Mo Hayder - Pig Island

'So,' he said, 'before the crap hit the fan did you get to the bottom of it?'

'The bottom of what?'

'Y'know — the video and shit. The hoax. The devil of Pig Island. Did you figure out what it was?'

I paused, the coffee cup half-way to my mouth. 'Yeah,' I said. 'I did.'

'Well? Well?'

I didn't speak for a moment. I lowered the cup and turned my eyes to the stairs, thinking of the door to Angeline's room — closed so tight it was like a statement.

'Oakes, come on! I'm waiting. I want to know what you're thinking…'

'It was a kid,' I said, tipping the coffee down the sink and turning on the tap. I didn't want it now. I wanted tea. 'Just some local kid got himself out to the island in some outfit he cooked up with his mates. Like I always said.'

'Have a look at this for me,' DS Struthers shouted, above the boat engine. He was sitting wedged up against the cabin bulkhead of the chartered pleasure-boat, his legs crossed, one arm resting along the gunwales, the other holding up a Polaroid. 'Might be interesting.' He sat forward and pushed it under my nose. 'Might be very interesting.'

I had to raise my hand against the sun and squint to see that the photo showed an outboard motor-boat pulled up at an angle on a beach.

'Recognize it?'

I took the photo from him, ducked into the cabin out of the sun, studied it and knew immediately: it was the orange-striped dory, a bit battered, resting on the beach, its bow line trailing in the shingle. I stepped back on to the deck and handed him the Polaroid. 'Where d'you find it?'

'Ardnoe Point. An off-duty woolly pulley out walking her pooch. Naughty lass — spends her days off fiddling with the police scanner if you ask me. Some people just can't leave their job behind, can they? What I think is, she's heard about it last night on the scanner and then, six o'clock this morning, she's walking her dog and finds she's staring at it in the flesh. So what's she going to do? She's got to phone it in.'

'And Ardnoe Point is…?' I turned and looked back at the mainland.

'That way.' He waved a hand to the south. 'It's making our missing car look a little nicer because it's not far from Crinian where the car disappeared on Saturday. A long way. It's where you'd drift to with the tide they had that night, so maybe he was heading there. Or maybe he just didn't know how to drive the thing.'

'Near Crinian…' I murmured, gazing at the coastline. In the morning sun it looked fresh and cold, the granite fingers on the shore eerie and architectural. The trees billowed like they'd been melted down and poured across the landscape. What are you doing out there, Dove baby? I thought, staring south at the firth glittering in the distance. Where are you heading? What's in Ardnoe Point, then? I like that you went south and not north towards the bungalow…

'I think you can relax,' shouted Struthers, behind me. 'You're not going to see Pastor Malachi Dove again.'

I turned. He had put the Polaroid away and was leaning against the bulkhead, his head back, his eyes scrunched up, scanning the mainland.

'I'm not going to see him again?'

'No. Too close to the edge now, isn't he? He'll be a suicide.' He nodded, wiping salt spray from his face. 'Aye — in my professional experience he's going to be a suicide. Some hill-walkers'll find him, all maggoty and shit. Or he'll be dangling off some bridge, or bumping around in a weir with his face all smashed to fuck. Yes. That'll be the next time we see Malachi Dove.'

'In your professional experience?'

He tapped the side of his nose and smiled. 'Got a copper's nose. Always have had, since I was a bairn. I'm telling you he'll be a goner by now.'

I gave him a cold smile. As an undergraduate, when I was getting the chicken-liver article finished, I had a fantasy, or a fear, that I knew Malachi Dove as well as I knew my own bones. It came back to me now that I was connected to him in a way that none of the others were — maybe even Angeline — and I knew Struthers could have no idea what was really in Dove's head. He was right: Dove was thinking about how to end it all. But it wasn't going to be that easy. I will, Joe Finn, in the final hour, run rings around you… . When he'd said he'd fuck with my peace of mind he didn't mean what he'd done in the chapel.

'Aye. Lost the plot, hasn't he? If you ask me-' He broke off and licked his lips. 'If you ask me, that lass is an orphan by now. As if she hasn't got enough problems.'

I looked thoughtfully at Angeline. She was sitting in the stern, arms crossed, chin lowered, staring into the middle distance and pulling sullenly at her lower lip. The bits of skin you could see through her patchy hair were red and chapped.

'Hey,' Struthers whispered, leaning close to me so I could smell his breath. He was squinting at her, taking in the faded football shirt you could just see peeping out from under the coat, the worn-out trainers. 'Something I wanted to ask you.'

I didn't meet his eyes. I knew what was coming.

'She told the boss she had polio. That's what she told him.' He licked his lips again. 'But it's not polio, is it? It's something else.'

I closed my eyes slowly, then opened them.

'Is it? It's not as simple as polio and I think-'

'Do you know,' I murmured, 'what would happen if the press knew about her?'

I felt him smile. 'Oh, yes,' he whispered. 'Which is why you're one lucky bastard, Joe Oakes. We can't talk to them about you because you're «vulnerable», according to the procurator fisk, which gives you the exclusive as soon as you want to crawl out from under your stone. I've got about a hundred good friends in the press up here who'd give up their bairns for the chance you've got. Not that I'll hold it against you.' He laughed and gave me a slap on the arm. 'Right,' he said, looking over his shoulder. 'The Semper Vigilo. We're nearly at the press cordon.' He stood and held his arm out to Angeline, beckoning her. 'Time to get you both in the cabin. Come on, hen.'

I stood. Ahead, bobbing in the waves, thirty or so chartered boats hovered in an untidy pack, surreptitiously nosing their way forward. Facing them, throwing up glittering spumes, bucking and rotating like a bull in the ring, a fluorescent yellow-painted police launch held them at bay.

'I mean now,' said Struthers. 'If you don't want them to see you, do it now.'

So we all crowded into the fume-filled cabin with the skipper and stared in awe at Cuagach growing bigger and bigger ahead of us, the army helicopter banking above it, searching the cliffs and forests for the one thing we all knew they weren't going to find: survivors.

The police operation was massive. The army had been called to make the island safe, and the nearer we got, the more you could see how much they were throwing into this. There were about eight launches moored off the shore and everything on Pig Island seemed covered in police tape and tarpaulins: from the moment we got to the jetty and gave our names to the officer on guard there, it was like walking on to a movie set.

It had totally fucking changed — beyond recognition. As we logged in at the rendezvous point and came up the coast path the first thing we saw on the village green, a hundred yards or so behind the Celtic cross, was the force's HM40 helicopter, crouched and silent, its rotor blades dipping gently in the wind. The corpse of a giant insect. The grass to the north — where the ferry had offloaded the vehicles — was churned up and hatched with vehicle tracks, and arranged in a circle round the green, like a wagon train round a fire, were two army trucks, four small inflated shelters and three white and blue police Land Rovers, each with a photocopied sign taped to the side. 'Communications,' said one. 'Casualty Clearing Station', another. The signs flapped as we walked past. It was like being at some weird village fete.