S Bolton - Sacrifice

She nodded again, more slowly. For a second, all I could do was stare at her. Then I went back to her notes, checking and re-checking everything I found there. She started to push herself forward on the bed.

'Don't tell me now this is going to be a problem. I've been promised-'

'No, no…' I held up both hands. 'Please don't be concerned. As I said, I'm just catching up. I'll let you get some rest now.'

I glanced at her notes once more and then moved towards the door. She sat on the bed, watching me the way a cat watches some- one moving around a room. At the door I stopped and turned.

'How did you hear about Tronal, Emma? If you work in the West End you must live in London. You've come a long way.'

She nodded slowly, still wary of me. 'I'll say,' she agreed. 'I went to a clinic in London. They said they couldn't help me, but they had some leaflets.'

'Leaflets about Tronal?'

A small shake of the head. 'Tronal wasn't mentioned. I had no idea I'd have to come to Shetland. The leaflet said something about advice and counselling for pregnant women in their second and third trimesters. There was a phone number.'

'And you called it?' Somewhere in the building a sound rang out. I tried not to let Emma see me stiffen.

'I didn't have anything to lose. I met a doctor in a room just off Harley Street. He referred me here.'

I had to move on. I forced a smile at Emma and looked at my watch. 'I'll be seeing Mr Mortensen in about an hour,' I said. 'I can check with him then about giving you something to help you sleep. Will you be OK till then?'

She nodded and seemed to relax a little. I gave her a last smile and left the room. With luck, she'd wait an hour before following up on my promise. I had an hour. At best.

Back in the corridor I leaned against the wall, needing a moment to get my breath, to clear my head.

Like most obstetricians, I'm trained to carry out terminations and since being on Shetland I'd performed three. I don't enjoy it, don't particularly approve of it as a general rule, but I respect the law of the land and a woman's right to be the ultimate determiner of what happens to her own body.

Under no circumstances, though, would I have agreed to carry out Emma's termination.

Compared to the rest of Europe, the UK's laws on abortion are fairly relaxed; too relaxed, many would argue. Here, up to the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy, an abortion can be legally carried out providing that two doctors agree the risk to a woman's health (or the risk to her children's health) will be greater if she continues with the pregnancy than if she ends it. This usually amounts to doctors supporting a woman's decision to terminate and has become known as 'social abortion', a practice many deplore.

After the twenty-fourth week, termination is only permitted if there's medical evidence that the woman's life or health would be seriously threatened by continuing with the pregnancy, or if the child is expected to be born severely handicapped. Looking carefully through Emma's notes, I'd found no valid reason why the procedure was being carried out so late. Nothing in her notes suggested either a serious deformity in the foetus or a significant threat to Emma's own life. The pregnancy was normal; inconvenient, obviously, but otherwise quite normal.

I wondered how much Emma had paid for her illegal operation, why on earth they'd kept her here for five days on ridiculous pretences instead of performing the operation straight away and how many other desperate women arrived here every year, seeking a procedure unavailable to them anywhere else in Europe.

I moved on. I pulled the next window back an inch and looked through. This time the woman inside was sitting up in bed watching television. The woman (no – girl – she couldn't have been more than sixteen) looked pregnant too, although it was impossible to be sure. If I had time to watch her, she'd undoubtedly give herself away. Pregnant women instinctively adapt both their usual pattern of movement and their posture in order to protect the growing foetus. Sooner or later, she'd rest her hands on her abdomen, raise herself up without putting pressure on stomach muscles, rub her back gently. I moved on and turned the corner.

I passed six rooms, all of them empty, and turned another corner. The first room on the next corridor was empty. The bed was bare, pillows without pillow-cases piled up, a folded yellow blanket but no sheets. The next room was a twin of the first.

The third was empty but looked ready to receive a patient. I stepped inside. The bed was neatly made. White towels were folded on the armchair. A flower-patterned nightdress – clean, perfectly ironed and folded – lay at the foot of the bed. On the walls hung several prints of wild flowers. It looked exactly like a neat, clean, comfortable room in an exclusive private hospital. Except for the four metal shackles chained to each corner of the bed.

I backed out and pulled the door towards me, careful to leave it slightly ajar, exactly as I'd found it. As I'd discovered two days ago, the death rate among young Shetland females peaked every three years. The last peak had occurred in 2004, the year Melissa and Kirsten were believed to have died. It was now May 2007, three years later.

Three more rooms. I wasn't sure I wanted to see what was inside. The handle of the next room moved and the door opened. A small bedside lamp gave just enough light.

The woman on the bed looked around twenty. She had dark brown hair and thick dark eyelashes, the willowy slenderness of the very young and perfect white skin. She lay as if sleeping, breathing deeply and evenly, but flat on her back, her legs straight and close together, her arms by her side. People rarely sleep naturally in such a posture and I guessed she'd been sedated. The blanket over her lay taut across her stomach. I wandered to the foot of the bed but there were no notes, just a single name: Freya. There were shackles on her bed but they hung loose, reaching nearly to the floor. I tiptoed out.

The woman in the fifth room looked older, but like the girl in the previous room she lay in an unnaturally still state of sleep on the narrow bed. Her name was Odel and her feet, though not her arms, were manacled. Odel? Freya? Who were these two women? How had they arrived here? Did they have families somewhere, grieving for them, believing them dead? I wondered if I'd seen either of them before, whether they'd passed through the hospital. Neither looked familiar. Neither showed any sign of being already pregnant. I wondered where they'd been that day, during Helen's visit. Where they'd be hidden when she returned tomorrow.

I pushed open the last door, noticing, as I did so, the pyjamas folded neatly on the armchair. They were white linen, with an embroidered scallop pattern around the collar, cuffs and ankles. They were laundered, pristine, showing no trace of the blood that had turned them a soft pink the last time I'd seen them. I turned to the bed, knowing that I'd stopped breathing but seemingly unable to start again. Someone lay in it. I walked over and stared down at the face on the pillow. I know that I cried out: part yelp, part sob. In spite of everything I'd been through, in spite of the immense danger I was still in, such a wave of joy hit me that it was all I could do not to dance round the room, punching the air and yelling. I forced myself to be calm and reached under the covers.

Two days ago I'd arrived at Dana's house, exhausted and scared, already dreading that something terrible had happened to her. I would have been putty in the hands of a skilled hypnotist. Planting ideas in my head – ideas already there in a half-formed state – must have been child's play for Andy Dunn. I couldn't believe how arrogantly stupid I'd been not to think of it before.