S Bolton - Sacrifice

I stopped moving, even stopped breathing. The kitchen started to go dark around me but I absolutely could not take my eyes off what lay in front of me. For a second or two I even thought I'd lost my mind. What I was looking at was impossible. I'd been in this room not two minutes earlier and there was no way I could have missed seeing… that… on the kitchen table.

The strawberries fell to the floor and the gun nearly did likewise but I managed to catch it. I turned, almost fell over and grabbed the phone. Then I ran, out of the kitchen, across the hall and into the downstairs lavatory. I slammed the door behind me, pulled the ridiculously inadequate bolt and sank to the floor. I pushed my back up against the door and wedged my feet against the opposite wall. Fighting back nausea, I phoned the police.

FOR THE TWENTY MINUTES IT TOOK THEM TO ARRIVE, I barely moved. I grew cold, but didn't think that was the only reason I couldn't stop shaking. Every few minutes nausea reared up but thankfully always stopped short of making me chuck. I phoned Duncan's mobile but he'd switched it off. I didn't leave a message. What the hell would I say?

I wanted, more than anything, to call my dad. To tell him what had happened, to hear him tell me it was going to be OK. Four times, I think, I dialled my parents' number but couldn't bring myself to press the last digit. What on earth could he do, my poor dad? He was hundreds of miles away.

Eventually I heard the cars pulling into the yard and made myself get up to answer the door. Andy Dunn took one look at me and ordered me into the sitting room with a WPC. A blanket materialized and I sat, shivering, trying to answer the questions that she and a detective constable put to me. From the kitchen I heard Dunn's sharp intake of breath, the blasphemous exclamation of the sergeant accompanying him. There was no sign of Dana. Then I heard Dunn on the radio:

'Yeah, we've got a break-in. Some sort of organ left on the kitchen table. Looks like a heart… yeah, looks human…'

I pushed myself up, ignored the protests of the two officers and walked into the kitchen. The heart hadn't been touched. It lay, glistening, in a pool of blood. The smell, strong, metallic, sickening, was flooding the kitchen now. I tried not to breathe too deeply.

'I don't think it's human,' I said.

Dunn stopped talking into the radio, muttered something about getting back and switched it off.

'You don't?' he said. I thought he looked paler than normal, but it could just have been the result of being dragged out of bed in the small hours.

I shook my head. 'I thought it was, at first. But I've had time to think about it…' The truth was, I still wasn't sure. Looking at it again, I couldn't have placed a bet either way.

Another officer entered the room. 'There's no sign of a break-in, Andy. Nothing forced or broken.'

Dunn looked at him and nodded. Then turned back to me. 'So what is it?' he said. 'What is it from? Some sort of animal?'

I swallowed hard. 'Can I weigh it?' I asked.

Dunn shot a glance at his sergeant. 'I'm not sure…' he began.

'You'll need a doctor to confirm it one way or another. Might as well be me.'

Dunn said nothing. I crossed the room to where I'd left my work bag and fumbled inside until I found a packet of surgical gloves. Then I carried my kitchen scales over to the table.

'Mammalian hearts are all very similar in structure,' I said, trying to sound professional, knowing I was failing miserably. 'They have five major pipes, called the great vessels, coming out of them: the superior and the inferior vena cava, two pulmonary trunks and the aorta.' I touched the heart, turned it round. Blood, already starting to clot, poured from it and splattered the table. The WPC gave a faint gasp. I clenched my teeth together and took a deep breath. 'They also have two chambers, the left and right ventricle, both with thick, muscular walls, the left substantially bigger than the right. Also a right and left atrium. They're all here.'

'You don't have to…' began Dunn, but I did. I had to prove to them all, and to myself most of all, that I was not going to be freaked out – not for more than a few minutes anyway – by some- thing I'd seen and handled countless times before. I picked the heart up and put it on the scales.

'Human hearts typically weigh 250-350 grams,' I said. The electronic reading on the scales said 345 grams.

'Within the range,' said Dunn.

'It is,' I agreed. 'And there's an outside chance this is the heart of a big adult male. Over six foot and powerfully built. But if I was putting money on it, I'd say it came from a large pig.'

The relief in the room was almost strong enough to reach out and touch. I was ordered back into the other room and questioned again. More police arrived. They dusted for fingerprints, walked the perimeter of the property with dogs and removed both the heart and the strawberries. Still no sign of Dana.

Eventually, Dunn came to join me on the sofa.

'You need to get some rest now,' he said, almost gently. 'I'm leaving a couple of constables in the house for the rest of the night. You'll be perfectly safe.'

'Thank you,' I managed.

'Duncan's back on Saturday, right?'

I nodded.

'You might want to find somewhere else to stay tomorrow. This is almost certainly some sort of sick practical joke but I don't like the fact that whoever got in here did so without breaking in. We'll be checking who might have keys to the house. A change of locks probably isn't a bad idea.'

I nodded again.

He reached out, touched my arm, seemed unsure what to do next and ended up giving it a feeble pat. Then he got up. 'Try to get some rest, Miss Hamilton,' he said again. Then he left.

I went upstairs thinking that, as practical jokes go, it was the least funny I'd ever heard of. And besides, it didn't feel like a joke to me. It felt as though someone was trying to scare the shit out of me.

'TOR, I FOUND THE RING.'

'What? You did what?'

It was seven forty-five the next morning; I was running late and driving too fast. Duncan had called to say he had an extra meeting scheduled – a really important one – and wouldn't be home till Saturday evening, if that was OK. He'd sounded so excited about the potential deal, so fired up, that I couldn't bring myself to tell him about what had happened the night before. I couldn't ruin a really big opportunity for him. I'd be OK for another night, I told myself. I could always sleep at the hospital.

So instead, I'd told him about all the stuff that had happened the previous day, things that had seemed so important at the time: finding the ring on my boot, checking the various registers and visiting both the Hawick family home and the graveyard. Speaking far too fast, praying he wouldn't notice how shaken I still was, I'd even told him about my plans to carry out an illicit search of dental records. He'd listened patiently until I'd just about done, then dropped his bombshell.

'I found it,' he was saying, 'months ago.'

I couldn't take it in. The ring had been stuck to the bottom of my Wellington. It had been buried beneath six feet of peat with the dead body of its owner.

'Where? How?' I managed.

'In the bottom field. Last November, I think, before you came out. I was laying concrete to put the fence posts in. I just saw it, lying on a pile of earth. I must have dug it up.'

'But, what… you never said!'

'I didn't give it much thought. I wasn't even sure what it was. It was filthy and I wanted to get the job finished. I threw it into my tool box and forgot about it.'

And suddenly, it all made complete sense: the ring had been in Duncan's toolbox. I'd dislodged it when I'd been looking for some- thing to cut the wire around Charles's leg and it had landed, to be found shortly afterwards, on the stair. It had been nowhere near my Wellington and – more importantly – nowhere near the grave. The fence that Duncan had built around our bottom field was a good hundred yards downhill from where I'd tried to bury Jamie. The ring was a total red herring after all.