Sacrifice

39

I COULDN'T SEE, COULDN'T HEAR, COULDN'T BREATHE. THE BOAT swerved again.

'… the hell are you doing?' I heard Richard calling out from some great distance away. 'She'll bleed to death before we can get her back.'

'Then fix it, Doctor. I'll drive the boat.'

Marginally, the pain was receding, leaving my head, my chest, my abdomen, and concentrating in one spot, the fleshy part of my upper thigh. The blackness in my head faded a little and I could see again. And hear again: a terrifying noise filled the cabin and I realized it was me – screaming. Richard pushed his hands under my shoulders and dragged me across the floor, into the starboard cabin. With a strength I'd never have believed he possessed, he picked me up and lay me on the bunk, beside the still form of a woman. Freya. Even through the pain I recognized her. Then he took hold of both my hands and pressed them against the wound.

'Push hard,' he instructed. 'Stem the bleeding. You know what will happen if you don't.'

Only too well. Crimson fluid was pumping from my leg. Gair had most likely hit an artery and I was in big trouble. I pressed hard but I could feel the strength draining from me. I felt like I do when I'm falling asleep, when keeping the mind focused on even the simplest thing becomes impossible. Except I could not sleep. I had to stay conscious. I could hear Gair on the radio and the crackle of someone responding to him.

Richard was back. He pushed my hands away and started wrapping something around my leg. He pulled tight, then tighter. I looked down – the white of the bandages was already soaked scarlet. I can never see fresh blood without admiring it. Such an amazing substance, rich and strong and vibrant; such a beautiful colour; so sad to see it leaking away, dripping down through the floorboards, into the bilges and out, to disappear without trace, amidst the cold salt waters of the North Sea.

Gair was giving the coordinates of our position. Reinforcements were on their way. I had lost. I was going back to Tronal, to spend the next eight months chained and drugged, while a new life grew inside me. A life I had planned for, longed for, prayed for. And now that it was here, it was to be my death. I wondered what they'd do with Duncan, whether he would be allowed to live, be given one last chance to come back to the fold. Or whether he was already dead.

Richard twisted me so that my head rested on Freya's shoulder and then propped my left leg against the wall, allowing gravity to do its job.

Then he leaned forward, put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. The room seemed to darken around him.

'Relax now,' he said. 'The pain will go.'

I struggled hard and forced my eyes shut. 'You're hypnotizing me?'

'No.' He stroked my forehead and my eyes opened. 'Just calming you, helping you with the pain.'

He continued stroking my forehead and, remarkably, the pain did seem to ease. But with it went what was left of my focus; I was starting to drift. Didn't want that to happen.

I reached out and caught his hand.

'Why?' I managed. 'Why do you kill us? Why do you hate your mothers so much?'

He held my hand in both of his. 'We have no choice,' he said. 'It's what makes us who we are.' He leaned closer. 'But never think we hate the women who bear our children. We don't. We mourn our mothers, honour their memories, miss them all our lives. We are not a religious people, but if we were, our mothers would be our saints. They made the ultimate sacrifice for their sons.'

'Their lives,' I whispered.

'Their hearts,' he said.

I tore my eyes away from his, back to the poppy-stained bandages around my leg. And knew what he was about to tell me.

Oh God, please God, no.

Richard sat down on the bunk beside me. He was still holding my hand. 'When I was nine days old,' he said, 'I drank the blood of my mother's heart.'

He paused, giving me a moment to understand what he was saying. I couldn't speak, I could only stare at him.

'It was given to me in a bottle,' he went on, 'along with the last of her milk.'

Bile rose in my throat. 'Stop. I don't want…'

He hushed me, stroking a finger gently across my cheek. I swallowed hard; concentrated on taking deep breaths.

'Of course, I knew nothing about it at the time; it was much later, on my sixteenth birthday, that I learned of… shall we say… my extraordinary heritage?'

Breathe in, breathe out. It was all I could think of. I heard his words but I don't think I was really registering them. Not then, not till much later.

'You can imagine the shock. I'd grown up with my father and his wife, a woman I loved very much. I had no idea she wasn't my biological parent. And the horror of what they were telling me, of what had been done to the woman who… I think it was just about the darkest day of my life.'

A derisory phrase sprang into my head, was on the tip of my tongue: my heart bleeds, I nearly said. Jesus, who on earth came up with that one?

'But at the same time, it was the start of my life, of understanding who I really was. I already knew I was special, brighter by far than any other child in the class. I was a gifted musician and I could speak four languages, two of which I'd taught myself. I was stronger, faster and more able in just about everything I did. Every sport I attempted I mastered. And I was never ill. Not once in all my sixteen years had I ever had a day off school because of sickness. When I was twelve, I broke my ankle playing soccer. It healed in two weeks.'

I found my voice. 'You were just lucky; a fortunate combination of genes. It had nothing to do with…'

'And I had other powers too, stranger powers. I'd discovered I could make people do what I wanted, just by suggestion.'

'Hypnosis.'

'Yes, that's what some of the younger ones like to call it.'

I shook my head. I wasn't buying it, but I couldn't find words to argue.

'I was introduced to two other boys who'd already turned sixteen. One was from the main island, the other from Bressay. They were just like me, just as strong, just as clever. I was told about four others, a few months younger, who were the rest of my peer group. And I met six older boys who had just turned nineteen. They knew what we were going through, had been through it themselves three years previously.'

'Every three years,' I said. He nodded.

'Every three years, between five and eight boys are born. We have just one son, in our lifetimes, one son who will become one of us.'

'Trows?' I wanted to scoff, tried to scoff, but it was hard.

He frowned. 'Kunal Trows,' he corrected. Then he relaxed, even half smiled. 'So many stories, so much nonsense: little grey men who live in caves and fear iron. Yet tucked away inside all legends, a kernel of truth can be found.'

All those women. All those deaths. How do you do it?'

He smiled again. I think he was even starting to show off.

'The practicalities are remarkably simple. The key is having people in the right places. Once a woman has been identified, we watch her very closely. We may stage an accident, or her GP might discover an illness. Not all GPs on the islands are with us, of course, so it depends. Once she's in hospital it becomes very straightforward, although obviously every case has to be handled differently. Typically, a high dosage of something like Midazolam is given to slow the metabolism right down so the life-support machines automatically sound the alarm. If relatives are present, the medical team make a great show of trying to save the patient, but fail. The unconscious woman is taken to the morgue, where our people are on standby to take her to Tronal. The pathologist produces a report and a weighted coffin is either buried or incinerated. Naturally, we encourage cremation.'

'Naturally. What about Melissa?'

He sighed. 'Melissa was a special case. Like you, never intended to be part of all this.' He glanced towards the open door of the cabin, glaring in Gair's direction. 'We do not use our own wives.'

'She found out?'

He nodded. 'She learned Stephen's passwords and went through his computer files one night.' He stretched out a hand, stroked my forehead again. 'Melissa was a very clever, very stubborn woman,' he continued. 'She was like you in so many ways. It struck me as the deepest irony that you should be the one to find her. Her mistake, of course, was in confronting Stephen, telling him what she knew. We had to act fast. At first, we planned to eliminate her, but she'd told Stephen she was pregnant and he didn't want to lose the child. It was his idea to substitute the other woman, the one from Oban. I was against it. Too many complications. But we'd pretty much run out of time.'

'And Kirsten Hawick. I know she's in my field too. Did you stage that accident? Did one of you drive the lorry?'

He shook his head. 'No, Kirsten's accident was genuine. We just exaggerated the extent of her injuries. She had a son. He lives on Yell now, a fine boy.'

Kirsten might have recovered. The almost unbearable grief I'd seen Joss Hawick enduring could have been totally unnecessary. I wanted to scream, but knew that if I did, I wouldn't be able to stop.

'Why do you bury the women? Why not just dump them at sea? Or burn them? If you'd done that, I'd never have found Melissa.'

'No, but we can't. It's against our beliefs. Our mothers lie in what is for us sacred ground. It's part of the way we honour them.'

'And I suppose it was just too great a risk to bury them all on Tronal. So you've created burial grounds all over the islands?'

He inclined his head, acknowledging the truth of what I was saying.

And Duncan? Duncan did this too? Drank…'

Richard nodded. 'He did. So did his father and his grandfather before him, and my father and grandfather and great-grandfather. We are the Kunal Trows, stronger and more powerful than any other men on earth.' He stood up, ready to return to the main cabin. I was so tired. I wanted nothing more than to slip into unconsciousness. And I knew that if I did so I would die. I had to keep talking.

'How many? How many of you are there?'

He paused at the door.

'Around the world, between four and five hundred. Most live here, but about a hundred years ago we started to colonize. We prefer islands, remote but with a strong local economy.'

My body was trembling and I felt a strong urge to vomit. I was going into shock but I was no longer in danger of losing consciousness. The pain was hell but I could deal with it.

'You're not special,' I said. 'It's all in your head.'

Richard's voice had fallen, as though he was trying to comfort a distressed child. 'You have no idea of the powers we have. Influence you couldn't even dream of. These islands, and many others around the world, belong to us. We do not flaunt our wealth but we possess it in immeasurable terms.'

'You're just ordinary men.'

'I'm eighty-five years old, Tora, and yet I have the strength of a man in his fifties. How ordinary is that?'

'Richard,' called Gair, 'I think I can hear an engine. I need to go up top and signal. Can you take the helm?'

Richard started to turn. 'Believe me if you can, my dear. It will make the next few months easier.'

He turned and left the cabin, closing the door and shutting me inside with the motionless Freya. I felt a moment of surprise that he hadn't sedated me. Maybe all that showing off about his so-called special powers had made him forget. Or more likely he figured the pain and blood loss would be enough to keep me immobile. I looked up at my leg. Blood was no longer pumping out and it was possible the artery wasn't severed after all. I risked lowering it and then raised myself up so that I was sitting on the bunk. The bleeding increased but not alarmingly. I looked at Freya. Still breathing, possibly not as heavily as before, but otherwise no real signs of life. I could expect no help from that quarter.

I sat on the bunk, thinking. It would be just about impossible to get the better of Richard and Gair, injured as I was, but I had to try. While they were separated, Gair on deck, Richard driving the boat and with his back to me, I had the best chance. Once the other boat arrived, Dana would go overboard and I'd be guarded, possibly drugged, until the police operation was over and I was safely back on Tronal.

I tried standing up. A stab of pain shot up through my leg. I took deep breaths, counted to ten, waited for the pain to subside. Then I stepped forward. Another stab of pain, not so bad this time.

Clinging to the shelf around the cabin I inched forwards until I reached the door handle. Motor launches have terrifically loud engines, but Richard had reduced the speed and I thought I caught the sound of another engine somewhere in the distance. I turned the handle and pulled at the door. It opened silently.

Richard was alone in the main cabin, standing at the wheel, peering forwards as though struggling to see ahead. We'd reached another offshore mass of stacks and the navigation was tricky. If I knocked him out – which was basically the plan – we could easily hit one of the huge granite rocks around us. Once the hull was breached, the launch would sink quickly and I'd have to launch a life-raft (always assuming there was one on board), get three unconscious women on to it and deal with a strong and violent psychopath. All this with only one good leg. Like I said, I didn't fancy my odds.

On the other hand… I really didn't like what was on the other hand.

I needed a weapon. Grandad's horse gun lay on a shelf at the far side of the cabin but I'd never be able to reach it without Richard seeing me. I looked all around. The floor was still slick with blood – my blood – and my stomach churned. I forced myself to look away. I checked the shelves that ran around the cabin and found where the boat tools were kept. I slipped my hand down. It was like a life- or-death game of jackstraws – dislodge one from the heap without moving the others or making a sound. Amazingly, I managed it. I raised my hand and examined my find. Some sort of pliers, thick steel, about twelve inches long. They would do. No point hanging about. I limped forwards, arm above my head.

Of course, Richard saw my reflection in the cabin windows. He spun round, catching my arm, pushing it down, behind my back. With my free hand, I pushed at his chest then, in desperation, clawed at his eyes. He hit me, just once, a heavy blow across the temples. Blood shot from my mouth and flew across the cabin as my legs gave way under me. I grabbed the lapel of Richard's jacket and clung on. As I toppled I took him with me.

We landed heavily, he on top of me. He pushed himself up. For a second, I could only stare at him, wait for him to act. Then I grabbed his earlobe and he yelled with pain. He hit my arm hard and I had to let go, but with my other hand I went for his eyes again. He sat up, straddled across me, pinning me down. With one hand, he grabbed my right wrist and held fast. With the other, he reached for my throat.

Knowing it could be the last sound I ever made, I screamed.

Richard's hand wrapped around my neck and squeezed. I thrashed my head from side to side but his grip wasn't budging. He was incredibly strong; I'd been a fool to imagine I could overpower him. With my left hand I struck out at his face but his arms were longer than mine and I couldn't reach him.

I tore at the hand holding my throat, dug my nails into skin, tried to wrench it away. The instinctive panic that goes hand in hand with oxygen deprivation had set in, giving me strength I wouldn't otherwise have had, but it still wasn't enough. Richard was no longer looking at me, but at a point over my head. He wasn't capable of looking me in the eyes as he throttled me. I think I took a small measure of comfort from that as the darkness began to grow.

Then he convulsed – just once – and his grip relaxed, releasing the pressure on my throat. My lungs started pumping, desperate for air, but my throat had been damaged by the pressure of Richard's strong hand. Like a dented pipe, it couldn't let enough air flow through and the darkness in my head continued to grow.

Richard fell forwards towards me; his eyes met mine but were expressionless. His weight shifted, my lungs made a gigantic effort and air flooded in once more. I managed to raise both hands to fend him off and as he collapsed I shoved hard.

He rolled to one side and I pushed against him, without a clue what was happening but grasping at any chance to be free. He fell face-down on the floor of the cabin. A circle of blackness stained the thick white hair on the back of his head and, as I watched, a small bubble of blood rose from the wound and burst as it reached the air. Tearing my eyes away, I looked at the figure kneeling above him. Eyes met mine and I thought I saw a brief glimmer of recognition before they glazed over. There was a heavy thud as the humane killer, the thick iron-bolt stained dark with Richard's blood, fell to the floor.

Pushing myself up, I reached over and felt for a pulse in Richard's neck. There was nothing. I pulled myself to my feet, stepped over him and peered up the companionway steps. Gair was nowhere in sight but I could make out flickers of light as he signalled to another boat.

I bent down, picked up the weapon and reloaded the bolt. Then, at last, I reached out and touched the face of Richard's killer. Eyes dazed with drugs looked back emptily into mine. Then I saw a gleam of intelligence and Dana's lips stretched into a smile.

'Can you understand me?' I whispered, feeling myself smile in response. She nodded, but didn't seem able to speak.

'Stephen Gair is up there,' I said, gesturing towards the cockpit. 'He is very dangerous.' No surprise in her eyes. 'Can you watch the steps? When he appears, let me know?'

She nodded again and I stood up and limped over to the helm. I could see no immediate hazards ahead; the depth gauge was unable to read the depth – always a reassuring sign – and I flicked the boat on to auto-pilot. Then, I picked up the radio and switched to channel 16.

'Mayday, mayday, mayday,' I said as loudly as I dared, knowing Gair would hear the crackle of the response and hoping he would think it was the other boat talking to Richard.

'Mayday, mayday, mayday,' I repeated. 'This is motor launch Arctic Skua, Arctic Skua. We are in Shetland waters, travelling south down the eastern coast of Tronal island. We require urgent medical and police assistance.'

There was a crackle of static. No response.

I glanced round. Dana's eyes hadn't left the companionway steps. I could hear footsteps above us.

'There are six people on board,' I said into the mouthpiece. 'Two of us are injured. Three have been drugged. Only one is able-bodied and he is a danger to the rest of us. We need help urgently. Repeat, urgently.'

Another crackle. Still no response.

It was close to hopeless. Even if anyone were listening – which the Shetland coastguard, at least, certainly should be – they would never get to us in time. The second Tronal boat would be here any second and the other women and I were going overboard. All I could do was make sure we didn't disappear without a trace.

'We are Tora Hamilton, Richard Guthrie, Stephen Gair and Dana Tulloch. Repeat Dana Tulloch, who is alive and well.' Not for much longer, though – I could definitely hear another engine getting closer. Also two other women whose real names I don't know. We have been abducted and held prisoner by Richard Guthrie and Stephen Gair. Both men are extremely dangerous.'

That was stretching it a bit. Richard hadn't moved and looked anything but dangerous. Gair was another matter. If he came below he would kill me. He would have no choice. Without Richard, he would be unable to administer the drugs that would keep me insensible until we got back to Tronal. The baby would have to be sacrificed. He would kill me and throw me overboard. Dana too. The other two women might survive the trip, but for what? Another eight months of imprisonment and a violent death. I could not let Gair come below. I had to go up and tackle him head on.

Except I couldn't do it. I was weak from loss of blood and dizzy from pain. I'd spent most of the night running on adrenalin and the tank was empty. I couldn't fight him; couldn't even climb the steps. I would wait, hide inside one of the sleeping cabins, jump on him when he came back down. It was the only possible way.

A noise above. Someone had leaped on the roof of the cabin.

'Hey, ladies!'

Gair's face hung upside-down in the companionway. He was lying on the cabin roof staring down at us. Veins bulged on his forehead and I could see his large white teeth. I realized that he and sanity had parted company. His eyes darted to Richard's body and narrowed. Then he looked back at me.

'Get up here, Tora,' he said.