Sacrifice

7

'GO ON, GO,' I URGED, AS HENRY MOVED INTO TOP GEAR. I rose out of the saddle and leaned forward, balancing over his neck as he pounded along the beach.

My favourite place to ride on Shetland was a half-moon beach, where dusky-pink, grass-tufted cliffs rose like the sides of a pudding basin around a bay of deepest turquoise. As I thundered along, spray blurred my vision and all I could see was colour: emerald grass, turquoise sea, pink sand and the soft, robin's-egg blue of the distant ocean. There are times on the islands when flowers seem superfluous.

The wind is rarely still on Shetland but it seemed content, that morning, just to whisper its presence, and the ocean was smooth but for small bubbles of white foam at the water's edge.

I turned Henry and we walked back through the surf. Both of us were panting. Blissful emptiness of mind disappeared and reality came tumbling back.

Thursday was my regular day off. I was expected to stay near a phone and respond to any emergency but otherwise I was free to relax. Some hope. I was having a period of what Duncan called 'the stressies'. I was finding it hard to get to sleep at night, waking up much too early in the morning and spending the day exhausted. For much of the time, I was grinding my teeth and clenching my fists without realizing it. A permanent headache nagged just shy of the point of being disabling and I was loaded up with aspirin and paracetamol twenty-four hours a day.

What was my problem?

Well, for a start, something was worrying Duncan but he wasn't telling me about it. We were hardly communicating at all; except in bed, if the non-verbal kind was allowed to count. His new business was proving harder to settle into than he'd expected and the hours he was working were as long as mine but he was doing it six, some- times seven days a week. The couple of times I'd mentioned babies his face had tightened and he'd changed the subject just as soon as he could. He hadn't spoken about adoption again. That morning, he'd left the islands on a three-day trip back to London for meetings with clients and I was finding it almost a relief to have the house to myself for a few days, not to have to pretend that everything was fine.

Second, I wasn't performing well at work. Nothing had gone wrong yet, all my babies had been successfully delivered and were doing well. With the help of the team I'd probably saved Janet Kennedy's life the other day. But somehow it just wasn't coming together. I was awkward, clumsy both in theatre and in the delivery room. I was pretty certain that no one, either on the medical team or among the patients, actually liked me. And it was my fault. I couldn't relax and be natural. Either I was stiff and cold or I tried too hard in the other direction, making inappropriate jokes and getting glassy-eyed stares in response.

Third, I was itching to know what was happening in the murder investigation. The day after DS Tulloch visited me at home I'd been interviewed again by a DCI from Inverness. He'd done nothing but reiterate the questions Tulloch had already asked me and, to my surprise, he'd even nodded sagely when I'd repeated DI Dunn's theory about the murdered woman being an islander. Since then, I'd heard from Duncan that most of the mainland team had been called home and that Dunn and Tulloch were, once again, in charge, although Dunn, Duncan told me, wasn't normally based on Shetland but at Wick on the mainland.

I'd thought about calling Dana Tulloch but didn't much fancy the inevitable rebuff I'd get. I'd made a point of catching the main news each evening for the last few days but had learned nothing. There had been some coverage in the local press and on Shetland TV, but far less than I'd expected. Nobody from the media had tried to interview me. Nobody at work had bothered to ask about it, although I was sure I'd caught one or two suspicious-looking glances. Neither had any of our neighbours been round in a spirit of friendly nosiness.

Sharing a table in the hospital canteen with some other members of staff, I'd found myself incredibly frustrated that the topics of conversation had ranged from school sports days to rising prices on the buses and road works on the A970. For God's sake, I'd wanted to yell, we dug up a body four days ago, not ten miles from here. She's in the morgue right now. Does nobody care? I hadn't, of course. But I had wondered if Gifford's oblique warning to me in the pub that night had been repeated across the hospital: don't discuss the particularly grizzly murder that has taken place amongst us, because that will be bad for the social and economic health of the islands; don't talk about it and it might just go away.

And then there was Kenn Gifford.

I'd met him just four days ago, and during those four days he'd been on my mind an awful lot more than he had any business to be. I'd even gone so far as to buy Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, drinking in greedily any descriptions of the character he'd likened me to and finding myself absurdly flattered by references to 'superior height', 'exquisitely fair complexion' and 'profuse hair of a colour betwixt brown and flaxen'.

I've been married for five years and of course Gifford wasn't the first man I'd found attractive during that time. I'd also met quite a few who had found me… interesting. It had never really been a problem. I have this simple test, you see; I say to myself, 'Tora, however amiable, however pleasing to the eye he may be, can he really, honestly measure up to Duncan?' And the answer has always been the same: never in a million years. But with Gifford the answer wasn't quite so clear-cut.

All in all, I had quite a lot to think about.

Henry, perhaps picking up on my mood, started to jump and skitter about. Then a guillemot flew close and he shied, backing into the water. Henry had ridden through waves, not to mention rivers, streams and ponds many times and there was absolutely no reason why the feel of water around his hoofs should bother him, but for some reason it did. He started to buck and kick, spinning in the water and going in deeper. He was in danger of slipping and I of losing my seat. I tightened the reins and pulled him up sharply.

'Pack it in!' I snarled, pulling him round so that he was facing up the beach and out of the sea. He side-stepped and backed up further.

Mildly concerned now, I kicked him forward, regretting not having brought a whip with me. I raised his head and kicked again. He shot forward, just as I saw a man standing on the cliff top, staring down at us.

Gifford, was my first thought, but it was impossible to be sure. The cliffs were to the east of us, the sun was still low and the man was little more than a shadow blocking out a fraction of the early- morning light. He was tall and broad and his hair, long and loose, seemed to gleam like gold. The sun was hurting my eyes and I looked away for a second, screwing them closed to shut out the brightness. When I opened them again the man was gone.

I urged Henry away from the surf and put him into an active walk along the beach. It was two miles to home and I still had Charles to ride.

Charles was in no state to be ridden.

Missing Henry and with no Jamie to keep him calm, he'd panicked, jumped a fence into the next field, stumbled on the uneven ground and fallen into the stream that runs down our land. That, in itself, wouldn't have been too bad, but in slipping he'd dislodged an old barbed-wire fence and wrapped it around his left hind leg. The least sensible of my horses was trapped in a stream, with several razor-sharp points digging into his flesh. Not surprisingly, he was seriously distressed. His eyes were rolling and his grey coat was dark with sweat.

I untacked Henry as fast as I could and pushed him into the field. Hearing Charles's panic he rushed up to the fence and started calling out to him. Horses have a particular whinnying cry when they're hurt or distressed. It's a sound you rarely hear, fortunately, because it pierces your heart the way I imagine the screams of a terrified child would. Charles's cries doubled in volume and he started to struggle and kick.

I knew I'd never get the wire off Charles without some sort of wire-cutter so I turned and ran back into the house. I was wearing an ancient pair of green Hunter Wellingtons and they were caked in mud from the last time I'd worn them – Jamie's aborted burial day. The mud had dried and started to flake off over the carpet as I rushed upstairs to the spare room where Duncan kept his tools. I found a pair of pliers, then grabbed another, stronger pair just for good measure and raced back downstairs again. On the fourth stair from the bottom I slipped and went down, banging my coccyx badly on the stairs. It hurt but I forced myself to stand up and get moving.

Running outside, I found Charles and Henry winding each other up and Henry prepared to jump the fence and join Charles in the stream. He needed to be tied up but the time it would take me to find a head-collar and catch him just couldn't be spared. Blood was running down Charles's leg. Even if I did manage to get him free – and from the state of him that was looking increasingly unlikely – he'd probably done irreparable damage to his leg. Surely I wasn't about to lose a second horse in as many weeks?

Forcing myself to move slowly, I approached Charles. The stream is a narrow one, at times barely visible under rushes and long grass. In summer it doesn't carry much water but the gully is deep. Charles was using his front legs in a scrambling motion to propel himself out but, fastened as he was by his hind leg, it was impossible. Plus, every effort he made sapped his energy, increased his panic and pushed the sharp prongs of the wire deeper into his flesh. I hadn't faced a situation remotely like it before and for a second I was tempted to just throw back my head and scream for help. Except I knew none would come.

I stood just out of reach of Charles's hoofs and tried to calm him. If he would let me touch his head I was in with a chance.

'Steady, steady, steady, whoa now, steady.' I reached towards him. He tossed his head up and towards me, grabbing with his teeth. Then he spun round, trying to scramble away. I'd known this horse since he was two years old; he'd come to my mother's farm to be broken in and I was the only regular rider he'd known, but pain and fear had turned me into the enemy. I looked down. The left hind leg was pretty well immobilized and there appeared to be two – no, three – strands of wire connecting Charles to the fence. If he let me approach, I might be able to cut through the wire, enabling him to climb out of the ditch.

I jumped down into the gully and Charles glared, swinging round to face me. A kick from a big horse can seriously injure, if not kill – and yet without getting close, I could do nothing to help him. Talking gently, wishing my voice sounded calmer, I moved forward. He was panting heavily and his eyes were rolling. If he sprang, I could be pinioned beneath two very powerful forelegs; if he fell, I'd be crushed. It all looked impossible and for a moment I was tempted to give up and ring the vet. Yet I knew the chances of him being able to come straight away were slim and if there were to be any possibility of saving Charles I had to get him loose from the wire-fence pretty much immediately.

I moved forward again as Charles reared, balancing precariously on his trapped rear limbs. He fell forward and I moved again before he had chance to recover. I was no longer talking to him, my voice just wouldn't work any more. Crouching down in the ditch, I willed myself to ignore the half-ton of muscle and bone poised above me as I squeezed the pliers around the first thick strand of wire. It snapped in two and Charles chose that moment to kick out with both hind legs. The remaining wire dug deep into his fetlock and he screamed out loud with the pain. He reared again and this time those murderous forelegs were directly above me and coming down fast. I had to move!

'Stay where you are,' said a voice.

I froze.

Above me I could see clear blue sky; soft, white clouds; and the imminent prospect of a violent death.

Charles's forelegs came down with a thud on the bank and he sobbed. I know, you've never heard of a horse sobbing and doubt it's even possible, but believe me, that's what he did. A tanned, freckled arm covered in fine golden hairs was wrapped around his neck and two enormous hands were gripping his mane, holding him still. It was impossible. No man is strong enough to hold a panicking horse, without reins or even a head collar, but Gifford was doing it.

As I lay half in and half out of the ditch, unable to move a muscle, I watched Gifford stroke Charles's mane. Gifford's head was pressed against Charles's nose and I could hear his voice, whispering softly in words I couldn't understand. Gaelic, possibly, or some obscure Shetland dialect. Charles was trembling, still visibly distressed, but otherwise perfectly still. This was my chance. If I moved quickly I'd be able to cut the two remaining strands of wire. I had to do it now because Gifford would not be able to hold Charles for long. Yet I must have been in shock because I still didn't move.

'The pliers are behind your head, slightly to your left,' said Gifford, without moving from his close embrace of the horse. His left hand was still clutching Charles's mane, his right was stroking his neck; short, quick, firm strokes. There was something slightly hypnotic about the movement. 'Get them now,' he said, and I turned. Lying on my stomach, I reached out for the pliers and then pushed myself forward, closer to Charles's hind leg. Charles shuddered and Gifford resumed his low Gaelic chanting. Shutting my mind to what could, at any moment, come slamming down on top of me, breaking my back and rendering me crippled at the very least, I reached forward with both hands, clamped the pliers around the closest piece of wire and cut it. Without stopping to think I reached for the second wire and squeezed. It broke with a high- pitched zinging sound that seemed to echo around the voe.

'Get out of there,' called Gifford and I rolled, over and over, until I judged I was far enough away to be safe. I looked back to see that Gifford had pulled Charles out of the ditch and was struggling to hold him still. Free at last of the painful brace, Charles just wanted to bolt, but Gifford was having none of it. He hung close around Charles's neck, being tossed this way and that by the superior strength of the horse, muttering in his ear all the while. After a minute or two, Charles admitted defeat. He drooped, seeming to lean against Gifford.

It was, quite simply, incredible. I'd heard, of course, of people with uncanny abilities to calm animals. I'd seen the film The Horse Whisperer, and had even gone so far as to read half the book, but I'd never seen anything like it in real life.

'Tora, will you get over here?' said Gifford, sounding half exasperated, half amused. I struggled to my feet and looked round for the pliers I'd dropped when I rolled out of the ditch. They were nowhere to be seen but the other, smaller pair lay close by. I picked them up and, glancing nervously at Gifford – I wasn't sure how long this mojo of his was going to last – approached Charles. He gave me his leg quite easily, as though it was any normal day at the blacksmith's.

Carefully, slowly, I snipped at the wire around Charles's leg. Five snips and the wire fell away. I picked it up, stepped back and Gifford let go. Charles reared and bucked and then cantered off towards the fence, where Henry had been watching the whole incident with in- creasing impatience. After a few paces Charles slowed to a walk. He was lame but still able to put weight on the damaged limb. I started to hope that it wasn't going to be too bad after all.

'How'd you do that?' I asked, without taking my eyes off Charles. 'He wouldn't let me near him.'

'You were more afraid than he was,' replied Gifford. 'He could sense that and it made him worse. I wasn't scared and I wasn't standing for any nonsense.'

It made sense. Horses are herd animals, following without question a strong leader – equine or human. Horses like to know who is boss.

'And I used a bit of hypnosis. Just to calm him down.'

That made no sense. I turned to look at Gifford.

'Animals are very susceptible to hypnosis,' he said. 'Especially horses and dogs.'

'You're kidding me,' I said, although I wasn't sure. He looked perfectly serious.

'You're right, I'm kidding you. Now, painkillers and a tetanus jab. Possibly antibiotics.'

'I'll call the vet,' I said, watching Charles and Henry nuzzle each other over the fence.

'I'm talking about you,' said Gifford, running his hand up my right arm towards the shoulder. The pain was as sharp as it was surprising; either Charles had kicked me after all, without my noticing, or I'd fallen on a pretty sharp stone. I turned towards Gifford and – oh shit – the pain disappeared beneath a stab of lust so unexpected it made me want to run for cover. I swear he'd grown two inches since I'd last seen him and in jeans and a T-shirt he was definitely not dressed for work. He was gleaming with sweat.

'Let's go in,' he said. 'I'll see what I've got in my bag.'

Gifford's car was parked in our yard and he took his bag from the boot as we walked past. In the kitchen I took off my riding helmet and sat down at the table, acutely conscious of the debris from breakfast, my red, sweaty face and hair that badly needed washing. I probably didn't smell too good either. Gifford turned on the tap and let it run till the water steamed.

'I can take you into the hospital where we can be properly chaperoned or you can have my word that I'm not about to behave inappropriately.'

I'm sure I blushed at that but my face was so red to start with he couldn't have noticed. I unbuttoned my shirt – an old one of Duncan's – and wriggled out of the sleeve. I held the fabric close to me, less out of modesty, if I'm honest, than because my bra was not the pure-white lacy one I'd probably have chosen for the occasion.

Gifford started to bathe my arm and I turned my head to assess the damage. Most of my upper arm was already starting to bruise. There was a nasty scratch, which was bleeding, but I didn't think it looked too deep. I had no recollection of it happening but, now that I was no longer running on adrenaline, it was hurting like hell.

Gifford dressed the wound and gave me a tetanus jab. Finally, he offered me two small, white tablets. They were painkillers, stronger than the sort you can buy over the counter, and I took them grate- fully.

He looked at his watch. 'I have surgery in twenty minutes.' He started to pack away his things.

'What are you doing here?'

He laughed. 'Thank you, Mr Gifford, for saving my life, not to mention that of my horse, and offering immediate and highly efficient first aid.' He closed his bag. 'I was planning to ring the vet for you but I guess I won't bother now.'

'Put my bad manners down to shock. Why are you here?'

'I wanted to talk to you away from the hospital.'

And there was my heartbeat, skipping away on a rollercoaster ride of its own again. I just knew there was bad news coming.

'Oh?'

'There've been complaints.'

'About me?'

He nodded.

'From whom?'

'Does it matter?'

'Does to me.'

'I told them I'm highly impressed with what I've seen so far, that you're doing a perfectly acceptable job and that I have every intention of keeping you on the team. But that you are in a very new environment, things will seem strange for a while and they need to cut you some slack.'

'Thank you,' I said, feeling no better. Having one friend is never enough; not if everyone else hates you.

'Don't mention it.' He closed his bag and lifted it.

'Why are you telling me?'

'Because you need to know. You need to make the effort, too. Your technical skills are all there but you don't handle people that well.'

That pissed me off, big time. Probably because I knew he was telling the truth. I stood up. 'If you have a problem with my performance at work there are procedures you need to follow. You don't need me to tell you that.'

Gifford wasn't remotely intimidated. 'Oh, get over yourself. We can do it by the book if you want. It will take an immense amount of time that neither of us can spare and the end result will be no different, except there'll be a cumbersome and potentially damaging paper trail on your file. I'll see you tomorrow.'

He turned and was gone, leaving me alone with a very sore arm and my self-esteem in tatters.