Sacrifice

10

'I SAW HER GRAVE, DANA. IT'S JUST NOT POSSIBLE.'

We were sitting at my kitchen table, doors locked, blinds drawn. I was tired and had an uncomfortable sense of being drawn back into something I'd been happy to leave behind just half an hour ago. We were drinking hot, strong coffee. I'd offered red wine but Dana had shaken her head. 'We need to think,' she'd said. Scary word: we. Suddenly, we were accomplices, working against clear instructions from our superiors. We were arguably being foolish, possibly about to do considerable harm and definitely in for a whole heap of trouble when – not if- we were found out.

I'd also offered food and Dana had given me a vague look. I wasn't sure if it meant yes or no. I was hungry and acutely conscious of cold ham in the fridge and fresh bread in the larder.

'Everything is possible. I just can't see how they did it.'

'Who exactly are they? You're talking about my boss. He's a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, for heaven's sake. There were other people in the room with her when the machines were turned off. Kirsten Hawick died. Nearly a year before our victim did.'

Dana clicked her tongue. 'Yeah, yeah… I've heard all that too. But – just to put it another way – you find a wedding ring on the same patch of ground you found a corpse; the inscription inside suggests it belongs to a dead woman, one Mrs Hawick, who not only fits the age and ethnic group of our victim, but also, judging by her wedding photos, bears a reasonable resemblance to her. And we're being told it's just coincidence. How likely does that seem to you?'

Not remotely, was the honest answer. But the evidence for Kirsten's death had been pretty convincing. I stood up. I was not going to be intimidated out of making a sandwich in my own home. I got out the ham, butter and bread.

'I felt such an idiot,' I said. 'God knows what they thought when they saw me digging up weeds on her grave.'

'Does it strike you as odd that the two of them should follow you to the churchyard? How did they even know you'd gone there? And why would it bother them?' Dana stopped, thought for a second, then said, 'Do I sound paranoid?'

I glanced over my shoulder. 'Only totally.'

'Thanks.' To her credit, she managed a smile.

'Welcome.' I bent down again, fumbling in the back of the fridge for the mayonnaise. When I straightened up she was serious again.

'There's something I want you to do,' she said.

Just when I'd thought it was safe. 'What?'

She reached into a briefcase and pulled out a folder of thin, green cardboard. From inside she removed a sheet of black and white transparent film.

'This is a dental X-ray that was taken of our corpse. My team have been checking it against records of women on the missing persons list. No matches so far, although obviously not all records are available to us.'

I brought the food back to the table and went to get cutlery. 'What do you want me to do?'

'I have nagged and pleaded and begged, but DI Dunn will not even consider asking Joss Hawick to release his wife's dental records for comparison.'

I really couldn't see where she was going with this. 'So…'

'You should be able to find them.'

Back at the table, I started buttering bread. I shook my head. 'Most dentists work privately. No one else can access their records. Even if we knew who Kirsten's dentist was, he couldn't release them to me without Joss Hawick's permission.'

'Tora, you're thinking of England. It's different up here. Most people use an NHS dentist. Plus, there was an IT pilot scheme carried out here a year ago. All the islands' dental records were computerized and made centrally available.'

'I still don't see…'

'There's a dental unit attached to your hospital. Kirsten's records will be on the hospital computer system. You can access them.'

She was probably right.

'I'm not a dentist,' I said lamely.

'You've studied anatomy. You know how to read X-rays. You'd have a better chance of seeing a match than I would.'

Following a hunch was one thing, asking someone you barely knew to carry out an illegal search was another. What wasn't she telling me?

'Will you do it?' she asked.

I didn't know.

'If there's no match, that's it. The ring is a red herring and we waste no more time on it.'

It was worth it, surely, to be able to close the chapter. I could prove to Dana that the corpse was not Kirsten and that would be the end of it.

'OK, I'll do it tomorrow.'

I indicated the food. 'Help yourself Dana ignored the ham and took a slice of bread and butter.

I, on the other hand, was no longer hungry.