Mo Hayder - Pig Island

Lightning Tree Grove (God, doesn't the name just say it all?) is the nearest thing to hell on earth. It's an abandoned estate between Dumbarton and Renton, one of those wretched fifties and sixties examples of bad urban planning, and it's basically already dead and just waiting for the undertaker's hearse to arrive. Number twenty-nine Humbert Terrace is a three-bedroom semi at the edge of the estate and when I lift up my head from writing this letter and look out of the window, what do I see? Three hundred houses shivering at the edge of miserable, deserted fields, some of the windows grilled up by Environmental Services because they've found asbestos in the attics, all the walls covered with graffiti, tiles flapping around on roofs, and a cul-de-sac where cars come from Dumbarton to fly-tip, so that the streets are littered with Buckfast tonic-wine bottles and dirty nappies. It's going to be concreted over so they can build a leisure centre, but there are still about twenty people clinging on to their pitiful lives here: mostly squatters and asylum-seekers — lots of women in headscarves loping along the streets with long, timid faces. God knows what they must think of the place. Talk about out of the frying-pan and into the fire.

Of course, when we first arrived it was dark so we had no idea how horrible it was. It just seemed very, very quiet and deserted. The babysitter unlocked the door, struggling a bit with the unfamiliar keys, and let us in, clicking on the light. We all filed in behind him, to this horrible, damp little house. Oakesy went straight to the windows and began rattling them, checking the locks, and Angeline, who hadn't said a word on the journey, shuffled sideways and sat down on the nearest sofa with her coat pulled tight round her, glaring at the floor. I stood in the middle of the room, looking around feeling really depressed.

It was much, much nastier there than at the bungalow, I could see that straight away. Everything was rather stiffly positioned, as if it had been doing a mad dance in the dark before we arrived and had to freeze when the babysitter's key rattled in the lock: two peeling fake leather sofas sat at untidy angles, and a dust-covered TV on a black veneer video cabinet was pushed into the corner. All still and noiseless, you could imagine the place was waiting for us to leave, tensed, hating our intrusion. It was open-plan, the ground floor, and beyond the seating area was a kitchen someone had tried to make cheery with bright yellow-papered walls and turquoise tiles, primrose yellow mugs on a rustic mug tree. But it felt like a deserted institution: 'Do NOT use the grill!!!!' said a sign taped to the oven. 'The grill has been disabled for your safety!!!!!''

'Aye.' The babysitter wandered over to the corner, where a bundle of wires poked out of the ceiling above an empty bracket. He hooked a finger round the bracket and gave it a small tug. 'Used to be a camera here. And over there. Which means somewhere there'll be a…' He opened a cupboard in the kitchen, peered inside, then closed it and went into the hallway where he opened a door under the stairs. 'Yes, here. The console room.' Oakesy and I crowded round and saw a little control panel, all the electronics ripped out, the holes pocked with spider-webs. An ageing rota sheet was thumbtacked to the wall. 'Yes.' He put his hands on the doorframe and leaned his head back outside the cupboard, craning his neck to follow the wires that led up the wall and out of sight under the stair carpet. 'They told me this used to be the rape suite.'

'The what?' I said. 'The what suite?'

'Rape suite.' He turned to me and the instant he saw my face his expression changed. 'Yeah,' he said hurriedly, ducking back out and closing the door. 'I know. Daft expression. It's just what the lads call it. Some of the lassies who used to come here had been-' He broke off, blushing and scratching his head in embarrassment.

'Raped, you mean? We know. The chief inspector told us.'

'It's somewhere safe, isn't it? Safer than being in the station. You're safe here.'

'Are you sure?'

'Of course. And, anyway you can coorie down here better. It's more cosy here than the station.'

I rubbed my eyes and sighed. Cosy? Cosy? It was horrible. Just horrible. If you ask me, all those raped girls and abused children and victims of racial harassment must have left something behind them in the house — some of their distress still clinging to the rag-rolled wallpaper — because when I did the rounds that night shivers went down my spine, just as if something very bad had happened there. Or was going to happen. At the back of the house, behind the kitchen, there was an examination room, still with a couch in the corner, as if we needed reminding what the place was once used for. None of the rooms had been properly cleaned — there was a stained baby's cot in one of the bedrooms with a patch of dried vomit on the wall behind it, dead flies all over the carpets and a used condom in the kitchen sink. Viva bureaucracy, I say. I hooked the condom out with the end of a spoon and dropped it into the bottom of a white bin-bag, where it lay, dried out and brown, as transparent as old human skin.

When the police had gone we carried our bags upstairs and chose rooms — Oakesy and me took the front room, Angeline the one at the back. Later, when I went in there, I saw she'd unpacked the bag she'd brought with her and put all her clothes on hangers arranged along the plaster picture rail. Dreadful things she had: long denim skirts and ageing blue and white Kappa T-shirts, all washed so many times they'd faded or gone grey.

Downstairs we made a dinner from the things we'd brought from the bungalow, a bit of tomato sauce that I poured over some sausages and called a casserole. I wished I could have put some broccoli or something on the plate because she didn't look as if she'd ever had a vitamin inside her. She ate a little bit, not looking at either of us, her head down so all we could see was that big, chapped forehead. It was only much later when I was at the window, my back to the room, peering out at the broken windows and the police car parked at the top of the street, and Oakesy was in the kitchen washing glasses, that she spoke. 'I think,' she said, out of the blue, 'I want to see the video.'

I dropped the curtain and turned — disconcerted to hear her voice after all this time. In the kitchen Oakesy had stopped what he was doing and was looking at her in surprise, the glass he was holding dripping water on to the floor. She was sitting on the sofa, her shoulders slumped, her head hanging, and although she'd said it quite clearly you could be forgiven for thinking she hadn't spoken at all, because her eyes were on the floor and she was chewing her lip, that paranoid, defensive look to her as if she'd never be able to meet another person's eyes.

'Did you say something?' said Oakesy.

'Yes. I want to see myself.'

He blinked. 'You know about it?'

'I want to see it.' She raised her eyes to him. 'If I'm in it I want to see it.'

There were a few moments' silence while Oakesy took this in. He turned to me.

'She had to know,' I said, opening my hands. 'Someone was going to tell her eventually.'

He didn't say anything. I think he was too tired to argue — or maybe he could see the sense in what I was saying. He went resignedly to the hallway and picked up the laptop from where we'd leaned it against the wall. He brought it back to the kitchen, pulled one of the chairs away from the table and spoke to Angeline. 'Sit down. Here.'

She hesitated, then got up and limped over unsteadily, resting her hands on the table to hold her weight and tentatively lowered her awkward body on to the tiny aluminium chair. Oakesy switched on the laptop and put it in front of her. He got a beer from one of the carrier-bags and switched off the kitchen light so the screen was the only illumination and Angeline's face was bathed a greenish-blue.