S Bolton - Sacrifice

And the timing just doesn't fit,' added Dunn, imitating Gifford's gentle tones. 'I've checked with Stephen Renney and the Inverness pathology team. They've had a chance to examine the body extensively and to carry out all sorts of tests on the peat around her. The woman from your field could not have been dead since 2004.'

I looked down at the grave. 'There's one way to know for sure.'

Well, that at least dented Dunn's annoying self-control. He flushed and glared at me. 'Don't even think about it. We are not about to start exhuming graves. Do you have any idea how much distress that causes? To the whole community, not just the family concerned.'

Gifford's hand left my shoulder and slid down my arm, my sore arm. He squeezed gently and I had to grit my teeth not to flinch. 'This is exactly what I was afraid of. Tora, I don't blame you, but this has all become too personal. I want you to think again about taking some time off.'

At least he wasn't firing me yet. But I wasn't about to take time off. There were some difficult deliveries coming up and the hospital needed me. I shook my head.

'OK.' He glanced at Andy Dunn, as if to say, I've done my best. You see what I have to deal with?

Maybe he was right, maybe I did need to detach at bit. Forget about the murder, just concentrate on doing my job and let the police do theirs.

'You have a clinic in the morning, don't you?' Gifford was saying.

I nodded.

'I'd like to see you just before. Can you be in by eight?'

I nodded again, feeling like a delinquent teenager whose parents were being just too understanding.

Gifford smiled at me. He laid his arm along my shoulders and pushed me gently down the path.

'Come on, I'll walk you to your car.'

Andy Dunn followed us in silence as we walked down the path and left the churchyard. As I drove away, I could see them both, in the rear-view mirror, standing in the road and watching me.

When I arrived home a shadowy figure was huddled on my door- step. I shrieked as it moved towards me.

'It's OK, it's only me.' Dana stepped out into the light. The body is slow to catch up with the brain on these occasions. Even as I knew there was nothing to worry about, my nerve endings felt as though someone had administered a thousand tiny electric shocks. I looked round.

'Where's your car?'

'Down the road.'

I stared at her stupidly. 'Why?' I managed.

'I don't want anyone seeing it outside your house. We arranged to meet here, remember?' she prompted.

'Yes, but… you obviously haven't seen your DI this evening.'

'Of course I've seen him. Why, have you?'

I nodded. 'He found me in St Magnus's churchyard. At Kirsten's grave.'

Her eyebrows shot up. 'Did he now?'

'He explained everything. He and Kenn Gifford.'

She looked at me with both amusement and pity on her face. 'And you fell for it? Tora Hamilton, you are not the woman I took you for.'

'I SAW HER GRAVE, DANA. IT'S JUST NOT POSSIBLE.'

We were sitting at my kitchen table, doors locked, blinds drawn. I was tired and had an uncomfortable sense of being drawn back into something I'd been happy to leave behind just half an hour ago. We were drinking hot, strong coffee. I'd offered red wine but Dana had shaken her head. 'We need to think,' she'd said. Scary word: we. Suddenly, we were accomplices, working against clear instructions from our superiors. We were arguably being foolish, possibly about to do considerable harm and definitely in for a whole heap of trouble when – not if- we were found out.

I'd also offered food and Dana had given me a vague look. I wasn't sure if it meant yes or no. I was hungry and acutely conscious of cold ham in the fridge and fresh bread in the larder.

'Everything is possible. I just can't see how they did it.'

'Who exactly are they? You're talking about my boss. He's a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, for heaven's sake. There were other people in the room with her when the machines were turned off. Kirsten Hawick died. Nearly a year before our victim did.'

Dana clicked her tongue. 'Yeah, yeah… I've heard all that too. But – just to put it another way – you find a wedding ring on the same patch of ground you found a corpse; the inscription inside suggests it belongs to a dead woman, one Mrs Hawick, who not only fits the age and ethnic group of our victim, but also, judging by her wedding photos, bears a reasonable resemblance to her. And we're being told it's just coincidence. How likely does that seem to you?'

Not remotely, was the honest answer. But the evidence for Kirsten's death had been pretty convincing. I stood up. I was not going to be intimidated out of making a sandwich in my own home. I got out the ham, butter and bread.

'I felt such an idiot,' I said. 'God knows what they thought when they saw me digging up weeds on her grave.'

'Does it strike you as odd that the two of them should follow you to the churchyard? How did they even know you'd gone there? And why would it bother them?' Dana stopped, thought for a second, then said, 'Do I sound paranoid?'

I glanced over my shoulder. 'Only totally.'

'Thanks.' To her credit, she managed a smile.

'Welcome.' I bent down again, fumbling in the back of the fridge for the mayonnaise. When I straightened up she was serious again.

'There's something I want you to do,' she said.

Just when I'd thought it was safe. 'What?'

She reached into a briefcase and pulled out a folder of thin, green cardboard. From inside she removed a sheet of black and white transparent film.

'This is a dental X-ray that was taken of our corpse. My team have been checking it against records of women on the missing persons list. No matches so far, although obviously not all records are available to us.'

I brought the food back to the table and went to get cutlery. 'What do you want me to do?'

'I have nagged and pleaded and begged, but DI Dunn will not even consider asking Joss Hawick to release his wife's dental records for comparison.'

I really couldn't see where she was going with this. 'So…'

'You should be able to find them.'

Back at the table, I started buttering bread. I shook my head. 'Most dentists work privately. No one else can access their records. Even if we knew who Kirsten's dentist was, he couldn't release them to me without Joss Hawick's permission.'

'Tora, you're thinking of England. It's different up here. Most people use an NHS dentist. Plus, there was an IT pilot scheme carried out here a year ago. All the islands' dental records were computerized and made centrally available.'

'I still don't see…'

'There's a dental unit attached to your hospital. Kirsten's records will be on the hospital computer system. You can access them.'

She was probably right.

'I'm not a dentist,' I said lamely.

'You've studied anatomy. You know how to read X-rays. You'd have a better chance of seeing a match than I would.'

Following a hunch was one thing, asking someone you barely knew to carry out an illegal search was another. What wasn't she telling me?

'Will you do it?' she asked.

I didn't know.

'If there's no match, that's it. The ring is a red herring and we waste no more time on it.'

It was worth it, surely, to be able to close the chapter. I could prove to Dana that the corpse was not Kirsten and that would be the end of it.

'OK, I'll do it tomorrow.'

I indicated the food. 'Help yourself Dana ignored the ham and took a slice of bread and butter.

I, on the other hand, was no longer hungry.

I'M NOT SURE AT WHAT POINT IN THE NIGHT I STARTED TO suspect that there was someone in the room with me. Sometime around two a.m., I guess, because that, typically, is when I'm in my deepest sleep and find it hardest to wake up. Ten years of being on call through the night and you get to know your sleep rhythms.