S Bolton - Sacrifice

Stephen Gair is still missing. Whether he's alive or dead we have no idea. We can only hope.

Richard's funeral is to be held on Unst tomorrow. We sank, that night, in relatively shallow water and the launch, with his body on board, was easily recovered. Half of Shetland are expected to turn up to honour Richard's memory, but Duncan and I will not be among them. We've talked about it at length but neither of us can face it. There are still faint bruises around my neck; I can't pretend to grieve for the man who put them there. Neither can I look into the faces of the congregation and wonder…

Duncan's motivation is more complex. He is struggling to deal with how close he came to becoming one of them.

So Kenn will be our proxy tomorrow. We've seen quite a lot of him the last couple of weeks. He's formed a habit of turning up unannounced, usually at mealtimes. He still flirts disgracefully, but only when Duncan is in the room. Other times, he avoids being alone with me so that problem, at least, has been shelved for the time being. I still haven't got to the bottom of who stole whose girlfriend and I suspect I never will; I'm not sure either of them really cares any more. It was Kenn, we discovered, who performed the surgery that removed a clot from Duncan's brain. At the end of the day, I guess, it's difficult to continue hating someone who has saved your life. Besides, they both enjoy bitching about the seemingly endless police investigation.

So far, no charges have been brought against either Duncan or Kenn, but we don't feel we can breathe easily just yet. The strongest point in Duncan's favour is that when Helen's team raided the island that night he was found locked in the basement, bleeding profusely from a head wound and not too far from death. The fact that he didn't set foot on Shetland for nearly twenty years will help too. As far as Kenn is concerned, he was conveniently out of the country during just about every summer when the female death rate peaked. I think Richard went to great lengths over the years to protect his favourite son.

The Tronal maternity clinic has closed for good. The two infants I saw that night have been transferred to a neonatal unit in Edinburgh and are both doing well. Their birth mothers will be traced; as will all the women who attended Tronal for a late termination in recent years. What their legal relationship will be to the babies they thought they'd aborted, who can say. Just another of the many unholy messes to come out of Tronal.

The land around the clinic is being extensively searched. Some human remains have already been found but, from what I can learn, it's going to be a long job. In one area, close to the beach where I landed that night, several tiny skeletons have been unearthed. Of all the babies born at Tronal over the years, these are the ones for whom my heart cries the most. The ones who didn't make it.

Collette McNeil and Alison Rogers are both pregnant as a result of their stay on Tronal. No intercourse had taken place; the pregnancies were achieved by doctors opening the women's cervixes and inserting sperm directly into their uterine cavities. Lawyers are currently arguing over whether, technically, that constitutes rape. Collette is planning a termination. She and her family are leaving Shetland. Alison, a twenty-year-old single girl, is thinking of keeping the baby.

I turned at the sound of footsteps on gravel. Dana had made it through the press barricade and was walking towards us. She was wearing jeans and a large shapeless sweater, her hair scraped back in a ponytail. I hadn't seen her since the night we all leaped into the ocean together and she looked smaller and thinner than I remembered. When she reached us, she didn't seem to know what to say.

'Thought you were in Dundee. On sick leave,' I said, because she looked as though she might start crying and I wasn't sure I could handle that. There had been too many tears over the last couple of weeks.

She pulled a wooden folding chair forward and opened it. 'Supposed to be,' she agreed. 'Bored to death. Flew back this morning.' She sat down next to me.

'I think you might be in trouble,' said Duncan, who was looking towards the top of the field. We both followed his eye line. Helen, in a white jumpsuit, had stopped bustling about like a mother hen and was staring down at us.

I turned back to Dana, risked a smile, saw its pale reflection on her face.

'How are you feeling?' she asked, her eyes dropping to my stomach.

'Dreadful,' I replied, because that was close enough, but there really aren't words to describe what a woman goes through in the first trimester. Just as soon as I could talk on the phone without vomiting over it, I was going to contact all my past patients and apologize for not being sufficiently sympathetic.

'And is that… good?'

'No, but it's normal,' I said. We fell silent, watching Helen torn between wanting to come down and lay into Dana for coming back to work and needing to stay where she was and get on with the job. All the while I was thinking that the only remotely normal thing about my pregnancy was the little creature at the centre of it. Jenny had scanned me yesterday. Duncan and I had held hands, tears streaming down both our faces, as we watched a shapeless little blob with a very strong heartbeat, totally oblivious to what had been going on around it.

'And I suppose we're hoping for… a girl?' said Dana tentatively. I heard Duncan give a soft laugh and it seemed like a very good sign.

A sudden noise grabbed my attention. On the fence that ran the length of the field were a group of pale-grey birds with forked tails, black heads and red beaks. They were Arctic terns, come back from their long winter in the southern hemisphere. Hoping to nest in our field, as was their usual custom, they were frustrated at the sudden human invasion. Terns are not placid birds. They jumped around on the fence, circled overhead, yelling down at the police officers to be off and find somewhere else to dig. Didn't they know this was breeding ground?

'I think they've found something,' said Dana.

My attention snapped away from the birds. 'Where?'

'That group near Helen. Tall man with sandy hair. Woman with thick-rimmed glasses. Near the reed bed.'

I watched. The small group Dana was talking about was no longer one team among many, it had become the focus of activity up on the field. One by one, other white-clad officers were stepping closer.

'Oh, they've been doing that for the last hour,' said Duncan. 'I think that team's just more excitable than the rest.'

'They're very close to where I found Melissa,' I said, in a voice I wasn't sure would carry. Nobody spoke. Up in the field four men started digging in earnest.

'We should go inside,' said Duncan. Nobody moved.

The digging went on. Activity around the rest of the field had stopped. All eyes were on the four men with spades. Even the terns seemed to have quietened down.

Clouds began to roll in from the voe. The land, so rich in colour just moments earlier, fell into shadow. No one, either in the field or on the back terrace of the house, seemed able to talk. We listened to the regular thud of spades against damp earth and waited.

When I didn't think I could bear it any longer, the digging stopped. The men with spades stepped back and others strode forward. Cameras began clicking, people were talking into radios, equipment was unloaded from the vans parked in our yard and a surge of excitement ran through the press ranks. Helen started to walk down the hill towards us.

The perfectly preserved, peat-stained bodies of four women were eventually found on our land. The first they dug out of the ground that day was Rachel Gibb; the others have since been identified as Heather Paterson, Caitlin Corrigan and Kirsten Hawick. All were names I knew: I'd seen them on my computer screen the night I met Helen. In the days that followed I learned more about them, where they'd lived, who they'd been, how they were believed to have died. And I spent more time than was good for me imagining their final year. Torn from their lives, cut off from everyone they loved, these women had to face the long, painful drudge of pregnancy and the terrifying ordeal of childbirth alone and in fear. They'd had the best medical attention possible, but no one to hold their hand, give them a reassuring hug, tell them it would all be worth it in the end. Prisoners of their own bodies as much as of the men of Tronal, these women had sat in their pens like pregnant cattle, biding their time until their purpose was served and they were needed no more. And if thinking of this makes you want to howl with rage, then join the club, my friend, join the bloody club.