Mo Hayder - Pig Island

When I went upstairs that night and started to get undressed in the damp bedroom at the front of the house, I saw Lexie was awake. She had her hand behind her head, the duvet pulled up to her chin, and was looking at me knowingly. I paused, the ripped sweater half way up my chest.

'You weren't asleep.'

'You made enough noise coming in.'

'You didn't want to come down? See how we got on?'

'Didn't want to interrupt.'

I pulled off the sweater and stepped out of my jeans. There was nowhere to hang them and my true instinct was to put them back on again and climb into bed. But she was watching me in silence. So I dutifully laid them flat on the floor and climbed into bed.

'She was talking to you.' Lex rested a hand on her chest, dropped her head sideways and looked at me. 'I heard her. She didn't stop talking.'

I rubbed my eyes. 'I've got the story — got it all. Tomorrow I'll speak to Danso.'

'Speak to Danso?'

'He needs to find her somewhere else to go.'

Lexie pushed herself up on her elbow and stared at me. 'No, she can't go, not yet.'

'She's not our responsibility-'

'Yes,' she hissed. 'She is. You can't just let her go.'

I turned to her. The broken streetlight outside was reflected orange in her eyes. 'What?'

'We can't let her go. Not yet. I've got someone to look at her. It's in Glasgow not London, because there are some — oh, some stupid professional hoops to jump through before we get her down to see Christophe, but it's next week so we have to keep her with us till then.' She bit her lip, searching my face. 'Oakesy? Just a few more days? Monday?'

I sighed. I put a fist into one of the appalling pillows, punched it — a pathetic attempt to get some air into it — and lay back on my hands, staring at the ceiling. I think I'd just realized how knackered I was. 'Go to sleep now. OK?'

But she didn't. She was still staring at me, chewing her lip. I closed my eyes and rolled away from her. 'Oakesy,' she said, tapping my shoulder, 'did she say anything? Did she say what's wrong with her?'

'I don't think she even knows herself. Can I go to sleep?'

'Hasn't she got an idea?'

'Don't think so.'

'Well, what about you? Haven't you got an idea?'

'Lex, please, I'm not a doctor.'

'Do you think she'd let me have a look?'

'Why don't you ask her?'

'You're not interested. Are you? You're just not interested.'

'I am,' I said. 'Of course I am.'

But I was lying. I didn't care what was wrong with Angeline. When I closed my eyes and fell back inside my head, the face I saw wasn't Angeline's or even Lexie's. It was Dove's.

Malachi. Malachi … My head was throbbing. What is your plan?

Danso was as scared as me about Malachi's plans. Instinct told him to listen to me, not to Struthers. But his head had gone further than mine and he'd started thinking about those suicide bombers in London, about all the capabilities Dove had, and whether his spectacular death would take out someone more than himself. The ACC had consulted with the home secretary, and over the next few days senior officers from London's SO 13 terrorist team flew up to meet him. Suddenly the incident room at Oban was crammed with criminal profilers and explosives experts, tearing apart the community's computer. Every ex-member of the PHM was being tracked down, every donor, anyone who had sent a letter or email in the last ten years. They'd got HOLMES actions raised to interview anyone who might have known Dove, even people involved in the arson or IRS investigations over in New Mexico. Some of the locals and national TV stations in Scotland had run appeals for sightings of the blue Vauxhall stolen from Crinian and the usual attention-seekers crawled out of the wainscoting — at least twenty people had seen the car and more than half of them had recognized Dove. They knew he was the Pig Island killer from the press, who were busy jumping up and down on Dove's sacred head. Mystery of Missing Preacher: The Mad Monk of Pig Island. All of which was funny, Danso said, because the force was still waiting for the procurator fiscal to let them name Malachi Dove publicly as their suspect.

'But what's good,' he said one morning, standing in the kitchen at the rape suite, still wearing his raincoat, 'what's good is we might know where he went after Crinian.'

It was Friday. Six days had passed since the massacre, and that, as everyone knew, wasn't good. The golden hours for a case, the first twenty-four, had passed. But now Danso was holding up a video-cassette for us to see. 'There I was, thinking it was all going down the cludgie, when this turns up.' He went to the TV on his long, awkward, ostrich legs, slotted the tape into the machine and stood back, aiming the remote at the video player. 'Inverary.' He looked at Angeline, who was sitting on the sofa, arms folded. 'It's about fifteen miles from Crinian. Ever heard of it?'

'No.'

'Dad never mentioned a friend in the area? Family? Someone who'd been with the PHM?'

'All the people he knew were in America. Or London. He was born in London.'

'You can watch it as many times as you need. Don't be afraid to say you don't know.'

Me and Angeline and Lexie all sat hunched round the TV, staring at the screen. It was grainy black-and-white CCTV footage but continuous action — easier to watch than the cut-price time-lapse of most shopping centres. The time code clicked away in the top corner and shoppers moved back and forward along the walkway, some stopping to sit on one of the four benches arranged round a concrete planter full of palm trees. A checkout girl in the window of Holland and Barrett opposite the camera gazed out at the passers-by, idly biting her cuticles.

'In about two seconds you're going to see him come from this side and — wait… wait… there. See him? Here?'

A man, the top of his head turned to the camera, appeared on the walkway. He shuffled across the screen, arms hanging listlessly at his sides. He was about to disappear off when something caught his eye in the window of a Superdrug shop. He turned his back to the camera and we had time to study his longish hair, the unremarkable sports jacket, the dark slacks.

'This is the best look you get at him. It was the sandals that did it. Sandals and socks. You both said sandals and socks in your statements. It's the kind of detail sticks in people's heads.'

I inched a bit nearer the screen, staring at the figure. If it was my own dad I wouldn't've been sure from this angle. I waited for him to face the camera. But he didn't. He peered through the chemist's window a little longer, then turned and continued off the screen. There was a long, silent pause. We all turned to Angeline. I'd expected her to look blank, but the second I saw her face I knew. She'd sat up a bit, her head was straight and she was staring at the screen. Her hands were on her knees, clenching and unclenching.

'Angeline?' Danso studied her. 'Want to see it again? There're a lot of these wee characters out in Inverary and-'

'No. Not again.' She blew out a long breath from pursed lips, a long fooooo sound, like she was trying to keep calm. 'Bastard,' she muttered at the TV. 'That bastard.'

It was the jacket she'd recognized. She'd washed it for him at the beginning of the summer and that was how she knew it was him. It had needed to be hand washed because there was blood on it from the pigs. Danso passed the news back to the incident room, then came and sat with me on the sofa. We had the shopping-centre video in the player and were watching it over and over again. On the sixth time Malachi stopped in front of Superdrug I caught up the remote and paused the tape. I took a chair and placed it in front of the TV.