Sacrifice (31 page)

‘OK,’ she said at last, ‘back to the missing women. You think while they were being held prisoner they had babies. Then they were killed. Their bodies were brought back to the mainland and buried in your field.’

Helen stopped.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s what I think happened.’

She said nothing.

‘It’s exactly like the legend,’ I rushed on. ‘The Kunal Trows steal human wives. Nine days after their sons are born – it’s always a son because they’re a race of males – the mothers die.’

‘Tora . . .’

‘Melissa Gair was killed between a week to ten days after giving birth.’

‘Whoa, whoa . . . Is it remotely possible to fake death in a hospital? Really?’

‘Not so long ago, I’d have said definitely not. Now, I think it could be.’

‘How?’

‘Quite a lot of people would have to be involved:
several of the medical staff, maybe an administrator, definitely the pathologist. I’m not sure you could fool a trained medic, but a layman, especially a distressed relative . . . if there was a lot of fuss, plenty of distractions . . . and if the patient was very still, maybe heavily drugged into a coma-like state.’

Helen was whirling the wine round in her glass, staring at the patterns it made. She was giving nothing away but I sensed she was listening.

‘And I think they use hypnosis,’ I went on, thinking what the hell, in for a penny . . .

She stopped twirling. ‘Hypnosis?’ she said. Seeing the look on her face, only the fact that she hadn’t already clapped me in handcuffs and phoned her colleagues gave me the courage to go on.

‘Hypnosis isn’t hokum,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s been scientifically proven. Plenty of psychiatrists practise it. You can alter someone’s perception by planting ideas in their head. I think it just possible that a grieving relative could be shown an apparently lifeless body and be led to believe that person was dead.’

Helen was silent. Then her head started to shake. She wasn’t buying it.

‘All the stories I’ve read emphasize the Trows’ ability to hypnotize people.’

‘They’re just stories.’ She looked incredulous. As well she might. But she hadn’t been in my shoes for the last ten days.

‘I don’t think so any more. I’m sure my boss at the hospital can do it. There was an incident a short
while ago with my horse. He put me in some sort of trance; made me do exactly what he told me. And I think he’s done it a couple of times at work too. He puts his hands on my shoulders, looks me in the eye and talks to me. And my mood just changes. I feel calm and happy to do whatever he says.’

Helen’s head was still now, but I couldn’t tell whether she was convinced or not. ‘And there are drugs that can do what you said – make someone look dead?’

‘Absolutely. Just about any sedative, if you take enough of it, will drop the blood pressure so low that finding a peripheral pulse would be all but impossible. It’s risky, of course; you could easily give the patient too much and end up killing them. But a skilled anaesthetist would probably manage it.’

I gave her time to think about it. And I thought about the skilled anaesthetist I knew.

‘How much of this did you discuss with Dana?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t get chance. But I left messages. I told her about the Trow legends. And I know she took me seriously because she has all the books upstairs. She didn’t say anything to you when she called?’

Helen sighed and took another gulp of wine. It was arguable which of us was drinking fastest. We needed to slow down. I, especially, needed to slow down.

‘No,’ she said. ‘She wanted to see me. I could tell she was worried. She didn’t want to talk on the phone.’

‘She learned too much,’ I said, wondering if I’d
ever be able to deal with that knowledge. Because of me, because of the messages I’d left her, Dana got too close to whatever was going on up here. She’d paid the ultimate price for my meddling.

As if sensing my thoughts, Helen put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m not dismissing the stats you found, but I’m struggling with this Trow business. We still only have one body. Let’s work with that, shall we?’ She stood up. ‘Come on, let’s see what Dana has to say about all this.’

I looked up at her stupidly. What was she planning, a séance?

‘Let’s go and check her computer. I know her passwords.’

I shook my head. ‘Her desk is empty. The police took it.’

‘Oh, you think?’ she said, and turned to go upstairs.

28

IN THE MAIN
bedroom helen hopped up on to a chair in front of the large oak wardrobes and opened the middle of three cupboards that ran along the top. Then she handed down a small canvas suitcase trimmed with red leather. Something large slid around inside. She pulled open the zip and took out a small laptop computer that I recognized immediately.

Helen grinned at me but there was no light in her eyes.

‘The desktop belonged to the Force. This was her own. Dana always copied everything important. Really sensitive stuff she only ever put on here.’

She carried it through to the spare room and fiddled around with leads for a few seconds before opening the laptop. The screen sprang to life. I glanced towards the window. The blind was drawn but I was sure traces of light would be seen outside.

Helen was already busying her way through
Dana’s filing system but I was too edgy to sit down and join her.

‘Helen.’

She looked up.

‘You should know the police are almost certainly looking for me.’

She leaned back in her chair and raised her eyebrows. It was such a Dana-like gesture that I didn’t know whether to smile or sob.

‘They want to question me about what happened here today – I mean yesterday. I sort of checked myself out of hospital earlier. Unofficially.’

‘Do they know you have a key to this house?’

I shook my head.

‘They’ll probably work it out. We need to get a move on.’

I joined her at the computer. We were looking at a list of files, each one numbered.

‘Dana gave her cases different numbers from the official ones,’ Helen explained. She was clicking on the bottom of the pile, where the more recent cases were likely to be.

‘She was strong on security,’ I said, remembering Kenn Gifford’s comments about Dana’s paranoia.

‘She was right to be,’ snapped Helen. ‘The average nick would make a sieve look watertight. Here we go.’

Case number Xcr56381 opened up. It was a folder containing a number of files. As I scanned down the list something heavy and cold started to grow in my chest.

The first file was named
Missing Persons
. Sub-files covered
Shetland, Orkney, Scotland
and
UK.
The second file was named
Babies
. Sub-files were called
Franklin Stone Deliveries
, and
Tronal Deliveries
. Then came
Financial Records
. In that section was a series of names: some I didn’t recognize, several I did.
Andrew Dunn, Kenn Gifford, Richard Guthrie, Duncan Guthrie, Tora Hamilton
. Not Stephen Gair, though; he had a file section all to himself, with a sub-file for his firm,
Gair, Carter, Gow.

‘Spouse is always the first suspect,’ said Helen, opening up the files on Gair. ‘Dana wouldn’t neglect the basics.’

There were a few personal details; his education, early years practising; the dates of his two marriages, to Melissa in 1999 and then to an Alison Jenner in 2005. Most of it, though, was work related.

We looked first at a summary of information about Gair’s firm of solicitors: Gair, Carter, Gow, based in Lerwick but with offices in Oban and Stirling. Most of their business seemed to come from handling commercial contracts for the larger local oil and shipping companies. I noticed, with a pang of alarm, that Gair acted for Duncan’s company and, with no real surprise, that they were legal advisers to the hospital. They also had departments that dealt with family law, conveyancing and trust and probate.

A pulse behind my left temple was threatening to become painful as we slowly ploughed through page after page of statements from the First National Bank of Scotland. Gair, Carter, Gow had numer
ous accounts. Each of its three branches had both a commercial account and a deposit account; after a few minutes it was clear the firm held substantial reserves. There were also six client accounts, sorted according to type of client.

‘How the hell did Dana get all this stuff?’ I asked. ‘I can’t believe Stephen Gair just handed it over. Could she have got a warrant this quickly?’

‘Unlikely,’ said Helen, without looking up.

‘So . . . how?’

‘Best not to ask,’ said Helen. She closed down one client account and opened up another. Then she paused and looked at me. ‘Let’s just say Dana wasn’t as strong on procedure as she was on security. In fact it was her unorthodox approach that got her transferred from Manchester to Dundee a few years ago. I was told to keep an eye on her, make her see the error of her ways. Needless to say, I failed.’

‘She got all this illegally?’

‘Almost certainly. There’s very little Dana didn’t know about computers. She did her Ph.D. in software creation. She had a particular expertise when it came to hacking into financial institutions.’

‘How? How did she do it?’

Helen sighed. ‘Tora, I don’t know. I really didn’t like to ask too much. But my guess is that when she moved here, she would have opened accounts for herself in every bank and financial institution based on the island. She’d have visited them frequently, getting to know the staff, copying down account numbers and sort codes. She’d have tried to work
out passwords by watching people type on their keyboards. When she was at your house, did you ever notice her looking at private papers?’

‘Yes,’ I said, remembering a time I’d seen her staring at our kitchen noticeboard where we pin our most recent bank and credit-card statements.

‘She had an amazing memory for numbers. And given how much she knew about writing software, she’d have known how to bypass most security systems.’

Well, Dana the villain. Who would have thought it?

‘But,’ I was struggling with my knowledge of the law, ‘if information is obtained illegally, doesn’t it jeopardize an investigation?’

‘Only if you try and use it. Which Dana would never have done. Once she knew what was going on, she’d have found proof using normal routes. OK, look, Dana has put several flags on this one client. Shiller Drilling. Heard of them?’

‘Vaguely. I think it’s one of the larger oil companies.’

Helen was looking at one of Gair, Carter, Gow’s client accounts for the previous financial year. Dana had flagged numerous entries, all relating to Shiller Drilling.

‘Law firms have to keep separate client accounts by law, you know that?’ asked Helen. ‘Any money the firm handles but which belongs to a client has to be kept separate from the firm’s own money.’

I must have looked a bit stupid because she took a deep breath and tried again.

‘If you buy a house, you hand over money to your solicitor. He keeps it in his client account until it’s time to pay it to the vendor. It’s supposed to ensure transparency and accountability.’

I nodded. ‘This money we’re looking at – it belongs to clients, to Shiller Drilling, for example, not to Gair, Carter, Gow.’

‘Exactly. Looks to me like Shiller Drilling were realizing quite a lot of assets that year. Look . . .’

Helen pointed out the first three entries that Dana had highlighted.

11 April TRF

15 June TRF

23 June TRF

There were more; too many to count at a glance, all apparently relating to income from land and property sales. At the bottom of the sheet, Dana had written a footnote.

NB: Total year’s incomings re Shiller Drilling – $9.075 million US dollars, £5.5 million sterling (current exchange rate). Cross Reference 3.

Helen called up the search facility and typed in ‘Cross Reference 3’. It took a couple of seconds
and then another page of figures filled the screen. Helen flicked to the bottom of the page. ‘Manganate Minerals Inc. Annual Report and Accounts.’ Dana had cross-referenced Gair, Carter, Gow’s client account with the annual report of a . . . mineral company?

Helen drummed her fingers on the desk. Then she flicked the screen back up.

‘Of course. Manganate whatsit is a group holding company. Shiller Drilling is part of the group.’

She was right. Shiller Drilling was there, tucked away in the left-hand column, headed ‘Income from Property and Land Sales’. Helen traced her finger horizontally across the screen. According to the annual report, Shiller Drilling had sold $4.54 million of land and property that year. Helen immediately flicked to another icon and opened up a calculator. She pressed a few keys and grinned at me. I was having trouble following. The calculator was showing 2,751,515.

‘And what would you expect that to be?’ Helen asked.

I was catching up slowly. ‘Five and a half million?’ I ventured, remembering the note Dana had made at the bottom of Gair, Carter, Gow’s bank statement. ‘It should be five and a half million pounds sterling.’

‘Clever girl,’ said Helen. All traces of her weariness seemed to have vanished. ‘So, Gair, Carter, Gow’s client account shows some two and three-quarter million pounds of income from overseas land and property sales that does not appear on the client
company’s annual report. So where is that money really coming from?’

‘Different accounting period?’

She looked at me sharply.

‘Good point. So if it’s just a discrepancy of accounting periods, you would expect to find the missing millions . . . where, exactly?’

I thought for a second. ‘The previous accounting period? Or maybe the subsequent one?’

She nodded. ‘I can’t believe Dana didn’t have those.’ She started flicking again and in a few seconds we had bank statements for the same client account for the previous financial year. Another footnote from Dana: