S Bolton - Sacrifice

She thought for a moment. 'I need to drop by the station,' she said. 'Go home. I'll see you there.'

Just after eight in the evening and the Franklin Stone was still busy. I hoped I wouldn't bump into anyone I knew as I left the building. I was seriously disturbed and I'm not a good liar at the best of times.

Kirsten Hawick had to be the woman I'd dug up in my field. Death hadn't changed her much. That delicate, white skin, with just a faint scattering of freckles, the type you only see on Scottish women, had been tanned by the peat, but her face had still been the perfect oval that I'd seen in the photograph.

Yet I'd just called up her hospital medical records. She had indeed been admitted on 18 August 2004 (the better part of a year before the woman in the peat was supposed to have been killed), presenting with severe head trauma and multiple fractures of her upper spine. She'd been pronounced dead at 7.16 p.m. and her body released for burial two days later. There had even been a post mortem.

I stopped at the front desk. At six in the evening the receptionist is replaced by a night porter. He was reading a newspaper and clutching a half-empty coffee mug.

'Hi!' I said, a lot more cheerfully than I felt.

He glanced up, didn't think much of what he saw and went back to his paper.

'Do you by any chance have a street map of the town that I could look at?' I asked.

He shook his head and carried on reading.

I fumbled in my bag, found my hospital ID card and placed it carefully on his newspaper. He looked up then.

'A map,' I said. 'The front desk needs to have one, or you can't do your job properly. If you don't have one, I'll make a complaint on your behalf, through the formal channels, that you're not being kept properly supplied.'

He glared at me. Then he got up, walked to a filing cabinet at the back of the room and searched inside. It took thirty seconds. He brought the map back and opened it.

'What would ye be looking for?'

'St Magnus's Church.'

With a tobacco-stained finger he pointed to a spot on the map.

I looked carefully, trying to memorize the place. It wasn't far from the hospital.

'Thanks,' I said.

He pushed it over towards me. 'Take it,' he offered.

'No thanks,' I said. 'Someone else might need it.'

I turned and left, feeling all warm and cosy inside at having made yet another friend at the hospital.

I was glad it was still light when I arrived at St Magnus's. I had to park on the main road and walk down the short, narrow street, and after dark I'm not sure I'd have found the courage to do so. The area was deserted. Tall, granite buildings towered overhead. Converted to offices, they were empty for the evening, but I had the sense of dozens of windows from which I could be watched.

Opposite the church was a large, old house set in a walled garden. Trees, the like of which I'd never seen before, grew along the cobbled driveway. They looked like some sort of willow, but were a far cry from the tall, graceful trees that line English rivers. None of them was more than about twelve feet high and none had a central trunk. Instead, thick, gnarled branches sprang from the ground, twisting and knotting as they reached upwards. Leaves hadn't started to open and the bare branches reminded me of an enchanted forest in one of the scarier fairy stories.

There was no easy way into the small, walled churchyard. I guessed official visitors had to go through the church. I spent a few seconds plucking up courage and then I leaped over the wall. None of the headstones near by carried dates later than the nineteenth century so I followed the narrow, overgrown path around to the back. The rear left corner looked promising. There were patches of bare ground, the graves were better tended and one grave even had a raised mound and some remains of funeral flowers.

It took me five minutes to find it. A large, rectangular headstone, the granite dark and glossy, the carving simple:

Kirsten Hawick

1975-2004

A most beloved wife.

The mound of earth had been flattened and planted with spring bulbs. Some of the daffodils were still in bloom; others had dried, their petals shrivelled and orange. They needed to be deadheaded, tied in neat bunches and replaced with summer bedding plants but I had the feeling that Joss Hawick probably didn't come here too much. I suppose it's a very individual thing, one's relationship with the grave of a loved one. Some people seem to need the close personal connection they feel with the deceased and can spend hours just standing or sitting by a grave. For others, I guess, a grave is a rather dreadful reminder of the physical process of decay taking place beneath their feet.

I knelt down and, because I really couldn't think of anything else to do, I started knotting the stalks. When I'd finished the grave looked neater, apart from the weeds. After all the rain we'd had recently they came out pretty easily, but my hands were soon filthy.

'Touching,' said a voice.

I spun round to see two men standing over me. Two tall men. The setting sun was directly behind them and for a second I wasn't sure who they were. Then, with a sinking heart, I recognized both. I stood up, determined to brazen it out, and looked down at the grave. 'So, who do you reckon is down here?' I said.

Andy Dunn looked back at me as though I was a difficult child in whom he'd invested an enormous amount of time and energy and who had just let him down, again.

'Kirsten Hawick is buried here,' he said. 'Joss Hawick is extremely distressed. He'll probably make a formal complaint.'

Well, I may not be the sharpest knife in the box but I know bullshit when I hear it.

'I can't imagine what about,' I snapped. 'He was handled with extreme sensitivity and the visit was perfectly legitimate. There was every chance the ring – and I'm referring to the one that I found, by the way, on my land – was his wife's.'

'How's your horse?' asked Gifford, successfully interrupting my train of thought. Christ, had that really only been this morning?

'Please, Kenn,' said Dunn, sounding tired.

I decided to ignore Gifford. Well, at least try. Looking directly at Andy Dunn I said, 'I saw her photograph this evening. It's the same woman. How else do you explain the fact that a ring, bearing the exact date of their wedding and their initials, could be found in my field. In the hole I dug her out of, for God's sake?'

'Tora,' it was Gifford again, 'you saw the corpse only twice. The first time it was covered in peat and you were understandably in shock. The second time was on an autopsy table and, frankly, you didn't look at her face that much.'

I looked at Gifford. His eyes seemed larger and brighter than I remembered. For the first time that evening I started to have doubts.

'Lots of women on these islands look like she did,' he said. 'Red hair, fair skin and small features are typically Scottish. But I knew Kirsten Hawick. For one thing, she was nearly your height. A good five inches taller than the corpse you found.'

I shook my head, but what he was saying was plausible.

He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, speaking quietly, as though he didn't want Dunn to hear. 'Two doctors, a nurse and her husband were present when the machines were turned off. Kirsten Hawick died in our hospital.'

I wasn't giving in easily. 'Then her body was stolen. Probably from the hospital morgue. Someone stole the body because they wanted her heart.'

They looked at me like I was deranged.

'Don't ask me why they wanted it, but someone did. They stole the body, took out the heart and dumped her in my field.'

'The woman in your field had just had a baby. Kirsten Hawick had never been pregnant.'

Well, I had to admit, he had me there. Plus, according to Dr Renney, the heart had been removed while the victim was still alive, not post mortem.