There stood Miss Fairlie, a white figure, alone in the moonlight; in her attitude, in the turn of her head, in her complexion, in the shape of her face, the living image of the woman in white.
On page 391 I found another highlighted piece:
The outward changes wrought by the suffering and the terror of the past fearfully, almost hopelessly, strengthened the fatal resemblances between Anne Catherick and herself.
Living image. Fatal resemblances. Stephen Gair had had an incredible stroke of luck. Needing to get rid of his wife, he’d known a terminally sick woman who bore a strong resemblance to her. Terrified for the future of her young children, Cathy Morton had allowed herself to be moved to a new hospital where, spaced out with painkillers, she wouldn’t have known what was going on around her. And who was there to suspect she wasn’t who a respected local solicitor said she was? None of the medical staff who had treated Cathy had known Melissa; Cathy’s sister and brother-in-law hadn’t been allowed to visit, Melissa’s parents hadn’t been told she was in hospital and it was a safe bet that none of her friends had known either.
Even if someone had met Melissa once or twice, it was still possible he or she would have been fooled by the sight of a cancer-ridden Cathy in a hospital bed. Both Cathy and Melissa had been pretty women, but a second photograph Caroline had shown us, of a barely recognizable Cathy towards the end of her illness, showed the devastating effect cancer can have.
Cathy had died just days after being admitted to hospital. There’d been a post-mortem, the report of which I’d seen in Gifford’s office, and then she’d been cremated. I imagined the funeral, the church full of Melissa’s friends and relatives, deeply shocked by her sudden death, struggling to even begin the process of grief. Which of them could have dreamed the body in the coffin heading for the furnace wasn’t Melissa at all? That Melissa, still very much alive, was . . . somewhere else? How had he done that? How had Gair arranged for his wife to disappear so effectively? Where had she been for the nine months between Cathy’s death and her own? And what the hell had happened to her in that time?
I closed The Woman in White and put it away. At the time I knew nothing of the story but I read it some months later. It’s about a man who fakes his wife’s death – for money, of course – by spiriting her away and substituting a dying woman in her place. Dana had known the story and had been well on her way to working it out. Whether she’d made contact with the Salters, whether that was the final trigger that made her killers act, I’d probably never know.
When we landed at Dundee Helen gave me a quick smile and disappeared into a waiting car. Another car took me to the station, where I was given coffee and left to wait in an interview room. I waited almost an hour, nearly going nuts in the process, and then a member of Helen’s team, an inspector, came to interview me. A constable sat in the corner of the room and the whole thing was tape-recorded. I wasn’t read my rights, I wasn’t offered a lawyer, but in all other respects it was an interrogation and he was taking nothing at face value.
I told him the whole story, from finding the body to meeting the Salters. I told him about Kirsten Hawick who’d been killed in a riding accident and about my finding the ring that had every appearance of being hers; about someone breaking in to my house and my office; about the pig’s heart on my kitchen table; about my suspicions that I’d been drugged and that someone had tampered with my computer. I told him about my sabotaged boat and useless life jacket; about my belief that Dana had been murdered because she’d found out too much. I described the evidence of financial irregularities that Dana had unearthed and about my escape with Helen through the dark Shetland landscape. Then I went through it all again. And again. He pulled me up time after time, making me repeat myself, clarify myself, until I really wasn’t sure what I’d said and what I hadn’t. After five minutes I was very glad I wasn’t a suspect in the case; after twenty minutes I was starting to think that perhaps I was.
An hour and a half later we stopped. I was brought lunch. Then he came back. More questions. Another hour and he leaned back in his chair.
‘Who knew you planned to go sailing that morning, Miss Hamilton?’
‘We didn’t plan it,’ I replied, knowing I was stalling. ‘We hadn’t even planned spending that weekend on Unst. It was a last-minute thing. But lots of people know we keep a boat there.’
‘Do you keep your life jackets there too?’
I couldn’t look at him. ‘No,’ I said. ‘We keep them at home. In the attic. Duncan would have picked them up from home before we set off. They were locked in the boot of his car till we used them on Sunday morning.’
He frowned, stared down at his notes for a while. Then looked back up at me.
‘Whose idea was it to go sailing? Who thought of it?’
‘Duncan’s,’ I said. ‘It was Duncan.’
I was taken to a cell, given more food and a note from Helen telling me to eat and rest. When I woke, it was nearly seven in the evening and Helen was standing in the doorway. She’d changed into a tailored black trouser suit and an emerald-green silk vest. Her hair had been washed and wound up on the top of her head. She looked nothing like the woman I’d ridden across country with the night before.
‘Feeling better?’
I managed a smile. ‘I guess.’
‘Ready to go back?’
Back? Back to the islands? Early that morning, I’d watched them disappear over the horizon and told myself it was over; that that part of my life was finished with. Now, it appeared, it was not.
‘Do I have a choice?’ I asked, knowing what the answer was going to be.
‘Not really. You can eat on the way.’
On the way to the helipad she was silent. I had a hundred questions but I didn’t know where to start and, if I’m honest, I was a little afraid to. Helen wasn’t my fellow fugitive any more; she was a senior police officer, probably in charge of a very serious investigation. And I was a principal witness. Having got this far, I didn’t want to do anything to screw things up.
When the driver was parking she said, ‘Stephen Gair has confessed.’
I’d been leaning back in the seat but at that I sat bolt upright. ‘You’re kidding me? He just admitted it?’
She nodded. ‘He’s been in custody since midday. It took two hours and then he cracked.’
‘What? I mean, what exactly has he confessed to?’ Stephen Gair had not struck me as the type to give in that easily.
‘Well, everything. Selling babies to the highest bidder, for one thing. He says he worked with several of the less scrupulous adoption agencies overseas. Whenever a wealthy couple appeared they were told about a way of short-cutting the system for a price. It was all done by a sort of blind auction on the Internet. When a baby became available it went to the highest bidder. Up to a million dollars in some cases.’
Our driver got out of the car. He waved to the pilot, who nodded back, and the chopper’s blades started to turn.
‘George Reynolds, the director of social services, is in Lerwick nick, helping us with our inquiries. He’s denying all knowledge, but if the babies went overseas with adoption papers, his department must be involved.’
‘Who actually took them overseas?’
‘A nursing agency. We’re talking to them but so far they claim they didn’t know anything was illegal.’
‘And Gair admits substituting Cathy for his wife at the hospital?’ The noise of the helicopter’s engines was increasing and I had to raise my voice. Once we got out of the car, speech would become impossible again.
‘Yep. Insists she was very well treated, that her illness followed its natural course and that in no way can he be held responsible for her death. He also says no one at the hospital knew anything about it.’
‘So who helped him? Who arranged the ambulance?’
‘Claims he did it himself. Chartered it privately. The nurse was hired for the occasion.’
I was thinking as fast as I’d ever done. Was it fe
asible? That no one from the hospital was involved?
‘What about the doctor, the one who later claimed to be a policeman? The one who Caroline met?’
‘He insists there was no accomplice. Says Caroline was confused.’
‘She didn’t sound confused to me.’
‘No. She’s at Lerwick now. We’ve got an identity parade lined up.’
‘So you know who it was?’
‘Let’s just say we have some ideas.’ Her face closed up. She was saying no more on that one. I tried another tack.
‘And Melissa?’
Helen held up one finger at the pilot. ‘Gair admits killing her. She found out about the adoptions and threatened to go to the police. You’re not going to like this, but he says he kept her in your cellar. A forensic team’s been there for the last few hours.’
‘You’re kidding me,’ I whispered, remembering Dana’s insistence on looking round my cellar – her instincts right on the button, as usual.
‘He’d handled the probate for the last owner and knew the house was empty. He even had a set of keys. He says he kept Melissa tied up and heavily drugged and once she’d given birth he killed her. He claims he acted alone.’
‘Bullshit! He couldn’t have done that without help. Kept a pregnant woman prisoner for months, delivered a baby. He’s covering for someone.’
‘Probably. He says he carved the symbols on her back. Got the idea from some markings around your fireplace. Apparently, he wanted to make it look like some sort of cult slaying, to draw attention away from him if she was ever found. Same with cutting out the heart. He can’t remember what he did with the heart. Says he was under a great deal of stress at the time and that huge chunks of his memory are missing.’
‘Bullshit! Bull-double-shit!’
‘Thank you. But we worked that out ourselves. He is also admitting that Connor, the little boy he calls his stepson, is his own child. And Melissa, not Alison his new wife, was his mother.’
‘Dana was right about that too.’
Beside me, Helen took a sharp breath. ‘Well, we can DNA test, prove it conclusively, one way or another. Look, don’t worry. A few more hours, maybe days and he’ll tell us everything. Right now, we need to move.’
It took us just over an hour to get back. Helen spent the time reading and making notes, her body language giving very definite don’t ask me now signals and I didn’t want to push her. But shit . . .
First thing that occurred to me, as the helicopter took off, was that we’d never have made it to this point if Stephen Gair hadn’t agreed to have his wife’s dental records examined. Just days ago, Saturday morning, he’d been cooperation itself. Far from complaining – as he’d have had every right to – about my unethical behaviour, he’d allowed the confirmation that the body in my field was that of his wife. Of course, we were still, at that stage, a long way from working out how the switch had taken place, but even so, Stephen Gair had effectively given himself up that morning.
The helicopter banked and we were heading back over the North Sea to the islands. The sun was low in the sky, spreading its golden warmth over the waves.
Why the hell had he done that? Had he been tired of living with the guilt? I’d heard criminals often secretly want to be caught. Or had he deliberately played along, knowing the system was in place to protect him; that he had friends who could get him off the hook?
Were Dana and I being played that morning; encouraged to reveal just exactly what we knew before being . . . well, neutralized? Put out of harm’s way before we could tell someone who might actually take us seriously? Three days later, Dana was dead and I’d narrowly escaped drowning.
Melissa had found out too much and she’d been dealt with; she’d suffered a protracted and terrifying death. I wondered what had roused Melissa’s suspicions in the first place, what path she’d followed to discover more, at what point she’d become seriously afraid, whether she’d tried to escape. First Melissa, then Dana had paid the price for knowing too much. And it wasn’t over. In spite of what Helen had just told me about Gair’s confession, I knew it wasn’t. Why the hell was I going back to Shetland?
We landed in a field close to Lerwick police station and the noise dimmed enough for Helen and me to be able to talk. She looked up from her notes.
‘There’s a car here, waiting to take you home to collect whatever you need. Then we’ll put you in a hotel for the night. I’m not sure when we’ll need you at the station so just sit tight.’
‘Are you in charge now?’
‘No, Detective Superintendent Harris is. But I’m officially advising and observing. We’re going by the book from now on, I promise you.’ She looked round. Several police cars were waiting for us. Then she turned back to me and there was a look on her face I couldn’t identify. ‘There is something you need to know. A lot of people are in custody tonight, and will stay that way until we’re convinced they had nothing to do with all this. I’m afraid your husband is one of them.’
I nodded. I’d expected that. I even welcomed the news. The last thing I could deal with just then was a confrontation with Duncan.
‘Also, your father-in-law and your boss from the hospital. You may well be needed at work over the next few days.’
She was right. The hospital couldn’t afford to lose me and Gifford. And I’d thought I was getting away.
We climbed down. Helen squeezed my shoulder and stepped into one of the waiting cars. A woman constable introduced herself and led me to a second car. A male constable was driving. We set off on the twenty-minute drive that would take me home. I wondered what I was going to do with my evening, stuck in a strange hotel somewhere in Lerwick.
The car pulled up at the front of the house.
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ asked the WPC – Jane, I think she’d said her name was.
‘No, thank you. I’ll be fine. It won’t take long.’
I walked to the front door of the house and found my key. The hall was in darkness and the house had that still, cold feel that houses assume when they’ve been empty for a while. I walked down the hall to the kitchen, registering but not appreciating the significance of the beam of light shining out from under the door. I pushed the door open.
Duncan and Kenn Gifford were sitting together at the kitchen table, our bottle of Talisker standing open and nearly empty between them.
33
I ALMOST YELLED but knew the officers outside would never hear me. I considered making a run for it, but Duncan was too close and he can move like lightning when he wants to. Kenn was staring at me, his eyes so narrow I could barely see beyond the lashes. Duncan moved towards me, the picture of a distraught husband, overwhelmed with relief at seeing his wife again.
‘Tor, thank God . . .’
I took a sharp step back and held up both hands in front of me. Duncan looked confused, but he stopped.
‘Are you OK?’
‘No, I am not OK.’ I started to move, edging further round the kitchen, away from the door, but closer to what I’d spotted on the worktop. ‘I am a very long way from being OK.’ I grabbed out and reached the knife that had been lying on the kitchen counter. It was an all-purpose knife, one I used for just about everything: chopping, slicing, peeling. It was small but sharp. It would serve the purpose. Duncan was looking horrified, Kenn vaguely amused.
‘I want you both out of here. Right now. If either of you tries to touch me, I will slice you up. Got that?’
‘Tor . . .’ Duncan moved forward again.
‘Have you got that?’ I yelled, shoving the knife in his direction. He was still two feet away but I’d made my point. He stepped back.
‘I’ve got it,’ said Gifford, who hadn’t moved. He picked up his drink and raised it to his lips. ‘How about you, Dunc?’
Dunc? Since when were these two on pet-name terms?
‘Why don’t you get Tora a glass?’ said Gifford.
‘There are two police officers outside,’ I said.
‘Well, they can’t drink on duty,’ said Gifford. I swear, if the knife had been a gun, I’d have shot him.
‘I think you should both sit down,’ said Gifford. ‘Tora, if it makes you feel better, invite your two friends outside to come in.’
I looked from one to the other: my tall, handsome husband, almost shaking with anxiety; my ugly, compelling boss, the picture of calm. ‘I was told you two were in custody.’
‘We were,’ said Gifford. ‘Interesting experience. Got released about an hour ago.’
An hour ago, Helen and I were taking off from Dundee. A lot can happen in an hour. ‘Don’t tell me, because you and DI Dunn go way back.’
Duncan and Kenn glanced at each other. ‘Not exactly,’ said Gifford, almost to himself. Then he looked at me. ‘Our friends at the station found no charges for us to answer. Can’t help but feel you have a few, though.’
For a second, I thought about walking out. Just for a second.
‘You helped Stephen Gair substitute a terminally sick woman for his wife,’ I said to Gifford. For some reason it was easier to talk to him, accuse him, than speak to Duncan. ‘You helped him keep Melissa Gair prisoner – here, in our bloody cellar – for eight months. You kept her alive and delivered her baby and then you killed her.’ I stopped and took a deep breath. ‘I cannot begin to imagine what she went through, you inhuman bastard!’
Gifford flinched. Then his eyes narrowed even more. ‘When Cathy Morton died at our hospital I was in New Zealand,’ he said. ‘I told you that already and I told the police that today. They checked my flight details and people I stayed with in Auckland. So, unlike you, they happen to believe me. I never saw Caroline Salter in my life until I took part in an identity parade this afternoon. Had she picked me out, I wouldn’t be here now.’
I wasn’t having it. ‘Somebody helped Gair. He couldn’t have done it alone.’
‘No, I don’t think he could. But he wasn’t helped by us. Neither of us had anything to do with what’s being going on up on Tronal. We had no reason to want Melissa Gair dead.’ Gifford had lowered his voice almost to a whisper. I found myself staring into his eyes, wanting to believe him. I made myself look away.
Sacrifice Page 29
