The recently opened NHS dental unit is in a separate building within the hospital complex, just a short walk away. I was still wearing my scrubs and I made sure my consultant’s badge was visible just above my right-hand jacket pocket. What I wanted was a not-terribly-bright-or-interested dental nurse.
I pushed through the double doors and forced my best smile on to my face. The nurse/receptionist looked up. The name on her badge said Shirley. She didn’t smile back or look at all pleased to have a visitor.
‘Hi! We haven’t met. I’m Tora Hamilton.’ I held up my badge and waited until I’d felt sure she’d read it. ‘Obstetrics,’ I added, somewhat unnecessarily. Then I looked at her with what I hoped came across as polite interest. ‘Are you new too?’
She nodded. ‘Just three months,’ she responded in a Shetland accent. So far, so good.
I leaned forward, trying for a friendly, confidential manner. ‘The thing is, I’ve got a bit of an embarrassing problem.’
Suddenly, she looked interested.
‘My predecessor left my office in a bit of a shambles and I’m trying to sort it out. I’ve just come across what appear to be dental records, but no indication of whom they might belong to. Now, I don’t want to get Dr McLean into trouble, what with him just retired and everything, but these things shouldn’t just be left around, should they? They’re confidential?’
She nodded. ‘Aye, they are.’
‘The thing is, I have an idea whose they might be. If we could just check, I can leave them with you, you can file them where they belong and the problem’s over with.’
‘Isn’t there a name on the X-rays?’
I tried to look as though I hadn’t thought of that and pulled the film out. There was a code on the bottom that I recognized as belonging to the morgue but I felt pretty sure that Shirley wouldn’t spot it.
‘Whose did you think they might be?’ she asked.
‘Kirsten Hawick’s. She’s a patient of yours.’
‘Thing is, we’re about to close for the evening. Can you come back in the morning and see Dr McDouglas?’
I shook my head, looking sorrowful. ‘I’m going to be in surgery all day,’ I said, which was a big lie. The only place I planned to be the next day was in bed; exactly where I hadn’t quite figured out. ‘I guess we’re just going to have to do this officially. God, the paperwork. For you as well, I’m afraid. Ah well, have a good time tonight. I guess you have plans?’
I started to turn away.
‘You can call up the records yourself, you know. If you have a computer, that is.’
I turned back. ‘I know, but I haven’t got all my passwords sorted out yet. Too busy learning the ropes. I called the IT department before I came here but I think they’d all gone home for the evening.’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ she said, looking sympathetic. Then she appeared to have a brainwave. ‘Is all you need the password then?’
I tried to look puzzled. ‘I guess,’ I said. ‘Do you know it?’
‘Sure,’ she said and scribbled something down. Willing myself not to snatch, I reached out and took the Post-it note. I read what she’d written and then looked at her for confirmation. She smiled.
‘Dr McDouglas’s favourite film.’
‘Mine too,’ I replied, not entirely untruthfully. I thanked her and left.
Back in my office, I wasn’t sure whether I was terrified at what I’d done or delighted by my own cleverness. Shirley would almost certainly tell her boss what had happened. Even if it didn’t get back to Gifford, I could face some pertinent and difficult-to-answer questions from Dr McDouglas.
Did I really want to go on with this? So far, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Granted, I’d tricked a junior colleague into giving me information I shouldn’t have, but I hadn’t used it. I could always claim I’d had second and better thoughts and would probably get away with it.
My screen still showed the homepage of the dental department. I typed in Terminator and waited. Then I was in. I found patient records and typed in Kirsten Hawick.
There was nothing there.
Huge relief. And a tiny but rapidly growing seedling of frustration.
I thought for a bit. Kirsten hadn’t been married that long when she died. Maybe she hadn’t got round to changing her name on all her records. I typed in Kirsten Georgeson and there she was: details of her age, address, brief medical history, records of her visits, invoices for non-NHS treatment. And her X-rays.
The comparison wasn’t as easy as I’d expected, as the format was different. The X-ray taken during the post mortem was just one film scanning from one side of the mouth to the other. Those produced during dental appointments tend to be taken in sections from inside the mouth. I had six small X-rays to compare to one large one. I started off in the top left corner, the section that I guessed would be easiest to distinguish. I was looking for a crown. Nothing.
Then I tried the bottom right corner for a small gap. Next, I tried to count the teeth. That was tricky due to the overlapping of teeth on more than one shot. It didn’t really matter, though. I was as sure as I could be, without having a dentist sitting next to me, that the X-ray taken of the corpse didn’t match the dental records of Kirsten Hawick. I’d known already, of course, but now even Dana would have to accept defeat. It wasn’t her.
I got ready to close up the site and started thinking. Dana had told me that most dentists on Shetland are NHS. If that were true, then whilst patients might visit a number of different surgeries scattered over the islands, their records would be on this one central database and accessible by yours truly, courtesy of a rather weird password, which would probably be changed the minute the hierarchy found out I’d been meddling. This was my one chance.
Which you are not going to take. You’ve done what you set out to do, proved the body in the peat wasn’t Kirsten; it’s up to the police now.
But dental records, like all medical records, are confidential. Even police working on a murder investigation couldn’t gain automatic access to them. A court order, at least, would be needed and from what I’d heard, there were no plans to apply for one. This was a pretty unique opportunity. No one on the murder squad could do what I was doing right now. The big question, though, was whether the search was even remotely manageable. Just how many dental records would I have to look at?
No, that is not the big question, Tora! The big question is: why aren’t you packing up and going to find a room somewhere to spend the night?
I switched to the Internet and called up the site of the Scottish Census. I knew the population of Shetland was in the region of 25,000, including the migrant workers on the oilfields, but I had no idea how many women there were in the twenty-five to thirty-five age group. Which, you could argue, was a bit unprofessional for the resident obstetrician, given they were what management consultants call my prime target group. The Scottish Census for 2004 was the most recent available and it told me that the number of women on the islands aged between twenty and thirty-four was 2,558: an impossible number to check.
Good, that’s settled then, let’s go and get some rest.
Could it be narrowed down at all? Not everyone is registered with a dentist. I remembered reading somewhere that a lot of people neglect their teeth, something like half the population. That would bring the number down to around 1,200. And my friend from the field had had dental work. If she was an island woman and an NHS patient, her records were here for me to find.
She isn’t an island woman. DI Dunn’s investigation has ruled out all the missing women from the islands. You and Dana were wrong.
Don’t like being wrong. I went back to the dental database, wondering if I could sort the data. I pressed the button for data sort and put in my criteria: female patients, resident on the island, aged between sixteen and thirty-four. I’d have liked to specify a narrower age band but the system wouldn’t let me. Then I was looking at a list of names. I scanned to the bottom of the page. 1,700 patients. Still an imp
ossible search. I got up and crossed to the coffee machine.
OK, think, tired brain, think. 1,700 women, aged between sixteen and thirty-four years old. There was a real, good chance the lady from the peat was one of them, if only I could . . . Of course! I shot back to my desk and scanned the list of search criteria. Yes! There it was: date of last appointment. My friend had been dead since early summer 2005; I just had to get rid of all the women who’d attended the surgery since then. I typed in ‘1 September 2005’, which I guessed would leave a big enough margin for error, and pressed search. It took a few seconds, then . . . sixty-three women left on the list.
It was a manageable – if lengthy – search. Five minutes per patient to be really sure; it was already seven thirty and I was shattered. On the other hand, this really was my only chance. By tomorrow morning my unauthorized hacking would have been discovered and terminated . . .
quite probably along with your employment
. . . and I had to make it worthwhile.
In my desk drawer, under Filing and Misc., was a copy of the print-out I’d given Dana at the start of the week: the list of women who’d given birth on the islands during the spring and summer of 2005. I began to compare the two lists, looking for a woman who had given birth that summer and, simultaneously, ceased to feel the need for regular dental check-ups. It took some time, as both lists were sorted by date rather than alphabetically, but thirty minutes and two cups of coffee later I was pretty certain there were no matches.
Exhaustion hit me at that point. There was really no getting round the birth issue. The woman had had a baby and any woman who had done so on the islands that summer had to be on my list. She must have visited a dentist privately. Unfortunately, I still had to work till two a.m. and go through the sixty-three records or I’d never know for sure.
The phone rang. This was it then: Gifford summoning me to his office. I considered ignoring it but knew he’d just come and find me.
‘Hello.’
‘It’s Dana. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine, just tired.’
‘I have just had the devil of a row with my inspector. I can’t believe no one called me last night. You must have been out of your wits.’
‘Something like that,’ I confessed. ‘I was a bit surprised not to see you.’
‘I’m supposed to be in charge of this blessed investigation. Can you believe what the official line is? I wasn’t called out because there was no direct link to the case. What happened last night was just somebody’s idea of a joke.’
Logically, I probably should have been disturbed that Dana took the events of the previous night as seriously as I did. And yet I found myself reassured. I guess, given the choice, most of us would opt for in danger before delusional.
‘You don’t go along with that theory then?’ I said.
‘Are you kidding me? What are you up to right now?’
I explained about conning the nurse into giving me the password and my examination of Kirsten Hawick’s records. If she was disappointed, she gave no sign. Then I told her about my plans to go through the rest.
‘How many more do you have to look at?’ she asked.
‘Sixty-three,’ I told her.
‘I’m coming in to help. I don’t like the idea of you being there on your own.’
I stood up, peered out of the window. Gifford’s car was still there.
‘No, you’ll be far too conspicuous. I’ll be fine. There’s loads of people around. I’ll call when I’m done.’
‘Thanks, Tora, I mean it. Look, let me give you my address and home phone number. Come round, it doesn’t matter what time.’
I scribbled the details down and she was gone. I was on my own and, in spite of all my best intentions and the well-meaning advice of those wiser than myself, I called up the first set of X-rays.
15
TWO HOURS LATER, I’d ruled out twenty-two of the names on the list. It was all starting to look like a complete waste of time, but I’m one of those people who can never leave a job unfinished. I knew I’d be here for the duration.
First, though: sustenance. I locked my office and went down to the canteen. I piled my tray high with fatty carbohydrates and added a Diet Coke. I ate like a robot, hardly lifting my eyes from the tray, and then went back to my office.
Another hour and a half, another two cups of coffee and either something was going wrong with the hospital electrics or I was seriously in need of sleep, because the room around me had grown decidedly dimmer. I looked up at the neon strips above me. I hadn’t noticed any flickering but the light just wasn’t what it had been a couple of hours ago. The sky outside seemed unnaturally dark too, even allowing for it not being far off midnight. There must be a storm coming.
I looked back at the screen, but could barely make it out. The sharpness of the X-ray image had blurred into a confused mass of shapes and shading. Words were indistinguishable. I knew I had eighteen more records to check, but it just wasn’t possible. I’d print them off, go find a bed and read through them in the morning. I closed my eyes, shook my head and then opened them again. It was no better; if anything, worse: I was staring at a black screen with words that had been bright green. Now, they were no colour at all, just dullish marks of light that seemed to be growing in size.
I selected the print field and pressed the print command. There was definitely a problem with the electricity. Without my noticing, the lights had gone out completely and my room was a mass of shadows. From the printer at the other side of the room came a shrill, persistent beeping sound. Great: as invariably happens when it’s important, it was out of paper. I started to get up and couldn’t. I just about managed to push the keyboard out of the way before my head hit the desk.
The next thing I remember was my mobile ringing, somewhere in the distance. I raised my head and gasped out loud: there were demons in my skull, beating a tattoo on my brain. And someone had broken my spine; nothing less could cause this amount of pain. As nausea reared up I closed my eyes and counted to ten. Then risked opening them again. I was still at my desk; the room was in almost total darkness. My computer screen was blank but its low-pitched buzzing told me it was still switched on.
Without moving I managed to locate the ringing. My mobile was in the pocket of my jacket, which was hanging behind the door. I got up – oh my, it hurt – and crossed the room. I found the phone and looked at the screen. It was Dana. I switched the phone off. Heading back to my desk I found even walking was an effort, as though every limb had suddenly grown three times as heavy. What the hell was wrong with me?
By the time I reached my desk I felt slightly better. Just the simple act of moving had loosened me up a little. Then I remembered what I’d been doing. I pressed a key and the screen sprang to life. There was nothing there. I was looking at the screen saver. I grabbed the mouse and flicked round the screen, in case I’d accidentally minimized the dental records somewhere. They couldn’t have just disappeared.
Except they had. I clicked again on the dental department’s section of the site and once again it requested a password. I typed in Terminator.
Access denied.
I tried it again.
Access denied.
I looked round my office, as though the answer might lie on my walls, my desk. The room was tidy, nothing out of place. Except . . .
My desk was never that tidy. Papers were stacked up neatly. The cup I’d been drinking from was over by the sink. It had been rinsed out, as had the coffee pot. I hadn’t done that. I crossed to the light switch and flicked. The lights flickered and flashed and then were fully on. Functioning normally. Which was a whole lot more than could be said for me.
I staggered to the sink and poured a cup of water. In my bag I found some of the painkillers Gifford had given me the other day and I swallowed two gratefully. I leaned against the sink, waiting for the pain in my head to subside, which it didn’t, and for the aching in my limbs to fade, which, gradually, it did.
The hospital was silent. Downstairs, in and around the wards, there would be people and movement, noise and bustle; up here, just the faint electronic buzz of the lights and my computer. My watch said 04.26. I’d been asleep, or something, for over four hours.
I started to walk back to my desk and a flashing button on the printer caught my eye. Paper tray empty said the message on the small display. Without really thinking about it, I bent down, took a few sheets of paper from the cupboard beneath it and slid them into the paper tray.
The machine whirred into life and started sending out printed sheets. I picked the first one up. It was an X-ray of the upper left quadrant and the second molar had been crowned.
Stop it, Tora, enough is enough.
I picked up the next sheet. It showed the central and lateral incisors. The placement looked right. I picked up the next sheet. Then the next. I counted the teeth. Then, for the first time, I looked at the patient’s name at the top of the page. I reached out and touched it, whispering it softly as I did so.
‘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.
Sacrifice Page 14
