S Bolton - Sacrifice

I couldn't reply. Couldn't do anything but stare at him. He waited a split second before shaking me. 'Boat?' he said. 'Did you come by boat?'

I was able to nod.

'Where is it?'

'Beach,' I managed. What did it matter if they found the boat? There was no way I was going to get away now.

'We need to get you back to it. Now.' He took my arm and started to drag me out of the room. I found the strength to pull back. No, not that easy, Duncan; I wasn't going to be that easy. Then Duncan grasped me close, wrapped both arms around me and put one hand over my mouth.

I could hear something. A clanging, whirring sound. Then footsteps returning along the corridor. They were coming back. Creaking, sliding noises told me they were bringing trolleys with them. I wanted to struggle against Duncan but he pressed his mouth against my ear and whispered, 'Ssshhh.' The door to Dana's room slammed open. A trolley was wheeled inside. I heard footsteps moving around the room, the sound of covers being pulled back. A voice I didn't know muttered a countdown, 'Three, two, one, lift…' and there was a soft thud.

'Strip the bed, bring the chains,' said another voice. Then I heard the trolley being pushed out of the room. Beside me Duncan let out a noisy breath.

From the next room along the corridor came similar, if fainter, sounds. I thought I heard someone cry out, but couldn't be sure. For a few seconds the corridor outside was as noisy as that of any normal hospital. Then the footsteps and the sound of the wheels faded. I heard the clanging noise of the lift's mechanism and then nothing. Silence.

Duncan spun me round to face him. He was white, except for red blotches around his eyes. I'd never seen him so angry. Except it wasn't anger. He was afraid.

'Tora, you have got to get a hold of yourself or you are going to die. Do you understand what I'm… no, don't you dare cry.' He pulled me close again. 'Listen, baby, listen,' he whispered, as he swayed gently, the way a mother might rock a child. 'I can get you out of the clinic but then you have to get back to the boat. Can you do that?' He didn't wait for a reply. 'Head for Uyeasound. Get as far from the island as possible then get on the radio to your policewoman friend. Can you do that?'

I didn't know. But I think I nodded. Duncan opened the bathroom door and we slipped out. Dana's room was empty. The bed had been stripped back to the mattress and her pyjamas were gone. If I'd been fifteen minutes later I'd never even have seen her. Duncan walked to the door and looked out. Then he beckoned me forward, grabbed my hand and pulled me into the deserted corridor. I wasn't sure my legs would carry me but they worked fine. We rounded a corner, ran down a short, fourth corridor and made it to the stairs. Duncan paused at the top. We could hear nothing below so risked running down to the mid section. A camera fastened high on the wall glared down at us.

We listened again. Nothing. We ran to the bottom of the stairs and found ourselves in a short corridor, twin to the one above. One door stood open on our left. I glanced inside. It was an operating suite: small room where the anaesthetics would be administered, then an open door into theatre. Duncan pulled me onwards.

We were now in the wing of the building I'd been watching when I'd disturbed the dogs. The rooms had been occupied; I'd seen light and movement behind them; we had to move quickly, someone could appear at any time. We walked forward, reached the first door. The glass window showed only darkness. We moved on. Another door, another window, light beyond. Duncan stopped and I was able to peer through. The room was well lit, about twenty metres long by eight wide. As far as I could make out there was no one inside. At least…

Duncan tugged again but this time I held firm. 'Come on,' he mouthed at me, but I shook my head. A sign on the door read: STERILE AREA, STRICTLY NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE. Pulling my hand out of Duncan's grasp, I pushed open the door and went inside.

I was in a neonatal intensive-care unit. The air temperature was several degrees warmer than that of the corridor and heavy with the continuous humming of electronic equipment. Around me I saw ultrasound scanners, a Retcam, paediatric ventilators, a transcutane- ous oxygen monitor. Several of the machines emitted soft beeping sounds every few seconds. Dana had been right. It was state-of- the-art. I'd worked in some very modern, well-equipped facilities in my time, but I'd never seen such a concentration of the very latest equipment.

'Tora, we don't have time.' Duncan had followed me into the room, was tugging at my shoulder.

There were ten incubators. Eight of them were empty. I walked across the room, no longer caring if someone found us. I had to see.

The infant in the incubator was female. She was about eleven inches long and, I guessed, would weigh around 31bs. Her skin was red, her eyes tightly closed and her head, tucked inside a knitted pink cap, seemed unnaturally large for her tiny, emaciated body. A thin, transparent tube ran into both nostrils, connected by sticking plaster to her face. Another tube ran into a vein on her wrist.

I found myself wanting to reach in through the hand access, to touch her softly. I wondered how little human touch she'd known in her short life. The longer I looked, the more I wanted to scoop her up, hold her to me and run, although I knew that to do such a thing would be to kill her.

I moved on, towards the next cot. Duncan followed, no longer trying to stop me. This baby was male, even smaller than the girl. He looked as though he'd be lucky to make 21bs, but his skin was the same dark, blotchy red. A ventilator was breathing for him, a monitor by the cot gave a continual reading of his heartbeat and a tiny blue mask covered his eyes to protect them from the light. As

I watched, he kicked one of his legs and gave a tiny, mewling cry.

I felt like someone had stuck a dagger in my heart. We stood there, staring down at him, for what felt like a long time. Neonatal units should never be left unattended, it could only be a matter of minutes before someone would return, but I simply couldn't move, except, every few seconds, to look up and glance across towards the baby girl. I wondered if they too had spent the day in the basement with Andy Dunn and three sedated women. Or maybe the people in charge had taken the risk of leaving them where they were, gambling that Helen and her team wouldn't insist upon a closer look around a sterile neonatal unit, and that, even if they did, they wouldn't recognize the significance of what they were seeing.

I knew now where Stephen Gair had been getting his babies from. I knew why Helen had been able to find no paper trail of the babies that had been adopted overseas.

George Reynolds, the head of social services, had protested his innocence, claiming that he and his team had been involved in no overseas adoptions, had given no approval, prepared no papers. He could well have been telling the truth. The babies Duncan and I were looking at would need no formal approval, no paperwork to be adopted overseas, because – officially and legally – these babies did not exist.

Their gestation had been terminated prematurely, some time between twenty-six and twenty-eight weeks. They were aborted foetuses – that were still alive.

IN RECENT YEARS ENORMOUS PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE IN THE care of babies born extremely prematurely. Not so very long ago, a baby born at twenty-four weeks would have been expected to die within minutes of birth or, if it survived at all, to be severely handicapped. Now, such a child has a good chance of survival, and babies born at this stage of development have been known to grow into normal and healthy children. Yet twenty-four-week foetuses are still routinely aborted.