S Bolton - Sacrifice

The wrist I held had been dressed with fine white bandages. I leaned over and found the other. Just the same. I was glad I hadn't imagined the ugly, bleeding gashes I'd seen in Dana's bathroom. Her wrists had been cut, but probably only superficially. She would have lost blood, but not so much it couldn't be replaced once she arrived on Tronal. I hadn't felt a pulse in Dana's bathroom – whatever drug she'd been given had made her peripheral pulse undetectable. But I could feel one – strong and regular – now.

As I'd sat trembling and close to fainting in Andy Dunn's car, I'd heard the sirens of an ambulance approaching. Dunn had driven me straight to the hospital and I'd assumed the ambulance was following with Dana. But it wasn't. Instead, Dana had been brought here. For what? To be part of this summer's breeding programme?

I bent down. 'Dana. Can you hear me? It's Tora. Dana, can you wake up?'

I stroked her forehead, risked giving her shoulders a shake.

Nothing, not even a flicker. This was not a normal sleep.

A door slammed and footsteps were coming down the corridor. Voices were talking, softly but urgently. I had seconds. I looked at the narrow, upright cupboard. Wasn't sure I'd fit inside. The bathroom. I crossed the room and pulled open the door.

There was a lavatory, wash-basin and shower cubicle. No window. I pulled open the door of the cubicle, jumped in and crouched down. If someone entered the room, they couldn't help but see me. I would just have to hope. Maybe they weren't even heading for Dana's room. Maybe my luck would hold a bit longer.

The footsteps stopped. The door to Dana's room opened, the draught it caused blew the bathroom door open another inch. For a moment there was silence. Then…

'What do you think?' asked a voice that sounded remarkably like that of my father-in-law. I realized my luck had run out.

'Well… she's bright, healthy, good-looking,' answered the voice I knew better than any other in the whole world. 'Seems like… like a bit of a waste,' he continued, and I didn't know whether I was going to scream or be sick.

'Exactly,' said the voice of Detective Inspector Andrew Dunn. 'Why the hell go to the risk of getting another one?'

I sat in the shower cubicle, shivering so violently it hurt and thinking, Why… why did I come here?

'This was an unforgivable risk,' came another voice, one that sounded vaguely familiar but that I couldn't quite place. 'You were told to get rid of her, not bring her here.'

'Yeah, well, sorry about the reality check,' snapped Dunn, 'but even I can't hypnotize someone into slashing their own wrists. And haven't we learned by now that if we rush an accident we mess it up?'

'She's half-Indian,' said the man whose voice I couldn't put my finger on. 'We don't pollute the bloodstream.'

'Oh, for God's sake,' spat Dunn. 'What is this – the Middle Ages?'

'Robert is right,' said my father-in-law. 'She isn't suitable.'

Robert? Did I know a Robert? Oh God, I did. I'd met him just over a week ago. Robert Tully and his wife Sarah had come to see me about their inability to conceive a child. The bastard had sat in my office, pretending to need my help, knowing his wife wanted a baby so much that she was close to breaking point. Was she, then, intended to be the adopting mother of one of the latest batch of Trow babies?

'All right,' my husband was saying. 'What do we do with Ms Tulloch then?'

'We'll take her in the boat with the other two,' answered Richard. 'When we're far enough out, I'll give her another dose and slip her over the side. She won't know anything about it.'

'I need a leak,' said Duncan. 'Won't be a sec.'

The bathroom door opened and Duncan came into the room. He was still wearing the charcoal-grey business suit I'd watched him put on that morning. He walked to the basin and leaned over it.

And what do we tell the girlfriend?' asked Dunn.

'We send her a coffin,' said Richard. 'Leave it till the last minute, day of the funeral if we can. Someone goes with it in case she wants to view the body. No big deal, we've done it before.'

'OK then, settled. Now, what else do we have to do?'

Duncan turned on one of the taps and splashed water over his face. He sighed deeply and straightened up. In the mirror above the basin I had time to notice the tie that I'd given him at Christmas, tiny pink elephants on navy-blue silk. A second later we made eye contact.

'Patients in one and two we don't have to worry about,' replied Richard. 'Standard adoptions, both likely to deliver in the next couple of weeks. The Rowley woman spoke to both of them today, shouldn't think she'll want to bother again.'

'What about Emma Lennard? Aren't you due to deliver her tomorrow?'

Duncan had turned to face me. I braced myself for him to shout out, alert the others or, even worse, to laugh. I wondered what they were going to do to me, how much it would hurt, whether it would be quick. Whether Duncan would be the one who…

'We're going ahead,' said Richard. 'Once the operation's over, I'll keep her sedated. We can't risk her talking.'

I tried to get up. I didn't want to be caught crouched, damp-assed, in a shower cubicle. But I couldn't move. All I could do was stare at Duncan. All he did was stare back.

'Isn't Emma safer on the boat?' In the outer room they were still talking, oblivious to the silent drama being played out in the bathroom.

'She would be, if we could be sure the police will only be here one more day. We can't hold on to her much longer, she's getting very edgy. Better to get it over with and get her out of here.'

And the woman in room six?'

'I think we'll be OK. She's only twenty-six weeks anyway, plus she's insisting to everyone who'll listen that all the scans are wrong and she's just twenty weeks. I've already changed her notes.'

'It's risky.'

'Tell me something I don't know.'

One of us had to break the deadlock, one of us had to move, say something, shout out loud. I would do it. Anything was better than this unbearable tension. Then Duncan put one finger to his mouth. He glared at me as he left the room, pulling the door firmly closed behind him.

'A cargo of three then, Richard. Sure you'll be OK on your own? Don't want to leave it till dawn?'

'No, I want to be well away before there's any chance of the police coming back. Right, I'm going downstairs to get that TV switched off. There's work to do.'

Footsteps faded away down the corridor. Had they all gone? Could I risk moving? What the hell was Duncan going to do? Dana's room was silent. I started to push myself up -

'Sorry, mate,' said Duncan, as though commiserating a friend on losing a tennis match. 'It really doesn't do to get involved.'

'Oh, and you didn't with Tora?' shot back Dunn, his voice thick with bitterness. Did he actually care for Dana? Was that why'd he'd saved her life against orders, why he'd been arguing to keep her alive for a few months longer?

'You look like shit. Been here all day?'

'In the basement,' replied Dunn. 'With three sedated women. Felt like the house of horrors. Police nearly found the door at one point. Probably will tomorrow.'

'We'll sort it. Have it looking like a dusty old storeroom by morn- ing. Right, we need a trolley. Can you get one from downstairs? There's something-'

A furious, terrified yell broke through the night, just as the door of the bathroom started to move inwards.

'Next door,' sighed Dunn. Footsteps ran from Dana's room and I heard a struggle in the next room along. There was banging and then a low, terrified whimpering, a noise I might have thought came from an animal; except I knew it wasn't an animal they were keeping chained up in there. Then the bathroom door opened and Duncan reappeared.

'What the hell are you doing here?' he hissed at me. 'Jesus, you idiot, you fucking idiot!' He opened the door of the cubicle, reached in and pulled me up. 'How the hell did you get here?'