Mo Hayder - Pig Island

Compared to Blake's snippers, the cutters went through the fence like a hot knife through butter. In less than three minutes I'd made a hole from top to bottom. If someone was watching me from in there, hiding in the trees, they weren't going to have any doubt about my intentions. I picked up the kit and stepped through, resting the cutters on my shoulder so I could either carry them comfortably or circle them down in one move, crack them out of the air like lightning.

The first thing that struck me about the forest was the pig dung. The pellets were everywhere, piles of them, some trampled, some perfectly oval and crusted like manufactured dog biscuits. I kept passing shallow grooves in the earth, wind-battered snarls of hog-hair caught on twigs and stones where the pigs had come to scratch themselves. Every time the wind changed direction I got a blast of a smell too — not the rotting pigs' heads, but digested grass and leaves.

Deeper in the forest the wind couldn't reach and for a while everything got weirdly still, the trees motionless, loaded with silence. I paused to get my bearings, ears roaring in the quiet. Ahead, between the trunks, I could see patches of sunlight, like there was a large clearing out there. I could make out shapes — a rusting old hopper, a blondin rope suspended high in the air with an old pulley dangling from it. The slate mine.

I poked my head out of the trees and checked the clearing for signs of life. Deserted. The pulley creaked back and forward in the breeze — the same eerie squeaking I'd heard from outside the fence. I picked my way across the mine, peering into shafts, giving the hopper a shove, making rust flake into the air. In the side of a rock face a shaft entrance was half concealed by a rusting water tank. It gave off a stink of decay, like a sewer — when I shone my torch into it I came face to face with a dead pig. I stared into its flat eyes for some time, thinking that it was a weird place for it to have crawled. It must have been pushed in. And it wasn't as decomposed as it smelt — it looked kind of fresh. Maybe this was one of Malachi's disposal places. I remembered what the Garricks had said, that he had access to hell through these shafts: I was thinking of crawling inside to dislodge it when something made me stop.

Someone was laughing.

I backed silently from the shaft, clicked off the torch and sat back on my haunches, looking around at the trees. It was a heinous laugh — like a cartoon witch's — echoing around the deserted rocky hollow. My skin tightened. The laughter stopped and another noise joined it — of someone speaking in a long, low, uninterrupted monologue. There was something about the quality — something so familiar that-

I stood slowly, a smile on my face. Television. I was sure of it. Somewhere up ahead, among the deserted rocks, a television was playing.

The house was like a large Victorian cottage — bizarre out here on its own in the woods. Maybe it was built for someone senior in the mine. It stood on a weed-cracked hard-standing; the paint had been allowed to peel and drop and the windows were mossed and dirty. But there were signs of life: lace curtains tacked up, oil drums stacked against the generator at the side and a television — an old black-and-white movie, from the Celia Johnson accents — playing beyond an opened downstairs window.

I stared at that window. Something about the lace curtains lifting on the cool breeze, something about the darkness inside — the way it seemed almost designed to suck in the attention — made every nerve ending sing out 'Trap'. Slowly I raised the bolt-cutters above my head. You're not the fucking Special Squad, old mate. Don't get your head stove in for nothing.

I approached, cautious step by cautious step, coming from a wide angle, meeting the house at the far end of the wall and sliding along with my back to it, conscious of the warmth of the bricks on the back of my neck. Hardly breathing now, cutters still raised, I bent slowly, slowly, to peer into the room. It was in disarray — filthy, crisps packets, dirty cups and empty yoghurt pots scattered around — the sunlight falling on sedimentary layers of dust. The back of the TV was to the window, and beyond it, facing me, was a sofa, worn shiny in the place opposite the screen. Beyond that another window, closed, its matching lace curtains hanging silent in the autumn sun, embroidered with dead-fly carcasses.

Using the tip of a finger I gently touched the door. It swung open to reveal the length of the tiled hallway. I took a step inside, my sandals sinking into the filth. In the room ahead the Neighbours theme tune started up, making me think incongruously of my soup-and-bread-roll lunches in Kilburn, when Lexie was out at the clinic and I was home working. I stood still and listened. Beyond the noise of the television, nothing stirred, only the occasional click of the net curtains moving in the breeze.

I stepped into the living room. It was small and clogged with furniture and rubbish. A reproduction of Blake's Christ hung above the fireplace, thick with dust, and in an alcove stood an almost life-size plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, the sort of thing I'd seen for sale in the Tijuana immigration lines, every inch of her painted a different colour, her cowl blue, her lips and cheeks red, her eyes a brilliant cornflower. She'd been draped with things — flower stems and tinsel trailed from her on to the floor. The house of a religious maniac, I thought. Just the sort of thing I'd-

Behind me something whirred to life.

The word trap trap trap went through me with a crack. I turned, bringing the cutters up ready to strike, expecting Dove or worse. But the living room was empty. In a plant pot on the windowsill a child's seaside windmill, lolling at an angle, had caught the breeze and was zipping round and round and round. I stared at it, blinking, as it speeded, slowed, speeded and slowed again, winding down with a lazy clickety-clickety-click, until I could see the individual colours, red and yellow, and at last came to a rather uncertain halt.

I didn't move. I stared at the windmill and let my heart thump out the remainder of the adrenaline. After a while I lowered the cutters. The house was still again, only the television still churning out its drama behind me. Clenching my teeth, I glanced at the pile of clothing in the hallway, then back at the windmill. Some of those clothes belonged to a child — there were a little girl's clothes in that pile. I entertained a brief, electrifying thought: that a child, or children, was here — maybe imprisoned. I raised my eyes to the ceiling, let the thought stay, and then, knowing that if I was going to keep sane I couldn't go forward in my imagination, I went into the front hall and started to search the cottage.

It turned out to be empty. Not a soul in the place. All I was getting from the cottage was that Malachi was as looped as they come. He had no regard for hygiene or civilization. And that maybe women, or a woman, or even children had been in the house at some time. One of the rooms was weirdly clean compared to the rest, a single bed made up neatly, curtains secured back, books lined up on the shelves. Where the occupants were now I didn't want to think. The second I was off this island I was calling the bizzies and getting them to check their missing-persons records.

You're a smart one, Oakesy. A smart one.

I stood at the edge of the clearing, my back to the cottage, breathing hard and wishing to Christ I hadn't let Lexie come to the marina. I hadn't had a chance to pick up any tobacco and, right now, I'd have given my kidneys for a tug on a rollie. I was staring at a trampled path that led away from my feet into the woods in the direction of the gorge, and I knew it had been walked along recently. The bad thing was that I was going to have to follow. On the heels of Dove's crooked beast. His biforme.