Mo Hayder: Pig Island

'I want you to see this, Joe.'

I stood still until my eyes got used to the light. The two Gothic windows behind me dropped coloured light on to the flagstone floor, but the rest of the chapel was in shadow. It took me a moment to understand why. I turned and looked back at the doors and saw that the weatherboard steeple was only a fascia containing the small vestibule — the remainder of the chapel, which stretched out past Blake into the darkness, had been hewn deep into the cliff face. Everything, the altar, the pulpit, the vaulted ceiling, even the pews, was carved from grey-veined rock. It was one of the hottest days of the year, but the chapel was colder than a meat-locker.

'We did this,' said Blake proudly, his voice echoing round the walls, 'with hammers and chisels and our own sweat. Three years it took from start to finish. Fifteen of us working round the clock. Can you imagine the love, Joe, the love that goes into a project like this?'

I fumbled out my camera, handing the bag to the girl, and fired off a few shots, resting the camera on a pew for stability because I didn't want to use a flash. A wooden cross hung on the far wall and below it, painted in a gold-leaf arc that spread like sunrays across the walls, were the words: 'Leave the world when the Lord calls you. Resist not his will. Accept his grace and feel it grow within.' The altar was very large and probably, looking at the imagery, carved by the person responsible for the crucifix outside. 'What happens in here?' I said, moving between the pews.

'What happens in here?' Blake gave a nervous laugh showing his long teeth, like he couldn't believe I'd ask such a dumb question. He glanced to the girl and back, sharing his disbelief with her. 'What happens in most Christian chapels? We hold our prayer meetings and services.'

'Prayer meetings?' I lowered the camera. 'Services?'

He studied me with his pale eyes. 'That's what I said. Have you ever been to a Christian service, Joe?'

'Yes, Blake, I have. Will I be invited to one of yours?'

'Oh, you will. All in good time.'

I smiled at him then, holding his eyes. We were playing a game now, Blake and me, and we both knew it. 'That lock.' I nodded back to the big main doors. 'That's kind of a serious lock.' I'd noticed it when we first came in — a huge iron one that could be opened from either side. The key was on the inside and it was supplemented with bolts all the way up the interior of the door. The windows had no catches because they had been built not to open. For whatever reason, the PHM felt a need to lock this chapel, miles away from the mainland. 'Pretty secure. Feels like a bunker.' I gave him a sly wink. 'But I think that's something else you'll tell me about. All in God's good time?'

Blake drew himself up to his fullest height and took a deep breath. 'You'll stay with us tonight, won't you, Joe? I've got no plans to go to the mainland. There's a bed made up in my cottage.'

I gave a short laugh. 'Of course I'm going to stay, Blake. Of course.'

After the tour Blake let me off the leash for an hour to get some photographs in — I was allowed to go anywhere, as long as I didn't stray further up the slope towards the cliffs. He sent the teenage girl along as a chaperone. She carried the bag when I was shooting, held the reflector for me, and didn't say much until we were out of sight of the cottages. I was busy changing a lens when she crept up next to me and said, almost in my ear, 'They're on the other side of the island.'

I stopped and looked at her. Her face was very pale. Her eyes were watery and cold blue, like a swimming-pool.

'The pigs. You wanted to know about the pigs. And I was just saying, they're over there.' She rolled her eyes in the direction of the cliff face, nodding up there, as if she'd have liked to point but thought she might get caught doing it. 'Over there. All the way across the other side. But no one's going to, like, just let you go over there or anything.'

I lowered the camera. 'Why? What's over there?'

'I can't tell you that. We're not supposed to talk to you about it. Blake's going to tell you.'

I studied her. She had lank blonde hair pushed behind her ears and was so pale and thin it was pitiful, with spidery fingers and her feet like a skeleton's, blistered and sore, crammed into pink jelly sandals. 'And who are you?'

She grinned and wiped her hand on her shorts and held it out to me. 'I'm Sovereign. Yeah, I know, Sovereign. It's what my parents called me. Because I was, like, so valuable to the community when I arrived. Apparently.'

'You were born here?'

'Yeah, and this place is so not what I'm about. The day I turn eighteen I'm total history.' She made her hand into a plane and glided it out into the air, off towards the mainland. 'Bye-bye, toot toot, train — you won't see me for dust. Only four months now.'

'Who are your parents?'

'The Garricks. You met them. The ones with the sticks up their butts?'

'Yes. I met them.'

'I know what you're thinking — like, geriatric ward, yeah?' She grinned, showing a missing canine in her left jaw. No medical treatment, my mind flashed. 'They waited until they were thirty-eight before they had me, totally ancient. How gross is that? But that's how it is round here. Bunch of retards.' She stopped smiling and took a few moments to look at me, jiggling her legs a bit, chewing her thumbnail. 'You know, you don't look anything like a journalist.' She took her thumb out of her mouth. 'Anyone ever tell you that? I watch a lot of TV and I know what a journalist should look like and the first thing I thought when I saw you was, uh, like no way, he rully doesn't look like a journalist.'

I glanced down at my battered shorts, my big stained hands and sandals all dirty and fucked from walking everywhere. I had to smile. She was right — in spite of the psychology degree, the cushy detached house and the job, somehow I never had got the Merseyside docker out of my bones. I only did it once over the summer, helping my old man out, but it was in my family and stuck inside me like DNA. 'I know,' I said. 'I look like a docker.'

'Yeah, you do. You look like a docker.'

I snapped on the lens cap and studied her carefully. 'Sovereign,' I said, 'what goes on here? What happens in the church? What rituals was it made for?'

She laughed. 'I know what you're thinking. I know about the video. I told you: we see TV.'

'Then what is it? The thing on the beach. Who is it?'

'That depends on who you ask. One person says one thing, someone else says something else.'

'What about you? What do you say?'

'I say we're not Satanists. Nothing happens in the church except the usual shit. Prayer meetings, tambourines, Mum and Dad making total muppets of themselves. It's, like, so boring it's not true. And cold. Mum's stopped making me go, except on Sundays.'

'What about the locks on the doors? Those are some serious locks. Makes it look like they want to stop someone getting out.'

Sovereign blinked, confused. Then her expression cleared and she gave a short laugh. 'Duh, Joe!' She tapped her temple, as if to say, 'How stupid are you?' 'Not out! In. They're not trying to stop anyone getting out. They're trying to stop something getting in.'

'You're not going to answer any of the questions I want answered. You don't want to talk about your rituals or the rumours going round. Or about why everyone is so antsy about whatever's at the top of that cliff. Instead you're giving me a pretty good press release on how well the PHM is taking care of Cuagach Eilean.' I leaned across the table and helped myself to another shot of Blake's gin. It was late — nearly midnight — and we'd come back to his cottage after the evening meal in the refectory. We sat at the kitchen table near the window that faced the cliff. It was dark outside, and all we could see in the glass were our reflections — our faces lit from underneath by the small table lamp. Sovereign had given me clues: I needed Blake to give me the truth.