Mo Hayder - Pig Island

'Jesus,' I said faintly, pulling out my camera, staring at the letters. 'Jesus fucking Christ. Someone here is really scared.' I squatted and fired off a few shots. Then I stood and faced across the gorge. The letters were so big they were difficult to understand this close up — they weren't designed to be read from the place we stood. They'd only be clear from a distance. Like if you were to stand in the tree-line on the other side of the gorge.

'That's it,' I said, staring at the trees. 'He lives over there, doesn't he? That's why you've got all this — this shit lying around up here.' I went to the edge of the gorge and squinted down into the darkness. 'Can we get down there? I want to go nearer.'

'No. The only way to get to Malachi's side of the island is in the boat and — don't lean over, please.'' He plucked at my shirt, trying to pull me back. 'Joe — please — this is very dangerous. If you went down there you wouldn't make it back alive. And any-way-'

I turned. 'Anyway what?'

He hesitated. His face in the moonlight was pale. He knew he'd said too much. 'Nothing. It's very dangerous. Very dangerous.'

'No.' I straightened and looked at him, a bit amused. 'No. You weren't going to say that. What were you going to say?'

'Nothing.'

'Yes, you were.'

'No,' he said firmly.

I sighed. 'Well, if you're not going to tell me I'll have to find out for myself.' I started off along the ledge, dodging the gargoyles, shining the torch at the edge, trying to find a place to clamber down the escarpment.

'Stop!'

I looked back at him. 'Only if you tell me what you were going to say.'

He paused, biting his lip, his eyes lowered, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. 'A non-harassment order,' he muttered, not meeting my eye.

'What? What was that?'

'I said a non-harassment order. Malachi took out a non-harassment order on us. He went to court for it.'

'He went to court?' I echoed. 'Oh, Blake,' I leaned a bit closer to him, giving him a faint smile, suddenly enjoying this, 'what did you do to deserve that?'

'Nothing. Malachi is very unwell. We've done nothing wrong.'

'So why'd he get a restraining order on you?'

'Because he is insane! Insane. We've done nothing wrong!' He paused, breathing heavily, wiping his face like it was difficult to control himself. He ripped his binoculars off his head, thrusting them out to me. 'There. Look. His place is a fortress.'

I let the camera dangle on my chest and lifted the binoculars, focusing, moving them through a kaleidoscope of landscapes: the side of a boulder, a pile of rusting drums, the yellow flash of a hazardous-substance label. The opposite escarpment was of a darker rock: it looked geologically totally different from the land we stood on — blacker and more compact. I raised the binoculars and found a consistent line at the point where the trees started and, above it, a faint impressionistic cross-hatched pattern.

'What's that? Another fence? He's got a fence just like you?'

'Yes.'

'And when did he put up that little beauty?'

'Two years ago. Can you see the video cameras? They're trained on us now, Joe.'

I moved the binoculars slowly. The fence ran the length of the top of the escarpment, and mounted in front of it, like H. G. Wells's tripods, were at least forty video cameras, all pointing out across the moonlit gorge, glinting at us like silent, unblinking eyes.

'If he picks us up on those video cameras then we're in breach of the order and we'll never get power of attorney.'

'This is your Gaza Strip wall? This is where it all happens?' I was about to drop the binoculars when they swept past something I couldn't put a name to. I quickly moved them back, the cross-hatching of the fence blurring with the movement, and-

'Blake? Blake, this is fucking weird shit.'

I was looking at a pair of eyes. Smeared and hollow. Below them a snout. A pig's head. Mounted on top of the fence. When I moved the binoculars to the right I found another — the same pushed-in features, the same hatch-like eyes, lolling tongue. I dropped the binoculars and stared out at the tree-line. Now I could see them — faint blobs of light, one after the other on top of the fence, lined up like heads on medieval battlements, one every ten feet or so just like the gargoyles on this side — stretching away into the distance. 'Where the fuck have they come from?'

'I told you — Malachi's very sick. He wants us to be scared.'

'And if I asked Benjamin Garrick, what would he say?'

Blake let his gaze drift out across the gorge. There was something resigned about his voice when he spoke. 'If you asked Benjamin he would say that Pan put them there. He would say that Pan can tear a living pig apart with his bare hands.'

The Garricks, it seemed, had a small following. They had convinced at least fifteen other members of the community that Pan was living on Pig Island, under Malachi's control. Or worse, not under it. Blake knew I wasn't going to be put off so the next morning he took me over to their cottage to speak to them. The storm he'd promised had arrived: overnight the island had been caught in a grey squall that sat like a cartoon cloud above it, circling it in grey mists and humid rains. When we set off at eleven, it seemed like the village had disappeared, only the dim orange glow of electric lights on in the cottages coming through the mist.

The Garricks lived at the end of the path that led down to the jetty. Once, their cottage had been painted peppermint green, but now it was faded almost to white, patched in places with grey filler and wet with condensed mist. It was the only cottage with a television set and the aerial rose, spidery, into the mist above the roof. We sat in the well-lit kitchen, with its cheerful gingham blinds, drinking steaming mugs of coffee and eating Susan's home-made brownies. Sovereign sat on the arm of the sofa in the adjacent room. She didn't speak but I was conscious of her watching me, an amused, knowing smile on her face. She was wearing a black Avril Lavigne T-shirt and a buckled, pleated miniskirt. Her long thin legs kept jiggling up and down, like she was dancing to a tune in her head.

I settled back and opened my notepad. The only way I can help you is if you tell me everything,' I said. 'We're going to talk about Malachi — and you're all going to tell me what you know.'

Susan Garrick flushed a very bright red. She looked from me to Blake and back again. 'I don't like this, Blake,' she said. 'I don't like this attitude. What happened to our agreement of March 2005?'

'Susan, there wasn't an agreement,' he said levelly. 'You said you wouldn't talk about it to outsiders, but I didn't make that promise. I'm acting in the interests of the whole community.'

'Well, I can't help it,' she said, running her hands over her arms where goosebumps had risen up. 'I can't help thinking that if Malachi knows we've talked about it he'll send that — that thing over here again. I'm not happy about provoking him.'

'Mr Oakes,' Benjamin said to me, 'do we have to do this? All we want is for you to tell our story. To tell how difficult it's been on Cuagach — but how devoted we are to it. We just want Malachi off the island so we can go over there and exorcize whatever it is he's tempted into living there.'

'Benjamin, Susan,' Blake put down his coffee and leaned across the table, taking their hands in his, 'Susan, Benjamin, this is important. Joe has told me that he won't do the story unless we talk about it.'

Susan stared at me. 'Is that true?'

'It's important to get the readers' interest,' I said, Joe-diplomat wise. 'They need to be drawn into a story.'

She looked at her husband, who shook his head and shrugged. 'Blake always does get his own way,' she said sullenly, dabbing at the few brownie crumbs on her plate. 'It's always been the same.' She turned her eyes to him. Her parrot-blue shirt made her face look old. 'If I speak, Blake, please try not to undermine me. I know you only do it because you're scared, but it wounds me.'