Sacrifice

by Sharon Bolton

  I stared at him, not sure what he meant. Then I got it; as a strong, cold hand took a grip on my heart, I got it.

  ‘Not this time,’ I managed. ‘I think one or two people might just notice I’m gone.’

  Gair shook his head, seemingly unable to take the grin off his face. ‘That boat you stole will be found drifting some time in the next couple of days,’ he said. ‘Some of your things will be discovered in the cabin, traces of your blood on the deck. People will assume you had an accident and went overboard. They’ll look for your body, of course. Hold a very tasteful memorial service when they don’t find it.’

  I bit my tongue to keep from blurting out about the note I’d left for Helen. If they knew about that, they’d break into Dana’s house before dawn and destroy it. Without the note, without Duncan, who would doubt that I’d taken out a boat in storm conditions – for unfathomable reasons of my own, but I had been pretty disturbed of late – and hadn’t made it back? Without the note, the bastards might just get away with it. I couldn’t let them know about the note.

  ‘If it’s all the same to you,’ I said, glaring at Gair, ‘I’d just as soon you drowned me now.’

  Without my noticing, Richard had moved closer. ‘She has a weapon, Stephen. Something tucked down the front of her suit.’

  Gair glanced at Richard, then back at me. His eyes dropped to my stomach. ‘I’ll say she has. Sorry, love, you and your little friend are far too valuable.’

  My right hand was ready to slip inside my waterproofs. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re pregnant, Tora. Congratulations.’ His grin got even wider. He looked like a wolf.

  ‘What?’ For a second I was so amazed I forgot to feel afraid.

  ‘In the club, up the duff, bun in the oven.’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘Richard, is she pregnant?’

  I risked a glance at Richard. ‘I’m afraid you are, Tora,’ he said. ‘I took a blood sample last Sunday while you were sedated. There were significant levels of hCG. I guess Duncan got careless with his medication.’

  hCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin, is the hormone produced by the body of a pregnant woman. It is hCG that home-testing kits are designed to detect, but a blood test can pick it up a matter of days after conception.

  Gair was still smiling at me but I could hardly see him. It didn’t occur to me to doubt what they were saying. I’d felt like shit for days: nausea and exhaustion are classic symptoms of early pregnancy, but I’d put them down to stress. I was pregnant. After two years of trying and failing, I was finally pregnant. I was carrying Duncan’s child and these guys – these monsters – thought they were going to take it away from me.

  ‘How did you get into my office?’ I said, feeling a surge of hatred for Gair as I remembered the drugs I’d unwittingly taken the night I’d discovered Melissa’s identity. Drugs can do any amount of damage to a young foetus. ‘I know how you got into the house; how did you get into my office?’ Even as I spoke, I realized how he’d done it. My office keys had gone missing. Gair had stolen them the night he left the strawberries and the pig’s heart in our house. He was a petty thief as well as everything else.

  ‘Pick up that rope and tie up Richard,’ I said, gesturing to the rope I’d dropped minutes before. ‘Do it quickly and properly and he won’t get hurt.’

  Gair looked back and the emptiness in his eyes was perhaps the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.

  ‘And why would I do that?’ he asked.

  I pulled my hand out from my pocket. ‘Because a two-inch iron bolt ramming into your brain is going to hurt a bit.’

  Gair glanced down, looking, to my immense satisfaction, slightly less sure of himself.

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘My grandfather’s humane horse-killer. Except you’re not going to think it very humane when it’s pressed up against your temple.’

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Richard drop his head into his hands, rub his face and then straighten up. As a gesture it was so completely Kenn I wondered why I hadn’t guessed immediately the two of them were father and son.

  ‘Tora, please put that down,’ Richard said. ‘Someone’s going to get hurt.’

  ‘You are so right,’ I said. ‘And it isn’t going to be me.’

  Gair moved towards me. I jerked my hand up. He danced back and came at me the other way. I jabbed the weapon at him and he jumped back again. He moved, left then right, feinting attacks, always diving back at the last second. He was taunting me, trying to unnerve me, and it was working. He was also gradually moving round the cabin, away from the steps and closer to me, forcing me to turn my back on Richard.

  I spun, jumping round and away from him, to Richard’s other side. Richard reached for me and I ducked. Then I grabbed Richard by the neck of his pullover and pushed the gun up against the side of his face. If I pulled the trigger now I would miss his brain but still make a hell of a mess.

  ‘Don’t move. Don’t move a fucking inch. Either of you.’

  Gair froze. He held his hands in the air and stood poised, ready to leap, eyes glinting with excitement.

  ‘Tora,’ gasped Richard. ‘Others are coming – they’ll be here any second.’

  ‘Good,’ I spat, although I was still thinking coherently enough to know the news was anything but good. ‘There are one or two things I’d like to say to Andy Dunn, not to mention my favourite boss.’

  Gair frowned. Richard twitched his head in my direction.

  ‘Do you mean Kenn?’ he asked.

  ‘Richard, can we just—’

  ‘Kenn isn’t coming,’ said Richard.

  I released the pressure I’d been applying to Richard’s face, allowing him to turn his head and face me. Gair tensed, as if ready to spring.

  ‘Don’t try it, Stephen. I can pull this trigger before you get here.’ I hadn’t taken my eyes off Richard. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  Richard’s eyes narrowed, as though searching for something in my face. For a moment or two he said nothing and I held my breath. Then, ‘Kenn isn’t one of us,’ he said softly, as though breaking bad news. ‘I can see why you might think so – he certainly looks the part – but he isn’t.’

  ‘How come?’ I demanded, unwilling to let myself believe something that logic told me couldn’t possibly be true. ‘How come Duncan is . . . was . . . but Kenn isn’t?’

  ‘Richard, do we really have time for this crap?’

  ‘I loved his mother,’ said Richard. ‘When it came to it, I couldn’t hurt her. I helped her escape. She’s lived in New Zealand for the past forty years.’

  ‘Kenn knows nothing about this?’

  Richard shook his head. ‘He knows his mother. I helped them make contact a few years ago. But no, he’s not one of us. It’s a great shame in many ways. He is an exceptional man, very gifted. What he would have achieved if . . . Well, it doesn’t do to dwell on these things. My fault, of course. I let myself get involved. It won’t happen again.’

  I could see Gair making impatient movements.

  ‘You were never intended to be part of this, you know,’ continued Richard. ‘Elspeth and I are fond of you. We know Duncan loves you.’ His eyes left me and his gaze seemed to turn inwards; I wondered if he was remembering Kenn’s mother. ‘A year from now you could have adopted a newborn baby. It could even have been Duncan’s baby. You weren’t supposed to be harmed.’

  ‘Unlike the poor child’s mother, of course. Did I meet her tonight? Which one was it to be? Odel or Freya?’

  ‘This is getting us nowhere . . .’

  ‘I wish you’d put that thing down,’ said Gair, taking a step forward.

  ‘And I wish you’d slit your wrists and jump over the side.’

  A sudden movement, a noise – that none of us had made. Richard and I both turned as one to the port cabin. Gair leaped at us. Too late, I swung the gun up, just as his full weight came crashing down on me. I pulled the trigger, felt the
bolt connect and then the gun was knocked from my hand as we both fell.

  For a second I lay stunned on the cabin floor. Gair lay over me, pinning me down.

  ‘Be careful with her, for heaven’s sake,’ said Richard. ‘We don’t want to lose that baby.’

  ‘Richard, will you take care of the boat? God knows where we are right now.’

  I heard Richard move, then the revs of the boat increased and we turned sharply to port. I heard the crackle of the ship’s radio and him speaking into it, trying to make contact with another boat.

  Gair was wearing a crumpled grey business suit, no doubt the same one he’d been wearing when he’d been arrested, questioned and charged with murder. He probably hadn’t been allowed to change before spending the night in the cell. He’d have been wearing it that morning when he’d swallowed the sedatives that reduced his peripheral pulse, when he’d pretended to hang himself and had been carted off: not to the morgue, of course, but to Tronal. A dark stain on his right shoulder was spreading slowly, but if he felt any pain he wasn’t showing it.

  I think a thousand different ways of pleading with him came into my head that moment. I was all out of bravado. I didn’t want to fight any more. I just wanted to live a bit longer.

  I think I even got as far as opening my mouth, forming the first words, but I never got the chance to utter them. Because Gair’s eyes left mine and searched along the cabin floor until he spotted the gun. His weight shifted as he raised himself up and reached out. Then he leaned back over me, pushed the humane killer against my left thigh and looked into my eyes. He smiled as he pulled the trigger and my world exploded in a mass of white-hot pain.

  39

  I COULDN’T SEE, couldn’t hear, couldn’t breathe. The boat swerved again.

  ‘. . . the hell are you doing?’ I heard Richard calling out from some great distance away. ‘She’ll bleed to death before we can get her back.’

  ‘Then fix it, Doctor. I’ll drive the boat.’

  Marginally, the pain was receding, leaving my head, my chest, my abdomen, and concentrating in one spot, the fleshy part of my upper thigh. The blackness in my head faded a little and I could see again. And hear again: a terrifying noise filled the cabin and I realized it was me – screaming. Richard pushed his hands under my shoulders and dragged me across the floor, into the starboard cabin. With a strength I’d never have believed he possessed, he picked me up and lay me on the bunk, beside the still form of a woman. Freya. Even through the pain I recognized her. Then he took hold of both my hands and pressed them against the wound.

  ‘Push hard,’ he instructed. ‘Stem the bleeding. You know what will happen if you don’t.’

  Only too well. Crimson fluid was pumping from my leg. Gair had most likely hit an artery and I was in big trouble. I pressed hard but I could feel the strength draining from me. I felt like I do when I’m falling asleep, when keeping the mind focused on even the simplest thing becomes impossible. Except I could not sleep. I had to stay conscious. I could hear Gair on the radio and the crackle of someone responding to him.

  Richard was back. He pushed my hands away and started wrapping something around my leg. He pulled tight, then tighter. I looked down – the white of the bandages was already soaked scarlet. I can never see fresh blood without admiring it. Such an amazing substance, rich and strong and vibrant; such a beautiful colour; so sad to see it leaking away, dripping down through the floorboards, into the bilges and out, to disappear without trace, amidst the cold salt waters of the North Sea.

  Gair was giving the coordinates of our position. Reinforcements were on their way. I had lost. I was going back to Tronal, to spend the next eight months chained and drugged, while a new life grew inside me. A life I had planned for, longed for, prayed for. And now that it was here, it was to be my death. I wondered what they’d do with Duncan, whether he would be allowed to live, be given one last chance to come back to the fold. Or whether he was already dead.

  Richard twisted me so that my head rested on Freya’s shoulder and then propped my left leg against the wall, allowing gravity to do its job.

  Then he leaned forward, put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. The room seemed to darken around him.

  ‘Relax now,’ he said. ‘The pain will go.’

  I struggled hard and forced my eyes shut. ‘You’re hypnotizing me?’

  ‘No.’ He stroked my forehead and my eyes opened. ‘Just calming you, helping you with the pain.’

  He continued stroking my forehead and, remarkably, the pain did seem to ease. But with it went what was left of my focus; I was starting to drift. Didn’t want that to happen.

  I reached out and caught his hand.

  ‘Why?’ I managed. ‘Why do you kill us? Why do you hate your mothers so much?’

  He held my hand in both of his. ‘We have no choice,’ he said. ‘It’s what makes us who we are.’ He leaned closer. ‘But never think we hate the women who bear our children. We don’t. We mourn our mothers, honour their memories, miss them all our lives. We are not a religious people, but if we were, our mothers would be our saints. They made the ultimate sacrifice for their sons.’

  ‘Their lives,’ I whispered.

  ‘Their hearts,’ he said.

  I tore my eyes away from his, back to the poppy-stained bandages around my leg. And knew what he was about to tell me.

  Oh God, please God, no.

  Richard sat down on the bunk beside me. He was still holding my hand. ‘When I was nine days old,’ he said, ‘I drank the blood of my mother’s heart.’

  He paused, giving me a moment to understand what he was saying. I couldn’t speak, I could only stare at him.

  ‘It was given to me in a bottle,’ he went on, ‘along with the last of her milk.’

  Bile rose in my throat. ‘Stop. I don’t want . . .’

  He hushed me, stroking a finger gently across my cheek. I swallowed hard; concentrated on taking deep breaths.

  ‘Of course, I knew nothing about it at the time; it was much later, on my sixteenth birthday, that I learned of . . . shall we say . . . my extraordinary heritage?’

  Breathe in, breathe out. It was all I could think of. I heard his words but I don’t think I was really registering them. Not then, not till much later.

  ‘You can imagine the shock. I’d grown up with my father and his wife, a woman I loved very much. I had no idea she wasn’t my biological parent. And the horror of what they were telling me, of what had been done to the woman who . . . I think it was just about the darkest day of my life.’

  A derisory phrase sprang into my head, was on the tip of my tongue: my heart bleeds, I nearly said. Jesus, who on earth came up with that one?

  ‘But at the same time, it was the start of my life, of understanding who I really was. I already knew I was special, brighter by far than any other child in the class. I was a gifted musician and I could speak four languages, two of which I’d taught myself. I was stronger, faster and more able in just about everything I did. Every sport I attempted I mastered. And I was never ill. Not once in all my sixteen years had I ever had a day off school because of sickness. When I was twelve, I broke my ankle playing soccer. It healed in two weeks.’

  I found my voice. ‘You were just lucky; a fortunate combination of genes. It had nothing to do with . . .’

  ‘And I had other powers too, stranger powers. I’d discovered I could make people do what I wanted, just by suggestion.’

  ‘Hypnosis.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what some of the younger ones like to call it.’

  I shook my head. I wasn’t buying it, but I couldn’t find words to argue.

  ‘I was introduced to two other boys who’d already turned sixteen. One was from the main island, the other from Bressay. They were just like me, just as strong, just as clever. I was told about four others, a few months younger, who were the rest of my peer group. And I met six older boys who had just turned nineteen. They knew what we were going through, had bee
n through it themselves three years previously.’

  ‘Every three years,’ I said. He nodded.

  ‘Every three years, between five and eight boys are born. We have just one son, in our lifetimes, one son who will become one of us.’

  ‘Trows?’ I wanted to scoff, tried to scoff, but it was hard.

  He frowned. ‘Kunal Trows,’ he corrected. Then he relaxed, even half smiled. ‘So many stories, so much nonsense: little grey men who live in caves and fear iron. Yet tucked away inside all legends, a kernel of truth can be found.’

  ‘All those women. All those deaths. How do you do it?’

  He smiled again. I think he was even starting to show off.

  ‘The practicalities are remarkably simple. The key is having people in the right places. Once a woman has been identified, we watch her very closely. We may stage an accident, or her GP might discover an illness. Not all GPs on the islands are with us, of course, so it depends. Once she’s in hospital it becomes very straightforward, although obviously every case has to be handled differently. Typically, a high dosage of something like Midazolam is given to slow the metabolism right down so the life-support machines automatically sound the alarm. If relatives are present, the medical team make a great show of trying to save the patient, but fail. The unconscious woman is taken to the morgue, where our people are on standby to take her to Tronal. The pathologist produces a report and a weighted coffin is either buried or incinerated. Naturally, we encourage cremation.’

  ‘Naturally. What about Melissa?’

  He sighed. ‘Melissa was a special case. Like you, never intended to be part of all this.’ He glanced towards the open door of the cabin, glaring in Gair’s direction. ‘We do not use our own wives.’

  ‘She found out?’

  He nodded. ‘She learned Stephen’s passwords and went through his computer files one night.’ He stretched out a hand, stroked my forehead again. ‘Melissa was a very clever, very stubborn woman,’ he continued. ‘She was like you in so many ways. It struck me as the deepest irony that you should be the one to find her. Her mistake, of course, was in confronting Stephen, telling him what she knew. We had to act fast. At first, we planned to eliminate her, but she’d told Stephen she was pregnant and he didn’t want to lose the child. It was his idea to substitute the other woman, the one from Oban. I was against it. Too many complications. But we’d pretty much run out of time.’