Straight to the police.
Fern had known the police sergeant since she was a teenager. Sergeant Russell was big and gentle and deceivingly placid. Many a crook had misjudged that easy smile as the look of a man who wasn’t prepared to make an effort.
There was no man who could move faster in an emergency.
He listened to Fern’s story and doodled little scrawls on a pad beside him.
‘You say whoever it was had a gun,’ he said at last, sinking back into his chair. ‘What sort of gun, do you know?’
‘I don’t.’ Fern shook her head. ‘Something long…Look, I might be mistaken. It just made me uneasy, that’s all. I didn’t recognise him. If he’s a stranger to the island and he’s shooting in the reserves…’
‘If he’s shooting that close to the hospital we risk pellets going through the hospital windows,’ the sergeant said thoughtfully. He sighed and pulled his cap from the top of the filing cabinet. ‘Guess I’d better get on with it.’
‘Thanks, Sergeant…’
He smiled and held the door for her. ‘My pleasure, Fern. It’s good to have you back again-if only for a week or so. Oh, and Fern…’
‘Yes?’
The big policeman paused, his eyes troubled.
‘I was sorry about you and Sam. But…’ He hesitated and then took courage into both hands. Courage was not something Sergeant Russell lacked. ‘Fern, there are whispers going round the island about you and Doc Gallagher. There’s nothing in it, is there, girl?’
Fern sighed. ‘No, Sergeant,’ she sighed. ‘There’s nothing in it.’
He nodded, his placid eyes watching her face. Fern wondered just how much of what she was thinking could be read there.
‘He’s married,’ the Sergeant said heavily and Fern knew he’d read heaps.
‘I know that.’
‘You going back to the mainland soon?’
‘On Friday.’
He nodded again. ‘Just as well, Fern,’ he said grimly. ‘You’re best well out of that lot-believe me.’
What had he meant by that?
Fern drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she finally drove back to her uncle’s. The thoughts stayed with her for the rest of the day.
‘You’re best off out of that lot…’
It had been a definite warning. Fern knew Sergeant Russell well enough to understand that.
Why?
There were things going on she didn’t understand. Undercurrents…
Why was the policeman involved?
The shadows under Jessie’s eyes drifted through and through her mind. They’d been there since the time Fern had first met her.
Jess hadn’t come to Fern’s wedding. Surely she’d been invited with her husband?
Why hadn’t she come?
There was an insistent little voice starting up in the back of Fern’s head and she didn’t like it one bit.
During her training, Fern had visited a women’s refuge-one where women sought sanctuary from violent men.
The shadows on their faces matched Jessie’s.
No. It didn’t fit. Every nerve in her body screamed out that it didn’t fit-yet what else made sense?
Nothing made sense. Nothing made sense at all.
That night Fern swam until her body ached with exhaustion-and still she swam.
Her dolphins swam with her but their leaping had ceased. They swam silently by her as if sensing that she was in no mood to play.
They sensed that they couldn’t help.
Fern hardly saw them. The magic of the night was wasted on her.
She swam as if escaping from a thousand demons and they never relented.
When she finally dragged herself from the water they were still with her.
So was the man with the gun.
As Fern towelled herself dry she glanced up to where sand met the grass verge and the low shrubs started pushing up from the sandy soil.
It was too dark to see him properly but she was sure that it was the same figure-a lean, tall figure with a gun, pointing to the sky.
She rang the sergeant when she got home, her uneasiness increasing.
‘I haven’t a clue who he is,’ the policeman said, worrying with her. ‘I checked the bush by the hospital after you reported it and found nothing. No signs of shooting. No spent cartridges. Nothing. A heap of tourists landed last Monday-about two hundred of them-and he must be one of the group; but there’ve been no reports of shooting or damage and without that I can hardly get warrants to search every one of them for a gun. Maybe he just carries a gun because it makes him feel macho.’
He hung up and Fern knew that the policeman believed what he’d said no more than Fern had.
She had him worried, too.
She didn’t see Quinn until Thursday night.
Fern packed for her aunt and herself in dreary silence. The joy had bubbled out of her world.
Quinn was leaving her alone and in one sense she was grateful.
She should be grateful.
She wasn’t.
She was as lost as she had ever been-as lost as she’d been in those awful weeks after her parents died.
There was nothing to look forward to.
She fell into bed late on Thursday night, knowing that she wouldn’t sleep. At midday tomorrow she and her aunt would leave.
Would leave…
The words rang over and over in her head like a death knell, and it took five or six rings of the phone before the new sound finally pierced the rhythm of her inner dirge.
Finally it did, though.
Fern glanced at her watch. It was close to midnight. Her uncle wasn’t home. As miserable as Fern at the thought of his wife’s operation and the thought that he couldn’t leave the farm untended to accompany her, he’d told Fern at eleven that he was going for a walk.
‘A long walk,’ he’d warned her. ‘I might get full round the island before I’m tired enough to sleep tonight.’
The phone…The phone, therefore, had to be answered and there was only Fern to do it.
Fern padded down the hall and lifted the receiver.
‘Fern?’ Quinn.
‘Y-yes.’
‘Fern, I need you.’
Ha! Fern nearly put the receiver straight back onto the cradle-but, of course, she didn’t. Of course…
‘Fern, I have Pete Harny here. Can you come?’
Pete. The ten year old haemophiliac.
Fern closed her eyes, envisaging trouble.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘He’s been shot’
Not this sort of trouble. Fern’s eyes opened with a start. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘His parents brought him in an hour ago,’ Quinn said grimly. ‘I’m still not sure what happened but he has shotgun pellets in his calf and I’ll have to put him to sleep to clear them. With his likelihood of internal bleeding, the sooner I get them clear the better. I’ve given him factor eight and pre-med and pain relief to make him dozy so if you come straight in we can do him immediately.
‘Jessie will gas if she must but she won’t do it if there’s someone more qualified on the island. So…’
So.
Quinn’s voice sounded strained almost to breaking point. Fern frowned. If Quinn had factor eight on the island-the mixture kept on hand whenever haemophilia was a problem-then there should be no worries with a simple surgical procedure.
So why was he so stressed?
‘How bad is it?’ she asked.
‘Just come.’ It was an order, hard and forceful.
‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’
She had no choice. Pete was a great kid.
There was no enthusiasm at all in Fern’s voice. Sure, she’d do this for Quinn-or do it for Pete and his parents. But that would be the end.
Fern met Sergeant Russell in the hospital car park. The police sergeant was striding down the hospital steps towards the police car as Fern pulled up. His face was grim and angry.
‘What on earth happened?’ Fern asked and the policeman shrugged.
‘I’m betting it’s your character with a gun,’ he told Fern savagely. ‘And shooting Pete, of all kids…’
‘But…but why?’