I heard Dana’s voice calling ‘Tora’, saw a movement at the steps, more hands on the rails. Odel was climbing up by herself. She looked weak, barely able to focus, and I guessed Dana was pushing her up. I reached out for her hand as she staggered up, over the steps and into the cockpit. She gasped at the cold and almost fell against me.
Somehow I managed to stand up and stumble to the steps. I reached out and took hold of Dana’s arm. She came up surprisingly easily and I helped her climb over the last step. As the wind hit her she started shivering violently. Below, I could see the cabin floor was underwater and it was rising fast. Gair had said we would have ten minutes once water started to flood the boat.
Dana’s eyes met mine. ‘Life jackets,’ I gasped, looking at Freya and Odel. Dana – sensible, practical Dana – was already wearing hers. She nodded and passed one to me. I managed to pull it over my head and fasten the metal buckle. Dana helped me pull jackets over the other two and then I inflated all of them and switched on the small lights that would give anyone searching for us just the ghost of a chance.
Water was breaking over the stern now and all four of us were sitting in an icy pool. Spray was soaking us, filling the cockpit every few seconds, hastening our descent. There was no time for the life raft, even if I could find it. I grabbed four harnesses and clipped our life jackets together at the waist. Sink or swim, we were doing it together.
‘Can you stand up?’ I yelled at Dana.
‘I think so,’ she managed, and together we struggled to our feet. Odel was able to stand with us and between us we supported Freya. Her eyes were darkening – she was sinking again. I climbed on to the seat and then the side deck. Dana followed, then Odel, and we dragged up Freya. Stumbling, grasping at anything that looked firm, we made our way to the stern of the rocking boat until we were all standing, looking down at the motionless propeller. I unclipped the rail and held tight to one of the stanchions.
‘We have to jump,’ I shouted, wrapping my other arm tightly around Freya’s waist and looking at Dana and Odel to make sure they understood. ‘I’ll give the signal.’
Dana nodded. Odel was struggling to keep her eyes open but Dana wrapped one arm tightly round her and grasped a stanchion with the other.
I lowered myself on to the top step. We’d left Tronal far behind and there was no land close enough for swimming to be an option. Waves were now washing over my feet. I turned back, almost lost my balance and nodded to Dana.
‘After three,’ she gasped. ‘One, two, three, go!’
We leaped through the air and hit the silky smooth welcome of the ocean. Stars sparkled all around us as we sank lower and the blackness below reached up its arms and carried us down. I felt no cold, no pain, no fear, had no sense of the women around me, although I knew they were there.
I was filled with a sense of peace, of finality; it wasn’t so bad after all, this dying business, just sinking into silent, velvet-soft darkness.
But the will to live is wonderfully tenacious and I felt my legs moving, making swimming motions. Then the ancient laws of physics kicked in and the air in our jackets began to rise upwards, taking us with it. The surface broke around our faces like shattering glass and the salty night air leaped into my lungs. I reached out for Dana, found her hand and thought I saw the glint of her eyes as they met mine. Odel and Freya were just dark shapes in the water.
I could hear an engine again and knew that someone was close. I tried to summon up fury that we’d been through so much, only to be picked up by the second Tronal boat, but couldn’t do it. I didn’t care.
The sound of the engine grew loud, almost deafening, but I had no sense of where it was coming from. I looked across at Dana and thought I saw her gazing upwards, a second before we were bathed in light.
When I opened my eyes again, I started screaming.
41
I WAS IN a small, cream-painted room, with flower-prints on the walls and a door opening on to a private bathroom. I was back on Tronal, chained to a narrow hospital bed. My screams echoed through the building.
The door to the corridor slammed open and a nurse ran in, followed by an orderly and then a young doctor. They clustered round my bed, making soothing noises, trying to settle me back down again. I’d been sitting up. I looked down at my wrists. No shackles encircled them. I tried to move my legs. One of them moved easily, the other was too stiffly wrapped in bandages. No sign of chains. There was another bed in the room, but I couldn’t see who was in it; the nurse was standing in the way.
The doctor was holding my arm, a syringe in his hand. I tugged free and hit him. He swore and dropped the syringe.
‘No drugs. Don’t you dare drug me!’ I yelled.
‘Sounds like she means it,’ said a voice I knew. We all turned.
Kenn Gifford stood in the doorway. The others stepped back, away from the bed, unsure what to do next.
‘Where am I?’ I said.
‘The Balfour,’ replied Kenn. ‘On Orkney. DCI Rowley and I thought you might all prefer to be off Shetland for a while.’
‘Duncan,’ I gasped, ready to start screaming again.
Kenn gestured across the room, a small smile on his face. The nurse had moved and I could see the man in the bed next to my own. Ignoring the pain, I pushed my legs over the side of the bed until I was standing.
Kenn put an arm round my waist and half steered, half carried me to Duncan’s bed. My husband’s eyes were open but dull. I didn’t think he could see me too well. I reached out to stroke the side of his face. His entire head was bandaged. I didn’t take my eyes off him as Kenn and the nurse settled me back down on my own bed.
‘He took a nasty blow to the head,’ said Kenn. ‘We did a CT scan when you all came in this morning. The middle meningeal artery had been ruptured, causing an epidural haematoma.’
I watched as Duncan’s eyes slowly closed. He’d suffered a fairly common form of head injury. The middle meningeal artery runs just above the temple on either side of the head; the skull is thin at this point, making the artery vulnerable to injury. An epidural haematoma, or build-up of blood between the skull and the brain, can compress the delicate brain tissue and, if not treated, lead to brain damage, even death.
‘Will he be OK?’ I asked.
‘We think so. The blood had time to clot so he needed a craniotomy, but it was all fairly straightforward. They’ll keep him sedated for another twelve hours or so.’
The younger doctor had picked up the syringe and was hovering.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ I spat at him.
He and Kenn exchanged a look. Then he left the room. The nurse and the orderly followed and the door closed behind them.
Kenn sat down on the bed.
‘Dana and the others? They’re here?’
He nodded. ‘Dana discharged herself a couple of hours ago. Alison and Collette are still here. Both doing fine.’
For a second I wasn’t with him. Then I had it. Freya and Odel: of course, those hadn’t been their real names.
‘Alison and Collette,’ I repeated. ‘Tell me about them.’
‘You need to rest.’
‘No, tell me who they are,’ I said, trying to push myself up and not managing it. Duncan’s eyes were still closed but the steady rise and fall of his chest was reassuring.
Kenn got up and propped up the bed.
‘Collette McNeil is thirty-three,’ he said, sitting down again. ‘She’s married with two young children and lives just outside Sumburgh. Every morning she takes the kids to school and then walks the family dog along the cliff top, over on the west coast. A month ago she was doing exactly that when she was approached by some men. Next thing she can remember is waking up on Tronal. The dog found its way home and raised the alarm. Everyone assumed she fell over the cliff.’
‘Her family. They know?’
Kenn nodded. ‘Her husband’s with her now.’
‘And the other one? Alison?’
‘Alison was a tourist
. Came up here with some friends but split up from them to explore the islands on her own. She can’t remember what happened, she’s pretty traumatized, but she was apparently seen getting on the ferry from Fair Isle three weeks ago. No one saw her arrive back on the mainland. She was presumed drowned.’
‘They couldn’t afford bodies to be found this summer,’ I said. Kenn frowned at me. ‘Stephen Renney isn’t one of them,’ I explained. ‘He’s only been at the hospital a few months; he isn’t even from Shetland. They couldn’t risk faking a death at the hospital this year. They would all have been accidents, with the bodies never recovered.’
Kenn fell silent. We listened to the sounds in the corridor outside, to Duncan’s breathing. ‘I guess,’ he said eventually. ‘Look, that’s enough now.’ He stood up. ‘You need to rest.’ As he made to leave the room I felt panic rising again.
‘No drugs, no sedatives, not even painkillers. Promise me,’ I said.
Kenn held up both hands. ‘I promise,’ he said.
‘You’re not one of them, are you? They said you’re not one of them.’
‘Take it easy. No, I’m not one of them.’
‘Richard, he’s . . . I’m so sorry.’
He walked back and took hold of both my hands. ‘Don’t be.’
‘Between four and five hundred, he said. They’re everywhere. They could be in this hospital.’
‘Calm down. You’re both perfectly safe. I won’t leave you.’
‘I’m so tired,’ I said.
He nodded and wheeled the bed back down again. Then he bent over and kissed me on the forehead. I managed to smile at him as he sat down in the chair beside me, but it was Duncan’s face I was looking at as my eyes slowly closed.
Epilogue
A SKYLARK HAD woken us, just as the silvery light of early dawn was beginning to soften and turn gold. Before breakfast we walked along the cliff tops, watching the waves break on the rocks below and hordes of seabirds bustle about building nests, preparing for the imminent arrival of parenthood. The day was unseasonably warm for late May. Sea pinks and the tiny, blue, bell-shaped flowers of the spring squill were scattered over the cliffs like confetti. Walking home along the roadside, we could hardly see the grass beneath the thick rug of primroses. Shetland was at its best and most beautiful. And a small army of English police officers were searching our land for the remains of Kirsten Hawick.
Duncan and I sat on the flagged area at the back of the house. Even from a distance we could see they meant business this time. The soil samples they’d taken previously had all tested negative for phosphate. Further analysis, on Helen’s orders, had indicated the samples hadn’t come from our land at all. Big surprise! So the process had begun again. More samples taken, tested at a different lab; and this time, several positive results.
Now, our entire field had been divided up into a grid. Metres of tape criss-crossed the length and breadth of it, held in place by tiny metal pegs. The officers, working in teams of three, were systematically checking square after square after square: measuring, probing, digging, paying particular attention to the areas where phosphate had been found. They’d been at it for four hours and had covered a good quarter of the field. They’d found nothing so far. But the world’s media, who’d been camped on our doorstep for the past week, seemed to have swollen in ranks this morning. A sense of grim expectation hung in the air.
Two weeks had passed since our adventures on Tronal. My leg was healing well, Duncan had made a near complete recovery. We’d been incredibly lucky. My detour to Dana’s house that night had saved our lives. Helen had instructed one of her constables to collect something she’d left behind there. He found the envelope I’d addressed to Helen and, on her instructions, opened it. Hearing what I was up to (and, I’m told, cursing non-stop for the following two hours), Helen had sent a dozen officers back to Tronal. They rescued Duncan from the basement and my stolen dinghy from the beach. Helen herself directed the operation from on board a police helicopter, the same one that picked us out of the water after the boat went down.
And then the fun really began.
Twelve island men, including the staff of the Tronal clinic, several hospital personnel, Dentist McDouglas, DI Andy Dunn and two members of the local police force, are being held in custody on various charges, including murder, conspiracy to murder, kidnapping and actual bodily harm, to name just a few. Superintendent Harris of the Northern Constabulary has been suspended from duties pending an internal inquiry. Duncan tells me that these men are the tip of the iceberg and I don’t doubt him for a second. Of course, believing is one thing; actual hard evidence is proving as elusive as the Trowie folk of legend. These thirteen may be all we ever get.
Stephen Gair is still missing. Whether he’s alive or dead we have no idea. We can only hope.
Richard’s funeral is to be held on Unst tomorrow. We sank, that night, in relatively shallow water and the launch, with his body on board, was easily recovered. Half of Shetland are expected to turn up to honour Richard’s memory, but Duncan and I will not be among them. We’ve talked about it at length but neither of us can face it. There are still faint bruises around my neck; I can’t pretend to grieve for the man who put them there. Neither can I look into the faces of the congregation and wonder . . .
Duncan’s motivation is more complex. He is struggling to deal with how close he came to becoming one of them.
So Kenn will be our proxy tomorrow. We’ve seen quite a lot of him the last couple of weeks. He’s formed a habit of turning up unannounced, usually at mealtimes. He still flirts disgracefully, but only when Duncan is in the room. Other times, he avoids being alone with me so that problem, at least, has been shelved for the time being. I still haven’t got to the bottom of who stole whose girlfriend and I suspect I never will; I’m not sure either of them really cares any more. It was Kenn, we discovered, who performed the surgery that removed a clot from Duncan’s brain. At the end of the day, I guess, it’s difficult to continue hating someone who has saved your life. Besides, they both enjoy bitching about the seemingly endless police investigation.
So far, no charges have been brought against either Duncan or Kenn, but we don’t feel we can breathe easily just yet. The strongest point in Duncan’s favour is that when Helen’s team raided the island that night he was found locked in the basement, bleeding profusely from a head wound and not too far from death. The fact that he didn’t set foot on Shetland for nearly twenty years will help too. As far as Kenn is concerned, he was conveniently out of the country during just about every summer when the female death rate peaked. I think Richard went to great lengths over the years to protect his favourite son.
The Tronal maternity clinic has closed for good. The two infants I saw that night have been transferred to a neonatal unit in Edinburgh and are both doing well. Their birth mothers will be traced; as will all the women who attended Tronal for a late termination in recent years. What their legal relationship will be to the babies they thought they’d aborted, who can say. Just another of the many unholy messes to come out of Tronal.
The land around the clinic is being extensively searched. Some human remains have already been found but, from what I can learn, it’s going to be a long job. In one area, close to the beach where I landed that night, several tiny skeletons have been unearthed. Of all the babies born at Tronal over the years, these are the ones for whom my heart cries the most. The ones who didn’t make it.
Collette McNeil and Alison Rogers are both pregnant as a result of their stay on Tronal. No intercourse had taken place; the pregnancies were achieved by doctors opening the women’s cervixes and inserting sperm directly into their uterine cavities. Lawyers are currently arguing over whether, technically, that constitutes rape. Collette is planning a termination. She and her family are leaving Shetland. Alison, a twenty-year-old single girl, is thinking of keeping the baby.
I turned at the sound of footsteps on gravel. Dana had made it through the press barricade and was walk
ing towards us. She was wearing jeans and a large shapeless sweater, her hair scraped back in a ponytail. I hadn’t seen her since the night we all leaped into the ocean together and she looked smaller and thinner than I remembered. When she reached us, she didn’t seem to know what to say.
‘Thought you were in Dundee. On sick leave,’ I said, because she looked as though she might start crying and I wasn’t sure I could handle that. There had been too many tears over the last couple of weeks.
She pulled a wooden folding chair forward and opened it. ‘Supposed to be,’ she agreed. ‘Bored to death. Flew back this morning.’ She sat down next to me.
‘I think you might be in trouble,’ said Duncan, who was looking towards the top of the field. We both followed his eye line. Helen, in a white jumpsuit, had stopped bustling about like a mother hen and was staring down at us.
I turned back to Dana, risked a smile, saw its pale reflection on her face.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, her eyes dropping to my stomach.
‘Dreadful,’ I replied, because that was close enough, but there really aren’t words to describe what a woman goes through in the first trimester. Just as soon as I could talk on the phone without vomiting over it, I was going to contact all my past patients and apologize for not being sufficiently sympathetic.
‘And is that . . . good?’
‘No, but it’s normal,’ I said. We fell silent, watching Helen torn between wanting to come down and lay into Dana for coming back to work and needing to stay where she was and get on with the job. All the while I was thinking that the only remotely normal thing about my pregnancy was the little creature at the centre of it. Jenny had scanned me yesterday. Duncan and I had held hands, tears streaming down both our faces, as we watched a shapeless little blob with a very strong heartbeat, totally oblivious to what had been going on around it.
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