Mo Hayder: Pig Island

I came to stand next to him, opening the other window and ducking to stick my nose out, staring up to where the cliff rose hard into the night. I tried to picture the island stretching out between here and the south tip — miles of uninhabited land, poking into the sea like a finger. So, Malachi, you live with the pigs, I thought. And do you cut them up too?

'What's he getting up to over there, then, Blake?' I murmured. 'What did the tourist photograph that day?'

When Blake answered his voice was so low that I had to strain to hear. 'Something has gone very wrong for Malachi. Things are happening at that end of Cuagach I try not to think about too hard.'

There was a full moon that night, and the air was so crystalline, so salty and cool that, lying in my bed in the cottage next to the firth, I could have been in my tomb. I stayed awake listening to the wind picking up outside, thinking of the trees on the slopes above, leaning and bending in the wind, about all the secret places their movements revealed. Malachi Dove, alive and only three miles away. I kept coming back in my mind to the path I'd been walking up when Blake had stopped me — Where does that go, then, Blake? Where does that path go? When at last I gave up trying to sleep and slid out of bed the display on my mobile phone read 02:47.

I hauled on my filthy old army shorts, grabbed my rucksack, and crept down the stairs. The house was silent. The smell of our drinking session still hung in the kitchen and the two half-empty glasses stood on the table. At the back door there was a heavy torch on the worktop, a Post-it taped above it — Blake reminding himself to check the batteries. I took the torch and stepped out into the starry night, closing the door carefully behind me.

Outside it was cold. The cottages were frosty and shuttered-looking in the moonlight. The only light was an old-fashioned harbour lamp on the jetty, twinkling through the trees, and beyond it, high in the sky above the silver-capped firth, clouds were gathering in a shape like sprawling seaweed, one tendril snaking out to the island, the other angling down above the Craignish Peninsula where the bungalow was, like they were trying to connect the two landmasses. I pictured Lexie, curled up on the bed, her yellow pyjama top bunched up a bit to show her long back, her face pleated against the pillow. Sorry, Lex, my love, I thought, pulling out my mobile, checking it for a signal. Nothing. When we first met it wouldn't have mattered that I'd left her on her own — she'd have been out with her friends or in bed with a bottle of wine, watching all the shite TV I hated. But everything was different now. The way she talked about my job, these nights away were like me putting fingers into an open wound. Still, I thought, pushing the phone back into my pocket, someone has to do it. I hitched up the rucksack, and was about to set off along the path when a faint sound made me pause.

What the-?

I turned and stared at the dark, ragged shape of the cliff, darker than the sky. The sound had come from that direction. It had been so brief, so momentary and faint, I thought I must've dreamed it. You're hearing things, Oakesy, old mate. But then it came again — clearer this time, sending a neat finger of fear down my back. It was thin and lonely, very, very distant, and I knew instinctively it wasn't human. Instead — and I got this instant picture of the rotting meat under the sewage pipe — it sounded like a animal squealing. Or howling.

Pigs.

I looped my fingers into the rucksack straps and turned my face to the sky, standing still for a long time and straining to listen. But minutes passed and the sound didn't come again. The cliff face stood hard and silent, only the occasional toss and buffet of the trees disturbing it. At length, when it felt like I'd waited for ever, I hitched the rucksack up again and, casting occasional glances at the cliff, set off along the path, the torch shining on the ground ahead.

I turned on to the narrow lane that wound up into the woods, the memory of the one lousy family holiday I'd ever had coming back to me — a caravan in Wales — the brilliant treachery of being out at night as a kid, the pancake-grey luminescence of the road. Who'd have thought Tarmac could look so pale in the darkness? About a hundred yards past the maintenance shed the Tarmac gave way to earth and I was into the woods, climbing now. Up and up for a good ten minutes into the dark woods and for ages all I could hear were my footsteps and the thump of my heart. Then, dead sudden, the trees opened, the moon came out, and I was in a clearing.

I stopped. A wire fence stood in front of me, rising up against the stars. Tall. At least nine feet of it. Like something from a zoo. I stared at it for a long time. A zoo or Jurassic Park. In the middle of it, directly in the path, was a tall gate. It had a heavy-duty padlock, and even before I went forward and rattled it I knew it wasn't going to open. I stood for a few moments, shining my torch to left and right along the fence, to where it stretched uninterrupted into the darkness. Then I pressed the torch into a hole in the wire and shone the beam through it to where the path continued on, identical to the path I stood on, winding away, higher and higher into the trees.

'OK,' I muttered, thinking of the maintenance shed I'd passed the previous morning. 'This, dear Father in heaven, is why you invented wire-cutters.'

'Wait!'

I'd found the cutters in the shed and was half-way back to the gate when I heard the voice. I halted in my tracks, heart sinking.

'I said wait! What do you think you're doing?'

I turned, shoving the cutters into my pocket. Blake was running up the path behind me, flushed and puffing, an expression of outrage on his face. 'What in — in heaven's name do you think you're doing?'

'I'm having a look round.'

'No! You do not just "have a look round" on Cuagach. It's against the rules.' He caught up to me, and stood, breathing hard and shaking his head. He was wearing a sports jacket over a long purple T-shirt, his naked feet shoved hurriedly into unlaced trainers. 'You can't leave the community. Do you understand?' He switched on a pen torch and shone it into my face, then on to my rucksack, then up the path. 'Where were you going?'

'Over there,' I said amiably. 'Was just on my way to speak to Dove.'

'No, no, no, Joe!' He snatched at my sleeve, holding it between thumb and forefinger to stop me moving. 'Oh, no. You can't just go and speak to him. It's not a good idea. Not a good idea at all.'

I stared at the hand on my sleeve. 'Well, you know,' I said slowly, the instinct to thump him twitching briefly in my chest, 'maybe you're right — maybe it isn't a great idea. But I'm going to do it anyway.' I pulled my arm out of his grip and began to walk away.

'No!' he cried, starting to run again. I was going fast but he managed to insert himself on the path in front of me, holding out his arms and trotting backwards, trying to prevent me going any further. 'Over my dead body.'

I stopped and looked down at his scrawny legs, his weird, squashed skull. He weighed about half what I did. I shook my head, amused. 'You're not really saying you want to fight me?'

'Don't laugh at me,' he said savagely. 'Don't you dare laugh, boy. If I can't fight you then the others will. They'd be here in minutes.'

'Well, that sounds like a deal-breaker. It sounds like you don't want me to do your publicity after all.'

He paused and bit his lip. We regarded each other in silence, and after a few moments, without speaking, I pushed past him and continued up the path. At first I thought he was going to let me go. Then I heard his footsteps behind, running to catch up. I stopped.