THE NEXT DAY I WENT TO WORK. BEFORE LEAVING THE night before, Kenn had asked me to come in if I felt up to it, my suspension having expired with the knowledge that the hospital was in the clear. I was still smarting from the indignity of it all but, when it came down to it, I didn't have anything I'd rather do that morning.
Some time in the night, Duncan and I had declared a truce. There remained a lot of unfinished business but neither of us had the energy to resume hostilities just yet. We were having some time out.
As to the future, I wasn't sure. Duncan had told me that the fight I'd overheard on Unst had been about his desire to leave Shetland, that Elspeth had been referring to me when she'd said he was in love. He'd declared that no power on earth would make him leave me. The jury was still out, though, on whether I was staying – with him, in the job, on the islands; I didn't know. I was taking it one day at a time. Because, in spite of all the lies, in spite of everything he'd kept from me, I still loved him.
I did the ward-round, ignoring the curious looks I was getting from the staff. When I'd been forced to admit (but only to myself) that the unit had been functioning perfectly well without me, I went upstairs to prepare for afternoon clinic.
I phoned my friend in Voe and learned that Charles and Henry were fine. I thanked her for taking care of them and fielded her few curious questions as to how and why they were there. I made arrangements to collect them that evening.
I wondered about what was happening at home. As Duncan and I were leaving that morning, the police had arrived in force. As Helen had promised, they were carrying out another sweep of our fields but I no longer believed they'd find anything. Maybe one day I'd have another look at the islands' female mortality statistics, get someone else's opinion. One day at a time. But there was one thing I really had to do that day. I picked up the phone, dialled a London number and asked to be put through to a woman I'd worked with at my last hospital; the consultant anaesthetist.
'Diane?' I said when we were finally connected. 'It's Tora.'
'My goodness, stranger, how are you?'
Well, there was no truthful short answer to that so I gave the usual lie. 'Fine. You?'
'Great. Will we see you in September?'
'Of course, we're looking forward to it,' I said, having not thought about it in weeks. A wedding in a picture-book Buckinghamshire village; I'd forgotten that normal life was still going on, somewhere out there. 'Look, I'm sorry about this, but I need some information and I don't have much time. Is that OK?'
'Fire away.'
'What do you know about untraceable drugs?'
Diane wasn't easily fazed. She paused only a second before replying. 'Well, ultimately, there aren't any. If you know what to look for, you can find anything.'
'Thought so. But if you were trying to knock someone out, not necessarily kill them, just incapacitate them, just for a short while, is there anything you could use that a pathologist wouldn't normally test for?'
'Has Duncan been playing you up again?' There was an edge to her voice now but I could hardly blame her. It wasn't exactly a run- of-the-mill question.
'I'm sorry, I wish I had time to explain. I'll call you soon, I promise. Can you think of anything? Something unusual, that they wouldn't test for unless they were specifically asked.'
'Well, I'd need to check, but I'm pretty certain they don't routinely check for things like Benzodiazepines – you know, Nitrazepam or Temazepam. Does that help?'
'Yes, it does. I promise I'm not planning anything illegal.'
'I believe you. Oh, by the way, I got the dress.'
She named a hideously expensive London bridal designer and wittered away happily for a few more minutes. I was happy to let her, but I wasn't really listening.
Dunn might be a dab hand with the old hypnosis, but it still didn't seem likely that someone as sensible and smart as Dana could be hypnotized into killing herself. Hypnotized for long enough to allow herself to be drugged, maybe. Once unconscious, it would be a relatively simple matter to carry her to the bath and cut through both wrists, probably using her own hands to do it. If Stephen Renney hadn't found anything in Dana's system, it was because he hadn't known what to look for. I wasn't going to accept what Gifford had said last night. Dana was not going to her grave a suicide; not if I had anything to do with it.
'Hey!'
I looked up. 'Hey yourself!'
Helen stood in the doorway. She was wearing the same suit as last night but had changed her blouse for a ruby-red one. She still looked great. I wondered if Dana had taken her shopping, supervised her wardrobe. Or maybe it had been the other way round. Maybe Dana owed her sense of style to this lady. I'd probably never know. I felt a pang of regret that I'd never be able to know them as a couple.
She came in. I realized I was ridiculously pleased to see her.
'Coffee?' I offered. She nodded and I got up to pour it out. We sat together for a while.
'Are you OK?' she asked, and from the way she was looking at me, just a little too intently, I started to think that she might have something to tell me.
'I'm fine,' I said, stalling for time, because I wasn't sure I wanted to hear whatever it was. 'Better than fine, actually. Duncan and I sorted a few things out and here I am, back at work.'
'Things that seemed impossible just twenty-four hours ago?'
I nodded. 'Is Duncan… I mean…'
'Is he in the clear? I think so. His story about being a shareholder checks out and he doesn't seem to have set foot on Tronal for years. The Franklin Stone and Mr Gifford seem out of it as well. You heard about Dunn, I take it.'
'I did. Is that bad?'
'Bad as it gets. When a copper's your villain, there's no happy ending.'
'Is he still missing?'
She finished her coffee and got up to pour a refill. 'Yep. He was seen catching a ferry to the mainland on Tuesday evening. We've alerted all the air and ferry ports but…'
'Could be well away by now?'
She nodded. 'Right, the good news is, your fields have been thoroughly swept this morning. You won't be uncovering any more nasty surprises should you decide to plant a few spring bulbs.'
'And it was all properly done? The instruments were switched on and everything?' Well, I had to ask.
Helen didn't take offence. She almost laughed. 'OK, let me tell you what they did, as far as I understand it. First of all, they flew over in the chopper this morning and took a whole load of aerial photographs. Apparently – and I admit I didn't know this – when soil has been disturbed at any depth, it shows up on the surface: either as marks on the soil or as crop marks. Also, you might get an increase in vegetation – a rush of spring flowers, for example. Aerial photographs can pick that up.'
'Did they see anything?'
'Nothing. But apparently they didn't really expect to. The method works best for larger sites, such as prehistoric burial grounds. Individual graves rarely show up; but it has been known, so they were being thorough to check.'
'So what then?'
'The next step was to use ground-penetrating radar. They have instruments that send electromagnetic pulses into the ground. When the pulses hit a soil surface that differs in water content from that around it, the signals bounce back. The team plot all these signals on a graph and, if anything has been buried, the pattern of reflections will show it up on the graph. It's even possible to estimate how deep a burial might be, based on the time delay for the reflections to come back. We've done that across the length and breadth of the field.'
'Clever stuff.'
'Oh it's amazing. Course, it's not foolproof. It works best, apparently, on sandy, high-resistivity soil, of which there's very little in your field. So they did one further sweep. This time using soil analysis. Want me to go on?'
'Please.'
'Soil analysis depends upon measuring the amount of phosphate in the soil. Phosphate is present in all soils, but where a body – human or large animal – is buried, the phosphate levels increase quite considerably.'
That certainly made sense to me. Bodies are particularly rich in phosphorus which, along with calcium, gives bone its strength and hardness. It's also found in other tissues of the body.
'Decomposition of human bodies after burial enriches the phosphorus content of the surrounding soil,' continued Helen. 'The team took hundreds of soil samples from your field. If any strong pockets of phosphorus are found, that could indicate more burials.'
'How long will it take to test them all?'
'A few more days. But they're already well under way and nothing has been found so far. I really don't think there's anything down there, Tora.'
I said nothing for a moment.
'So, no more worries about little grey men with a silver fixation?' said Helen.
I had the grace to look bashful. 'Guess the stress was getting to me the other night.'
She smiled back. I looked at her carefully. The slightly wary, nervous look was still there.
'There's something else, isn't there? Something not so good?'
'I'm afraid so. It looks like Stephen Gair isn't going to be facing justice after all. Not in this life anyway.'
Helen broke eye contact first. She stood up and walked to the window.
'What happened?' I managed, wondering why I was feeling so cold. It wasn't as if he'd got away or anything.
'He hanged himself,' she replied, still enjoying my view of the staff car park. 'He was found shortly after five this morning.'
She gave me time to think about it. I thought about it. I would never have the chance to face him in court, to say I know what you did and have people believe me. I would never be able to look him in the eyes and say Got you, you bastard; I bloody well got you! How did I feel about that? Pretty damned pissed off, to be frank. I stood up.
'How could that have happened? What did you do, give him some rope to practise tying knots with?'
At last she turned round. She held up her hand. 'Take it easy. It will be fully investigated. I can't give you details, I'm afraid. These things happen. I know they shouldn't, but they do. He just wasn't considered a suicide risk.'
'Unlike Dana, of course, who you dismissed as a suicide without a shred of evidence.'
As soon as I said it, I knew I'd gone too far. Helen's face had hardened. She started to move. I stepped in front of her.
'I'm sorry, that was totally uncalled for.'
She relaxed a little.
'I guess it's really over then?' I said.
'You're kidding, aren't you? This Tronal business will keep us going for years.'
I found myself wanting to sit down again. 'What do you mean?'
'That place is an unholy hotchpotch of medical work, social services, legitimate business and the illegal trading of infants. A few dozen people are connected with it; they all need to be checked out. And, of course, we obviously have to trace all the babies that have been adopted from Tronal.'
'All that could take a while.'
'Quite. Trouble is, we can see the money coming in but they're all cash transfers that will be hellishly hard to trace to source. We may suspect which adoption agencies were involved, but without proof they're hardly going to admit it.'
'What about at this end? There would be birth records, adoption papers, passports prepared.'
'Maybe, but we can't find them yet. Well, apart from the half- dozen or so a year that get adopted locally, but they seem to be completely in order. Everyone we've spoken to so far, including George Reynolds at social services and his team, are denying any knowledge of overseas adoptions – whether for money or not.'
'Well, they would, wouldn't they?'
'Yes, but the fact is, there's no evidence of any significant number of babies being born there – less than a dozen a year by all accounts. On the surface, it seems a pretty low-key operation; which, when you come to think of it, you'd expect. How many babies are put up for adoption these days?'
She had a point. 'But he admitted it. He said he was selling babies over the Internet.'
'True, but apart from the money and the word of a now-dead man, we really have no evidence.'
She walked over to the coffee table, put her mug down. 'I'm on my way up there now.'
'Long trip,' said a voice from the doorway. We both turned. Kenn Gifford stood there. Neither of us had heard him approach. 'No helicopter pad on Tronal,' he explained. 'You need to go by road and boat.'
'I'll call you later, Tora,' said Helen. She nodded at Gifford and left the room.
'DCI Rowley?' he asked me. I nodded.
'Every bit as gorgeous as they say'
I felt the need for something to do. I picked up Helen's mug and my own and took them over to the sink. 'Take it from me, you're wasting your time.'
He laughed. 'I'd heard. How you doing?' He came closer, looked carefully at me. It's so bloody unfair, this ability big men have to intimidate others; they don't have to be smart, they don't have to threaten, they just have to be there. I side-stepped round him and walked over to the window.
'Fine,' I answered for what felt like the tenth time that morning.
'Good to have you back.' He glanced at the coffee pot, noticed it was empty and helped himself to a digestive biscuit.
'Says the man who suspended me in the first place.'
'Says the woman who's never going to let me forget it.' He moved towards me again and I retreated behind the desk.
He made an exasperated face. 'Will you keep still? I'm not about to hypnotize you. I never really managed it anyway; you're a particularly tricky subject.'
And yes, as I was meant to, I felt a surge of pride at that. I also felt a bit daft. I decided to risk looking him in the eyes – green, they were, a deep, mossy green this morning – but if he put his hands on my shoulders I was yelling.
'I didn't get a chance to congratulate you last night,' he said.
I searched his face for sarcasm, but didn't see any.
'I'd be tempted to say you picked the wrong profession but I really don't want to lose you from this one.'
'You're only saying that because the hospital has come up smelling of lavender. If there were any dirt still clinging to you and yours you'd be patting me on the head, making worried noises and murmuring about sedatives.'
He fixed me with a stare. 'Richard is still in custody.'
Shit, I'd walked right into that one. Would I ever learn to engage my brain before my mouth opened?
'Sorry. I should have thought of that.'
And then that big warm hand was on my upper arm and I wasn't making a sound.
'You've dealt with more this past week than most do in a lifetime. Richard can look after himself.' He turned to leave and there was a cold space on my arm.
'Kenn…'
He turned in the doorway.
'I' m sorry.'
He raised one eyebrow.
'About suspecting you,' I added.
'Accepted. And I'm still thinking about it.'
'About what?'
'About what I'm going to do with you.' He grinned at me and left the room.
I sat down. 'Shit!' I said out loud. And there I'd been thinking all my problems were solving themselves.
I went downstairs. A couple of my third-trimester ladies were kind enough to say they'd missed me at the last clinic. But the Tronal business was still preying on my mind, so as soon as we broke for lunch, I grabbed a sandwich and went back up to my room. From my bag I dug out the pieces of paper that had started it all: the record of deliveries for the Shetland District Health Authority.
Let it go, Tora, said a voice in the back of my head; the faint, slightly wistful voice that speaks for the sensible, grown-up part of me. Unfortunately, I'd never really learned to pay attention to that voice and I wasn't about to start now. Once again, I counted up the Tronal deliveries. Four. Four in a six-month period meant around six to ten a year. If around half a dozen were adopted locally, that just didn't leave enough to sell overseas and make any sort of money.
Where the hell had Stephen Gair been getting his babies from? And how on earth could the sort of state-of-the-art maternity facility that had been described to me be feasible for just eight births per annum? The equipment and the staff would be standing around doing nothing for most of the year. There must be more babies being born at Tronal than were recorded on my stats. But how could a birth not be registered?
Dana had also mentioned terminations, but that made little sense. Terminations are available everywhere in the UK; why on earth would significant numbers of women travel all the way to Tronal for what they could get in their hometown?
If only I could go with Helen to Tronal. I'd know the questions to ask, be able to spot anything that didn't fit, far better than she could. But it was impossible; if any sort of trial came out of all this, I would be a key witness. I couldn't keep interfering in the official investigation.
I started going through the list one more time.
The first thing that jumped out at me were those blessed initials. KT. Keloid Trauma: problems arising from previous perineum scarring. I flicked to another screen and typed 'Keloid Trauma' into the Google search engine. Nothing, but the term had been coined to describe a condition particular to Shetland so maybe it hadn't yet made it on to the world wide web. I went into the hospital archives and ran a similar search. Nothing. I started checking all the KT entries again. First of April, a baby boy, born on Papa Stour. Then, on 8 May, another boy, born here at the Franklin Stone. On 19 May, a third boy – of course, they were all boys. But the sex of the baby couldn't possibly have an impact upon perineum scarring, could it? On 6 June, Alison Jenner had had a little boy on Bressay; later in June another delivery at the Franklin Stone.
Hang on a minute. That name meant something. Alison Jenner. Where had I heard that before? Jenner, Jenner, Jenner. Shit, it had gone.
Stephen Renney was in his windowless office, eating a sandwich and drinking Fanta from a can. He sensed me standing in his doorway, looked up and then started making those slightly embarrassed, fidgety movements we all make when we've been caught eating alone. As though eating were some sort of not-quite-respectable indulgence instead of the most natural thing in the world.
'Sorry,' I said, giving the time-honoured response, and looking slightly embarrassed myself, as though I'd caught him on the loo.
'Not at all,' he responded, ridiculously forgiving me. He stood up, motioned to a chair. I took it.
'I wanted to ask you something. About Dana Tulloch.'
His forearms were on the desk and he leaned forward. I could smell tuna fish on his breath.
'Mr Gifford said you'd found no traces of any sort of drug in her system and-'
'Miss Hamilton…' He leaned forward some more and I tried not to back away; it smelled as though he'd been eating cat food.
'I know you can't discuss specifics with me and I really don't want to put you in a difficult position, but-'
'Miss Hamilton…'
'Please, just give me a second. I've been speaking to an anaesthetist friend of mine this morning. She mentioned some drugs that would incapacitate someone but that wouldn't normally be tested for in a post-mortem. I just wondered if you-'
'Miss Hamilton.' Stephen Renney had raised his voice. 'I didn't carry out Miss Tulloch's post-mortem.'
'Oh!' I said. Had Gifford mentioned Stephen Renney or had I just assumed?
'I'll get a copy of the report, of course, but I don't think it's come through just yet. I can check for you.'
'So who did?' I demanded, manners out the window.
He frowned at me. 'I never actually saw Miss Tulloch. She was only here for a couple of hours and I was in meetings. She was taken to Dundee. I understand her next of kin, a policewoman, requested the transfer. The PM was carried out in Dundee.'
'Of course, I'm sorry.' Helen hadn't mentioned it, but there was no real reason why she should. It certainly made sense that she'd want Dana's post-mortem to be carried out by people she knew and trusted.
'Is there anything else I can help you with?'
Well, I know a dismissal when I hear one. I shook my head, thanked him again and left.
Back in my office there was an email from Gifford asking for my help in theatre that afternoon. He had a full list himself and a patient with a ruptured appendix had been admitted that morning. It would save him rearranging his list if I could do it. I'm not qualified for general surgery but the appendix was well within my region of expertise. I checked my messages – one from Duncan, the rest all non-urgent – and went down to theatre.
The patient was a thirty-year-old male, fit and healthy. I opened him up, fumbled around for a few minutes and removed the offending piece; swollen like a drum, no wonder he was in pain. Just as I finished closing and the patient was being wheeled out to recovery, Gifford came in. He was still gowned up and his gloves were covered in blood. I glanced down. So were mine. The other staff had left theatre and we were alone. He unhooked his mask from one ear.
'Will you have dinner with me?'
I left my mask in place. 'When?'
He shrugged. 'Tonight?'
I managed to look him straight in the eye. 'How kind. I'll see if Duncan's free.'
He reached out and took the mask from my face. As he did so, his gloved fingers brushed my cheek and I couldn't help the shudder. He saw it, of course.
'I'll ask again.'
I wondered if I had blood on my face. 'I'll email you the hospital's policy on sexual harassment.'
He laughed. 'Don't bother. I wrote it.'
He stood still for a moment, looking at me, and from beneath the harsh, antiseptic smells of theatre came a scent so warm and familiar it made me want to step closer, breathe it in, catch hold of his clothes and press them to my face. Then he turned and left and the scent was gone. I found I was shaking. The scrub nurse came back into the room and started collecting up instruments. I thanked her and left, praying I wouldn't bump into Gifford on the way back to my room.
I spent an hour on the wards, then decided to check on my appendix patient. He was awake but drowsy. His wife sat by his side, his young son, about fifteen months old, perched on the edge of the bed. His mother held him with one hand, his father with the other, and he bounced gleefully. It can't have been comfortable but if my patient wasn't objecting, neither was I. I checked him out, aware that something at the back of my mind was nagging me, and agreed he could go home the next day if he got plenty of rest.
I stopped by the canteen, bought a chocolate muffin and carried it back to my room. I made fresh coffee, sat down at my desk – and remembered.
The family group: the appendix patient, his wife and baby son. I knew who Alison Jenner was. She was Stephen Gair's second wife, the woman who was step-mum to his son by Melissa.
So why the hell was her name on the list of Shetland births? She hadn't given birth; Melissa had. Stephen Gair had admitted that his son, Connor, was Melissa's child. How could Alison's name be included on a list of women who had delivered that summer? And why did her entry include the KT reference?
I found the list and checked, just in case I'd been mistaken. There she was. Alison Jenner, aged forty, gave birth to a little boy, 81bs 2oz, on 6 June. Surely that couldn't be coincidence, it had to be the same woman. OK, think! The Gairs only had one child. So, either Stephen Gair had been lying about Connor being Melissa's – and why the hell would he? – or the entry must be referring to Melissa's son.
I double-checked the number of entries with the KT initials after them. There were seven that summer. I pulled up the corresponding list for the subsequent period, from September 2005 through February 2006. Couldn't see anything. Then I went back, to the previous winter. Nothing. I went back again, to the summer of 2004. No KT entries. I kept on going back until I spotted them again. In summer 2002 there were five entries with KT after them, born in various centres around the islands, all baby boys.
A tightness was forming in my chest as I went further back, examining whole years at a time. 2001 was clear; so was 2000. In the summer of 1999 there were six KT entries. Boys.
I wanted to switch off the computer, get into my car and drive home, collect the horses and ride for miles along the beach. Better still, run up to Kenn Gifford's office, lock the door and take off every stitch I was wearing. Anything to take my mind off what was now staring me in the face.
I stayed where I was and I brought up more screens.
I went back to 1980 and that was enough. The pattern was unmistakeable. Every three years, between four and eight baby boys had their deliveries recorded as KT.
Every three years, the female death rate on Shetland made a modest but unmistakeable blip. The following summer, some unusual little boys were born. KT; it had nothing to do with Keloid Trauma, that was a smokescreen, the condition probably didn't even exist. KT stood for Kunal Trow.
I flicked back, faster and faster, to the earliest year the computerized records showed. They began in 1975. I needed to go further back.
I stood up, on legs that felt none too steady, and walked as fast as I dared along the corridor to the service lift. It arrived within two minutes and – by some miracle – was empty. I pressed B for basement and went down.
The floor seemed empty. I followed the signs and walked down a corridor lit by occasional electric bulbs. Several had blown. As I walked, I looked out for switches on the walls. I did not want to find myself trapped in pitch-blackness down here, scrambling around for switches that didn't exist.
I reached the end of the corridor. Most hospital archives are a mess and these were no exception. They were housed in three basement rooms. I pushed the door of the first. Darkness. I felt around on the wall for a light switch. The room sprang into a grimy light. I could feel the dust in my throat. Everything was in large, brown cardboard boxes, stacked several high on steel shelving. The labels were mostly turned to the front. I walked along the shelves, keeping one eye firmly on the open door. I doubted these rooms were visited more than a couple of times a year. If a door slammed shut, locked from the outside, I could say Hi to a pleasant few days of starvation and terror.
I didn't find obstetrics and opened the door to the second room. Same layout as the first. This time I wedged the door open. In the third row I found them. It took a few minutes to locate the box I needed and pull it down. Inside were ledgers, handwritten records of births; the manual equivalent of the lists I'd been looking at on my computer. I found the year I was looking for, 1972, and flicked to July. On the twenty-fifth of the month, there it was. Elspeth Guthrie, aged thirty-five, on the island of Unst, a baby boy, 7lbs 15oz. KT.
I'd been crouching down over the box and I sank to the floor. I sat amidst years of accumulated dust and debris, getting filthy and not caring.
I could think of only one reason why birth records should be falsified to the extent of recording the adopting mother as the birth mother: something was so badly wrong with the real birth that it would bear no investigating. Duncan's birth mother had been killed. Just like Melissa had been; just like all the others had been.
Every three years island women were being bred in captivity like farm animals and then slaughtered. I wondered whether the legends of the Trows had given some maniac the idea in the first place, or whether the stories had sprung from real events taking place in the islands over the years; known about but never discussed, never openly acknowledged, because to do so would be tantamount to admitting you lived among monsters.
I'd intended to find the record of Kenn's birth too, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Enough was enough.
I pushed myself to my feet, put the lid back on the box and lifted it back on to the shelf. I tucked the ledger under my arm and left the room, willing myself not to run; I switched off the lights and made for the lift. Then I changed my mind and went in the opposite direction, heading for the stairs, telling myself all the while to stay calm, act calm; no one knew what I'd found out, I was safe for a while. I just had to keep my head.
How the hell were they doing it? How do you spirit away a live woman, at the same time convincing all her relatives that she's dead? How do you hold a funeral with an empty coffin? Had no one ever taken a last peek and found a pink-lined casket of bricks?
I'd made the ground floor. I was ridiculously out of breath. I stopped for a second.
They couldn't use semblances – the equivalent of the dying Cathy Morton – for all of them. It just wasn't feasible that enough seriously ill women would be found. The Cathy/Melissa switch had to have been a special case. I was back to hypnosis and drugs, to the involvement of enough people to make sure the procedures were never questioned: the doctor would administer the drugs, pronounce death, comfort the family; the pathologist would fill in the forms, make out reports for corpses that didn't exist; relatives would be discouraged – under any number of pretexts – from viewing the bodies.
I was back on my floor.
Kirsten. Poor Kirsten, my fellow equestrian. I'd knelt by her grave, tidying the spring flowers and feeling a close empathy because of the way she'd died. But she hadn't been down there. She was still in my field, the real grave site, she had to be. The instrument sweeps had been a sham – even the most recent, carried out that very day. If Detective Superintendent Harris had been present… well, I'd be interested in finding out where and when he'd been born.
I wondered, briefly, if I'd found out where Stephen Gair had been getting his babies from. Except it still didn't add up. The numbers involved – an average of just two per annum – still seemed far too few to attract the sort of revenues Helen and I had found. Plus, the babies I could name – Duncan, Kenn, Andy Dunn, Connor Gair – had all been adopted locally. The chances were others had been too. Money might have changed hands but it couldn't explain the massive amounts – several millions each year – that were coming in from overseas. And it would be too big a risk, surely, to abduct women, keep them prisoner and murder them, just to be able to sell their babies to the highest bidder. No, whatever motive was driving these people, it had to be more than money. The babies being sold were coming from another source.
My office appeared as I'd left it. The coffee had brewed and I poured myself a mug, spilling a good quarter of it in the process. I had to get a grip or the first person who saw me would know something was up. I think the desk phone must have been ringing for some time before I reached out and picked up the receiver.
'I was just about to try you at home.' It was Helen. I couldn't tell her yet. I needed to get my head together first. If I opened my mouth I'd probably babble like an idiot.
'Where are you?' I managed.
'Just leaving Tronal. Boy, the wind's getting up. Can you hear me?'
A flash of panic so sharp it was painful. I'd forgotten Helen was going to Tronal. 'Are you OK? Who's with you?'
"Tora, I'm fine. What's wrong? What's happened?'
'Nothing, nothing, just tired,' I managed, telling myself to calm down, to take it easy. Big, deep breaths. 'How was it?'
'Quiet sort of place. Only a few women, most of them asleep. Couple of babies in the nursery. We're going back in the morning. I'll be staying on Unst for a few days.'
'Will I see you soon?'
She was quiet for a second. I could hear the boat's engine in the background and the whistling of the wind. 'Are you sure you're OK?' she said at last.
'I'm fine,' I said, then because it didn't seem enough, 'I'm on my way home. Dunc and I are going out to dinner.'
'Great, cos look, I wanted to ask you something. Something personal and I didn't really get chance this morning. Is now a good time?'
'Of course,' I said. Now was a great time. I was ready for just about anything; anything that didn't require thinking, moving, speaking.
She lowered her voice. 'Thing is, I have to start thinking about Dana's funeral. I'm her next of kin, you know.'
I knew that; my friendly local pathologist had told me so. Dana's funeral. I closed my eyes and found myself in the midst of a sad, solemn gathering. We were in an ancient church, cathedral-like in its dimensions, softly lit by tall white candles. I could smell the candle smoke and the incense that drifted down from the high altar.
'I know you hadn't known her very long,' came Helen's voice from a distance, 'but… I think… well, I think you made quite an impression. On me too, come to that. It would mean a lot if you could be there.'
Dana's flowers would be white: roses, orchids and lilies; stylish and beautiful, like the woman herself. Six young constables, uniforms gleaming, would carry her to the altar. The back of my throat started to hurt. Tears were rolling down my cheeks and I could no longer see the room around me. 'Of course,' I said. 'Of course I will. Thank you.'
'No, thank you.' Helen's voice had deepened.
'Will it be in Dundee? Do you have a date in mind?'
'No. I'm still waiting to hear from your place about when they can let her go. They need to keep her for a while. I can understand that, of course, I'd just like to get things moving.'
And the vision froze, the uniformed pall-bearers stopped moving, the candles flickered and went out. 'She's still here? In the hospital?'
I didn't expect her to hear me, I could barely hear myself, but the wind must have died at just the right moment because she did.
'Just for a little while. I have to go. I'll see you.'
She was gone. I blinked hard. My face was wet but my eyes were clear. The room that had been swimming just a second ago was thrown into sharp focus. I could see again. I stood up. I could move again. And, praise the Lord, I could think again.
I grasped, in that moment, the true and complete meaning of the word epiphany. Because I'd just had one. There was much I still didn't get, but I understood one thing with perfect and absolute clarity. Sorry, Helen, couldn't oblige after all. I was not going to be one of Dana's mourners, biting lips and dabbing eyes as we watched her elegant, weightless coffin carried to the grave. I would have no part in the age-old ritual of committing her body to the earth or the flames. This was one funeral I was going nowhere near.
Because Dana wasn't dead.