.
But Turalla was in the outback—no rocks…
She drove with a fierce concentration, aware that the tree-covered hills had given way to plains—endless miles of emptiness stretching to a far horizon. Cattle country, she reminded herself, and wondered where the cotton was grown. Perhaps the other side of the town?
The little she knew about Turalla, a medley of ill-assorted facts, swirled in her head like leaves in a willy-willy. Old gold-mining town, huge open-cut coal mine nearby, cotton-growing begun when the river had been dammed and water had become available for irrigation.
Cancer cluster.
Cancer clusters happened, she reminded herself. They were an inexplicable phenomenon but common enough to be written up in any number of medical texts.
Other experts had been to Turalla and decided the cases weren’t linked by any discoverable cause. Would she find any clues?
The question raised a new spark of energy and she straightened behind the wheel.
Sure, she would! She was a woman and women could do anything.
She repeated the words that were her personal mantra, then sang them, slightly off-key, while she tapped out a rap beat on the steering wheel.
Tall silos appeared in the distance—deceptively close. Perhaps another twenty minutes before she actually drove through their elongated shadows but they signalled the end of her journey. With the new energy flowing, she looked across the plains, her thoughts leaping ahead.
Hospital first—meet this Dr Clarke and find out about accommodation. She’d explain later why she’d come—if no one had already filled him in.
She passed the silos standing guard over the railway tracks and saw the sign to the hospital. Swinging left, she drove more slowly down the wide street, studded with houses on one side and emptiness on the other. She knew enough about country towns to recognise the design. Out here, habitation ended abruptly—not dwindling into a scattering of houses and businesses as cities did. It was as if someone had drawn a line. On one side of the outermost road was ‘the town’—however small the settlement, it still clung to township—and on the other side ‘the bush’.
The hospital was instantly recognisable, a low-set wooden building surrounded by wide verandas with various outbuildings strewn behind and to the side of it. A thin spiral of smoke drifted from the tall chimney of the incinerator. It looked white against the fierce blue of the sky and seemed to hang above the hospital like a benevolent spirit. Well, hopefully benevolent!
Caitlin parked her car in front of the main building and carefully eased her cramped and aching body out of its confinement. As she stretched she looked around but her mind was too numb from lack of sleep to take in much of her surroundings. The burst of energy had fizzled out, leaving her drained and empty.
Shower and bed, she reminded herself, hoping the magic words would give her the strength to climb the three steps up onto the veranda. She clicked the automatic lock on the car doors and headed purposefully towards the building.
A wide hall opened off the veranda and the first door on the left bore a neatly printed ‘Of ice’ label. Some wit had scribbled over the second ‘f’ and written ‘out’ above the word but it was close enough for Caitlin. She knocked, then pushed the door open as a male voice called to her to enter.
‘I’m Caitlin O’Shea,’ she began, holding out her hand to the man who had risen to his feet behind a cluttered desk.
He recognised the name and she recognised his reaction. The incredulous question ‘You’re a doctor?’ was all but tattooed across his forehead.
He stretched out his hand and managed to mumble something appropriate about pleasure and welcome, then added ‘Sorry we didn’t have a bet?’ in an aside to someone else.
Caitlin turned to find a second man in the room. The open door had hidden him from view, but he was definitely there. A tall, rangy-looking man with softly curling reddish-brown hair, round-rimmed glasses and a smile she’d have to consider later—when she wasn’t feeling like a bit of chewed string. He had one denim-clad hip hitched up on a table but he levered himself to his feet, took off his glasses and shoved them into the pocket of his pale blue shirt, then he, too, stretched out his hand.
‘Connor Clarke,’ he said, and she gave him full marks for making and maintaining eye contact. ‘I’m the doctor in charge at Turalla and this is Mike Nelson, our director of nursing. I had a fax this morning to say you were coming, but it failed to mention when. Mike and I were just discussing accommodation for you. There’s a small house behind the main building you could use, if you haven’t made other arrangements.’
His voice was deliberately neutral—but he couldn’t conceal the gleam of humour lurking in his eyes. Something to do with the bet?
She allowed herself a small smile in response to that gleam.
‘As long as it’s got hot water and a bed, it’ll be fine,’ she told him. ‘I spent part of the night in the hotel from hell—about six hundred kilometres back down the road—’
‘Calthorpe!’ the two men chorused.
‘Cattle sales today,’ Mike explained. ‘Did you have the train or just the cattle?’
‘Both,’ Caitlin admitted, feeling her body relax and her smile widen. ‘If it’s a weekly event there should be a sign outside the town telling unwary travellers to drive straight through on Mondays.’
Connor watched the smile drive the greyness of fatigue from her face and felt a twinge of something he barely recognised as attraction. She was certainly beautiful enough to attract any man’s attention. Clear smooth skin, golden hair, dark eyes above moulded cheekbones, lips that could…He caught his wayward thoughts and hauled them back under control.
‘If you’ve driven from there this morning, you’re overdue for some sleep,’ he said. ‘Where’s your car? Your gear? I came over to ask Mike to have the house cleaned, but you can take a shower then crash at my place while that’s being done. Your introduction to your new home sweet home will wait. Come on, I’ll take you across.’
She hesitated, as if obeying orders didn’t sit easily on her lovely shoulders, then she dipped her head, said ‘See you later’ to Mike, and allowed Connor to usher her out the door.
The bright red, low-slung Porsche parked outside made him groan. It was just too trite—this ‘blonde in the red sports car’ image.
‘Well, you’ll sure make a splash in this town!’ he said, and felt his companion stiffen. Wrong move, Clarke, he told himself. Could be a while before she smiles at you again.
He heard the noise of the alarm and door locks deactivating and strove to make amends.
‘I’ll take your bag for you. It’s quicker to walk across to my place, but if you’ll trust me with the keys I’ll put the car under cover for you once I’ve shown you around.’
She swung to face him, the smile back in place.
‘Want to drive it, don’t you?’ she teased, and he found himself nodding as he smiled foolishly back at her. ‘It’s my one rebellion,’ she added, leaning into the back seat and pulling out a duffel bag. ‘One thing in my life that’s not constrained by the narrow boundaries of the known.’
She shouldered the bag and tossed the keys to him.
‘Dent it and I’ll kill you. Now, lead me to the bathroom.’
He decided he’d look foolish offering to carry her bag for a second time, so he waved his hand for her to follow and headed off across the asphalt car park, past the swings and through the opening in the fence that led into his yard. Covering familiar ground made unfamiliar by company. He tried to see the place through her eyes, to analyse the old timber structure he now called home.
But all he noticed was how badly it needed painting.
‘We’ve a crew of painters due in a couple of weeks—they’ll do the hospital and all the outbuildings, this one included.’
He explained this as they climbed the steps, breaking a slightly daunting silence that had strained the air between them.
‘Here’s the kitchen. Laundry and bathroom through there and to the left of the bathroom, if you walk out onto the veranda, you’ll find a spare bedroom. There are towels in a cupboard in the laundry. Why don’t you have a shower while I throw clean sheets on the bed?’
She didn’t answer, seemingly more interested in examining his kitchen than in the shower she’d wanted earlier. She dropped her bag and looked around.
‘Do you cook?’ she asked when her survey was completed.
‘Not well enough to justify all this gear,’ he admitted, waving a hand to where an amazing array of stainless-steel implements hung from an old cartwheel suspended above an island bench. ‘I inherited them from the previous occupant. I guess the local charity shop knew the townspeople well enough to know they wouldn’t sell, so whoever cleaned out the house left the kitchen as it was.’
Tired as she was, Caitlin heard the constraint in his voice. What had happened to the previous occupant that a ‘whoever’ had cleaned out the house?
‘Shower’s that way,’ her guide repeated, cutting off any question she might have been tempted to ask. ‘Unlimited hot water so take your time. Would you like a cup of tea or coffee when you finish? I can put the kettle on when I hear the shower go off.’
Was he real, this lean, casual guy making such sensible suggestions?
‘I’d probably sell my soul for a cup of tea,’ she told him. ‘That’s if I haven’t already mortgaged it for the shower.’
She smiled at him and was pleased to see him smile back. Maybe it was exhaustion muddling her mind, but it seemed important he should like her.
Connor watched the bathroom door close behind her and sighed. No matter how blonde and shapely she was, she was only passing through his life, he reminded himself, but he whistled quietly as he found clean sheets, and wondered if he should check the old matron’s house for wood-rot or lice—find some excuse to have the visitor stay on in his spare bedroom.
‘You’ve been too long on your own, Connor, lad,’ he muttered in a fair imitation of his mother’s tones. His mother usually added ‘Time you found yourself a nice girl and settled down’, but would the beauty in the red sports car meet his mother’s idea of ‘nice’?
Angie had.
But, then, Angie had been everyone’s idea of nice.
Images he’d thought he’d buried long ago recurred, the wedge of fear returning to dig into his ribs, while the question hammered once again in his head.
Why had Angie died?
It was an accident, he repeated to himself for the four-thousandth time. He tucked the sheets under the foot of the bed and squared the corners as the aides in the hospital did each morning.
It had to have been an accident.
Would it have happened if he’d given in and chosen to work in the country with her? Could he have kept her safe or was death—and therefore life—pre-ordained?
And if so, had pre-ordination brought him Caitlin O’Shea?
He stopped what he was doing and stared out through the open door. Neither he nor Mike had thought to ask her why she’d come to Turalla. Hadn’t thought of much at all, in fact, simply letting their libidos run a little wild and surreptitiously examining the waving golden blonde hair and lush, luscious body only partially hidden by jeans and a faded chambray shirt not unlike the one he was wearing himself.
No, Mike probably hadn’t done that at all. Mike had Sue at home to keep his libido happy.
Banishing the distracting images of the visitor, he pulled a light cotton coverlet up over the sheets then realised the water had stopped running in the bathroom. He’d promised her tea—he’d better get moving.
Caitlin wrapped a towel, turban-style, around her wet hair and dried her body with another. It was then she remembered she’d dropped her bag on the kitchen floor.
A slightly faded towelling robe hung on a hook behind the bathroom door so, with a silent apology to her host, she snagged it down and pulled it on. It had a strangely masculine scent to it—not unpleasant, in fact quite comforting—evoking memories of herself as a small child, climbing on her father’s knee for her goodnight story.
She considered using her host’s comb to untangle her hair but decided that would be taking too much advantage of his hospitality. The tangles would have to stay in place.
Collecting her dirty clothes in one hand, she opened the door and headed back towards the kitchen. He was over by a bench beneath the window, pouring water into the teapot. Her reaction to this back view of the man made her wonder if there was a Mrs Clarke.
‘I forgot to take my clothes through to the bathroom so I borrowed your robe. I hope you don’t mind.’ The words came tumbling out, talking to hide her embarrassment at her own unruly thoughts.
‘Mind?’ Connor turned as he spoke, then he smiled again. ‘How could I possibly mind when you make it look so good? I’d been thinking I should get a new one but that old thing has suddenly taken on a whole new lease of life.’
He set the teapot on a small table by a second window.
‘Here you go. I’ve toast cooking—it’s what I’m good at, toast—or I’ve biscuits and a bit of slightly suspicious-looking fruit cake. I’ve examined it for mould but it looks OK. Patients give me these things but they never put a “use by” date on them.’
He waved her towards the table, pointing out the un-inspiring view of the hospital it afforded. Caitlin obeyed the gesture, wondering if he, too, was a little uneasy in this situation. Or did he talk non-stop all the time?
‘Toast! Sorry there’s no silver toast rack to keep it crisp.’
He pushed a plate with two golden toasted slices of bread towards her.
‘The previous occupant not into toast?’ she asked lightly, and was surprised to see a shadow darken his eyes before he turned away to brush crumbs from the bench.
Nice eyes they were, too—even darkened by that shadow. A kind of greenish blue, like deep creek water on a hot day.
‘The previous occupant died,’ he said, and all thoughts of eyes—nice or not—were forgotten.
‘The doctor who was here before you died? I’m presuming this is a hospital house?’
He nodded in reply to one or both Caitlin’s questions, and shifted so he could hitch his hip onto the bench.
‘Do you know much about Turalla?’ he asked, the switch in conversation so obvious Caitlin wondered why the subject of his predecessor was taboo. Well, she was new here and had to learn as much as possible so she’d play along with him.
‘Small town, originally founded in a gold rush. When most of the miners moved on to the next bonanza, some people took up land in the area and stayed on to farm so a small section of the original town survived to serve the farmers. Later, rich coal deposits brought in a huge mining operation and today about a quarter of the population work in jobs connected with the mine.’
She spread marmalade on her toast as she spoke and cut it into neat squares as he replied.
‘You’ve done your homework. Did it cover cotton?’
He snapped the question at her and she tried a smile to dispel a feeling of uneasiness. ‘Do I win a prize if I get all the answers right?’
He shook his head and the sunlight from the window turned his hair to a halo of reddish brown.
‘I’m sorry. I guess I’ve been here too long! I’ve developed small-town syndrome.’
‘Which is?’
‘Suspicion of any newcomer. Oh, we get plenty of visitors coming through the town. People come to fossick around the old goldfields, but they usually stay in the caravan park and I don’t get introductory faxes about them.’
Connor had the contrite look of a small boy caught out in mischief so it was easy to accept the apology. He was right about small towns but she’d have said the syndrome was revealed in curiosity rather than suspicion. She filed the word away in her mind and decided to tread more warily.
‘I do know about the cotton,’ she said. ‘And the dam, and the problems over irrigation rights—and the cancer cluster.’
The final words dropped into the warm air like pebbles into a pond. Caitlin could almost feel their ripples spreading outward.
‘Cancer clusters happen,’ he said flatly, a defensive shield springing up between them. ‘They occur time and time again in communities all over the world and are sheer coincidence. It was before my arrival in Turalla but I do know what went on up here. After some totally insensitive journalist broke a highly emotive TV story about the place, the Health Department sent up every kind of expert to try to establish links. They tested all the farm and mine chemicals, tested air and water, dissected locally grown meat and vegetables, and came up with a big fat zero.’
‘You’re very defensive for someone who wasn’t here,’ she suggested, and watched him shrug as if to ease his tension. The marmalade was homemade, sweet and tart at once—a kind of metaphor for this man…
‘It’s that syndrome again,’ he said, but although she waited for a smile it didn’t come. ‘I’ve only been here two years but already the town feels like my town, the people I treat my friends. Because the original focus was medical, the hospital was at the centre of things—still is in some ways. The four surviving children are my patients, and while the kids are all in remission now, some close to being what we’d call cured, their parents carry the fear of recurrence or of a sibling being affected.’
Shifting from the bench, he came towards her, ran his fingers through his hair, sighed, then sat down at the table opposite her. Caitlin felt his tension as if he carried it in a force-field around his body. She chose another square of toast and bit into it, knowing he had more to say and prepared to wait until he was ready to say it.
‘When the first child was diagnosed, the medical emergency united the town—everyone dug in to help. When another child fell ill, then another followed, it was as if the town had rehearsed their parts. Because treatment was only available in the city, the townspeople raised money for the parents to accompany the children. Neighbours minded the siblings and the service clubs organised special events for them to distract them from the upheaval in their young lives.’
‘You know all this although you weren’t here?’
He shifted in the chair, as if the question was a missile he might dodge.
‘Like any halfway competent practitioner, I need to know the history of the patient before I can attempt a diagnosis. I made it my business to find out. Not that it was difficult. Most patients are only too anxious to tell their side of things.’
The explanation sounded reasonable, but Caitlin sensed evasiveness behind the words. Did resentment remain although it had been years since the other scientists had arrived to conduct their tests? And if so, how would that affect her work?
‘Why did the scientific investigation cause problems?’ she persisted, pushing aside the now empty plate and pouring herself another cup of tea. ‘Why didn’t the townspeople welcome the chance to find out what was happening?’
‘It’s probably hard for someone looking in from the outside to understand, but the arrival of those so-called experts caused huge divisions in this town. Everybody had a pet theory. The “old” locals blamed the mine, the cattle people blamed the chemicals used on the cotton crops, brawls broke out in pubs and shots were fired from cars. This town went from a place united by the illness of a handful of its children to a virtual war zone.’
‘But surely the ill feeling must have been there all along, hidden beneath the surface. The testing may have provided a focus, which would explain why the violence erupted so suddenly.’
‘Like someone lighting a fuse already in place? You could be right,’ he admitted, twirling the teapot around in circles and watching the movement as if it absorbed all his attention. ‘I know the cattle men had resented the irrigation rights given to the cotton growers and there’s been a historical division between the miners and the primary producers, but it had been a niggling kind of enmity—not an explosive force.’
Connor paused, looking up at Caitlin, then bending his head again as if the words he wanted were written on the table.
‘It might have happened years ago, but the animosities still linger.’
‘And the hospital?’ Caitlin asked. ‘Where do you sit?’
‘Slap bang in the middle of it. There’s a little thing called the Hippocratic oath to deal with—service to all people. Besides, I’m the only doctor in town, so they have to be nice to me. Trouble is—’
‘You hear both sides of the story.’
He glanced up at her, as if startled by her perception, and she smiled at him.
‘I’m not totally insensitive to the dynamics of small-town life,’ she said. ‘In fact, if you’re city-born I probably understand them better than you do. Try as I do to forget it, I grew up in a town like Turalla. My father was the local doctor. The hospital, the house—even the tatty park and swings—are all eerily familiar. It’s a bit like coming home—or perhaps going back in time. When I was younger, all I ever wanted to do was get out of the place, to hit the city where I could be anonymous, a no one, not “the doctor’s daughter”.’
Connor studied her across the table. Even in his far from glamorous bathrobe and with her lovely hair hidden in a hospital-issue towel, she was like an exotic orchid transplanted into the drabness of his surroundings.
‘Anonymous?’ he teased, raising one eyebrow but smiling to ward off any offence. ‘Like supermodels are anonymous?’
‘Believe me, at sixteen, when I went down to the city to finish my schooling, I didn’t look like this. Zits and braces, hair in a long thick plait down my back—the duckling showed absolutely no sign of becoming a swan.’
‘And when it happened?’
It was her turn to sigh.
‘I was in med school and it was a darned nuisance. All I wanted to do was study, to learn as much as I could. I loved it, loved the challenge of the work, the science of it all. I was fascinated by the exactness of mathematics, by microscopes and slides. Then suddenly there were boys I’d known for ages panting over me, as if having breasts had suddenly transformed me from one of the guys to a sex object. Believe me, it’s no fun. They even talked differently to me. Remember all the blonde jokes? I actually had people explaining them to me!’
Connor found himself chuckling at her disgust, yet he was pleased to hear her speak so matter-of-factly about her appearance. No pride, but no false modesty either. She’d accepted the transformation to swan, though she might chafe against the burden that came with it.
‘I must be keeping you from your work,’ she said, switching the conversation away from herself. ‘Don’t feel you have to entertain me.’
‘It’s Tuesday. I’ve done a morning ward round and usually do minor operations on Tuesday mornings, but for once there wasn’t anyone who required my cutting or stitching expertise so I’ve nothing on my schedule until this afternoon’s clinic. But don’t let me keep you talking. You wanted to catch up on your sleep.’
Caitlin smiled at him and lifted one hand to tug the towel from around her wet hair.
‘I was so tired I thought I’d sleep for a week,’ she admitted, ‘but the shower seems to have woken me up.’
She combed her fingers through the damp strands, as unselfconscious as a child. Wet, her hair seemed darker, almost brown, the same colour as her eyebrows, and the soft fan of lashes framing her dark eyes.
Should he ask her why she was here?
Of course he should.
So why was he hesitating?
Caitlin sensed his hesitation. She tracked back through the conversation to where he’d shifted it sideways with talk of the town and the fallout from the TV report.
‘How did your predecessor die? From the way you spoke, it was unexpected. An accident?’
The wall came up between them once again, but she refused to break the silence and finally he spoke again.
‘Yes!’
Silence returned.
‘Vehicle?’
He raised his head and looked at her, studying her face as if trying to fathom her interest—or her willingness to persist until she had an answer. He must have read something in her eyes, for he ran his fingers through his hair again, lifted his shoulders in a heavy shrug, then replied.
‘She fell down a mine shaft.’
The words were rough-edged, scything through the air like a too-blunt knife through bread, shedding tatters of emotion like crumbs.
‘Here at Turalla? I thought the mine was an open-cut operation. I didn’t realise there were shafts.’
He shook his head then propped his elbows on the table and lowered his head to his hands. Not looking at her this time, he repeated words that must have figured in some report, so concisely did he recite them.
‘It is assumed the deceased was walking through the bush when she saw the old mine shaft.’ He glanced up again, explaining, ‘We’re talking old gold mines here, not the coal mine.’
Caitlin nodded, her mind racing as she tried to work out why this man had taken his predecessor’s death so personally. Before she could ask, he bent his head once more and finished his recital, the words delivered without intonation, flat and hard and cold as a steel blade.
‘Perhaps moving closer to investigate the excavation, it appears the deceased slipped. The depth of the shaft, when measured, was seventy-two feet, so death was probably instantaneous.’
‘Probably instantaneous?’ Caitlin repeated. ‘Surely the medical examiner could do better than “probably”.’
‘Not after sixteen months.’ Connor lifted his head and she saw the pain in his eyes. He’d been the medical examiner. He’d been the one who’d had to prod and pry and poke at that broken body.
‘Sixteen months—that’s a long time for her family and friends to have lived without knowing what happened to her.’
Her host nodded grimly.
‘It was only sheer luck she was found then. Some of the professional gold-seekers have started detecting the walls of old mines. They use slings and ropes and pulleys—and are quite safe as long as they keep an eye out for snakes that get down into the shafts. They’ve found the bones of cattle in holes and the occasional kangaroo, but kangaroos don’t wear wristwatches. She was identified by the jewellery she was wearing.’
Something in this blunt presentation of facts chilled Caitlin’s blood and she shivered in the warm air.
‘When did it happen?’ she asked, sorry she’d brought up the subject but unable to let it die now she knew the stark outline of the story.
‘She went missing right in the middle of the leukaemia war. In fact, if the hospital and medical staff hadn’t remained so determinedly neutral throughout all the mud-slinging and finger-pointing, I imagine her disappearance would have attracted a lot more attention.’
An added chill produced goose bumps, making the hairs on Caitlin’s arms stand to attention. Rubbing her hands across her skin, she stared at the man across the table, willing him to lift his head and look at her before she asked the next question.
Connor felt her attention focussing on him like a laser beam. He banished thoughts of Angie and raised his head, blinking his eyes at the extravagant beauty of this woman who had lobbed into his life as unexpectedly as a mishit tennis ball into a football game.
‘You said “attention” but the word sounded more like “suspicion”. You don’t think it was an accident.’
Statements, not questions. He didn’t have to answer statements. But her curiosity should be dispelled before she started to dig deeper into what he thought or didn’t think about the situation.
‘As I said, I wasn’t here when it happened. I’ve no reason to think it was anything other than an accident. Believe me, tempers were running so high at the time I’m sure if there’d been the slightest whiff of suspicion someone would have said something. Apparently she liked to walk in the bush when she was off duty. She collected rocks and fossils. The stones are still here in the house somewhere. No, it was an accident.’
Or you want me to believe it was, Caitlin decided, stacking her cup and saucer on the dirty plate and standing up to take the crockery over to the sink.
‘I think I will have that sleep,’ she said, ‘but perhaps the house is ready now. I could go over there.’
Connor rose to his feet and reached out to take the dirty dishes out of her hands.
‘Mrs Neil isn’t one to vary her routine. She’ll finish at the hospital at precisely two o’clock, then start on the house. You’re welcome to use my spare bedroom. I’ll help you get settled into your temporary home when I finish my afternoon session.’
How’s that for a dismissal? Caitlin thought as she grabbed her bag and headed through the laundry and bathroom to the veranda, turned left as directed and entered the bedroom through open French doors.
And why hadn’t he asked her why she was here?
The question made her frown for the two seconds it took to pull back the coverlet and collapse onto the bed, but her last hazy thought as she drifted off to sleep was about the man himself, not the question he hadn’t asked. Were his eyes greenish blue or bluey green?