Mo Hayder - Pig Island

'Angeline?'

'It was him,' she muttered. 'Did it himself. Wouldn't've let anyone else come out here.'

'Good with his hands, was he? Knew his explosives — knew how to put a hole in granite?'

She shrugged again and stared off into the distance, like she wasn't connected with the words coming out of her mouth. 'Yeah. S'pose.'

It was kind of embarrassing the way she kept up with these monosyllabic answers — Yes. No. Maybe — not offering any more information than she was asked. She led us round grudgingly, showing us the handbarrow Dove used to bring the supplies dropped by the shopkeeper in Bellanoch up from the jetty, taking us to where he kept his outboard motor under a tarp near the jetty, tightly chained and padlocked.

Up at the cottage the generator had run out of oil, and when we came inside there were no lights. We all crowded into the small room at the front where. Dove kept his paperwork, looking around ourselves at the torn curtains, the filthy windows, the two walls filled from floor to ceiling with battered notebooks and photos.

'He's taken the photos.' We all turned to look at Angeline then, because it was the first time she'd spoken without being asked. She was staring at two stained gaps on the peeling wallpaper. 'He's taken photos from there. And he's taken… notebooks. One. No-' She turned round, her finger out, tracing the air. 'No, two. He's taken two notebooks.'

'Which photos?' asked Danso, standing next to her and looking at the gaps really hard, like he'd pick up some supernatural vibes if he did. 'What did they show?'

'Him with Mother. And one of him praying.'

'Praying?'

'He looks dead,' I said. 'Lying on his back, hands over his chest. It was his habit.'

Struthers rolled his eyes. He'd spent a lot of his time in uniform in Glasgow dealing with crazies. 'What about the notebooks?' he said. 'Which ones are missing?'

Angeline lowered her eyes and pulled the coat round her like it was suddenly cold. 'The PHM philosophy on death,' she murmured. Behind her, Struthers and Danso exchanged a glance. 'It was always there — on that shelf. And another one — the PHM philosophy on suicide.'

'I told you so,' Struthers mouthed under his breath, giving me and Danso a slow, reptilian smile. He was over the fucking moon. He thought he was the only person in the world who'd predicted Dove's suicide. 'Didn't I tell you so?'

'If only,' I said. 'If only it was that easy.'

While Struthers, Danso and Angeline pulled notebooks from the shelves, opening up the PHM's records, finding file after file of furious hermeneutical letters to the C of E synod, reams of Bible verses, written and rewritten in Dove's looping hand, I slipped outside, muttering something about needing a smoke. No one stopped me. I just walked outside, free as a bird, into the cold, bright day.

I went quickly, retracing our steps, getting photos of the outside of the cottage, the empty Scotch bottles piled in a mountain behind one of the sheds, the generator and the piles of rubbish. I went to the army cordon and got some long-lens shots of the explosives team working in the distance, then turned north, giving the cottage a wide berth and moving through the silent woods until I came to the mine. Today it was quiet, no wind reached the clearing, and an empty silence hung over the rusting old machinery.

I turned to face the south. In the distance, a long way past the treetops of Cuagach, I could just see the headland of Crinian, the sky above it stained with dark clouds. I pulled out the camera, switched it on and focused on that distant coast. None of them, not Danso, not Struthers, had the instinct I had for Dove. He wasn't going to commit suicide. Not until he'd finished with me. It was like I could feel him in my brain, creeping around making his plans.

Ardnoe Point? Crinian? What are you planning, Malachi? Why Crinian?

I clicked off some photos of the coast, then fitted a new lens and ambled around doing some shots of the mine: rusty wheelbases of long-forgotten vehicles, ageing barbed wire strung over adits. Every now and then I'd stop and look thoughtfully out at the coast. A swarm of flies hovered round the hole where the pig was wedged. When I flicked them away I saw maggots like moving rice grains in the pig's eyes and something brown and frothy coming from its snout. I took ten shots.

Why Crinian?

He hadn't drifted there because he couldn't start the boat engine, whatever Struthers thought. He had meant to go there. I cranked open the aperture for the light and moved round the pig, firing off shot after shot, my thoughts rolling out like ticks on a metronome: What business have you got down there, Malachi? Why south? I was north. Does that mean you're not going to come after me direct? And if you're not going to do that, then what are you going to do? How else can you get to me? Or do you think I've gone back to London?

A twig snapped behind me. I spun round, raising the camera, ready to swing out. It was Angeline, her face red, her breathing rapid, staring past me at the pig in the shaft. She'd got right up behind me without me hearing. She made a grab for my sleeve.

'Hey.' She caught me off-balance and I'd hopped along a few feet before I got my footing. 'Let go. Come on — let go.' I scrabbled at her fingers, trying to unpeel them. She resisted, then let out a gasp and snapped her arm away like it was burnt.

'Christ.' I closed my hand over the camera, steadying it against my chest. My heart was racing. 'Don't do that again.'

She stood for a moment, half turned away, trembling, her hands crabbed up in front of her chest.

'What's up?'

'The pig.'

I wiped my forehead and looked over at the dead animal. 'What about it?'

A long shiver went up her body, something visible that travelled from her stomach to her shoulders, then kind of shook itself off into the air. She closed her eyes and put her hands over her mouth.

'It's dead,' I said. 'It won't hurt you.'

'It looks like it's watching me.' Her voice was quick and whispered, like she thought the pig might hear her. 'I know you'll think that sounds stupid but I mean it. It's watching me.'

'Then walk away.'

'It'll watch me.'

I sighed, and clicked the lens cap in place. 'What do you want me to do?'

She shook her h" I tail.??< strap-on your us Show bonehead. old you Malachi,>

I stared at her. Sovereign. I remembered the way I'd stalked along the fence, desperate to get a shot of Angeline in the grass. Something pinched at me now. Something that must have been pity or shame or something. 'They wanted to kill you. They had plans.'

She shrugged, like this wasn't a surprise. She chewed a little more on her thumbnail. Her coat hung open and I could see under the football shirt that she was thinner than I remembered, sort of starved-looking. Lexie said she looked like she was on drugs. 'When they read what you write about me,' she said, nodding at the tape player, 'you know, in the papers, do you think people will still be scared of me?'

'No,' I said. 'Not at all.' I pressed pause on the machine and checked how long we'd been talking. Forty minutes. 'But it won't be yet. I can't go to the papers with this. Not until they find him.'

We were silent for a while, holding each other's eyes. And then, like we were both thinking the same thing, we turned and looked at the window. The curtains were still open, and outside the orange streetlight was flickering like it was going to short out any second.

'What do you think?' I murmured. 'Angeline? Do you think he's going to kill himself?'

She didn't turn back to me. She kept her eyes on the streetlight. 'Yes,' she said. 'He'll kill himself. But you're right. I think he's got something else to do first.'