Sacrifice

I thought about what he was telling me. Was it really possible that whatever sick shit was going on here, Kenn Gifford had no part in it?

'The pathologist who carried out her post mortem is on sick leave in Edinburgh-'

'Wait a sec,' I interrupted him. 'Stephen Renney didn't do it?'

Gifford shook his head. 'Stephen's only been with us about eight months. He started just before you did. He's covering for our regular guy – chap called Jonathan Wheeler. What was I saying? Oh yes, Sergeant Tulloch is at this moment flying down to interview Jonathan. The report is here, though.' He gestured to the manila file on his desk. 'It seems pretty thorough. Want to see it?'

He reached over and I took the file, more because I needed time to think than because I really wanted to look at it. I flicked through. Extensive spread of the cancer into both breasts, lymph nodes and lungs. Secondary tumours in… and so it went on.

I looked up. 'Her grave. I mean, her official one. Where is it? Are they exhuming?'

'Not an option, I'm afraid. Mrs Gair was – or so we believed until now – cremated.'

'How convenient.'

'Nothing remotely convenient about this mess.'

'So how, exactly, does a woman who died of cancer three years ago end up in my field?'

'You want my best guess?'

'You mean you have more than one? I'm impressed. I can't even begin to start guessing.'

'Well, as theories go it's a weak one; wishful thinking probably describes it better. But what I hope is that we're looking at some sort of Burke and Hare scenario.'

'Body-snatchers?'

He nodded. 'Someone, for reasons of their own – which I would really rather not enquire into but I suppose I'm going to have to – stole her body from the morgue. An empty coffin – or more likely a weighted one – got cremated.'

It was ridiculous. Kenn Gifford, one of the brightest men I'd ever met, thought that load of rubbish was going to fly?

'But she didn't die in October 2004. According to the pathologists she died nearly a year later.'

'Her body was put in the peat nearly a year later. What if she was kept in a deep freeze for several months?'

I thought about it. For a split second.

'She'd had a baby. A dead body in a deep freeze can't gestate a baby to full term.'

'Well, there my theory hits an obstacle, I'll have to admit. I just have to hope – and pray – that you and Stephen Renney got it totally wrong.'

'We didn't,' I whispered, thinking about the forensic pathology team from Inverness who'd also examined the body. We couldn't all be wrong.

'Peat's a strange substance. We don't know very much about it. Maybe it confused the normal decaying procedure.'

'She'd had a baby,' I repeated.

'Melissa Gair was pregnant.'

'She was?'

'I spoke to her GP. About forty minutes ago. Before the police picked him up.'

'You mean you warned him.'

'Tora, get a grip. I've known Peter Jobbs since I was ten years old. He's as straight as an arrow, trust me.'

I decided to let that one pass. 'So, what did he tell you?'

'She went to see him in September 2004, concerned about a lump in her left breast. She also suspected she was in the very early stages of pregnancy. Peter arranged a consultation with a specialist in Aberdeen, but two weeks later – three days before her appointment – she was admitted to hospital in great pain.' He got up and walked across the room. 'Do you want coffee?' he asked.

I nodded.

Gifford poured from a machine very similar to the one I kept in my office and brought two mugs back. He handed one to me and then sat down in the other chair. I had to twist sideways to look at him. He stared straight ahead, denying me eye contact.

'The initial X-rays showed extensive spread of the cancer. No one here is really qualified to deal with that so a transfer was requested. She was kept as comfortable as possible and flown, briefly, to Aberdeen. They did an open-and-shut and brought her back here. They upped her pain relief and she died a few days later.'

Open-and-shut refers to a surgical procedure cut short following the discovery of an inoperable condition. The surgeon at Aberdeen would have opened Melissa up, seen that the spread was too extensive to be able to remove the cancer surgically and then closed her again. The surgeon would have been standing beside Melissa's bedside when she woke up. I'm very sorry, Mrs Gair, but I'm afraid we weren't able to operate. He might as well have donned a black cloak and carried a scythe into the room.

'Poor Melissa.'

He nodded agreement. 'Thirty-two years old.'

With a new life just beginning inside her. How sad was that?

Except… 'No, fuck it.' I was on my feet again and shouting. I couldn't believe I'd nearly fallen for that shit. 'Melissa did not die of cancer. Melissa died when someone took a chisel, rammed it between her breast bone, forced open her ribcage and then systematically hacked through five principle arteries and several smaller ones and pulled her heart, probably still beating, from her body.'

'Tora.' Gifford was also on his feet, coming towards me. I was breathing too fast and starting to feel light-headed.

'She died because some sick fuck decided she was going to and a whole load of wankers are lying about it. Probably you, too.'

He put his hands on my shoulders and I felt an immense flood of warmth wash into me. We looked at each other. Slate, his eyes were the colour of slate. He was breathing heavily and slowly. I found my own slowing down to fall into sync with his. The fuzziness in my head faded. There was a knock on the door.

'Is everything OK, Mr Gifford?'

'Everything's fine,' Gifford called back. 'Can you give me a minute?'

Footsteps retreated outside.

'Feeling better?' asked Gifford.

I shook my head, but more out of stubbornness than honesty. I was, a little.

Gifford lifted a hand and stroked it down over my head. It came to rest on the bare skin of my neck.

'What am I going to do with you?' he said.

Well, a few things sprang to mind because, in spite of everything, it felt very nice to be standing there with Gifford, in that ridiculously furnished room, being held – almost – in his arms.

'I hate long hair on men,' I said.

Don't ask me where that came from; or why I thought that particular moment, of all possible opportunities, was the time to utter it.

He smiled. A proper smile this time, and I wondered how I could ever have thought him ugly.

'So, I'll get it cut,' he said.

I took a step closer, dropped my head and stared at the fabric of his shirt, knowing the situation had strayed way beyond the bounds of what was appropriate and that I really, really, needed to snap out of it.

'Now comes the bit you're not going to like,' he said.

I looked up again sharply, even took a step back. What was it, exactly, that I was supposed to have been enjoying so far?

'You're suspended on full pay for a fortnight.'

I backed away. 'You are fucking well kidding me.'

He said nothing. He wasn't kidding.

'You can't do that. I've done nothing wrong.'

He laughed and walked back over to the window. Turning his back on me made me want to kick him, but I didn't move.

'Technically,' he said to my reflection in the windowpane, 'I think you'll find you've done quite a lot wrong. You've interfered in police investigations, you've broken any number of hospital regulations and you've disregarded some direct instructions from me. You've broken patient confidentiality and you've upset some senior members of the community and the hospital.' He turned round again. He was smiling. 'But that isn't why you're suspended.'

'Why, then?'

He held up his index finger. 'One – if you stay, you'll carry on exactly as you have been and I can't protect you for ever.'

'I won't. I'll leave it to the police now.'

He shook his head. 'Don't believe you. Two – as you so eloquently put it over in the dental unit, the shit is really going to hit the fan here in the next few days and a lot of people will be very unhappy. I don't want you being seen as the focus – or even the cause – of all that.'