Sacrifice

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘Yes,’ said Gifford. ‘I think your wife will die if we don’t.’

  Pretty blunt, even by my standards, but I couldn’t argue with him.

  The Kennedys looked at each other. Then John spoke to Gifford again. ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Miss Hamilton will do it better than I can.’

  I somehow doubted that, but it wasn’t the place to argue. I looked over at the anaesthetist. She nodded at me, already set up to administer the general anaesthetic that would be needed for the procedure. A nurse arrived with the consent forms and John Kennedy and his son left the theatre. I shut my eyes briefly, took a deep breath and got to work.

  Two hours later, Janet Kennedy was weak but stable, the wind had dropped and the blood she badly needed was on its way. She was probably going to be OK. Baby Kennedy, now named Tamary, was fine and dandy and John was dozing in the chair by his wife’s bed. I’d showered and changed, but felt the need to stay at the hospital until the blood arrived. I phoned home to check messages but Duncan hadn’t called. I had no idea if the police were still there or not.

  Gifford had stayed in theatre throughout the hysterectomy. He might have pretended absolute confidence when speaking to the Kennedys but he’d kept a pretty close eye on me throughout. Only once had he spoken: a sharp ‘Check your clamps, Miss Hamilton’ when my concentration had slipped a fraction. He’d left the theatre without a word when the operation was over, at least trusting me to close by myself.

  I really wasn’t sure whether he’d been satisfied with me or not. It had all gone pretty smoothly, but there’d been nothing slick, certainly nothing polished about what I’d done. I’d looked like what I was: a newly qualified and very nervous consultant, desperate not to put a foot wrong.

  And now I was annoyed with him. He should have said something; even criticism would have been better than just leaving. I may not have been brilliant but I’d done OK and now I was tired, a bit weepy and rather in need of an encouraging word and a pat on the back. It’s a part of myself that I really don’t like, this constant need for approval. When I was younger, I assumed it was something I’d eventually grow out of; that self-assurance would come with greater experience and maturity. Just lately, though, I’ve started to have doubts about that, to wonder if maybe I’ll always need the reassurance of others.

  I was standing at my office window, watching people and vehicles move around in the car park below. I jumped as the phone rang and rushed back over to my desk, thinking the blood had arrived sooner than expected.

  ‘Miss Hamilton, this is Stephen Renney.’

  ‘Hello,’ I said, stalling for time, thinking, Renney, Renney, I should know that name.

  ‘I heard you’d been called in. If you’re not too busy, there’s something you can help me with. Any chance of you popping down?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Anything I need to bring?’

  ‘No, no, just your expertise. Call it professional pride, even professional conceit, if you like, but I do want to hand over a complete report when the big boys get here. I’ve got a suspicion that could be important and I don’t want a couple of smart-arses from the mainland waving it in my face tomorrow morning like some big discovery.’

  I had no idea what he was talking about but I’d heard it all before. So reluctant were the islanders to be thought in any way inferior to their mainland counterparts that they created a climate of excellence, even over-achievement, as the norm. Sometimes it actually got in the way of doing the job; sometimes good enough was really, honestly, all you needed. When I was in a bad mood and some bolshie registrar was giving me a hard time, I called it the Collective Chip on the Shetland Shoulder.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ I said. ‘What room are you in?’

  ‘103,’ he replied. A room on the ground floor. I put the phone down and left the office. I made my way along the corridor and down the stairs, past radiology, paediatrics and accident & emergency. I followed the corridor, counting off room numbers as I went. I couldn’t place room 103 and had no idea of Stephen Renney’s field. I saw the number and pushed open the door.

  On the other side, totally blocking the corridor were DI Dunn, DS Tulloch and Kenn Gifford, still in scrubs but having lost the mask and hat. Also a small, bespectacled man with thinning hair who I knew I’d seen before. I guessed he was Stephen Renney and, feeling like a complete idiot, I finally remembered that he was the hospital’s locum pathologist.

  Room 103 was the morgue.

  3

  THE SMALL MAN came forward, holding out a bony hand. There were traces of eczema around his wrist. I took it, trying not to shiver at how cold it felt.

  ‘Miss Hamilton, Stephen Renney. I’m so grateful. I’ve just been explaining to the detectives that, in the interests of completeness, I really do need—’

  The doors opened again and a porter wheeled in a trolley. We all had to stand back against the wall to let him past. Gifford spoke and, away from the tension of theatre, I realized he had one of those deep, educated Highland voices that, prior to my moving here and hearing them on a regular basis, had been guaranteed to put a tickle behind my knees and a smile on my face. One of those ‘oh, just keep talking’ voices.

  ‘Why don’t we go into your office for a moment, Stephen?’

  Stephen Renney’s office was small, windowless and absurdly tidy. Several pen-and-ink drawings hung on the walls. Two orange plastic chairs were placed, too close together, in front of his desk. He waved his hand at them, glancing from DS Tulloch to me, then back to the detective sergeant. She shook her head. I remained standing too. With a tight smile, Renney lowered himself into his own chair behind the desk.

  ‘This is entirely inappropriate,’ Tulloch said to her inspector, gesturing towards me. She was probably right, but I don’t like being described as inappropriate; it tends to put my back up.

  ‘Miss Hamilton isn’t under suspicion, surely?’ said Gifford, smiling down at me. I was surprised and intrigued to see that he wore his hair unusually long for a man, especially a senior surgeon. As he leaned under the powerful electric light above Stephen Renney’s desk it shone golden-blond, as I imagined it would do in the sun. His eyebrows and lashes were the same pale colour as his hair, destroying in one fell swoop any claim he might otherwise have had to conventional attractiveness.

  ‘She’s only been here six months,’ he went on. ‘From what you tell me, our friend next door is headed for the British Museum. What’s your best guess, Andy? Bronze Age? Iron Age?’ He was smiling, not quite pleasantly, as he spoke. I had the feeling Andy Dunn wouldn’t know his Bronze Age from his Iron from his Stone, and that Gifford knew it.

  ‘Well, actually . . .’ said Stephen Renney, rather quietly, as if afraid of Gifford.

  ‘Something like that,’ agreed Dunn, and I was struck by how alike he and Gifford were – huge, fair-skinned, rather ugly blond men – and also by how many island men I could think of who resembled them. It was as though the islands’ gene pool had been pretty much undisturbed since the time of the Norwegian invasions.

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first to be found up here,’ Dunn was saying. ‘Peat bogs are notorious. I remember one in Manchester in the eighties. Police identified it as a woman they suspected of being murdered by her husband twenty years earlier. They brought him in and he confessed. Only it turned out the body was two thousand years old. And a bloke at that.’

  Sergeant Tulloch’s eyes were darting from one man to the next.

  ‘But if I can—’ tried Renney.

  ‘We saw Tollund man once,’ said Gifford. ‘Do you remember that trip to Denmark in the lower sixth, Andy? Absolutely incredible. Came from the Pre-Roman Iron Age but you could see the stubble on his chin, wrinkles on his face, everything. Perfect preservation. Even the contents of his stomach were still there.’

  I wasn’t remotely surprised to hear that Gifford and Dunn had been high-school contemporaries. Shetland was a small place. I’d long since got used to everyone knowing ever
yone else.

  ‘Exactly,’ replied Dunn. ‘We’ve got a forensic anthropologist coming over. Maybe we can hang on to it. Be good for tourism.’

  ‘Sir . . .’ said Tulloch.

  ‘I really think . . .’ said Renney.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I snapped. ‘She isn’t from the Pre-Roman Iron Age.’

  Dunn turned to me as if only just remembering I was there. ‘With all due respect—’ he began.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ I interrupted. ‘But as far as I’m aware, women in the Pre-Roman Iron Age didn’t paint their toenails.’

  Dunn looked as though I’d slapped him. Tulloch’s mouth twitched briefly, before she pulled it straight again. Gifford stiffened but I couldn’t read his expression. Stephen Renney just seemed relieved.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. This is not an archaeological find. Absolutely not. Peat is confusing. You’re right about it having remarkable preservative properties but there are traces of nail varnish on her toenails and her fingernails. Plus some very modern dental work.’

  Beside me I heard Gifford take a deep sigh.

  ‘OK, what can you tell us, Stephen?’ he asked.

  Dr Renney opened the one file that lay on top of his desk. He looked up. I wondered if he felt uncomfortable, staring up at the four of us, but he was such a tiny man he was probably used to it.

  ‘You understand the subject was only brought in just under three hours ago. This is very much an initial report.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Gifford, sounding impatient. ‘What have you got so far?’

  I saw Dunn glance sharply at Gifford; technically, the police inspector was in charge, but the hospital was Gifford’s patch. I wondered if we were going to see a clash of the titans.

  Stephen Renney cleared his throat. ‘What we have,’ he began, ‘are the remains of a female, aged between twenty-five and thirty-five. The peat has tanned her skin but I’ve had a good look at her face, her bone structure and her skull and I’m pretty certain she was Caucasian. I’m also as certain as it’s possible to be that death wasn’t due to natural causes.’

  Well, there was an understatement if ever I’d heard one.

  ‘What then?’ asked Gifford.

  I turned to look at him, wanting to see how he took the news.

  Dr Renney cleared his throat. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him glance at me.

  ‘The victim died from massive haemorrhage when her heart was cut out of her body.’

  Gifford’s head jerked; his face blanched. ‘Jesus!’ he said.

  The two officers didn’t react. Like me, they’d already seen the body.

  Having got the worst over, Renney seemed to relax a little. ‘A series of slashes, some ten, possibly twelve, in all, with a very sharp instrument,’ he said. ‘I’d say a surgical instrument, or maybe a butcher’s knife.’

  ‘Through the ribcage?’ said Gifford. It was a surgeon’s question. I could think of no common surgical instrument that would cut straight through a ribcage. Neither could he, judging by the way his eyebrows had knit themselves together.

  Renney shook his head. ‘The ribcage was opened first,’ he said. ‘Forced open with some sort of blunt instrument, I’d say.’

  Saliva was building at the back of my mouth. The orange plastic chair in front of me started to look very inviting.

  ‘Could the heart have been used again?’ asked Dana Tulloch. ‘Could she have been killed because someone needed her heart?’

  I watched DS Tulloch, following her train of thought. One heard of such things: of people being abducted and their organs forcibly removed; of covert, evil operations, organized and funded by people with poor health but heavy wallets. It happened, but in faraway countries with strange-sounding names, where human life, especially that of the poor, was cheap. Not here. Not in Britain and certainly not in Shetland, the safest place to live and work in the UK.

  Renney paused before replying and studied his notes for a moment.

  ‘My guess is not,’ he said. ‘The inferior vena cava was quite neatly removed. As were the pulmonary veins. But the pulmonary trunk and the ascending aorta were quite badly hacked about. As though someone had made several failed attempts. This was no harvest. I’d say someone with a rudimentary knowledge of anatomy, but not a surgeon.’

  ‘I’m off the hook then,’ quipped Gifford.

  Tulloch glared at him. I bit the inside of my lip to stop the giggle slipping out. I was nervous, that’s all; it was really no joking matter.

  ‘I’ve done a few quick tests and there are very high levels of Propofol in her blood,’ continued Renney. He looked at DI Dunn. ‘She was almost certainly very heavily anaesthetized when it happened.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ said DS Tulloch, still shooting daggers at Gifford.

  ‘How easy is it to get hold of Pro . . .’ she began.

  ‘Propofol,’ said Renney. ‘Well, you can’t buy it at the chemist but it’s a pretty common intravenous induction agent. Anyone with access to a hospital wouldn’t have too much trouble. Maybe someone who worked at a drug company.’

  ‘You can buy just about anything on the black market these days,’ said Dunn. He looked at Tulloch. ‘Let’s not go chasing any red herrings.’

  ‘I also found evidence of trauma around her wrists, upper arms and ankles,’ continued Renney. ‘I’d say she was restrained for quite some period before death.’

  I’d done with being macho. I stepped forward and sat down. Renney caught my eye and smiled. I tried to reciprocate but couldn’t quite manage it.

  ‘OK, so we know the how,’ said Gifford. ‘Any thoughts on the when?’

  I leaned forward in my seat. This had been exercising my mind, whenever it hadn’t been totally focused on other things, for the whole afternoon. I should explain that, before choosing obstetrics, I’d toyed with the idea of making a career in pathology and had done some rudimentary training. That was before realizing that the moment of life, rather than that of death, held infinitely more appeal. Typical Tora, my mum had said, always swinging from one extreme to the other. Actually, she’d been hugely relieved. Anyway, thanks to the preliminary training, I had a slightly better than average idea of the decomposition process.

  First, the golden rule: decomposition begins at the moment of death. After that, it all depends: on the condition of the body – its size, weight, any wounds or traumas; on its location – indoors or out, warm or cool conditions, exposed to weather or sheltered; on the presence of scavengers or insects; on whether burial or embalming has taken place.

  For example, take a corpse abandoned in woodland in a temperate climate such as that of the British Isles. Upon death, the body’s internal chemicals and enzymes will combine with bacteria to begin breaking down tissue.

  Between four and ten days after death, the body will start to putrefy. Fluid is released into body cavities and various gases – foul-smelling to humans but as tempting as a gourmet dinner to insects – are produced. Gas pressure inflates the body whilst young maggots rampage their way through, spreading bacteria and tearing through tissue.

  Between ten and twenty days after death, a corpse reaches the stage of black putrefaction. The bloated body collapses, its exposed parts turn black and it gives off a strong smell of decay. Body fluids will drain into the surrounding soil and, by this stage, several generations of maggots and other larvae will have enjoyed a spell of residence.

  By fifty days, most of the remaining flesh will have been removed, the body will have dried out and butyric acid will give it a cheesy smell. Parts in contact with the ground will ferment and grow mould. Beetles will replace maggots as the primary predator and the cheese fly makes a late arrival to finish off any remnants of moist flesh.

  A year after death, the body will have reached the stage of dry decay, with only bones and hair remaining. Eventually, the hair too will disappear, eaten by moths and bacteria, leaving only the skeleton.

  That’s one example.
A body frozen in Alpine ice, neither exposed to sunlight nor torn apart by glacier movement, might remain perfect for hundreds of years. On the other hand, one placed in an aboveground vault during a New Orleans summer would be expected to disappear almost completely within three months.

  And then you have peat.

  Stephen Renney was talking. ‘Yes, exactly: when? When did she die? When was she buried? Million-dollar questions, I expect.’

  Behind me I heard a sharp intake of breath and felt a stab of sympathy with the detective sergeant. Stephen Renney seemed to be enjoying himself just a little too much. I didn’t like it and neither, I guessed, did she.

  ‘Very interesting questions, anyway, because the normal process of decay is completely thrown into the air when you bring peat into the equation. You see, in a typical peat bog – especially one on these islands – you have the combination of cold temperature, the absence of oxygen – which, as we know, is essential for most bacteria to grow – and we also have the antibiotic properties of organic materials, including humic acids, in the bog water.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m following you, Mr Renney,’ said DS Tulloch. ‘How can organic materials slow down decomposition?’

  Renney beamed at her. ‘Well, take sphagnum moss, for example. When the putrefactive bacteria secrete digestive enzymes, the sphagnum reacts with the enzymes and immobilizes them in the peat. The process is brought to an abrupt halt.’

  ‘You’re very well informed, Stephen,’ said Gifford.

  I swear I saw Stephen Renney blush at that point.

  ‘Well, the thing is, I’m a bit of an archaeologist in my spare time. Sort of an amateur Indiana Jones. Part of the reason why I took this job. The wealth of sites on these islands is, well . . . anyway, I’ve had to learn quite a bit about the nature of peat bogs. Did a bit of reading up when I first came here. Every time there’s a dig I go along and volunteer.’

  I’d risked a sneaky glance back at DS Tulloch, wanting to see how she took the comparison of the mouse-like Stephen Renney with Harrison Ford. There was no hint of amusement on her face.