Sacrifice

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘Tora, you’re thinking of England. It’s different up here. Most people use an NHS dentist. Plus, there was an IT pilot scheme carried out here a year ago. All the islands’ dental records were computerized and made centrally available.’

  ‘I still don’t see . . .’

  ‘There’s a dental unit attached to your hospital. Kirsten’s records will be on the hospital computer system. You can access them.’

  She was probably right.

  ‘I’m not a dentist,’ I said lamely.

  ‘You’ve studied anatomy. You know how to read X-rays. You’d have a better chance of seeing a match than I would.’

  Following a hunch was one thing, asking someone you barely knew to carry out an illegal search was another. What wasn’t she telling me?

  ‘Will you do it?’ she asked.

  I didn’t know.

  ‘If there’s no match, that’s it. The ring is a red herring and we waste no more time on it.’

  It was worth it, surely, to be able to close the chapter. I could prove to Dana that the corpse was not Kirsten and that would be the end of it.

  ‘OK, I’ll do it tomorrow.’

  I indicated the food. ‘Help yourself.’ Dana ignored the ham and took a slice of bread and butter.

  I, on the other hand, was no longer hungry.

  11

  I’M NOT SURE at what point in the night I started to suspect that there was someone in the room with me. Sometime around two a.m., I guess, because that, typically, is when I’m in my deepest sleep and find it hardest to wake up. Ten years of being on call through the night and you get to know your sleep rhythms.

  So there I was, two a.m. or thereabouts, alone, because Duncan was not expected back before Saturday morning, with a glimmer of consciousness returning and a niggling fear that all was not as it should be. Because someone had entered my bedroom.

  I can’t really explain how I knew; I just did. When you habitually sleep with a partner, you develop a sense of the closeness of the other and, upon waking, a dozen different triggers will remind you in an instant that he (or she) is still there: the scent of skin, the sound of breathing, the extra warmth another body creates. You settle back down reassured: you are not alone and the otherness beside you is comfort and familiarity.

  This was neither comfortable nor familiar. The presence I could sense was far from the cosy warmth of a sleeping husband; it was alien, intrusive, predatory.

  As always, I was huddled well down in the bed, covers drawn up around my face, and, like a child hiding from the bogeyman, I felt a sense of the quilt’s protection; that if I lay still, pretending all was well, then maybe – just maybe – it would be; that whatever was in the room with me – quite close now, I could sense it – would just fade away into the realm of forgotten dreams. The drowsy side of me just wanted to slip back into oblivion and take the chance.

  At the same time, the part of me that was trying desperately to wake up properly knew this wasn’t just another night-time jelly-wobble, the kind of thing that occasionally happens when you sleep alone. This wasn’t a random creaking floorboard or the wind rattling next door’s dustbins. For one thing, I couldn’t hear anything: the wind had dropped, the house’s water-heating system had finally settled down for the night and even the night birds – often so loquacious on the Shetlands – were taking a break. Dead silence. A deep, dark, impenetrable silence.

  I braced myself to move, to jump up, startle whoever it was and give myself a fighting chance. And found that I didn’t dare. I lay there, totally exposed to the threat beside me and unable to move a muscle. I couldn’t even open my eyes. I’m not sure how much time passed: it felt like for ever; realistically it was probably only a minute or two. Then the lightest movement of air passed across my cheek, the atmosphere in the room changed and I found myself sitting up.

  The room was dark, much darker than normal. Light never really disappears during the Shetland summer, but this was as dark a night as I could remember. I looked all around, struggling to make everything out, to see into the deepest shadows. There was nothing and no one in the room that shouldn’t be there. Except the smell.

  I was breathing too fast – shallow, rapid, panicky breaths – and I made myself slow down, breathe in properly through my nose, be sure I wasn’t imagining it. Like a perfumier testing a new fragrance, I explored the air around me: sweat, ever so faint but unmistakeable; and the softest hint of cigarette smoke, not the smell of a smoker, but of someone who might have passed briefly through a smoke-filled room; something else too, faintest of all, something that made me think of my mother’s spice cupboard: cinnamon maybe, or ginger. It was a smell you might experience twenty times a day and think nothing of: passing someone in a corridor, getting on to a train, shaking hands with a stranger. Just the normal, everyday aroma of a normal, everyday male.

  So what the hell was it doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night?

  That’s when I noticed something else that wasn’t right. The bedroom door was slightly ajar. Strange though it may seem, I cannot sleep when there are doors open around me. The door to the corridor, to our en-suite bathroom, even those on the wardrobes have to be closed. Duncan laughs at me, I even laugh at myself, but before I go to sleep, without fail, I close all the doors.

  I remained frozen on the bed, listening as hard as I’d ever listened in my life before. Nothing. There was a phone on my bedside cabinet and I was pretty certain the police, Dana at least, would come straight over. But what, exactly, was I going to report? A smell? A door not properly closed?

  I made myself climb out of bed as I tried to remember what we are supposed to do in these situations. Make a noise or be silent? Pick up the phone and loudly pretend to be calling the police? I walked to the door and eased it open. The corridor was empty. Four more doors led off it, three to spare bedrooms, one to the main bathroom. Downstairs something scraped along a wooden floorboard.

  I ran back into the bedroom, pulled open the wardrobe door and reached up to the top shelf. My fingers touched what I was searching for and I pulled it down. I checked the bolt was set and held it out in front of me, the way I’d seen people do on television. Then I crossed the room, stepped out along the corridor and paused at the top of the stairs. I was carrying a humane horse-killer, fifty years old if it was a day, a crude, inefficient weapon of iron and copper. It had belonged to my grandfather and had been designed to put down injured or very old horses by firing a four-inch iron bolt directly into their brains. Duncan had begged me many times to get rid of it. I’d always resisted and now I was glad I had. It was completely ineffective unless the target was close enough to touch, but most people probably wouldn’t know that. Having a weapon, even this one, gave me the courage to walk down the stairs.

  Our front door was at the bottom. I checked quickly: still closed and locked. I pushed open the door to the dining room and looked round. Nothing that I could see. Our sitting room, on the other side of the hall, was a much bigger room; three large sofas for people to hide behind. I took a step inside. And another.

  Down the hall came the sound of something breaking, footsteps running, a door being pulled open. I ran from the room and into the kitchen, fumbling for the light-switch as I went. A large glass vase, which I’d left too close to the edge of the worktop, had smashed into a thousand pieces on the slate floor. The back door was open and the cold night air was pushing its way into the room. I ran across, slammed it shut, turned the key and pulled both bolts into place.

  As I turned to the phone I noticed the door to the cellar was open and the light on. Three paces took me to the top of the steps.

  I had no intention whatsoever of going into the cellar. The area beneath our house is spooky enough at the best of times. But something lay at the bottom of the steps; something that most definitely should not be there.

  It was a piece of fabric wrapped around an object the size of a grapefruit. I was still some distance away and the light in the cellar wasn’t good.
I was pretty certain, though, that the fabric was linen, ivory in colour – except where its contents were staining it a bright scarlet.

  My brain was telling me to call the police; they’d deal with it, whatever it was. But first one foot and then the other took me down. There were only eight steps and I was soon at the bottom, close enough to touch. I crouched down beside it.

  The stain was still wet. Red liquid was oozing out, seeping on to the stone floor of the cellar. I reached out, expecting to feel warmth beneath my hand. The package was cold and smelled of something that was . . . a total surprise. I picked it up. Pulled the linen apart. Some of the contents spilled over on to the floor. The rest lay in my hands.

  I was looking at strawberries.

  Not wild – it wasn’t the season for them – just common or garden strawberries, found in supermarkets and greengrocers the length and breadth of the land. Most of them had been crushed, hence the red liquid seeping through the linen and the sweet summery smell. As I knelt in the poor light of the cellar, I found that I was mad as holy hell that I’d been scared so much for this. Not remotely frightened any more, but seething with rage, I scooped up the berries that had fallen and climbed the steps to the kitchen, the horse gun tucked under one arm. I reached the top, shut the door behind me and was about to head for the phone.

  I stopped moving, even stopped breathing. The kitchen started to go dark around me but I absolutely could not take my eyes off what lay in front of me. For a second or two I even thought I’d lost my mind. What I was looking at was impossible. I’d been in this room not two minutes earlier and there was no way I could have missed seeing . . . that . . . on the kitchen table.

  The strawberries fell to the floor and the gun nearly did likewise but I managed to catch it. I turned, almost fell over and grabbed the phone. Then I ran, out of the kitchen, across the hall and into the downstairs lavatory. I slammed the door behind me, pulled the ridiculously inadequate bolt and sank to the floor. I pushed my back up against the door and wedged my feet against the opposite wall. Fighting back nausea, I phoned the police.

  12

  FOR THE TWENTY minutes it took them to arrive, I barely moved. I grew cold, but didn’t think that was the only reason I couldn’t stop shaking. Every few minutes nausea reared up but thankfully always stopped short of making me chuck. I phoned Duncan’s mobile but he’d switched it off. I didn’t leave a message. What the hell would I say?

  I wanted, more than anything, to call my dad. To tell him what had happened, to hear him tell me it was going to be OK. Four times, I think, I dialled my parents’ number but couldn’t bring myself to press the last digit. What on earth could he do, my poor dad? He was hundreds of miles away.

  Eventually I heard the cars pulling into the yard and made myself get up to answer the door. Andy Dunn took one look at me and ordered me into the sitting room with a WPC. A blanket materialized and I sat, shivering, trying to answer the questions that she and a detective constable put to me. From the kitchen I heard Dunn’s sharp intake of breath, the blasphemous exclamation of the sergeant accompanying him. There was no sign of Dana. Then I heard Dunn on the radio:

  ‘Yeah, we’ve got a break-in. Some sort of organ left on the kitchen table. Looks like a heart . . . yeah, looks human . . .’

  I pushed myself up, ignored the protests of the two officers and walked into the kitchen. The heart hadn’t been touched. It lay, glistening, in a pool of blood. The smell, strong, metallic, sickening, was flooding the kitchen now. I tried not to breathe too deeply.

  ‘I don’t think it’s human,’ I said.

  Dunn stopped talking into the radio, muttered something about getting back and switched it off.

  ‘You don’t?’ he said. I thought he looked paler than normal, but it could just have been the result of being dragged out of bed in the small hours.

  I shook my head. ‘I thought it was, at first. But I’ve had time to think about it . . .’ The truth was, I still wasn’t sure. Looking at it again, I couldn’t have placed a bet either way.

  Another officer entered the room. ‘There’s no sign of a break-in, Andy. Nothing forced or broken.’

  Dunn looked at him and nodded. Then turned back to me. ‘So what is it?’ he said. ‘What is it from? Some sort of animal?’

  I swallowed hard. ‘Can I weigh it?’ I asked.

  Dunn shot a glance at his sergeant. ‘I’m not sure . . .’ he began.

  ‘You’ll need a doctor to confirm it one way or another. Might as well be me.’

  Dunn said nothing. I crossed the room to where I’d left my work bag and fumbled inside until I found a packet of surgical gloves. Then I carried my kitchen scales over to the table.

  ‘Mammalian hearts are all very similar in structure,’ I said, trying to sound professional, knowing I was failing miserably. ‘They have five major pipes, called the great vessels, coming out of them: the superior and the inferior vena cava, two pulmonary trunks and the aorta.’ I touched the heart, turned it round. Blood, already starting to clot, poured from it and splattered the table. The WPC gave a faint gasp. I clenched my teeth together and took a deep breath. ‘They also have two chambers, the left and right ventricle, both with thick, muscular walls, the left substantially bigger than the right. Also a right and left atrium. They’re all here.’

  ‘You don’t have to . . .’ began Dunn, but I did. I had to prove to them all, and to myself most of all, that I was not going to be freaked out – not for more than a few minutes anyway – by something I’d seen and handled countless times before. I picked the heart up and put it on the scales.

  ‘Human hearts typically weigh 250–350 grams,’ I said. The electronic reading on the scales said 345 grams.

  ‘Within the range,’ said Dunn.

  ‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘And there’s an outside chance this is the heart of a big adult male. Over six foot and powerfully built. But if I was putting money on it, I’d say it came from a large pig.’

  The relief in the room was almost strong enough to reach out and touch. I was ordered back into the other room and questioned again. More police arrived. They dusted for fingerprints, walked the perimeter of the property with dogs and removed both the heart and the strawberries. Still no sign of Dana.

  Eventually, Dunn came to join me on the sofa.

  ‘You need to get some rest now,’ he said, almost gently. ‘I’m leaving a couple of constables in the house for the rest of the night. You’ll be perfectly safe.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I managed.

  ‘Duncan’s back on Saturday, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You might want to find somewhere else to stay tomorrow. This is almost certainly some sort of sick practical joke but I don’t like the fact that whoever got in here did so without breaking in. We’ll be checking who might have keys to the house. A change of locks probably isn’t a bad idea.’

  I nodded again.

  He reached out, touched my arm, seemed unsure what to do next and ended up giving it a feeble pat. Then he got up. ‘Try to get some rest, Miss Hamilton,’ he said again. Then he left.

  I went upstairs thinking that, as practical jokes go, it was the least funny I’d ever heard of. And besides, it didn’t feel like a joke to me. It felt as though someone was trying to scare the shit out of me.

  13

  ‘TOR, I FOUND the ring.’

  ‘What? You did what?’

  It was seven forty-five the next morning; I was running late and driving too fast. Duncan had called to say he had an extra meeting scheduled – a really important one – and wouldn’t be home till Saturday evening, if that was OK. He’d sounded so excited about the potential deal, so fired up, that I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about what had happened the night before. I couldn’t ruin a really big opportunity for him. I’d be OK for another night, I told myself. I could always sleep at the hospital.

  So instead, I’d told him about all the stuff that had happened the previous day, things that had seemed so im
portant at the time: finding the ring on my boot, checking the various registers and visiting both the Hawick family home and the graveyard. Speaking far too fast, praying he wouldn’t notice how shaken I still was, I’d even told him about my plans to carry out an illicit search of dental records. He’d listened patiently until I’d just about done, then dropped his bombshell.

  ‘I found it,’ he was saying, ‘months ago.’

  I couldn’t take it in. The ring had been stuck to the bottom of my wellington. It had been buried beneath six feet of peat with the dead body of its owner.

  ‘Where? How?’ I managed.

  ‘In the bottom field. Last November, I think, before you came out. I was laying concrete to put the fence posts in. I just saw it, lying on a pile of earth. I must have dug it up.’

  ‘But, what . . . you never said!’

  ‘I didn’t give it much thought. I wasn’t even sure what it was. It was filthy and I wanted to get the job finished. I threw it into my tool box and forgot about it.’

  And suddenly, it all made complete sense: the ring had been in Duncan’s toolbox. I’d dislodged it when I’d been looking for something to cut the wire around Charles’s leg and it had landed, to be found shortly afterwards, on the stair. It had been nowhere near my wellington and – more importantly – nowhere near the grave. The fence that Duncan had built around our bottom field was a good hundred yards downhill from where I’d tried to bury Jamie. The ring was a total red herring after all.

  ‘But how did it get there?’ Red herring or not, it still didn’t add up.

  ‘Good question. Assuming it really is the wedding ring of the woman who died – Kirsten, was that her name? Is it possible it wasn’t? How clear was the inscription?’

  ‘Not very.’ I hadn’t even been completely sure about the letters. Only the date was clear and, as I’d discovered, several weddings had taken place that day.