S Bolton - Sacrifice

'What are you saying?'

He walked over to my window. 'She's believed to be seriously in debt,' he said to the seagulls outside. Then he turned round to me again. 'She can't stop spending money. Money she doesn't have. And she can't work as part of a team. She's secretive. Drives Dunn up the wall and makes her very unpopular with her colleagues. If people question her methods, she always assumes the problem lies with them; that there's some sort of conspiracy to get at her.'

I remembered her actions the previous evening, working with me rather than any of her colleagues, not letting them know where she was or what she was up to. It had seemed odd at the time; now it made more sense. And that was before her accusations against Gifford and Dunn, or her persuading me to carry out an illegal search of confidential records. Oh great, my new best friend was a fruit-cake!

'Dana Tulloch needs professional help, in my view,' said Gifford. 'You, on the other hand, need to come to terms with what's happened and move on.'

'You mentioned that before.'

And it bears repeating. This case may never be solved.'

I looked at him and shook my head.

'Ask any police officer,' he continued. 'The chances of solving a murder are always greatest in the first twenty-four hours. Just one day goes by and the trail starts to go cold. This trail is two years cold and our friend down in the morgue matches no one on the missing- persons list and no one who had a baby on the islands that year. She almost certainly wasn't local.'

He was right, of course. The grown-ups are always right in the end. He looked at his watch. 'It's nearly nine. You have a clinic this morning?'

I nodded. A busy one. Ten appointments, followed by two planned Caesars this afternoon and discharging Janet and Tamary Kennedy.

'I'd better go too. Mr Stephenson will be wondering where I am.'

He was in the doorway when I called him back. 'Kenn, what does KT mean?'

He turned. 'Excuse me?'

'KT. I found it on the system, recorded against births in summer 2005.'

Light seemed to dawn. 'Oh yes, I asked that too. It means Keloid Trauma.'

'What?'

'Oh, it's a term we coined up here. You won't have come across it before. Hold on, let me think for a minute…'

He leaned against the doorframe, staring up at the ceiling. I watched him. The word 'keloid' refers to an over-reaction of fibrous skin tissue that sometimes occurs after surgery or injury. It can lead to a thickened or pronounced scar.

'There was a study here a while ago,' Gifford said, after a second or two. 'One of our graduate students led it. I was away at the time and can't say I've actually read the paper, so I'm going to sound a bit vague. Oh, I've got it. There's a genetic condition up here that results in severe scarring after perineum tearing in childbirth. When the next child comes along it can cause problems. Hence, Keloid Trauma.'

'Sounds like something I should watch out for,' I said, relieved that KT, at least, was a mystery I could cross off the list.

'I'll try and dig the paperwork out for you.' He turned to the door, stopped and then looked back over his shoulder.

'Duncan doesn't like me because I stole his girlfriend.' He grinned at me: a thin, mirthless elongation of his lips. 'More than once.'

I THANKED MY LUCKY STARS FOR A BUSY CLINIC THAT MORNING and for the fact that this really isn't a job you can do with your mind elsewhere. For four hours I monitored foetal heartbeats, measured blood pressure, checked for excess sugar in urine and examined abdomens in various stages of distension. I discussed, with a straight face, whether damp panties were likely to be the result of waters breaking early or late-pregnancy incontinence and I resisted throwing up my hands in despair at the woman in the thirty-eighth week of her fourth pregnancy who wanted me to describe the exact sensations felt during a Braxton Hicks contraction. Well, you tell me, love.

During my half-hour lunch break I grabbed a sandwich from the hospital canteen. Not feeling up to small talk, I took it back to my office and, with nothing to immediately occupy me, started getting flashbacks of the night before. My sandwich – rare roast beef – no longer seemed a particularly wise choice. Searching for something to take my mind off blood-covered organs, I found myself thinking of Kirsten Hawick, who'd been killed riding a horse not far away. I've been riding since I was seven and consider myself, modesty aside, pretty good. But hearing about Kirsten's accident had bothered me. The best of riders can be caught unawares and horses are notoriously unpredictable, especially on the roads. I wanted to know more. Had she been at fault? What had happened to the driver of the lorry? I switched on my computer and accessed the Internet.

The Shetland Times is not the only newspaper on the islands, but it's the one claiming the highest circulation. I found its website easily enough. I put 'Kirsten Hawick' and 'Riding Accidents' into the search facility and pressed Go. A few seconds later I was reading the account, from August 2004, of how a supermarket delivery lorry took a blind corner on the B9074 just a little too fast and of how the driver had been unable to stop when he found himself almost on top of the woman on the large grey horse. Kirsten had been pronounced dead at the hospital and there was a quote – bland and sympathetic – from the senior registrar. The police were considering a charge of causing death by dangerous driving.

There would be follow-up stories in later issues of the paper but I wasn't interested. I was staring at the photograph of Kirsten that accompanied the story. The caption described it as having been taken by her husband on a recent walking holiday. There were mountains in the background and an inland loch just behind her. She wore walking boots and waterproofs and looked very happy. Her hair was cut into a chin-length bob and was as straight as my own. The night before, looking at the photograph at the Hawicks' home, Dana and I had been deceived by a glamorous wedding hair- do and had compared it to the woman on the autopsy table with her long, corkscrew curls. When Kirsten Hawick died, her hair was short and straight. And that finally convinced me. I sighed, checked my messages – nothing from Dana – and logged off before heading down to theatre.

By six o'clock I was so tired I could have starred in Night of the Living Dead, but the thought of going home didn't hold enormous appeal. I found I was really missing Duncan. We had to try and use this coming weekend as a chance to reconnect, somehow. Perhaps we could catch the ferry up to Unst and stay with his parents for a couple of nights. Our Laser 2 was up there for the summer and we could do some sailing; maybe even a race or two if the local club was active this weekend.

Dana hadn't phoned and I was hugely relieved. I hadn't worked out what I was going to say to her, but I'd decided I wasn't going to do what she'd asked. I no longer believed the woman buried in my field was Kirsten Hawick. Any more digging on my part could get me into serious trouble and – more importantly – I'd promised Duncan. Somehow, I was going to have to get the dental X-rays back to her without anyone knowing she'd given them to me. I picked up a pile of midwives' timesheets that needed checking and signing, read through the first and scribbled my signature at the bottom.

If you're not getting close, why is someone trying to scare you?

I stopped, pen in mid-air. Then looked down. My briefcase was by my desk. I reached into it and pulled out the file.

I'd promised Duncan.

I shoved the file back down and closed the case. Last night had been a joke, a sick prank, nothing more. Gifford was right: news spreads like forest-fire in small communities. In the restaurant at lunchtime someone behind me had muttered, 'Have a heart, Nigel.' There'd been sniggers and a scuffle, the sound of someone being elbowed sharply in the ribs. I'd given no sign that I'd heard, but knew that my adventures were common knowledge and that more than one person on the islands was getting some fun out of them. I bent down to the timesheets again.