Sacrifice (20 page)

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 arrival 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?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said, wondering what Stephen Gair did for a living.

‘Except therein lies a problem. My wife died in hospital of breast cancer in October 2004. She’d been dead for months, possibly the better part of a year, by the time the murder took place. So the body on your land cannot be her. How am I doing?’

‘You’re cooking on gas,’ I said, borrowing an expression of Duncan’s. From the corner of my eye I caught Dana looking at me as if worried my head was still addled from the drugs I may or may not have been fed.

Gair smiled. Too bright a smile, or maybe I just couldn’t cope with jollity this morning. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘Trouble is, the X-rays match,’ I said. ‘Illegal
search or not, there’s no getting round that. If she’d been my wife, I’d want to know why.’

The smile faded. ‘I do want to know why,’ he said. He no longer looked remotely nice.

Dana seemed to sense trouble. She stood up.

‘Shall we go?’ she said. ‘Tora, are you OK to go straight away?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Where are we going?’

We were going to the hospital dental unit. Dana drove me, Stephen Gair followed behind. It took us ten minutes to get there and when we did, three cars were already parked in the car park. I was not in the least bit surprised to see Gifford’s silver BMW and DI Dunn’s black four-wheel-drive. A glance at Dana told me that she too had expected it. Stephen Gair got out of his car and looked over at Dana and me. He started to walk towards the entrance.

‘He’s dodgy,’ I said.

‘He’s senior partner in the biggest firm of solicitors we have here in Lerwick.’

‘Oh, well, there you go.’ Neither of us moved. ‘Do you think he tipped off the fuzz?’

‘What do you watch on TV? And no, I think that was probably Dentist McDouglas. You might want to muffle that schoolgirl sense of humour of yours for the next hour.’

‘Right you are, Sarge.’

Neither of us moved. ‘What’s with you and your inspector?’ I asked.

Glancing across, I saw her face had clouded over
and wondered if I’d overstepped the mark. ‘How do you mean?’ she asked.

No going back now. ‘You don’t trust him, do you?’

Bracing myself for one of her put-downs, I was surprised to see her thinking about it.

‘I used to,’ she said eventually. ‘We got on pretty well when I came here. But he hasn’t been the same the last few days.’ She stopped, as though worried she’d said too much.

‘You give quite a lot away when you think no one’s watching you,’ I ventured. ‘You weren’t happy in the morgue that first day, you went out on a limb the evening we met Joss Hawick. And he left you off the guest list at my house the other night. You’ve disagreed all along about whether the victim was a local woman.’

She nodded. ‘There’s nothing he’s doing I can specifically complain of, it just seems all the way along that my gut is steering me one way and he’s sending me another.’ We both watched as Stephen Gair pulled open the door to the dental unit and went inside. ‘We should go,’ said Dana.

We got out of the car. I was still wearing yesterday’s scrubs and hadn’t showered, cleaned my teeth or combed my hair in about twenty-four hours. Gifford was about to see me looking like death warmed up and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

‘The truth is in there, Agent Tulloch,’ I said, as we headed for the swing doors.

She gave me a
will-you-pack-it-in
look, as the automatic doors opened for us and we walked through.

‘I am deeply uncomfortable,’ said Dr McDouglas, which struck me as just a little ironic coming from a dentist. ‘Your actions are reprehensible, Miss Hamilton. You might do things differently where you come from, but I assure you, in Scot—’

‘Let me apologize for—’ Gifford interrupted.

‘Oh no, you don’t.’ That time, it was me. I turned to Gifford. ‘With respect, Mr Gifford, I can apologize for myself.’ Fantastic phrase that – you can be as rude as you like to someone but as long as you put a
with respect
in front, you get away with it. I turned back to Dentist McDouglas, a tall, thin, arrogant shit whom I’d disliked on first sight. I was going to do it again. ‘And with all due respect to you, Dr McDouglas, my actions are not our primary concern right now. If I’m wrong, you can instigate a formal complaint and Mr Gifford here will make sure it’s dealt with according to the health authority’s procedures.’

Gifford put a hand on my arm, but I wasn’t having it. I was on a roll.

‘On the other hand, if I’m right, then so much shit is going to hit the fan that any complaint against me will, frankly, get lost in the general hysteria.’

‘Your use of profanities offends me deeply,’ the sour, Presbyterian tooth-puller spat back at me.

‘Yeah, well, digging up mutilated corpses offends me deeply. Can we get on with it, please?’

‘We’re not getting on with anything here. Not without the proper authority.’

‘I agree,’ said Andy Dunn.

I pointed at Stephen Gair. ‘There’s your proper authority. He is prepared to release his wife’s X-rays for examination. Or at least, he said he was before we left. Have you changed your mind, Mr Gair?’ As I said that, I knew, with a plummeting heart, that Gair wasn’t going to back us up. He’d never intended to let us examine the records officially. He’d been playing us along, getting us to admit everything we’d been up to in front of the very people able to cut us off at the knees. Stephen Gair had sold Dana and me down the Swannee and we’d fallen for it.

‘No, I haven’t changed my mind,’ he said.

OK, maybe I wasn’t reading the situation too well. I decided to quieten down for a while.

‘I think it would help to see exactly what we’re dealing with here,’ said Gifford. ‘Who’s got the X-rays?’

‘Kenn,’ said Andy Dunn, ‘this is really not—’

‘I have,’ said Dana, ignoring her boss. From her bag she pulled the folder I’d given her that morning. She took out the large panoramic film taken in the hospital morgue and then the half-dozen smaller, overlapping shots – the ones that were definitely Melissa’s – that I’d printed off the dental intranet site the night before.

‘What do you think, Richard?’ said Gifford.

Richard McDouglas
looked at the films on his desk. So did the rest of us. From time to time, I looked up at his face but it was unreadable; a frown of concentration crinkling his brow, his lips curled in a scowl. Once, I risked looking at Dana but she was staring into space. I didn’t want to look at anyone else.

After about five minutes, McDouglas shook his head.

‘I can’t see it,’ he said. Sighs of relief all around the table.

Oh, for heaven’s sake! ‘Dr McDouglas,’ I said quickly, before anyone else had a chance to open their mouths. ‘Could you look at the second molar in the upper left quadrant?’ He looked at Gifford, then at Dunn, but neither of them spoke. ‘Look on the panoramic radiograph first, please.’

He did so.

‘Would you say that molar has been crowned?’

He nodded. ‘It would appear so.’

‘Now look at the same tooth on your own X-rays.’ I pushed the relevant film towards him. ‘There, has that tooth been crowned?’

He nodded again, but didn’t speak.

‘Now, please look in the upper right quadrant. Do you agree there’s a molar missing?’

‘Difficult to say. Could be one of the pre-molars.’

‘Whatever.’ I pushed another film in front of him. The look of distaste on his face was a picture. I was being unreasonably aggressive, but enough was enough. ‘This is the corresponding quadrant for Mrs Gair’s X-rays. Is there a molar, or pre-molar missing?’

He counted the teeth.

‘Yes, there is.’

Gifford leaned forward. He and Andy Dunn exchanged a glance. I was about to play my trump card.

‘Dr McDouglas, could you please look at the root of this tooth.’ I pointed to a tooth on the panoramic X-ray. ‘I think this is the second pre-molar, am I right?’

He nodded.

‘The root has a very distinctive curvature. Would you say it’s mesial or distal?’

He pretended to study it but the answer was obvious.

‘The curvature is distal.’

‘And this one?’ I indicated the same tooth on Melissa’s X-ray.

He stared down. ‘Miss Hamilton is correct,’ he said eventually. ‘There are sufficient similarities to merit a proper investigation.’

Stephen Gair pointed to the panoramic, then looked at Gifford. ‘Are you saying this is my wife? That my wife is in your morgue? What the hell is going on here?’

‘OK, that’s it.’ Andy Dunn had a loud voice and the proper air of authority when he needed it. ‘We’re going down to the station. Mr Gair, can you come with us, please? You too, Dr McDouglas.

At that moment, my beeper sounded. I excused myself and went out into the hallway to make a call. One of my patients was nearing the end of the second
stage of labour and the baby was showing signs of distress. The midwife thought an emergency Caesar might be needed. I went back in and explained.

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Gifford. ‘Catch up with you later, Andy.’

Andy Dunn opened his mouth, but Gifford was too fast for him. He had the doors open and me out of there before anyone had time to object. I caught Dana’s eye; she looked surprised and not entirely happy and I couldn’t help feeling that we were being deliberately separated.

Once outside, Gifford strode ahead and I followed as best I could. It was difficult to keep up as we crossed the car park and walked up the flagged path that led to the main door of the hospital, so I walked faster than I really had the energy for and wondered when he was going to open his mouth and ball me out for the trouble I’d caused.

I had so many words bubbling inside me I didn’t trust myself to get them out in the right order once I’d begun. I wanted to accuse him, to demand an explanation, to vindicate myself. At the same time, I was determined not to let myself down by incoherent babbling. It was up to him to speak first, to offer some sort of explanation and I was determined he was going to do it.

He still hadn’t said a word as we entered the hospital, turned left past A&E and carried on towards the maternity unit. At the stairs he turned and started to climb.

‘I thought you were coming to give me a hand?’ I
said, realizing I sounded like a nagging wife but not caring. I had the moral high ground now and I wasn’t budging.

He was on the fourth step up but he stopped and turned. The light from the staircase window shone brightly behind him and I couldn’t see his expression.

‘Do you
need
help?’ he asked.

Instantly I felt stupid. Of course I didn’t need help. But I wasn’t about to be ignored either. Two nurses and a porter were coming along the corridor. Their conversation faded as they took in the obvious tension between us. ‘You said you were coming with me,’ I said, not bothering to lower my voice.

Kenn had noticed the others too. ‘I needed to get away,’ he said. ‘There are things I have to do.’ He turned and continued up the stairs. I stayed where I was, watching him. ‘You’re needed in maternity, Miss Hamilton,’ he said firmly. ‘Come and see me when you’re done.’

The three staff members passed me and followed him up. One of them, a nurse I knew slightly, didn’t even bother to hide the curious look and the half-smile she shot in my direction. She thought I was in trouble and wasn’t in the least bit sorry.

I could hardly follow Gifford up the stairs, demanding an explanation in front of half the hospital. And he was right, I was needed in maternity. I turned, continued on down the corridor and, stopping only to scrub my hands and tie back my hair, strode into the delivery room.