Sacrifice

by Sharon Bolton

  If that were the case, then her name might not be on my list of women who had given birth on the islands. I grabbed it and scanned as quickly as I could. No, Melissa Gair had not given birth here. She’d had her baby off the islands and then returned less than two weeks afterwards. Most women are not up for major upheaval in their lives two weeks after having a baby. Something in her motives would surely give us a clue as to why she’d been killed.

  I needed sleep very badly, but first I had to find Dana. I picked up the phone and dialled her mobile number but got an unobtainable tone. I almost stood up, but thought of one more thing I could check. It would help Dana, surely, to have as much information on Melissa Gair as possible.

  I turned back to my computer and went into the main hospital records. I put Melissa’s name into the search facility and waited for a few seconds, not really expecting to find anything. She’d been a healthy young woman and might never have been admitted.

  Her name appeared. I opened the file, read it through once, then again, checking and double-checking the dates. My headache was back with a vengeance and I think only the certain knowledge that I was a split-second from throwing up kept me motionless in my seat. Had I moved, it would have been to ram my fist directly into the computer screen.

  16

  I SAW NO other traffic on the way over to Dana’s house, which was a good thing, because I’d probably have collided with it. I hit the kerb twice and scraped the paintwork leaving the hospital.

  I parked, checked the address and climbed out of the car. There was no sign of Dana’s car in the car park that I’d assumed would be closest to her house. I staggered like a drunk through the stone archway, down a flight of steps and a steep, cobbled slope. It was an hour or so before dawn and the sky in the east had lightened. The narrow streets of the Lanes, though, were still drenched in shadows.

  The Lanes are one of the oldest and most interesting areas of Lerwick. They run downhill, in parallel lines, the quarter of a mile from Hillhead to Commercial Street, from where it’s a two-minute walk to the harbour. The Lanes are flagged, steeply sloping alleys, interspersed with short flights of stone steps. It would be impossible to drive a vehicle down them; in places they are so narrow that two grown people would struggle to walk abreast. The buildings, a mixture of residential and commercial property, rise up to three and four storeys on either side. The Lanes are quaint, popular with tourists and much sought-after as trendy, town-centre homes. But when the light is poor and no one else is around, they are dark, decidedly eerie.

  Three times, I’d tried Dana on her mobile but had got no response. At first, I’d assumed she’d gone to bed, but now that seemed unlikely. I’d found her door and had been banging on it for several minutes. No one was coming. She wasn’t home and I was in no fit state to drive anywhere else. I climbed slowly back up to my car. On the back seat were my coat and an old horse blanket. I thought, briefly, about trying her mobile again but couldn’t summon up the energy. She was almost certainly somewhere out of signal range. I wrapped coat and blanket around me and was asleep in seconds.

  It was nearly dawn when the tapping on the window woke me. I was cold, stiff and acutely aware that the moment I moved I would regret it. The worst hangover I’d ever experienced – and I’ve had a few bad ones – was going to feel like a Shiatsu massage compared with what today had in store for me. But there was nothing else for it. Dana’s incredulous face was staring down at me and I had to move. I sat up. Oh boy, so much worse than I’d expected. I reached for the lock and then Dana opened the door.

  ‘Tora, I’ve been at your house half the night. I’ve been seriously—’

  I waved her away, turned and vomited over the rear wheel of my car. I stayed there, bent double, for some time. I coughed and retched, trying to dislodge those sickening bits that stick in your nasal passages at such times and decided that sudden death had an awful lot to recommend it.

  The next thing I remember is being half led, half carried, through Dana’s front door and deposited on her sofa. She gave me, on my instructions, an unwise dose of ibuprofen and paracetemol and left to make hot, sweet tea and dry toast. While she was gone I tried to steady my nausea by focusing on her living room. It was exactly as I would have expected: immaculately tidy and undoubtedly expensive. The floorboards were polished oak, partly covered by a rug patterned in squares of rust, oatmeal and pale green. The sofas were the same shade of green, whilst the roman blinds on both windows picked out the rust and oatmeal colours. The fabrics looked the sort you might pay £50 a metre for. A flat-screen TV was fastened to one wall and there was a Bang and Olufsen stereo system under the window. Dana came back with the food and left the room again. I heard her running upstairs. She returned carrying a large duvet and wrapped it around me, like a mother with a sick toddler. I took a bite of toast and managed to keep it down. Dana sat down on a leather footstool in front of me.

  ‘Ready to tell me what happened to you?’

  ‘I worked half the night, spent the rest of it in the car,’ I managed. The tea was scalding and totally wonderful.

  She looked at me, then down at herself. Her linen trousers were creased but clean and still looked pretty good, as did the pink cotton shirt and matching cardigan. Her skin looked daisy-fresh and her hair as though it had been combed ten minutes ago.

  ‘So did I,’ she said. She had a point.

  ‘First, I need to tell you what I found out,’ I said. I’d been toying with how exactly I was going to do that since we’d entered the house. Duncan has a particularly irritating habit when he wants to tell me something and, for some reason, it seemed strangely appropriate for the circumstances.

  ‘Tor,’ he’d announce, ‘I’ve got good news and bad news.’ It really didn’t matter how I’d respond, he’d have some half-witted wise-crack to hand which he’d invariably find hilarious and was guaranteed to irritate the hell out of me. ‘I’ll have the good news,’ I’d say, with heavy reluctance. ‘The good news is: there’s not too much bad news!’ he’d respond. We’d been doing it for seven years now and it really wasn’t getting any funnier. Not from my point of view anyway. Still, I definitely wasn’t myself that morning because I had an almost irresistible urge to use it right now.

  Do you want the good news, or the bad news, Dana?

  The good news? I know who our lady from the peat was.

  The bad news? No, you are really not going to believe the bad news.

  She was watching me closely. I realized she was very concerned and that I must look even worse than I felt. I took a deep breath.

  ‘I found a match,’ I said, watching the glint leap into her eyes and her face come alive. ‘You’ll need to get it checked, of course, but I am 98 per cent certain.’

  She leaned forward and her hand brushed mine. ‘My God, well done! Who was she?’

  I took another gulp of tea. ‘Melissa Gair,’ I said. ‘Aged thirty-two. An island woman; from Lerwick; married to a local man.’

  Dana clenched her fist and made a little stabbing action with it. ‘So why wasn’t she reported missing? Why wasn’t she on your list of summer 2005 deliveries? She wasn’t, was she?’

  ‘No, she wasn’t . . .’

  ‘Then how . . .’

  ‘Because she was already dead.’

  She stared at me. Three tiny furrows appeared between her eyebrows. ‘Come again,’ she said.

  ‘I checked her hospital records. She was admitted on 29 September 2004, with a malignant breast tumour that was subsequently found to have spread to her lungs, back and kidneys. Her GP had spotted a lump just a couple of weeks earlier during a routine examination. She was transferred to Aberdeen for treatment but it didn’t work. She died on the sixth of October, just three and a half weeks after being diagnosed.’

  ‘Fuck!’ I hadn’t heard Dana swear before.

  ‘You can say that again,’ I said.

  She did. And quite a lot more. She got up and walked across the room, stopping only when the wall made fur
ther progress impossible. She turned and walked back, again just stopping at the wall. Another turn and a few more steps. Then she stopped and looked at me.

  ‘How sure are you about those dental records?’

  At four in the morning I’d been pretty certain. Now . . .

  ‘You need to have a proper dentist look at them but . . . I’m . . . I’m sure. They were the same.’

  ‘Could she have been a different woman? Different woman, same name. Two Melissa Gairs living in Lerwick.’

  I’d thought of that. I shook my head. ‘Their birth dates were identical. So were their blood groups. It’s the same woman.’

  ‘Shit!’ And she was off again, pacing the room and swearing. In a way, it was kind of nice to see the impeccable Dana losing control. In another, I wanted her to stop. She was making my head hurt more.

  ‘It’s déjà vu. It’s déjà-fucking-vu. We went through this with Kirsten, convinced we’d found the right woman.’

  ‘We have to forget about Kirsten. The dental records were totally different. It wasn’t her.’

  ‘I accept that. But it’s still too much of a bloody coincidence. We find a body and a ring in your field. Both belong to young women who supposedly died in 2004. Except one of them didn’t. One of them actually died – because our pathologists tell us so– almost a whole year later.’

  ‘My head hurts!’ I wailed.

  ‘OK, OK.’ She stopped pacing and came back to sit on her footstool. She lowered her voice. ‘Now tell me what happened to you.’

  I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  She took hold of my hands, one of them still clutching an empty tea mug, and forced me to look at her.

  ‘It matters. Now talk.’

  I talked. I told her that, for the second time in two nights, someone had bypassed locked doors, not to mention considerable hospital security, to force their way into my presence. That for the second time, someone had watched me while I slept, that I had, once again, been completely at the mercy of someone who wished me harm.

  ‘Nothing was left. No . . .’

  ‘Little gifts? No. But he washed out my coffee mug and pot. Very thoroughly.’

  ‘You think you were drugged?’

  ‘It’s possible. I haven’t been feeling great the last few days, like I’m coming down with flu or something, but not this bad.’

  ‘We need to get you to a doctor.’ She saw the look on my face and allowed herself to smile. ‘We need to do some tests,’ she said. ‘I don’t know, blood tests or something.’

  ‘Already done. I took some bloods before I left the hospital. They’re in my office fridge; I’ll send them off on Monday. But until we know for certain, can we just keep quiet about this, please? It’s only going to be a distraction.’

  Dana nodded slowly but her eyes were dull and unfocused. I recognized the sign that she was thinking hard. I wondered how to breach the subject of my going home. I hated to leave her with such a bombshell but knew I couldn’t carry on any longer. I stood up.

  ‘Dana, I’m sorry, but I really need to get home.’

  She looked up sharply. ‘Will Duncan be there?’

  ‘No,’ I said, surprised. ‘He’s not back till this evening.’ Which was probably just as well. I didn’t want him to see me in this state.

  ‘You can’t go.’

  ‘Umm?’

  ‘You’re safer here. Go upstairs. Have a shower if you like and then use the spare bedroom. When we know he’s back I’ll sign your release papers.’

  I didn’t move. I hardly knew this girl. I was far from sure I trusted her and I was letting her take control of me. She must have seen something in my face because her own expression sharpened. ‘What?’ she said.

  I sat back down. I told her everything Gifford had said about her. She listened, her eyebrows flickered once or twice, but otherwise there was no reaction. When I finished, her mouth tightened. She was visibly angry but I didn’t think it was with me.

  ‘My father died three years ago,’ she said. ‘I lost my mother when I was fifteen and have no siblings so I inherited the whole of his estate. He wasn’t a rich man but he’d done OK. I got about four hundred thousand pounds. I bought the car, the house and the things you can see around you. It’s nice to have some money but I’d much rather have my dad.’

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘I did not leave Manchester in disgrace. I left with an excellent record and first-rate references. I transferred to Dundee because I wanted to work in Scotland. I left Dundee because I began a relationship with another officer – a much more senior one – and we agreed it wasn’t good for the force.’

  She stood up, still annoyed, and crossed the room to her stereo system. She ran a finger along the glass case then inspected her fingertip for dust. I doubted she’d see any. Then she looked back at me.

  ‘As for not fitting in here, well, they got that bit right. These islands are run by a small and very powerful clique of big, blond men who all went to the same schools, the same Scottish universities, and whose families have known each other since the Norwegian invasions. Just think about it, Tora, think about the doctors you know at the hospital, the head-teachers at the schools, the police force, the magistrate, the chamber of commerce, the local councils.’

  I didn’t need to think about it. I’d noticed more than once how many of the islanders fitted into the same distinctive physical type.

  ‘Oh, the place is crawling with Vikings. One of its few redeeming features, I’ve always thought.’

  ‘Try and name me more than half a dozen prominent islanders who are not local men,’ said Dana, ignoring my feeble attempts at humour. ‘They all know each other, they all socialize, they do business together, offer each other jobs and the best contracts. These islands are running the biggest jobs-for-the-blond-boys club I have ever come across and when, once in a blue moon, an outsider does manage to break in, he or she gets obstructed, delayed and frustrated every step of the way. Most outsiders, sooner or later, get driven out. It’s happening to me and I suspect it’s happening to you too. Sorry to go on a bit, but I happen to get pretty pissed off about it.’

  ‘Clearly,’ I said.

  ‘I am not in debt, nor am I anorexic. I eat quite a lot but I work out most evenings. And yes, I shop a lot too. It’s called displacement activity. I don’t particularly like it here and I miss Helen.’

  ‘Helen?’ I said stupidly.

  ‘DCI Helen Rowley. The officer in Dundee with whom I was – am still when we get the chance – having a relationship. Helen is my girlfriend.’ And no, I admit, I had definitely not seen that one coming.

  ‘Now, you can stay down here and help me do some pretty arduous police work, you can go home and risk someone disturbing your rest for a third time in three days, or you can go upstairs and get some sleep.’

  Not really too difficult a decision. I turned to leave the room.

  When I awoke, it was to the sound of voices. Two voices, to be precise: Dana’s and that of a man. I sat up. Dana’s spare bedroom was small but as beautifully decorated and tidy as the rest of her home. A blind was drawn but behind it I thought I could see bright sunshine. There was no clock in the room. I walked to the window and raised the blind. Lerwick Harbour and the Bressay Sound. It was about midday, I guessed, which meant I’d slept for five hours.

  I felt better. I was groggy from too little sleep and aching in all sorts of places but the horrible nausea had gone.

  I sat down to slip on my shoes. Bookshelves lined one wall of the small room. The desk in the corner held computer equipment that looked state-of-the-art. Beside the monitor stood a framed photograph of Dana in Ph.D. graduation robes, standing next to a tall man with grey hair and fair skin. I was pretty certain it had been taken at one of the Cambridge colleges.

  Dana and her guest were still talking quietly. I walked softly downstairs, but they must have heard me coming because the voices stopped when I reached the bottom step and silence heralded my ar
rival into the room below. They were sitting, but first the man, then Dana, stood as I walked in. He was in his early forties, maybe slightly above average height, with pale-blue eyes and thick hair of the colour known as salt and pepper. He was smartly dressed for a Saturday, possibly with lunch at the golf club in mind. He was attractive and – maybe more importantly – he looked nice. There were lots of lines around his eyes that suggested he laughed a lot.

  ‘This is Stephen Gair,’ said Dana.

  I turned to Dana in astonishment.

  ‘Melissa’s husband,’ she added, quite unnecessarily. I’d got it; I just couldn’t believe it. She gestured towards me. ‘Tora Hamilton.’

  He held out his hand. ‘I’ve been hearing a lot about you. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Mr Gair knows you’ve been working all night,’ said Dana. ‘We’ve been waiting for you to wake up before . . .’

  She looked at him, as if uncertain what to say next.

  ‘Before we go and get my wife’s X-rays checked,’ answered Stephen Gair. Dana visibly relaxed.

  ‘My, you have been busy,’ was just about all I could manage. Was it really going to be that easy?

  Somehow, without my noticing it, we’d all sat down again. The other two looked as though they were waiting for me to say something. I glanced from one to the other, then looked at Stephen Gair.

  ‘Has Dana told you . . .?’ Jesus, what had Dana told him? That I’d dug his wife up out of my field six days ago?

  ‘Shall I summarize?’ he offered.

  I nodded, thinking, Shall I summarize? What kind of talk was that for a man who’d just been given such devastating news?

  ‘Last Sunday,’ he began, ‘a body was found on your land. My sympathies, by the way. The body was that of a young woman who was murdered – rather brutally, I understand, although I haven’t been given the details – some time during the early summer of 2005. You’ve been using your position at the hospital to conduct a comparison of dental records. Your doing so was unethical and probably illegal but entirely understandable given your involvement in the case. Now, you believe you’ve found an exact match in the dental records of my late wife, Melissa. Am I right so far?’