Sacrifice (7 page)

He sat back in his chair and I felt a sense of relief, although he hadn’t been anywhere close to touching me. ‘Tora,’ he said. ‘Unusual name. Sounds like it should be an island name, but I can’t say I’ve heard it before.’

‘I was christened Thora,’ I said, telling the truth for the first time in years. ‘As in Thora Hird. When I got brave enough I dropped the H.’

‘Damnedest thing I ever saw,’ he said. ‘I wonder what happened to the heart.’

I sat back too. ‘Damnedest thing I ever saw,’ I muttered. ‘I wonder what happened to the baby.’

4

‘
TORA, WHAT THE
hell were you thinking of?’

Our sitting room was gloomy. The sun appeared to have called it a day and Duncan hadn’t bothered with the light switch. He was sitting in a battered old leather chair, one of our ‘finds’ from our bargain-hunting days around Camden market when we were first married. I stood in the doorway, looking at his outline, not seeing his face properly in the shadows.

‘Trying to bury a horse by yourself,’ he went on. ‘Do you know how much those animals weigh? You could have been killed.’

I’d already thought of that. A moment’s carelessness, a tumbling earth-mover and I could have become the body in the peat. It could have been me lying on the steel trolley today, being probed and measured and weighed by the good Dr Renney.

‘And it’s illegal,’ he added.

Oh, give me a break. It had been illegal in Wiltshire too, but when had that ever stopped a Hamilton
woman? Mum and I had buried dozens of horses over the years. I wasn’t about to stop now.

‘You’re home early,’ I said, pointing out the obvious.

‘Andy Dunn phoned me. Thought I should get back here. Jesus! Have you seen the state of the field?’

I turned my back on Duncan and walked through to the kitchen. I tested the weight of the kettle and flicked the switch. Beside it stood our bottle of Talisker. The level seemed to have gone down considerably. But then again, I’d just come from the pub myself, hadn’t I? Who was I to get preachy?

A movement behind me made me jump. Duncan had followed me into the kitchen.

‘Sorry,’ he said, putting his arms around me. ‘It was a bit of a shock. Not quite the welcome home I’d expected.’

Suddenly, it all seemed more manageable. Duncan, after all, was supposed to be on my side. I turned round so that I could put my arms around his waist and drop my head against his chest. The skin of his neck smelled warm, musty; like paper fresh off the mill.

‘I tried to phone,’ I said lamely.

He let his chin drop so that it rested on the top of my head. It was our favourite hug pose, familiar, comforting.

‘I’m sorry about Jamie,’ he said.

‘You hated Jamie,’ I replied, nuzzling into his neck and thinking that one of the best things about Duncan was that he was so much taller than I. (One
of the worst was that his jeans were two sizes smaller than mine.)

‘Did not.’

‘Did too. You called him the Horse from Hades.’

‘Only because he repeatedly tried to bring about my demise.’

I leaned back to look him in the face and was struck, for the millionth time, by how bright blue his eyes were. And by how gorgeous a contrast they made with his pale skin and spiky black hair. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, let me think. How about the time he got spooked by some cyclists on Hazledown Hill, leaped into the air, spun a 180-degree turn, shot across the road in front of the vicar’s new convertible, and took off down the hill with you yelling “Pull him up, pull the fucker up!” at the top of your voice.’

‘He didn’t like bikes.’

‘Wasn’t too keen on them myself after that.’

I laughed, something I couldn’t have imagined myself doing just half an hour earlier. Nobody, my whole life, has ever been able to make me laugh the way Duncan can. I fell in love with Duncan for a whole host of reasons: the way his grin seems just a little too wide for his face; the speed at which he can run; his complete refusal to take himself seriously; the fact that everyone likes him and he likes everyone, but me most of all. As I say, there were a whole load of reasons why it all started, but it was the laughing that kept me in there.

‘And what about that time we were crossing the Kennet and he decided to roll?’

‘He was hot.’

‘So he gave me a cold bath. Oh, and—’

‘OK, OK, you’ve made your point.’

He tightened his arms around me. ‘I’m still sorry.’

‘I know. Thanks.’

He pushed me away from him and we made eye contact. He ran the side of his hand down my cheek.

‘Are you OK?’ He wasn’t talking about Jamie any more.

I nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘Want to talk about it?’

‘I don’t think I can. What they did to her, Dunc . . . I can’t.’ I couldn’t go on, couldn’t talk about what I’d seen. But that didn’t mean I could stop thinking about it. I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to stop thinking about it.

Women in the first few days after childbirth – especially their first childbirth – are intensely vulnerable, often physical and emotional wrecks. Their bodies are weakened, thrown into confusion by the trauma of delivery and by rampant hormones, racing round all over the place. Feeding at all hours, they soon become exhausted. Plus, they’re often reeling from the shock of the overwhelming connection they feel to the tiny life they’ve just produced.

There are good reasons why new mothers look and act like zombies, why they burst into tears at the drop of a hat, why they so often think normal
life will be, for ever more, beyond them. To take a woman in this state, pin her down and carve up her flesh was the most unspeakable act of callousness I’d ever imagined.

He shushed me and held me close again. We stood, not talking, for what felt like a long time. Then, almost out of habit, I raised one finger to stroke the hair at the nape of his neck. It had been cut recently and was very short. It felt like silk.

He shivered. Well, he had been away for four days.

‘The police will want to talk to you,’ I said, straightening up. I was hungry and needed a bath.

Duncan’s arms dropped to his side. ‘They already have.’ He walked over to the fridge and opened the door. He squatted down, peering inside, more in hope than expectation.

‘When?’ I asked.

‘Did it all over the phone,’ he said. ‘Dunn said he shouldn’t need to bother me again. She was almost certainly buried before we came here.’

‘They were asking about the previous owners.’

‘Yeah, I know. I said I’d drop the deeds off at the station tomorrow.’ Duncan stood up again. He carried a plate on which sat a half-eaten chicken carcass. He crossed to the table, put it down and returned to the fridge. ‘Tor, we need to try and forget about it now.’

Twice in two hours someone had told me that. Forget about the fact that you dug up a corpse – minus heart, minus newborn baby – in your back field this afternoon.

‘Dunc, they’re digging up the field. They’re looking for more bodies. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to find that a bit difficult to ignore.’

Duncan shook his head, the way a fond parent does when his child has become over-excited about something. He was preparing salad and I didn’t like the way his knife was slicing into a red pepper.

‘There aren’t any more bodies and they’ll be finished by the end of tomorrow.’

‘How can they possibly know that?’

‘They have instruments that can tell. Don’t ask me exactly how it works. You probably understand it better than I do. Apparently, decomposing flesh gives off heat and these gizmos can pick it up. Like metal detectors.’

Except any bodies out there were buried in peat. They weren’t decomposing. ‘I thought they’d have to dig up the whole field.’

‘Apparently not. The wonders of modern technology. They’ve already done one sweep and found nothing. Not even a dead rabbit. They’ll do another tomorrow, just to be sure, then they’re out of here. Do you want something to drink?’

I filled a jug with water from the tap and added ice from the freezer. One benefit of living on Shetland was that we were saving a fortune on bottled water. Oh, and the local smoked salmon was pretty good. Apart from that, I was struggling.

‘That wasn’t the impression Detective Sergeant Tulloch gave me. She thought they’d be here for some time.’

‘Yes, well, reading between the lines, I think the sergeant has a tendency to get a touch overenthusiastic. Bit too anxious to make her mark and not afraid to set a few hares running in the meantime.’

Which hadn’t been the impression I’d had of Dana Tulloch. She’d struck me as someone who played her cards quite close to her chest.

‘You seem to have got very chummy with DI Dunn on the strength of one phone call.’

‘Oh, we know each other from way back.’

I should have known. I felt a touch of annoyance that Duncan, who’d played no part in the discovery of the body, should have been given far more information than I had, purely on the strength of being a fellow islander.

We sat down. I buttered some bread. Duncan served himself a large helping of cold chicken. Some of the flesh was still pink and jelly had congealed around it. At the sight of it, the nausea I’d been fighting in the post-mortem room reared up again. Great, after nearly fifteen years in medicine, I was getting squeamish. I helped myself to salad and a piece of cheese.

‘Were there any reporters when you got home?’ I asked. By the time I’d arrived, just before nine, the place had been deserted apart from one solitary copper standing guard. I’d braced myself to run the gauntlet of press questioning and been pleasantly surprised.

Duncan shook his head. ‘Nope. Dunn’s trying
to keep a lid on the whole thing. Apparently under pressure from his Super. Thinks it might be bad for business, just as the summer tourist season starts.’

‘Jesus, not again. I had the same thing from Gifford just now. Bad for hospital PR. I think you people need to get your priorities sorted out. This is not the people’s republic of Shetland. You are remotely answerable to the outside world.’

Duncan had stopped eating. He was looking at me, but I didn’t think he was still listening.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Gifford,’ he replied. The shine had gone from his eyes.

‘My new boss. He’s back. I met him just now.’ Mentioning the drink didn’t seem like a terribly good idea.

Duncan stood up, emptied his glass of pure Shetland water into the sink and poured an inch of neat Talisker into it. He drank, looking out of the window, his back to me.

‘Can’t help thinking there’s a story here,’ I said.

Duncan didn’t answer.

‘Anything I need to know?’ I tried again.

Duncan muttered something that included more than one expletive and the phrase ‘should have known’. Unlike me, he doesn’t normally swear much. By this stage I was shamefully, gleefully curious.

He turned. ‘I’m going for a bath,’ he said as he left the room.

I made myself wait ten minutes before I followed him. I wandered back into our sitting room. There
was one bookcase, its contents somewhat sparse. I’m really not much of a reader. Duncan tells anyone who’ll listen that I won’t consider a novel not written by someone called Francis (Dick or Claire – take your pick). Duncan is marginally better, but not exactly one for the classics. He had, however, inherited his grandfather’s library and there were a few volumes by Dickens, Trollope, Austen and Hawthorne on the top shelf. I looked closely. Nothing by Walter Scott.

So I switched on the TV just as the late news was starting. If I’d been hoping for a starring role I’d have been disappointed. The last item was a twenty-second piece about the discovery of a corpse in some peat land several miles outside Lerwick. The location hadn’t been specified, nor had there been any footage of our home. Instead, DI Andy Dunn, standing outside Lerwick police headquarters, had said the minimum possible whilst still using words. He did, though, finish with a speculative comment about the possibility of an archaeological find – I guessed the recording had been made before we’d met Stephen Renney. It was an obvious attempt to play down the situation but I assumed he knew what he was doing.

When I judged I’d left enough time I went upstairs. Duncan was in the bath with his eyes closed. He’d filled the tub so full that water was trickling down the overflow pipe. I knew from experience that the temperature would be pretty close to forty degrees. Duncan and I never shared a bath. About a year ago, before the sperm tests, I’d wondered if Duncan’s hot
baths were behind our failure to conceive. The effect of hot water on sperm is well known and I’d suggested he might try soaking his testicles in ice water for five minutes a day. He’d looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘How?’ I was still thinking about it. Maybe one day I’d invent a device for the convenient cold soaking of the male genitalia. Western fertility levels would soar and I’d make my fortune.

I leaned against the sink. Duncan made no sign of knowing I was there.

‘You can’t just leave it at that, you know. I have to work with the man. We’re probably expected to entertain him and his wife for dinner over the next couple of months.’

‘Gifford isn’t married.’

I felt a jolt of something like relief mixed with alarm. Had I been hinting? And if I had, had Duncan spotted it?

‘What is it?’ I tried again.

Duncan opened his eyes but didn’t look at me. ‘We were at school together. I didn’t like him. The feeling was mutual.’

‘He’s from Unst?’

Duncan shook his head. ‘No, I’m talking about secondary school.’ That made more sense. On Shetland, children from the more remote islands often attend secondary school in Lerwick, either boarding during the week or staying with relatives.

‘Is that it?’ I said.

Duncan sat up. He looked me up and down. ‘You coming in?’

I leaned across, dipped my hand in the water and took it out again quickly. ‘No,’ I said.

Duncan picked up the loofah and held it out to me. It looked like some sort of kinky invitation. If I picked it up, we would have sex. If I didn’t, I was rejecting him and would have to deal with sulks for the next couple of days. I thought for a second. My period was due any day but you can never be sure about these things. It was worth a try. I reached out for the loofah. Duncan leaned forward towards the tap, exposing his sleek, strong back.