'Melissa Gair.'
I wanted to weep. I wanted to jump on my desk and scream my triumph to the rooftops. At the same time, I don't think I've ever felt calmer in my life.
I flicked through the print-outs that followed. I saw her birth date and calculated her age: thirty-two. I saw that she'd been married and that she'd lived in Lerwick, not two miles from where I was sitting. I saw that she'd attended the dentist regularly; appointments roughly every six months going back ten years or so, with hygienist's appointments in between. Her last appointment had been just before Christmas in the year 2003.
Which, of course, didn't quite fit. My head started to hurt more as I struggled to work out what was bothering me. The woman in my field was Melissa Gair. The records matched exactly. Yet why would a woman who attended her dentist religiously suddenly stop a good eighteen months before her death? Unless she'd left the islands temporarily, coming back only to meet an untimely end.
If that were the case, then her name might not be on my list of women who had given birth on the islands. I grabbed it and scanned as quickly as I could. No, Melissa Gair had not given birth here. She'd had her baby off the islands and then returned less than two weeks afterwards. Most women are not up for major upheaval in their lives two weeks after having a baby. Something in her motives would surely give us a clue as to why she'd been killed.
I needed sleep very badly, but first I had to find Dana. I picked up the phone and dialled her mobile number but got an unobtainable tone. I almost stood up, but thought of one more thing I could check. It would help Dana, surely, to have as much information on Melissa Gair as possible.
I turned back to my computer and went into the main hospital records. I put Melissa's name into the search facility and waited for a few seconds, not really expecting to find anything. She'd been a healthy young woman and might never have been admitted.
Her name appeared. I opened the file, read it through once, then again, checking and double-checking the dates. My headache was back with a vengeance and I think only the certain knowledge that I was a split-second from throwing up kept me motionless in my seat. Had I moved, it would have been to ram my fist directly into the computer screen.
16
I SAW NO OTHER TRAFFIC ON THE WAY OVER TO DANA'S HOUSE, which was a good thing, because I'd probably have collided with it. I hit the kerb twice and scraped the paintwork leaving the hospital.
I parked, checked the address and climbed out of the car. There was no sign of Dana's car in the car park that I'd assumed would be closest to her house. I staggered like a drunk through the stone archway, down a flight of steps and a steep, cobbled slope. It was an hour or so before dawn and the sky in the east had lightened. The narrow streets of the Lanes, though, were still drenched in shadows.
The Lanes are one of the oldest and most interesting areas of Lerwick. They run downhill, in parallel lines, the quarter of a mile from Hillhead to Commercial Street, from where it's a two-minute walk to the harbour. The Lanes are flagged, steeply sloping alleys, interspersed with short flights of stone steps. It would be impossible to drive a vehicle down them; in places they are so narrow that two grown people would struggle to walk abreast. The buildings, a mixture of residential and commercial property, rise up to three and four storeys on either side. The Lanes are quaint, popular with tourists and much sought-after as trendy, town-centre homes. But when the light is poor and no one else is around, they are dark, decidedly eerie.
Three times, I'd tried Dana on her mobile but had got no response. At first, I'd assumed she'd gone to bed, but now that seemed unlikely. I'd found her door and had been banging on it for several minutes. No one was coming. She wasn't home and I was in no fit state to drive anywhere else. I climbed slowly back up to my car. On the back seat were my coat and an old horse blanket. I thought, briefly, about trying her mobile again but couldn't summon up the energy. She was almost certainly somewhere out of signal range. I wrapped coat and blanket around me and was asleep in seconds.
It was nearly dawn when the tapping on the window woke me. I was cold, stiff and acutely aware that the moment I moved I would regret it. The worst hangover I'd ever experienced – and I've had a few bad ones – was going to feel like a Shiatsu massage compared with what today had in store for me. But there was nothing else for it. Dana's incredulous face was staring down at me and I had to move. I sat up. Oh boy, so much worse than I'd expected. I reached for the lock and then Dana opened the door.
'Tora, I've been at your house half the night. I've been seriously-'
I waved her away, turned and vomited over the rear wheel of my car. I stayed there, bent double, for some time. I coughed and retched, trying to dislodge those sickening bits that stick in your nasal passages at such times and decided that sudden death had an awful lot to recommend it.
The next thing I remember is being half led, half carried, through Dana's front door and deposited on her sofa. She gave me, on my instructions, an unwise dose of ibuprofen and paracetemol and left to make hot, sweet tea and dry toast. While she was gone I tried to steady my nausea by focusing on her living room. It was exactly as I would have expected: immaculately tidy and undoubtedly expensive. The floorboards were polished oak, partly covered by a rug patterned in squares of rust, oatmeal and pale green. The sofas were the same shade of green, whilst the roman blinds on both windows picked out the rust and oatmeal colours. The fabrics looked the sort you might pay £50 a metre for. A flat-screen TV was fastened to one wall and there was a Bang and Olufsen stereo system under the window. Dana came back with the food and left the room again. I heard her running upstairs. She returned carrying a large duvet and wrapped it around me, like a mother with a sick toddler. I took a bite of toast and managed to keep it down. Dana sat down on a leather footstool in front of me.
'Ready to tell me what happened to you?'
'I worked half the night, spent the rest of it in the car,' I managed. The tea was scalding and totally wonderful.
She looked at me, then down at herself. Her linen trousers were creased but clean and still looked pretty good, as did the pink cotton shirt and matching cardigan. Her skin looked daisy-fresh and her hair as though it had been combed ten minutes ago.
'So did I,' she said. She had a point.
'First, I need to tell you what I found out,' I said. I'd been toying with how exactly I was going to do that since we'd entered the house. Duncan has a particularly irritating habit when he wants to tell me something and, for some reason, it seemed strangely appropriate for the circumstances.
'Tor,' he'd announce, 'I've got good news and bad news.' It really didn't matter how I'd respond, he'd have some half-witted wise-crack to hand which he'd invariably find hilarious and was guaranteed to irritate the hell out of me. 'I'll have the good news,' I'd say, with heavy reluctance. 'The good news is: there's not too much bad news!' he'd respond. We'd been doing it for seven years now and it really wasn't getting any funnier. Not from my point of view anyway. Still, I definitely wasn't myself that morning because I had an almost irresistible urge to use it right now.
Do you want the good news, or the bad news, Dana?
The good news? I know who our lady from the peat was.
The bad news? No, you are really not going to believe the bad news. She was watching me closely. I realized she was very concerned and that I must look even worse than I felt. I took a deep breath.
'I found a match,' I said, watching the glint leap into her eyes and her face come alive. 'You'll need to get it checked, of course, but I am 98 per cent certain.'
She leaned forward and her hand brushed mine. 'My God, well done! Who was she?'
I took another gulp of tea. 'Melissa Gair,' I said. 'Aged thirty-two. An island woman; from Lerwick; married to a local man.'