It wasn't the brightest of Shetland nights; it still appeared to be raining softly, but I could make out just about everything: white police tent; red-and-white-striped tape; sheep in the neighbouring field; the solitary spruce tree that grew at the bottom of what passed for our garden; Charles and Henry, wide awake, with their noses poking over the fence, the way they do when someone appears in the next field. Horses are friendly – and nosy. If they see someone close by, they hurry over for a better look. So who were they looking at?
Then I saw the light.
It appeared inside the police tent, a faint brightness shining briefly behind the white canvas; flashing quickly then disappearing; then again. Flash, sweep, flicker.
Something stroked my bare hip. Then Duncans warm body pressed against me from behind. He swept my hair up, pushed it over one shoulder and bent down to kiss my neck.
'There's someone in the field,' I said. His hands slid around my waist and moved higher.
'Where?' he asked, nuzzling the place behind my ear.
'In the tent. There's a torch. There.'
'Can't see anything,' he said as his hands found my breasts.
'Well, you won't. You're not looking.' I pushed his hands away and they dropped down to the window ledge.
'It'll be the police,' he said. 'Dunn said they'd be leaving someone here overnight.'
'I suppose.'
We stood staring out into the darkness, waiting, but the light didn't appear again.
'Did they hurt her?' asked Duncan after a minute or two, so quietly I could barely hear him.
I turned in surprise, glared at him. 'They cut out her heart.'
Duncan's pale face drained. He stood back, arms falling to his sides. Instantly I regretted being so brutal. 'Dunn didn't tell you that? I'm sorry…' I began.
He shushed me. 'It's OK. Did they… he… was he cruel?'
'No,' I said, remembering everything Dr Renney had told us about the strawberries, the anaesthetic. 'That's the strangest thing. He… they… they fed her, gave her pain relief. They almost seemed to… care for her.' They cared for her. Before they tied her up and carved Nordic symbols into her skin, of course. What kind of sense did that make? I shut my eyes, but the image was still there.
Duncan rubbed his hands over his face. 'Jesus, what a mess.'
There didn't seem an immediate answer to that, so I said nothing. Duncan made no move to go back to bed and neither did I. After a while I started to feel the chill. I closed my eyes and leaned against him, seeking warmth rather than intimacy, but he wrapped his arms around me and his hands started to move down my back. Then stopped. 'Tor, would you consider adoption?' he said.
I opened my eyes. 'You mean a baby?' I asked.
He squeezed one buttock. 'No, a walrus. Of course I mean a baby.'
Well, he'd certainly taken me by surprise. I hadn't thought about adoption, hadn't considered we were anywhere near that stage. We had any number of boxes to tick first. Adoption was the last resort, wasn't it?
'It's just there's a good programme on the islands. Or, at least, there always used to be. It's not difficult to adopt here. A newborn, I mean. Not an emotionally screwed-up teenager.'
'How can that be?' I said, thinking that the adoption laws here were surely the same as for the rest of the UK. 'How can Shetland have more babies than anywhere else?'
'I don't know. I just remember it being discussed when I lived here before. Maybe we're more old-fashioned about single mothers.'
It was possible. Churches were better attended here than on the mainland and, on the whole, moral standards seemed comparable with what they'd been in the rest of the UK some twenty or thirty years ago. In Shetland, teenagers stand up on buses to let old ladies sit down. On the roads, drivers wait by passing spaces instead of racing to beat the oncoming car. Maybe this was a real possibility that I hadn't considered.
Then Duncan took hold of me round the waist and lifted. He put me down on the window ledge. The glass was cold and slightly damp against my back. He lifted my legs and wrapped them around his waist. I knew exactly what was coming. The ledge was just the right height and we'd done this before.
'Of course,' he said, 'we could just keep trying.'
'For a little while longer maybe,' I whispered, watching him lower the blind.
And we kept on trying.
6
SARAH SAT ON THE EDGE OF HER CHAIR. SHE HAD THE look in her eye: angry, ashamed, impatient; the one that would increase in intensity month by month, anger gradually giving way to despair as the arrival of each menstrual period signalled a fresh failure. Of course, it could also disappear, completely and for ever, the second she knew she was pregnant. I knew that look so well. I saw it all the time. And not just on the faces of patients.
Robert's expression, on the other hand, I couldn't read. He had still to look me in the eye.
Although this was their first meeting with me, Sarah and Robert Tully had already run the gauntlet of tests, examinations and interviews with counsellors. They were running out of patience. He wanted the pats on the back down the local and the weekends browsing through model-train brochures. She wanted her feet up in stirrups and a good dose of artificial hormone coursing round her veins.
'We were hoping you'd put us on the IVF programme,' she said. 'We know there's a waiting list for NHS treatment but we have some money saved up. We want to start right away.'
I nodded. 'Of course. I understand.' Oh, how well did I understand: Get me pregnant. I don't care how you do it. I don't even want to think about everything that comes after – the nausea, exhaustion, backache, stretch marks, total lack of privacy, and then pain beyond anything I could ever have imagined. Just wave your magical, medical wand and make it OK for me too.
What I was about to suggest they would find incredibly hard to accept; patience and the biological urge to reproduce don't make comfortable bedfellows. 'There is another way forward that I'd like you to think about.'
'We've been trying for three years.' With something between a hiccup and a sob she started to cry. Robert glared at me as though their failure to conceive was entirely my doing and gave his wife the handkerchief he'd had ready in his hand.
I decided to give them a moment. I stood and walked to the window.
It had been raining as I'd driven into Lerwick that morning and the clouds above were low and heavy, the town dark and damp.
Lerwick is a grey stone town on the eastern coast of the main island, a short channel hop from the island of Bressay. Like the rest of the islands' townships, it isn't noted for its architecture: the buildings are simple and functional but rarely beautiful. The traditional choice of building material is local granite with a slate roof. For the most part, two storeys are thought ample by the practical islanders – maybe they worry about high winds blowing roofs away – but in the older parts of town and around the harbour a few three-storey, even four-storey houses can be seen. They seem to represent a rare flash of ambition, or defiance, on the part of the islanders.
Gazing at a rain-washed Lerwick did nothing to improve my mood.
I found myself stifling a yawn. I hadn't slept well. Even when I hadn't been fully awake and out of bed, I'd been restless, my head full of the woman I'd found. I'd seen her, touched her, knew some- thing of what had happened to her. It was appalling… I should be appalled, and I was… but I was angry too. Because I'd wanted to plant snowdrops on Jamie's grave to remind me of the time he tried to eat some. I'd gone out one evening to call him in and found a tiny white flower sticking out of his mouth. He'd looked like an equine flamenco dancer. But now I'd never be able to do that because some sick bastard had chosen our land to bury his dirty work on. And Jamie had been carted off to the knackers' yard.
There was a movement behind me; a fidget. Sarah had stopped crying. I sat down again and turned to her.