Sacrifice

by Sharon Bolton

‘Tor, you’re not really going to check dental records, are you? At best it’s a waste of time and at worst highly unprofessional, probably even illegal. Don’t get involved any more.’

  It’s not often Duncan asks me to do something. When he does, I nearly always agree.

  ‘No, of course not. You’re right.’ I meant it, too. It had all gone far enough.

  ‘Good girl. I’ll see you tomorrow. Love you.’

  He hadn’t said that in a long time. By the time I was ready to respond, he’d hung up.

  I was on the edge of Lerwick now and drove quickly to the hospital. I glanced at the car clock. I was going to be ten minutes late. I parked the car and jumped out, wincing. It occurred to me that I might be coming down with some sort of summer flu bug: every limb was aching, I had what seemed like a raging hangover even though I’d drunk nothing the night before, and felt like I hadn’t slept in a week. And now I was ten minutes late for a bollocking from Kenn Gifford.

  He was waiting for me in my office, looking out of the window, already dressed in blue surgical scrubs, his long hair scraped back in a ponytail.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, turning round.

  ‘Been better,’ I replied.

  I might feel like shit but Gifford wasn’t looking his best either. His narrow eyes were little more than slits in his face and the shadows under them had deepened.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said. ‘Duncan phoned on my way in. Slowed me up a bit.’ I told Gifford about Duncan finding the ring. When I’d finished, he nodded.

  ‘I’ll call Joss Hawick. It’s almost certainly not his wife’s ring, but if he wants to pursue the matter he can call into the police station to identify it. If it is hers, it looks like we have a pilfering problem; a particularly distasteful one, at that, if someone is robbing the morgue. I’m sorry all this is happening, Tora, it can’t be easy settling in with all these distractions. Can I get you a coffee?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, and he walked over to the coffee-maker in the corner and poured two cups.

  ‘Do you have some sort of master key?’ I asked.

  He turned round, a steaming mug in each hand, and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I lock my office in the evening but you managed to find your way in and organize breakfast. Do you have croissants baking as well?’

  ‘I’ll happily nip out to the bakery. Mr Stephenson’s been waiting three months for his bypass and I’m sure another half-hour won’t hurt. But, no. Having a master key – and using it – would be pretty unprofessional, don’t you think? Unless, of course, you’re a cleaner. Like the one who was in here when I arrived and who let me stay and make coffee. Just thought you might need it.’ He handed me a mug. The warmth in my hands was comforting, like a hug from an old friend. He was standing very close to me and I didn’t move away.

  ‘DI Dunn came by earlier,’ he said. ‘He wanted Stephen Renney to confirm the heart wasn’t human.’

  ‘And . . .’ I prompted, although I was pretty certain I’d been right the night before.

  Gifford led me to two easy chairs in the corner of the room. He motioned for me to sit and I did. So did he.

  ‘From a pig,’ he said. ‘Andy’s got people checking all the butchers on the islands. If anyone bought a heart in the last few days he’ll soon know about it.’

  ‘Is he still going with his practical-joke theory?’

  Kenn nodded. ‘I think he’s right, don’t you? Why would the killer, assuming he’s still around, take such a huge risk? Supposing you’d seen him last night.’

  Then I’d be dead right now.

  ‘Andy’s done his best to keep details under wraps,’ continued Gifford, ‘but this is a small place. Things get out. Any number of people might know that you found the body, about the missing heart, about her stomach contents. As jokes go it’s not particularly tasteful but there are some very odd people around.’

  ‘And I’m not exactly Miss Popular.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He stood up. ‘You need somewhere to sleep tonight,’ he said. ‘I’d offer my spare room, but I’m not sure how that would go down with Duncan.’

  Suddenly I couldn’t look at him.

  ‘Is Inspector Dunn making much progress with the murder investigation?’ I asked, partly because I was sure the island police would have been more forthcoming with one of their own than they had been with me, and partly because a change of subject seemed to be called for.

  ‘They’ve pretty much ruled out the victim being a local woman,’ he said. ‘She matches no one on the missing-persons list. Andy has his team combing similar lists for the rest of the UK. When they find a possible match they’ll use dental records to confirm identity.’

  Dental records that were, at that moment, in my briefcase. I must have looked guilty as hell, but if he noticed he gave no sign.

  ‘It’s not exciting, it’s not glamorous, but it’s good solid police work and sooner or later it should get results.’

  ‘You’d think so, but . . .’ I stopped. Kenn had known Dunn since school, he’d known me for a matter of days. Where did I really think his loyalty was going to lie?

  ‘But what?’ he prompted.

  ‘It just seems . . . sometimes I think . . .’ I stopped. Kenn was looking at me, waiting for me to go on. I was in for it now. ‘He just doesn’t seem to be taking it terribly seriously. First the body was an archeological find, then the victim couldn’t possibly be local, and then last night was a practical joke. It’s like he’s trying to play it down all the time, make out it’s less serious than it is.’

  Kenn was frowning at me, but whether he didn’t believe me and was annoyed, or whether he did and was alarmed, I really couldn’t tell.

  ‘Dana Tulloch thinks so too,’ I went on. ‘She hasn’t said anything, she’s far too professional for that, but I can tell the way she’s thinking sometimes.’

  He sighed. ‘Tora, there’s something you need to know about Sergeant Tulloch.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m probably breaking all sorts of professional confidences now but, well, Andy Dunn and I go back a long way.’

  ‘I know. You all do up here.’

  He smiled. ‘This is not Dana’s first sergeant’s job. She was a sergeant in Dundee. She also did a spell in Manchester. Neither job worked out and she agreed to two transfers. I get the impression this is her last chance in the force.’

  I was amazed. ‘But she’s just so . . . competent.’

  ‘Oh, she’s bright enough. IQ off the stratosphere. One of the reasons she’s lasted so long. But there are other problems.’

  ‘Such as?’ I didn’t like this. The previous day I’d found myself warming to Dana, even starting to like her. It didn’t feel right to be talking behind her back.

  ‘I don’t remember much of my psychology but I’d say she shows signs of obsessive compulsive disorder. I think there’ve been eating problems in the past, maybe there are still, she’s very slim. And she has a compulsive interest in order and organization and external appearances. She’s been known to throw a complete tantrum when someone moves a stapler on her desk.’

  ‘So she’s tidy.’ I glanced round my office: utter tip, as usual. ‘Christ, we could all do with having that problem.’

  ‘Look at the way she dresses. Have you ever seen her less than immaculate? How does she afford that on a police sergeant’s salary? And what about the car she drives? Not only is it a Mercedes but it looks like she just drove it out of the showroom. Every police officer I’ve ever met has a car like a municipal dump. You can’t see the carpet for fag ends, the remains of takeaway dinners and Mars bar wrappers. That’s if you get one of the more refined ones. Her car gets vacuumed every day.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  He walked over to my window. ‘She’s believed to be seriously in debt,’ he said to the seagulls outside. Then he turned round to me again. ‘She can’t stop spending money. Money she doesn’t have. And she can’t work as part of a team. She�
��s secretive. Drives Dunn up the wall and makes her very unpopular with her colleagues. If people question her methods, she always assumes the problem lies with them; that there’s some sort of conspiracy to get at her.’

  I remembered her actions the previous evening, working with me rather than any of her colleagues, not letting them know where she was or what she was up to. It had seemed odd at the time; now it made more sense. And that was before her accusations against Gifford and Dunn, or her persuading me to carry out an illegal search of confidential records. Oh great, my new best friend was a fruit-cake!

  ‘Dana Tulloch needs professional help, in my view,’ said Gifford. ‘You, on the other hand, need to come to terms with what’s happened and move on.’

  ‘You mentioned that before.’

  ‘And it bears repeating. This case may never be solved.’

  I looked at him and shook my head.

  ‘Ask any police officer,’ he continued. ‘The chances of solving a murder are always greatest in the first twenty-four hours. Just one day goes by and the trail starts to go cold. This trail is two years cold and our friend down in the morgue matches no one on the missing-persons list and no one who had a baby on the islands that year. She almost certainly wasn’t local.’

  He was right, of course. The grown-ups are always right in the end. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly nine. You have a clinic this morning?’

  I nodded. A busy one. Ten appointments, followed by two planned Caesars this afternoon and discharging Janet and Tamary Kennedy.

  ‘I’d better go too. Mr Stephenson will be wondering where I am.’

  He was in the doorway when I called him back. ‘Kenn, what does KT mean?’

  He turned. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘KT. I found it on the system, recorded against births in summer 2005.’

  Light seemed to dawn. ‘Oh yes, I asked that too. It means Keloid Trauma.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a term we coined up here. You won’t have come across it before. Hold on, let me think for a minute . . .’

  He leaned against the doorframe, staring up at the ceiling. I watched him. The word ‘keloid’ refers to an over-reaction of fibrous skin tissue that sometimes occurs after surgery or injury. It can lead to a thickened or pronounced scar.

  ‘There was a study here a while ago,’ Gifford said, after a second or two. ‘One of our graduate students led it. I was away at the time and can’t say I’ve actually read the paper, so I’m going to sound a bit vague. Oh, I’ve got it. There’s a genetic condition up here that results in severe scarring after perineum tearing in childbirth. When the next child comes along it can cause problems. Hence, Keloid Trauma.’

  ‘Sounds like something I should watch out for,’ I said, relieved that KT, at least, was a mystery I could cross off the list.

  ‘I’ll try and dig the paperwork out for you.’ He turned to the door, stopped and then looked back over his shoulder.

  ‘Duncan doesn’t like me because I stole his girlfriend.’ He grinned at me: a thin, mirthless elongation of his lips. ‘More than once.’

  14

  I THANKED MY lucky stars for a busy clinic that morning and for the fact that this really isn’t a job you can do with your mind elsewhere. For four hours I monitored foetal heartbeats, measured blood pressure, checked for excess sugar in urine and examined abdomens in various stages of distension. I discussed, with a straight face, whether damp panties were likely to be the result of waters breaking early or late-pregnancy incontinence and I resisted throwing up my hands in despair at the woman in the thirty-eighth week of her fourth pregnancy who wanted me to describe the exact sensations felt during a Braxton Hicks contraction. Well, you tell me, love.

  During my half-hour lunch break I grabbed a sandwich from the hospital canteen. Not feeling up to small talk, I took it back to my office and, with nothing to immediately occupy me, started getting flashbacks of the night before. My sandwich – rare roast beef – no longer seemed a particularly wise choice. Searching for something to take my mind off blood-covered organs, I found myself thinking of Kirsten Hawick, who’d been killed riding a horse not far away. I’ve been riding since I was seven and consider myself, modesty aside, pretty good. But hearing about Kirsten’s accident had bothered me. The best of riders can be caught unawares and horses are notoriously unpredictable, especially on the roads. I wanted to know more. Had she been at fault? What had happened to the driver of the lorry? I switched on my computer and accessed the Internet.

  The Shetland Times is not the only newspaper on the islands, but it’s the one claiming the highest circulation. I found its website easily enough. I put ‘Kirsten Hawick’ and ‘Riding Accidents’ into the search facility and pressed Go. A few seconds later I was reading the account, from August 2004, of how a supermarket delivery lorry took a blind corner on the B9074 just a little too fast and of how the driver had been unable to stop when he found himself almost on top of the woman on the large grey horse. Kirsten had been pronounced dead at the hospital and there was a quote – bland and sympathetic – from the senior registrar. The police were considering a charge of causing death by dangerous driving.

  There would be follow-up stories in later issues of the paper but I wasn’t interested. I was staring at the photograph of Kirsten that accompanied the story. The caption described it as having been taken by her husband on a recent walking holiday. There were mountains in the background and an inland loch just behind her. She wore walking boots and waterproofs and looked very happy. Her hair was cut into a chin-length bob and was as straight as my own. The night before, looking at the photograph at the Hawicks’ home, Dana and I had been deceived by a glamorous wedding hair-do and had compared it to the woman on the autopsy table with her long, corkscrew curls. When Kirsten Hawick died, her hair was short and straight. And that finally convinced me. I sighed, checked my messages – nothing from Dana – and logged off before heading down to theatre.

  By six o’clock I was so tired I could have starred in Night of the Living Dead, but the thought of going home didn’t hold enormous appeal. I found I was really missing Duncan. We had to try and use this coming weekend as a chance to reconnect, somehow. Perhaps we could catch the ferry up to Unst and stay with his parents for a couple of nights. Our Laser 2 was up there for the summer and we could do some sailing; maybe even a race or two if the local club was active this weekend.

  Dana hadn’t phoned and I was hugely relieved. I hadn’t worked out what I was going to say to her, but I’d decided I wasn’t going to do what she’d asked. I no longer believed the woman buried in my field was Kirsten Hawick. Any more digging on my part could get me into serious trouble and – more importantly – I’d promised Duncan. Somehow, I was going to have to get the dental X-rays back to her without anyone knowing she’d given them to me. I picked up a pile of midwives’ timesheets that needed checking and signing, read through the first and scribbled my signature at the bottom.

  If you’re not getting close, why is someone trying to scare you?

  I stopped, pen in mid-air. Then looked down. My briefcase was by my desk. I reached into it and pulled out the file.

  I’d promised Duncan.

  I shoved the file back down and closed the case. Last night had been a joke, a sick prank, nothing more. Gifford was right: news spreads like forest-fire in small communities. In the restaurant at lunchtime someone behind me had muttered, ‘Have a heart, Nigel.’ There’d been sniggers and a scuffle, the sound of someone being elbowed sharply in the ribs. I’d given no sign that I’d heard, but knew that my adventures were common knowledge and that more than one person on the islands was getting some fun out of them. I bent down to the timesheets again.

  Someone stood in your bedroom. Watched you while you were asleep. Some kind of joke!

  I scribbled my name on a third and a fourth timesheet. I can’t say for certain that I read them.

  They entered your house without breaking any windows, forcing any doo
rs. Sound like an ordinary prankster to you?

  I put down my pen and looked at my case again.

  Can’t hurt, can it, to rule Kirsten out once and for all?

  I pulled the black and white films from the cardboard file and placed them on top of white paper on my desk. There was a noise outside, someone walking past in the corridor. I got up, meaning to lock the door, and found my office keys weren’t in my handbag. Leaving keys at home is hardly a first for me so, thinking nothing of it, I took a spare set from the desk drawer and used them. Sitting back down again, I looked at the X-ray. It was what is known as a panoramic radiograph, showing every tooth present in the mouth.

  Permanent dentition consists normally of thirty-two teeth and one of the first rules in studying dental radiographs is to count. There were thirty-one: fifteen uppers, sixteen lowers, only two molars in the upper right quadrant rather than the more usual three. There was what looked like a crown in the upper left quadrant; also a malformed root above one of the pre-molars in the upper right quadrant. Unlike all the other roots, this one had a distinctive distal curvature. Most of the teeth were regular, but there seemed to be a significant space in the bottom right-hand side, between the first and second premolar. Not big enough to suggest a missing tooth, just a gap that would be barely noticeable when she smiled. Several of the back teeth had been filled. I was no dentist, but I was pretty certain I’d be able to make an intelligent comparison of these films with any others that might be relevant.

  The phone rang. It was the secretary whom several of the doctors share, with a call waiting from Dana Tulloch. I asked her to tell Dana I was still in theatre and would get back to her later.

  Glancing once more at my door even though I knew it was locked, I found the hospital’s intranet site and tried to access the dental department. And found myself tripped at the first hurdle. As a consultant I have access to pretty much the entire site, but the dental unit politely requested a password. I thought about ringing the hospital’s IT department but I was willing to bet all requests for new information had to be cleared by Gifford first. I got up and crossed to the window. His BMW was still in the car park. I took a puce-coloured folder from my cupboard and tucked the X-ray inside it. Then I left the room.