My car was parked in the area reserved for hospital staff. My keys were still in my pocket. Someone had even put Elspeth’s bicycle in the back.
It was too late to leave the islands that night, but that part of the plan had changed anyway. I was going nowhere. I had more to find out and – priority for the morning – I was going to tell people I could trust. The one person I was going to find, somehow, was Helen. Dana’s Helen. She was a high-ranking detective in Dundee. If Dana trusted her that was good enough for me.
First I needed some clothes and a sleeping bag, in case I ended up spending the night in my car. I parked a quarter of a mile down from the house, tucking the car away behind some garages. Then I pulled Elspeth’s bicycle out of the back and cycled, in the late twilight, up the hill. I walked round the house once, peering into all the downstairs windows, but it seemed empty. As softly as I could, I turned the key and slipped inside. The mail lying behind the door scraped against the tiled floor. I closed the door and listened. Nothing. I was pretty sure the house was empty but I was jumpy all the same. I ran upstairs, found a holdall and threw some clothes into it. My sleeping bag was on top of the wardrobe and I grabbed a pillow from our bed for good measure. My jewellery, what little I possessed, went in the bag too. Last, I found Granddad’s old horse gun and tucked it away under some clothes.
I stood in the doorway of our bedroom and it occurred to me that I might never see this room, this house again. It was only polite to leave a note.
On our dresser was a photograph of Duncan and me on our wedding day. He, tall and elegant in full morning dress, was kissing my hand at the door of the church. I was draped in cream lace and, for the only time in my life, looked feminine. I’d always loved that photograph. I picked it up, dropped it and stamped down hard with my right foot. The glass shattered and the wooden frame cracked at one corner. Should get the message across.
I struggled downstairs, not entirely sure how I would balance everything on the bike. The answer machine was flickering. Five messages. They could be important. I pressed play:
‘Tora, this is Richard. It’s just gone noon on Tuesday. Elspeth and I are concerned about you. Please call.’
Yeah, I’ll bet you’re concerned. I pressed erase.
‘Tor, it’s me. What’s going on? I’ve been trying your mobile all day. Will you phone me, please?’
Erase.
‘Tora, look – this really isn’t funny. Everybody’s worried about you. Just let us know you’re OK . . . It’s really difficult for me to get away at the moment. Jeez, Tora, just phone, will you?’
Erase.
‘It’s me again. I just heard about Dana. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Can you phone, please, just to let me know you’re OK? . . . I love you.’
Well, call me a sucker if you like, but I couldn’t erase that one. I pressed the button for the last message. New voice.
‘Tora, this is a bad idea. You need to come back in now. I hope to God you’re not driving. Let me know where you are and I’ll come and pick you up.’
Like that was really going to happen. I pressed erase. It worried me though. If Kenn had told the local police I was driving around under the influence of sedative drugs I could expect to be picked up within minutes of leaving home.
I carried my stuff to the door and bent to pick up the mail. I was planning to dump it on the coffee table in the living room but one item caught my attention. It was a lilac envelope, with Tora handwritten on the front. There was no stamp and I could feel something heavy and hard inside. I opened it, took out a gold key and read the short note; the first I’d ever received from beyond the grave.
26
SOMEHOW I MANAGED to freewheel elspeth’s bike back down the road to where my car was parked. I struggled to get my bags and the bike into the back and start the engine. I think it would have been tricky even if I hadn’t been sobbing.
It started to rain as I set off back towards Lerwick. I couldn’t stop crying. I thanked God it wasn’t quite dark because I had to drive fast. They’d look for me on this road. Once I hit the edge of Lerwick it would be easier to hide. They’d never guess where I was going.
Tora [Dana’s note had said]
Just spoke to your mum-in-law. Is she always like that?
Your message very helpful. Things are starting to come together.
Assume you’re heading back here. Don’t stay home by yourself. Come to my house. Let yourself in and wait.
Worried about you! Get in touch soon, please.
Dana
She’d put both the date and time of writing in the top corner. Twelve noon that day. I realized it would be crucial in establishing time of death and that I ought to hand it over to the police immediately. Knowing my luck, I’d have the opportunity some time in the next five minutes.
But no patrol cars pulled me over on the short drive back to Lerwick. Once I was off the highway I felt a bit safer. It took me a few more minutes to get to the Lanes and, driving past Dana’s usual car park, I headed for the next one along.
The front door had been repaired – quick work, guys – but the key still worked. Dana’s hallway seemed still, silent. I stood for a long moment, listening, and realized the house wasn’t silent at all. Houses never are. I could hear faint gurgles of water heating up; a soft buzz of electronic equipment; even the ticking of a clock. Nothing to send my already racing pulse-rate into orbit. I’d brought a flashlight and, switching it on, I walked through the hall to the kitchen. The room was spotless. The floor looked freshly scrubbed, the stainless steel around the sink area was gleaming. Without really thinking what I was doing – maybe I was hungry and acting subconsciously – I crossed to the fridge and opened it.
Dana had been shopping. The salad tray was full. A giant tub of apricots sat on one shelf, several wrapped Continental cheeses on another. Natural yoghurt by the bucketful. Two litres of skimmed milk, a litre of cranberry juice and a bottle of good white wine sat in the fridge door. Above them nestled a row of organic eggs. No meat or fish. Dana had been vegetarian.
I thought about eating but knew I couldn’t. I closed the fridge door and left the kitchen. I had to go upstairs.
One step at a time, I retraced the last journey I’d made in this house, thinking, as we all do at such times, if only . . . If only I hadn’t panicked on Unst; if only I’d gone back to Richard and Elspeth’s house and stolen Elspeth’s car instead of her bicycle, I’d have been back on the main island in a couple of hours, I could have been here before Dana . . .
The bathroom door was closed. I pulled my jacket up over my hand and pushed at it. Then I shone the flashlight all around.
Spotless.
The bath had been scrubbed. I remembered small pink splashes on the tiles from earlier in the day. They had gone. The ceramic tiles on the floor were clean but, as far as I could remember, they had been earlier. Dana had been as neat and clean in death as she had been in life. I backed out and pulled the door shut. There was nothing for me in here.
I walked past Dana’s bedroom. I was heading for her spare room, where I’d slept briefly a few days earlier and which I knew doubled as a study.
Her desk was practically empty. I knew she kept her case notes in a pale-blue folder but there was no sign of it in the room. I pulled open the desk drawer and counted twenty folders in hanging files. Each was labelled in lilac ink on a buff-coloured card: House, Car, Investments, Pension, Travel, Insurance . . . and so on. I thought of the three battered box files at home that served as my own filing system. Maybe if she’d stayed around longer, Dana could have taught me to be tidy, to be organized. Maybe just a few hints.
I closed the drawer. I was probably wasting my time. Anything pertaining to the case would have been removed already by the police. I was sure I remembered a desk-top computer from my previous visit but it was gone now. Only a printer remained and a few trailing leads. And a pile of books stacked neatly to one side.
The top one caught m
y eye because I recognized the author. Wilkie Collins, I read, remembering Richard’s taunt about Wilkie Collins being suitable for a retarded reader like myself. The Woman in White. I’d have dismissed it as Dana’s bedtime reading, except it wasn’t by her bed, and she’d marked several pages with little yellow Post-it notes. I picked it up.
Next in the pile was Shetland Folklore by James R. Nicholson. Again, some pages had been marked with Post-it notes. Then I found British Folklore, Myths and Legends by Marc Alexander. The title on the bottom of the pile was familiar, although I hadn’t seen a copy before. I flicked open the hardback cover and saw that it was a library book; very recently taken out judging by the return date stamped inside. It was the book that I’d found several references to in Richard’s study, the one that might tell me more about the Kunal Trows. Dana had taken my comments about local cults seriously. The book held a lot of Post-it notes. I sat on the bed and started to read.
The first story to have caught Dana’s attention was that of a macabre discovery of a large number of human bones during building work on Balta. Locals had muttered about an ancient burial ground but the bones (all from full-grown adults) had been discovered in no order, just flung together, and there had been no signs of memorial stones. On the accompanying Post-it, Dana had written: Were bones female? Is story true? Can date be ascertained?
On a later page I read about a rock that rises out of the sea near Papa Stour, known locally as the Frow Stack or the Maidens’ Skerry. At the time the author was writing, the remains of a building could be seen on the rock. Local rumour held that the Frow Stack was used as a prison for women who ‘misbehaved themselves’. Another rock, the Maiden Stack, with a very similar story attached to it, could be found on the east side of Shetland. Dana’s commentary read: Island stories of women being imprisoned. Any human remains found on either rock?
A few pages further on and she’d found another story of unorthodox graves: a great number of small mounds on the island of Yell. The whole hillside, according to local tradition, was covered in graves and people avoided the spot. Dana’s notes suggested increasing frustration. When? she had written. Dana had wanted facts and evidence, real leads she could follow up with meticulous police work. The book was only offering stories. Interesting stories, though. If the author was right, several times on these islands, hidden and unconsecrated mass graves had been discovered. I wondered how many more there might be. And I was growing more certain by the minute that Melissa had not lain alone on my land.
I lost all track of time as I read on through the books Dana had marked with Post-it notes, learning more and more about the strange and sometimes ghastly history of the islands. I found numerous other stories: of young women, children, even animals being stolen by Trows, their semblances left behind only to die shortly afterwards. The cynical amongst us would claim, of course, that the semblances were nothing of the kind, that the deaths had been of natural (or, more likely, human) causes and that the Trows had had nothing to do with it. One could argue, and half of me was tempted to, that the Trows had taken the blame for an awful lot of human mischief on these islands over the years. But still, the sheer number of stories impressed me. Over and over again, the same theme appeared: someone was taken, a semblance was left behind, the semblance died.
Of course, I didn’t believe in semblances. If deaths had been faked in order to conceal kidnappings – which was basically what all these stories boiled down to – then it had been achieved by natural means. I wasn’t going down any supernatural route.
Trouble was, I wasn’t going down any route. The words were starting to jump around on the page and I was done with thinking for one day. I put the book I was struggling to read down on the floor beside me and allowed my eyes to close.
In my dream, I closed the back door on Duncan and the sound of wood slamming into the door frame rang out around the house. I woke up. It hadn’t been a dream. Someone had entered the house. Someone was moving around, softly but quite audibly, downstairs.
For a second I was back in the nightmare world of five nights ago. He’d come back. He’d found me. What the hell was I going to do? Lie still, don’t move, don’t even breathe. He won’t find you.
Ridiculous. Whoever was here, he’d probably had the same idea I had. He was looking for something and soon his search would bring him to the place where Dana worked.
Hide.
I felt beneath me. The bed was a divan. There was no wardrobe in the room. Nowhere someone of my size could hope to go unnoticed. Especially if it was me he was looking for.
Escape.
Only sensible option, really. I sat up. My car keys were on the desk. As I picked them up they chinked together.
I reached for the window. The handle wouldn’t move. Of course Dana would lock her windows. She was a police officer. I looked closer. It was double-glazed. Breaking it might be possible but would make too much noise. I had to go down. Get past him somehow.
I reached into my holdall and rummaged around until I found the extra bit of protection I’d brought from home. Grasping it tightly in my right hand I walked to the door, pressed the handle softly and opened it. From downstairs came a faint bump. I crossed the hall, mentally blessing Dana for putting carpets on her stairs and landing. Downstairs were hardwood floors and ceramic tiles. But I still had to get downstairs.
At the top of the stairs I paused and listened. Faint sounds were coming from behind the closed kitchen door. I peered over the banister. There were two doors leading from Dana’s kitchen, not counting the external back door: the first, the one I was looking at, led into the hall; the second into the living room. I was planning to go that way, throw something back into the hall to distract whoever it was and then, when he went to investigate, slip quietly through the kitchen and out the back door. Once outside I could climb the garden wall and run like hell back to the car.
Five more steps, six. My right hand was sticky with sweat. I checked the trigger. Loosened the safety catch.
The bottom step creaked.
I crossed the hall and into Dana’s living room. It was darker than it should have been. Someone had pulled the curtains. I stopped. Listened. My right hand was up now, in front of me, but it was shaking.
Then something hit me square in the back and I went down hard.
27
I LAY ON the floor, the side of my head pressed against Dana’s oak floorboards, my right hand empty.
The weight pressing me down moved. I jabbed my elbow back hard and heard someone grunt. Then that solid weight was on me again. My right arm had been captured and was being twisted behind me. I squirmed and bucked and kicked backwards with both feet. My first three blows made contact and then the weight shifted forward.
‘Police! Keep still!’
Yeah, right! One of the hands holding my right arm was released, presumably to grab a hold of my left hand and get cuffs on me. But he wasn’t strong enough to hold me with one arm.
I took a large breath – tricky because with that weight on my chest my lungs could barely function – and twisted round. The figure on top of me slipped sideways. I was on my feet. So was my opponent. We stared at each other. In the darkness I could make out a tall figure; short, blond hair; neat, regular features. I resisted the temptation to say ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume,’ because I now knew who I’d been scrapping with.
‘Who the hell are you?’ she said.
‘Tora Hamilton,’ I answered. ‘A friend of Dana’s. She gave me a key.’
It occurred to me that that might not have been the wisest response, but the woman seemed to relax.
‘I work at the hospital,’ I added. ‘I’ve been helping Dana with one of her cases. The murder. The body was found in my field. I found her.’
I stopped gabbling.
The woman nodded her head. ‘She told me.’
I was breathing normally again. My head was sore but had stopped spinning.
‘I’m truly, truly sorry,’ I said, hearing my voice cr
ack.
Detective Chief Inspector Helen Rowley stared at me for a long time. I could hear the central-heating system creaking as it cooled down for the night. Outside a dog barked.
‘Can you believe she killed herself?’ she asked me, so softly I could barely make out the words. She wasn’t really expecting an answer, but I’d spent the better part of eight hours waiting, longing, to be given the chance to say what I said next.
‘Not for a fraction of a second have I believed she did that.’
Helen’s eyes glinted in surprise, then narrowed as she caught up with me. ‘What are you talking about?’ she whispered.
‘Have you seen the fridge?’ I asked, the first thing that came into my head. ‘You think Dana would stock a fridge hours before taking her own life?’
If anything, the stare intensified. She didn’t believe me. And she was quickly becoming angry. But I was already there. Helen was supposed to know Dana better than anyone. Why was it up to me to convince her of the blindingly obvious?
‘If Dana – the Dana I knew – had planned to kill herself she’d have emptied her fridge, put the contents in the bin, wheeled it down to the bottom of the drive and then cleaned the fridge with Dettol,’ I said, with a bitterness I knew was unfair but couldn’t help. ‘Oh, and she’d have taken back her library books as well.’
Helen took a step back and fumbled against the wall. The room filled with light and I could see her properly. She wore a padded green jacket and baggy combat-style trousers. She was tall, almost my height, and her hair wasn’t short, it was pulled back in a plait. She was attractive. Not pretty, exactly, but with a clean jaw-line and brown eyes. I realized with a jolt of surprise that she looked quite a lot like me. She looked round and then sank on to one of Dana’s sofas.
Sacrifice Page 23
