S Bolton - Sacrifice

Over at the paediatrician's table, the house officer had finished his checks.

'Everything's fine,' he said, handing the baby back to Maura.

I STAYED IN THE DELIVERY ROOM FOR ANOTHER FIFTEEN minutes, making sure mother and baby were OK. Then an orderly came to take Maura for a shower and I had a quick wander round the ward to check on the rest of my patients. We weren't expecting another birth before midweek so with a bit of luck it would be a quiet weekend. I decided I could be spared and headed for the exit.

Jenny, the midwife, was coming back into the unit as I left.

'Well done, Miss Hamilton,' she said, and instantly I suspected sarcasm.

'Is anything wrong?' I asked, hackles up.

She looked puzzled. 'Not now,' she said. 'But before you arrived, I really thought I was going to lose that one. And I haven't said that in a few years.'

She must have seen something give in my face because she stepped forward and lowered her voice.

'I spent fourteen sweaty hours with that lassie. I've been shouted at, kicked, sworn at and had my hand squeezed so tight it feels like the bones are broken. And it's your praises she and her man are singing right now, not mine.'

She reached out for my arm and gave it a squeeze.

'Well done, lass.'

I climbed the stairs to where the senior members of the medical team had their offices. Gifford's was the last along the corridor, the largest, on the corner. It was the first time I'd been in there and it came as something of a surprise, reminding me of private consulting rooms I'd visited during my student days: buttermilk-washed walls, heavy, striped curtains, brown studded leather armchairs and a dark wooden desk, whether antique or reproduction I couldn't tell. The desk was almost empty, with just a closed laptop computer and a solitary manila file. I was willing to lay bets it contained the records of Melissa Gair.

Gifford had his back to the door. He was leaning forward, elbows on the window ledge, staring out over the buildings towards the ocean. I didn't knock, just pushed the already open door; it made no sound on the thick, patterned carpet. He turned.

'How'd you get on?' he asked.

'It's a girl,' I answered, crossing the carpet to the middle of the room.

'Congratulations.' He stood there looking at me, the picture of self-possession. At any moment, he was going to tilt his head on one side, assume a polite but firm expression and ask, 'Will that be all, Miss Hamilton?'

Well, I was having none of it. 'I am this close -' I held up my left hand, making a pinch-of-salt type of gesture, 'just this close to throwing the biggest tantrum of my life. And you know what? I think I'd get away with it.'

'Please don't,' he said, crossing the room and leaning back against his desk. 'I have a splitting headache.'

'You deserve one. What the fuck are you lot playing at? Do you have any idea how serious this is?'

He sighed, looking suddenly tired. 'What do you want to know, Tora?'

'Everything. I want a goddamned explanation.'

His response was a weary smile, a small shake of the head and an exhalation of air from his nose – it was a laugh, as economical in mirth as it was in duration. 'Don't we all,' he said. He ran both hands over his face, sweeping his hair back and up. There were sweat stains under his arms. 'I can tell you what's happened while you've been in delivery. Will that do?'

'It's a start.'

'Do you want to sit down?' He nodded towards a chair. I did. In fact, I needed to, as though his despondency was infectious. The chair was absurdly comfortable and the room hot. I made myself sit upright.

'Detective Superintendent Harris is on his way over from Inverness. He is taking personal control of the situation. Andy Dunn came here twenty minutes ago to collect details of the two doctors and three nurses who treated Mrs Gair. Three of the five are currently at the station being interviewed. One is on holiday, the other left the hospital and is being tracked down. Mrs Gair's GP is also at the station.'

'What about you?'

He smiled again, reading my mind.

'I often take extended leave in the late summer or autumn. When Mrs Gair was admitted, I was in New Zealand. She'd been dead five days by the time I got back.'

I thought about what he was telling me. Was it really possible that whatever sick shit was going on here, Kenn Gifford had no part in it?

'The pathologist who carried out her post mortem is on sick leave in Edinburgh-'

'Wait a sec,' I interrupted him. 'Stephen Renney didn't do it?'

Gifford shook his head. 'Stephen's only been with us about eight months. He started just before you did. He's covering for our regular guy – chap called Jonathan Wheeler. What was I saying? Oh yes, Sergeant Tulloch is at this moment flying down to interview Jonathan. The report is here, though.' He gestured to the manila file on his desk. 'It seems pretty thorough. Want to see it?'

He reached over and I took the file, more because I needed time to think than because I really wanted to look at it. I flicked through. Extensive spread of the cancer into both breasts, lymph nodes and lungs. Secondary tumours in… and so it went on.

I looked up. 'Her grave. I mean, her official one. Where is it? Are they exhuming?'

'Not an option, I'm afraid. Mrs Gair was – or so we believed until now – cremated.'

'How convenient.'

'Nothing remotely convenient about this mess.'

'So how, exactly, does a woman who died of cancer three years ago end up in my field?'

'You want my best guess?'

'You mean you have more than one? I'm impressed. I can't even begin to start guessing.'

'Well, as theories go it's a weak one; wishful thinking probably describes it better. But what I hope is that we're looking at some sort of Burke and Hare scenario.'

'Body-snatchers?'

He nodded. 'Someone, for reasons of their own – which I would really rather not enquire into but I suppose I'm going to have to – stole her body from the morgue. An empty coffin – or more likely a weighted one – got cremated.'

It was ridiculous. Kenn Gifford, one of the brightest men I'd ever met, thought that load of rubbish was going to fly?

'But she didn't die in October 2004. According to the pathologists she died nearly a year later.'

'Her body was put in the peat nearly a year later. What if she was kept in a deep freeze for several months?'

I thought about it. For a split second.

'She'd had a baby. A dead body in a deep freeze can't gestate a baby to full term.'

'Well, there my theory hits an obstacle, I'll have to admit. I just have to hope – and pray – that you and Stephen Renney got it totally wrong.'

'We didn't,' I whispered, thinking about the forensic pathology team from Inverness who'd also examined the body. We couldn't all be wrong.

'Peat's a strange substance. We don't know very much about it. Maybe it confused the normal decaying procedure.'

'She'd had a baby,' I repeated.

'Melissa Gair was pregnant.'

'She was?'

'I spoke to her GP. About forty minutes ago. Before the police picked him up.'

'You mean you warned him.'

'Tora, get a grip. I've known Peter Jobbs since I was ten years old. He's as straight as an arrow, trust me.'

I decided to let that one pass. 'So, what did he tell you?'

'She went to see him in September 2004, concerned about a lump in her left breast. She also suspected she was in the very early stages of pregnancy. Peter arranged a consultation with a specialist in Aberdeen, but two weeks later – three days before her appointment – she was admitted to hospital in great pain.' He got up and walked across the room. 'Do you want coffee?' he asked.

I nodded.