Sacrifice (50 page)

‘Her family. They know?’

Kenn nodded. ‘Her husband’s with her now.’

‘And the other one? Alison?’

‘Alison was a tourist. Came up here with some friends but split up from them to explore the islands on her own. She can’t remember what happened, she’s pretty traumatized, but she was apparently seen getting on the ferry from Fair Isle three weeks ago. No one saw her arrive back on the mainland. She was presumed drowned.’

‘They couldn’t afford bodies to be found this summer,’ I said. Kenn frowned at me. ‘Stephen Renney isn’t one of them,’ I explained. ‘He’s only been at the hospital a few months; he isn’t even from Shetland. They couldn’t risk faking a death at the hospital this year. They would all have been accidents, with the bodies never recovered.’

Kenn fell silent. We listened to the sounds in the corridor outside, to Duncan’s breathing. ‘I guess,’ he said eventually. ‘Look, that’s enough now.’ He stood
up. ‘You need to rest.’ As he made to leave the room I felt panic rising again.

‘No drugs, no sedatives, not even painkillers. Promise me,’ I said.

Kenn held up both hands. ‘I promise,’ he said.

‘You’re not one of them, are you? They said you’re not one of them.’

‘Take it easy. No, I’m not one of them.’

‘Richard, he’s . . . I’m so sorry.’

He walked back and took hold of both my hands. ‘Don’t be.’

‘Between four and five hundred, he said. They’re everywhere. They could be in this hospital.’

‘Calm down. You’re both perfectly safe. I won’t leave you.’

‘I’m so tired,’ I said.

He nodded and wheeled the bed back down again. Then he bent over and kissed me on the forehead. I managed to smile at him as he sat down in the chair beside me, but it was Duncan’s face I was looking at as my eyes slowly closed.

Epilogue

A SKYLARK HAD
woken us, just as the silvery light of early dawn was beginning to soften and turn gold. Before breakfast we walked along the cliff tops, watching the waves break on the rocks below and hordes of seabirds bustle about building nests, preparing for the imminent arrival of parenthood. The day was unseasonably warm for late May. Sea pinks and the tiny, blue, bell-shaped flowers of the spring squill were scattered over the cliffs like confetti. Walking home along the roadside, we could hardly see the grass beneath the thick rug of primroses. Shetland was at its best and most beautiful. And a small army of English police officers were searching our land for the remains of Kirsten Hawick.

Duncan and I sat on the flagged area at the back of the house. Even from a distance we could see they meant business this time. The soil samples they’d taken previously had all tested negative for phosphate. Further analysis, on Helen’s orders, had indicated the samples hadn’t come from our land at
all. Big surprise! So the process had begun again. More samples taken, tested at a different lab; and this time, several positive results.

Now, our entire field had been divided up into a grid. Metres of tape criss-crossed the length and breadth of it, held in place by tiny metal pegs. The officers, working in teams of three, were systematically checking square after square after square: measuring, probing, digging, paying particular attention to the areas where phosphate had been found. They’d been at it for four hours and had covered a good quarter of the field. They’d found nothing so far. But the world’s media, who’d been camped on our doorstep for the past week, seemed to have swollen in ranks this morning. A sense of grim expectation hung in the air.

Two weeks had passed since our adventures on Tronal. My leg was healing well, Duncan had made a near complete recovery. We’d been incredibly lucky. My detour to Dana’s house that night had saved our lives. Helen had instructed one of her constables to collect something she’d left behind there. He found the envelope I’d addressed to Helen and, on her instructions, opened it. Hearing what I was up to (and, I’m told, cursing non-stop for the following two hours), Helen had sent a dozen officers back to Tronal. They rescued Duncan from the basement and my stolen dinghy from the beach. Helen herself directed the operation from on board a police helicopter, the same one that picked us out of the water after the boat went down.

And then the fun really began.

Twelve island men, including the staff of the Tronal clinic, several hospital personnel, Dentist McDouglas, DI Andy Dunn and two members of the local police force, are being held in custody on various charges, including murder, conspiracy to murder, kidnapping and actual bodily harm, to name just a few. Superintendent Harris of the Northern Constabulary has been suspended from duties pending an internal inquiry. Duncan tells me that these men are the tip of the iceberg and I don’t doubt him for a second. Of course, believing is one thing; actual hard evidence is proving as elusive as the Trowie folk of legend. These thirteen may be all we ever get.

Stephen Gair is still missing. Whether he’s alive or dead we have no idea. We can only hope.

Richard’s funeral is to be held on Unst tomorrow. We sank, that night, in relatively shallow water and the launch, with his body on board, was easily recovered. Half of Shetland are expected to turn up to honour Richard’s memory, but Duncan and I will not be among them. We’ve talked about it at length but neither of us can face it. There are still faint bruises around my neck; I can’t pretend to grieve for the man who put them there. Neither can I look into the faces of the congregation and wonder . . .

Duncan’s motivation is more complex. He is struggling to deal with how close he came to becoming one of them.

So Kenn will be our proxy tomorrow. We’ve seen
quite a lot of him the last couple of weeks. He’s formed a habit of turning up unannounced, usually at mealtimes. He still flirts disgracefully, but only when Duncan is in the room. Other times, he avoids being alone with me so that problem, at least, has been shelved for the time being. I still haven’t got to the bottom of who stole whose girlfriend and I suspect I never will; I’m not sure either of them really cares any more. It was Kenn, we discovered, who performed the surgery that removed a clot from Duncan’s brain. At the end of the day, I guess, it’s difficult to continue hating someone who has saved your life. Besides, they both enjoy bitching about the seemingly endless police investigation.

So far, no charges have been brought against either Duncan or Kenn, but we don’t feel we can breathe easily just yet. The strongest point in Duncan’s favour is that when Helen’s team raided the island that night he was found locked in the basement, bleeding profusely from a head wound and not too far from death. The fact that he didn’t set foot on Shetland for nearly twenty years will help too. As far as Kenn is concerned, he was conveniently out of the country during just about every summer when the female death rate peaked. I think Richard went to great lengths over the years to protect his favourite son.

The Tronal maternity clinic has closed for good. The two infants I saw that night have been transferred to a neonatal unit in Edinburgh and are both doing well. Their birth mothers will be traced; as will
all the women who attended Tronal for a late termination in recent years. What their legal relationship will be to the babies they thought they’d aborted, who can say. Just another of the many unholy messes to come out of Tronal.

The land around the clinic is being extensively searched. Some human remains have already been found but, from what I can learn, it’s going to be a long job. In one area, close to the beach where I landed that night, several tiny skeletons have been unearthed. Of all the babies born at Tronal over the years, these are the ones for whom my heart cries the most. The ones who didn’t make it.

Collette McNeil and Alison Rogers are both pregnant as a result of their stay on Tronal. No intercourse had taken place; the pregnancies were achieved by doctors opening the women’s cervixes and inserting sperm directly into their uterine cavities. Lawyers are currently arguing over whether, technically, that constitutes rape. Collette is planning a termination. She and her family are leaving Shetland. Alison, a twenty-year-old single girl, is thinking of keeping the baby.

I turned at the sound of footsteps on gravel. Dana had made it through the press barricade and was walking towards us. She was wearing jeans and a large shapeless sweater, her hair scraped back in a ponytail. I hadn’t seen her since the night we all leaped into the ocean together and she looked smaller and thinner than I remembered. When she reached us, she didn’t seem to know what to say.

‘Thought you were in Dundee. On sick leave,’ I said, because she looked as though she might start crying and I wasn’t sure I could handle that. There had been too many tears over the last couple of weeks.

She pulled a wooden folding chair forward and opened it. ‘Supposed to be,’ she agreed. ‘Bored to death. Flew back this morning.’ She sat down next to me.

‘I think you might be in trouble,’ said Duncan, who was looking towards the top of the field. We both followed his eye line. Helen, in a white jumpsuit, had stopped bustling about like a mother hen and was staring down at us.

I turned back to Dana, risked a smile, saw its pale reflection on her face.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, her eyes dropping to my stomach.

‘Dreadful,’ I replied, because that was close enough, but there really aren’t words to describe what a woman goes through in the first trimester. Just as soon as I could talk on the phone without vomiting over it, I was going to contact all my past patients and apologize for not being sufficiently sympathetic.

‘And is that . . . good?’

‘No, but it’s normal,’ I said. We fell silent, watching Helen torn between wanting to come down and lay into Dana for coming back to work and needing to stay where she was and get on with the job. All the while I was thinking that the only remotely normal
thing about my pregnancy was the little creature at the centre of it. Jenny had scanned me yesterday. Duncan and I had held hands, tears streaming down both our faces, as we watched a shapeless little blob with a very strong heartbeat, totally oblivious to what had been going on around it.

‘And I suppose we’re hoping for . . . a girl?’ said Dana tentatively. I heard Duncan give a soft laugh and it seemed like a very good sign.

A sudden noise grabbed my attention. On the fence that ran the length of the field were a group of pale-grey birds with forked tails, black heads and red beaks. They were Arctic terns, come back from their long winter in the southern hemisphere. Hoping to nest in our field, as was their usual custom, they were frustrated at the sudden human invasion. Terns are not placid birds. They jumped around on the fence, circled overhead, yelling down at the police officers to be off and find somewhere else to dig. Didn’t they know this was breeding ground?

‘I think they’ve found something,’ said Dana.

My attention snapped away from the birds. ‘Where?’

‘That group near Helen. Tall man with sandy hair. Woman with thick-rimmed glasses. Near the reed bed.’

I watched. The small group Dana was talking about was no longer one team among many, it had become the focus of activity up on the field. One by one, other white-clad officers were stepping closer.

‘Oh, they’ve been doing that for the last hour,’ said
Duncan. ‘I think that team’s just more excitable than the rest.’

‘They’re very close to where I found Melissa,’ I said, in a voice I wasn’t sure would carry. Nobody spoke. Up in the field four men started digging in earnest.

‘We should go inside,’ said Duncan. Nobody moved.

The digging went on. Activity around the rest of the field had stopped. All eyes were on the four men with spades. Even the terns seemed to have quietened down.

Clouds began to roll in from the voe. The land, so rich in colour just moments earlier, fell into shadow. No one, either in the field or on the back terrace of the house, seemed able to talk. We listened to the regular thud of spades against damp earth and waited.

When I didn’t think I could bear it any longer, the digging stopped. The men with spades stepped back and others strode forward. Cameras began clicking, people were talking into radios, equipment was unloaded from the vans parked in our yard and a surge of excitement ran through the press ranks. Helen started to walk down the hill towards us.

The perfectly preserved, peat-stained bodies of four women were eventually found on our land. The first they dug out of the ground that day was Rachel Gibb; the others have since been identified as Heather Paterson, Caitlin Corrigan and Kirsten
Hawick. All were names I knew: I’d seen them on my computer screen the night I met Helen. In the days that followed I learned more about them, where they’d lived, who they’d been, how they were believed to have died. And I spent more time than was good for me imagining their final year. Torn from their lives, cut off from everyone they loved, these women had to face the long, painful drudge of pregnancy and the terrifying ordeal of childbirth alone and in fear. They’d had the best medical attention possible, but no one to hold their hand, give them a reassuring hug, tell them it would all be worth it in the end. Prisoners of their own bodies as much as of the men of Tronal, these women had sat in their pens like pregnant cattle, biding their time until their purpose was served and they were needed no more. And if thinking of this makes you want to howl with rage, then join the club, my friend, join the bloody club.

Each woman brought out of the earth that week had had her heart cut out, just as Melissa’s had been. Each had three runic symbols carved into the flesh of her back: Othila, meaning Fertility; Dagaz, the rune for Harvest; and Nauthiz: Sacrifice.

The search has been called off now, much to my dismay, because I know there must be two more bodies buried somewhere; seven KT boys were born a year after these women supposedly died. The police team insist, though, that the fields behind our house have been thoroughly searched; even Duncan and Dana are telling me to leave it now. So these women
will stay out there. They may lie in the Shetland earth for all time, along with all the other women who have disappeared without trace on these islands over the centuries. Or they may turn up out of the blue one day when someone, too ignorant to know better, dares to disturb the ground.