The place was deserted. She unlocked the door into the surgery but couldn’t find the key to the drugs cabinet. She wedged the sturdy steel arm of a desk lamp into the cabinet handle, then picked up a heavy resin paperweight emblazoned with a drug company logo. After slamming the paperweight onto the metal rod a couple of times, she managed to lever the lock open. There was a sizeable supply of Schedule 8 drugs inside—plenty for her needs.

TWENTY-TWO

IN THAT PHONE CALL, ROHAN HADN’T MENTIONED EXACTLY where on the coast Paula was working. Anita contemplated calling back to ask, but she didn’t want to compromise him.

Instead, she tried the old-fashioned plodding method she’d learned as a cadet journalist: hit the phone book. She made a list of medical practices in every town along the coast south of Sydney. Given it was Sunday, many of them were closed, with recorded messages. If she reached a practice with a person on the end of the line, she would claim to be a colleague of Dr Kaczmarek, urgently needing to make contact about a patient, but she had no luck. She tried looking up medical practice websites with smiling photos of their GPs but found no sign of Paula. If she were new on the staff, she probably wouldn’t be on an ‘Our Team’ page yet.

Finally, in desperation, Anita looked up a website with doctor reviews and ratings and typed in Paula Kaczmarek. Thank God for the odd surname and thank God for Paula being such a fucking good doctor. There was one posting from two days ago:

Dr Kaczmarek is lovely, so it’s a shame she’ll be leaving us next week! Any chance we can persuade her to stay?

Under the post was a link to the medical centre, with the address.

Anita hurried downstairs to her car. Heading to that medical centre was the only move she could think of for now.

As she drove, she yanked her mobile out of her pocket and slid it into the holder mounted on the dashboard. Every time the phone dinged with a message, she was hopeful then disappointed. Paula obviously wasn’t picking up or returning calls.

The next time the phone rang, it was Rohan.

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘In my car. Going south. See if I can find Paula.’

‘Listen, I’m not sure that’s the best idea.’ Rohan was using his serious police officer voice. ‘That bloke Paula asked me about—the local cops are out searching for him right now.’

‘Because of Paula?’

‘Because he drove his vehicle into his wife, smashed her up badly. Attempted murder.’

Anita saw her own hands clenched so tightly on the steering wheel, it felt like she could snap it into pieces.

‘Does Paula know about the attempted murder?’

‘Uh, yeah. She treated the woman, got her into the medical chopper.’