Mo Hayder - Pig Island

'What is it?' I said, looking at his hands. 'What's the matter?'

But before I could finish the sentence he swerved the car off the road, pulling it into a layby with a spume of gravel. He threw the door open, jumped out and walked away from the car half bent over, his hands pressed to his stomach. Oh, God, I thought, here we go, he's going to be sick. I got out of the car. It was really cold and still outside. My breath was hanging in the air as I crunched across the layby towards him. He heard me coming and turned, and I saw that he wasn't being sick, he was crying. His face was swollen and red. His nose was running.

'I shouldn't,' he said, hunching his shoulders and wiping his face on the sleeves of his sweatshirt. 'I shouldn't — I mean, look at her. She saw the whole fucking thing and she's not crying.'

'What whole thing? What whole thing? How can I talk to you if you won't tell me what happened?'

'It's all my fault, Lex.' He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and shook his head, taking deep breaths, slowly getting the crying under control. 'If he'd never found out they let me on that fucking island in the first place-' He took another few shaky breaths, then drew himself up, red-eyed. He raised a hand towards the firth, glittering and twitching pink in the dawn. 'People are dead, sweetheart.' He shook his head, sad and exhausted. 'Out there, on Cuagach, people are dead.'

I'd taken a breath to answer before his words sunk in. When I realized what he'd said I closed my mouth and turned my head to one side, lowering my voice. 'Dead? Is that what you said? Dead?'

'Yes.'

'What do you mean dead?' I took him by the sweatshirt, at a point just above his belly-button, and turned him so he had to look me in the eye. 'You said people are dead. Dead how? Oakesy? Tell me this isn't what those types in the pub were telling you about.'

He closed his eyes and sighed. 'You don't want to know, Lexie, please, believe me you-'

'Don't patronize me, Oakesy. Whatever's happened to you out there I can promise you I've seen it before. Don't forget who I work for. Now, tell me.'

And in the end he did. He sat down wearily on the freezing gravel on the side of the road and while Angeline peered at us through the steamed-up car window, and the sun spread orange and molten across the horizon, he told me.

I'm sure you think you know what he said because it's all been in the papers this week, and everyone probably imagines they know exactly what happened, but I can promise you don't know the half of it: some of the things he kept coming back to — over and over again as if they'd got stuck on a loop in his head. I mean, you never saw in the newspapers about a face peeled off, did you? But Oakesy kept coming back to that, showing me with his hands how big it was, the way it had been hanging, drooped over the edge of something. And you never read in the Sun about pigs tearing apart a teenage girl and carrying her foot away. Or the way her foot had tried to stay attached to her leg bones. Or the guy blown by the blast on his side, just his little toe facing the ceiling, or — I could go on and on — the people with no heads, their necks just red stalks, a bit of vertebra protruding from the flesh, half a skull with its contents sucked away by the explosion…

I can say it all quite calmly now, a few days later, but as much of a professional as I am, as much as I've seen with Christophe's work, I'm not completely atrophied, you know. I couldn't even look at Oakesy as he told me. I listened with my eyes locked on the frozen blades of grass at the edge of the layby, my arms folded, half of me wanting to scream at him, 'Shut up.' When he was finished I was quiet for a long while, feeling my heart knocking deep against my stomach. Then I turned round to where Pig Island just peeped out beyond the headland. It was too far away to see anything, of course — not the village or the chapel or anything — just this great silent shape taking all the light away.

'Lex?' He put his hand on my foot. 'You OK?'

I looked down at his hand. 'I've seen things, you know. At work.'

'I know,' he said, rubbing his eyes. 'I know.'

There was a bit of a silence while we both thought about the island. Then he stood and felt in the back pocket of his shorts. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and passed it over. I took it, my eyes not leaving his face.

'Well?' I said. 'What's this?'

He didn't answer. He put his hands in his pockets and stared out to sea, as if he'd just handed me one of those awful private-detective photos — him with another woman. I unfolded the paper shakily, my heart thumping.

'It's the rental agreement for the bungalow.'

'Yes.' He bent his head and scratched the top of his scalp hard — the way he always does when he knows he's done something wrong. For a moment I thought he was going to start crying again. 'Found it in Dove's cottage,' he said, his voice all thick. 'I took her to get a bag packed and I found it. I never said, but it was missing from my rucksack — after he gave me that twatting.' He paused. 'You know what it means?'

My blood was racing now. Oh, yes. I knew what it meant. Now everything made sense. Like why he'd called me and told me to lock the doors. Like why he was so anxious. 'My God,' I said faintly. My legs felt like jelly. 'He knew where I was? All that time?'

'I'm sorry.'

'All that time.' I looked back down the long, empty road in the direction of the bungalow. I was scared out of my mind. I kept picturing the woods surrounding the bungalow, thinking how close I'd been. Maybe he'd been out there, watching me. Maybe he was there now. 'My things. Oakesy, I left all my things in the bungalow.'

'Yeah.' He got to his feet and put his hand on my back. 'The police'll deal with it.'

The walk back to the car was only a few yards — but it felt like miles. I kept my back stiff, resisting the impulse to whip round. I knew if I turned all the mountains and clouds would be glaring down at me, scrutinizing my back. As Oakesy put his hand on the driver's door he stopped and looked round quite suddenly as if someone had called his name. He stared up at the mountains, at the dark green, almost black ribbons of trees on the upper slopes.

'What? What did you hear?'

'Nothing,' he said. He gave a long, violent shiver as if he wanted to shake something off his back. He threw a glance out at Pig Island, then got into the car, locked his door and leaned across me to lock mine. 'Come on,' he said. 'Let's go.'

I don't know if this is a good time to point something out, but you may as well know, if you haven't already guessed: your comments about Christophe really hurt my feelings.

'Lexie, would it be very difficult for you to accept that Mr Radnor wanted nothing more than a professional relationship with you?'

That's what you said. Remember? Well, I've thought about it and the other day I remembered an incident I should have told you about before. It's something that absolutely proves there is more to Christophe's relationship with me than you could ever guess at.

It was one morning when I'd been at the clinic for only about a month. He came in early because that was his habit — all clean and scrubbed and smelling of aftershave — his Telegraph tucked under his arm. Usually he'd just raise a hand as he passed my desk, but that day, maybe because no one else was around, he stopped and looked at me curiously.

'Good morning,' he said, as if he'd never seen me before and was impressed with what he saw. I was wearing a very neatly pressed white blouse with a matelot collar and a rather sweet black skirt that ended mid-thigh. But Mr Radnor is too much of a gentleman to be staring at my legs. Instead he pretended to be admiring the vase of fresh yellow ranunculus I'd placed on the counter-top. 'This all looks very attractive,' he said, taking in the gleaming floors the magazines lined up neatly, the plasma screen monitor polished carefully. 'Yes,' he repeated. 'All very attractive.'