Mo Hayder - Pig Island

I'm sorry. I can't help it. This morning I opened the window and looked at the solid grey Ballantine's factory, and the playing-fields that come away from it and sweep down almost to the front door. I've never seen a soul on those fields. They're always completely silent, the trees at the side all dark, and you can't help imagining there might be someone in those trees, just like at the bungalow, someone watching the house. No one — not the police or anyone we ask — can explain why those fields aren't being used. At night, when I wake up, I imagine something out there gathering, closing in on us. I have a nightmare of it clinging to the house in the dark: pulsing like a giant heart.

I've thought about getting away. I've worked out what to do — I can't drive the car because it's a manual, but if I told Oakesy I was going to Mummy's and made up some excuse about my bankcard not working I could buy the rail ticket on our joint account. I've ferreted away almost thirty pounds too, just from the loose change I empty out of his shorts at the end of the day.

But, of course, I'm not going to leave. How could I leave when there's so much at stake? When I'm this close to Christophe. I can't just drop it because I'm scared, for heaven's sake. I had to wait it out — a whole week until this wretched doctor at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary would see us. The reply to my email was pretty quick: 'Mr Radnor regrets he cannot see you personally. Without an examination it is very difficult to make a diagnosis and ordinarily it would be appropriate to refer you to a GP. However, given the circumstances, he is delighted to refer you to a colleague.' No prizes for guessing which self-appointed arbiter of human values was behind that. Somehow she'd weeded out my email and stopped it getting to Christophe. Of course I knew that the moment the doctor saw Angeline he'd be on the phone to Christophe double quick and then it'd all come out and Cerberus would look pretty stupid, not passing on my messages. But in the meantime there was nothing I could do except wait. So you can imagine, given the circumstances, that by the time the hospital appointment rolled round I was jumpy. Very jumpy indeed.

Guy Picot was waiting for us in the office, dressed in something lightweight and elegant. I was surprised by how good-looking he was. He hasn't got Christophe's force of personality, of course, but he really knows how to dress. If we'd met under different circumstances, if I hadn't been so anxious, who's saying there wouldn't have been sparks between us?

'After this consultation,' I said, when we'd all filed into his office, 'will you speak to Mr Radnor directly?'

'I'll send him a letter. Out of courtesy.'

'A letter?' A letter wouldn't reach Christophe's desk. Not with her guarding the postbag. 'Can't you phone him?'

He gave me a long look. 'I'll send him a letter. And I'll send one to Angeline, the patient. With all the pertinent points of our meeting today. I'll need an address.'

Oakesy wrote down the address of the PO box we'd rented at the local shop and I relaxed a little after that because I'd have access to the mail every day and at least I wouldn't be completely sidelined. Guy Picot made us green tea in gorgeous half-glazed Japanese bowls (green tea in the NHS!!!), then settled down, tapping a patella hammer distractedly on the desk and looking thoughtfully at the way Angeline was sitting.

I didn't say anything, but I noticed all the questions seemed to be lifted directly from my email. He might as well have been reading from a script. Was she continent? Did she have mobility in both legs? What, both? But when he put her on the examination couch he didn't invite me in. He pulled the screen tight, as if he thought I was trying to sneak a look. Next thing, I thought, I'm going to be accused of prurience, so instead I went very quickly to the opposite side of the office and stood looking out of the window, my back very firmly to the room so anyone could see I wasn't interested in peeping, for heaven's sake.

When he came out he was red-faced and flustered. 'I'll be honest,' he said. 'I wasn't warned what to expect. I was expecting something smaller.' But apart from that he made every effort not to talk to me or acknowledge how unique this case was. Of course, I wasn't fooled: he managed to arrange not only an X-ray but also an MRI in under three hours — and how many times have you known an NHS doctor do that? He even got two radiographers to give up their lunch-hour for the MRI.

'No pacemakers? Surgical clips, pins or plates or cochlear implants?'

By one o'clock Angeline was in the MRI room, dressed in a pale blue hospital gown, going through a questionnaire with one of the radiographers.

'No IUDs?'

'What's an IUD?'

'A coil. No, never mind. We'd have seen it on the X-ray.'

Oakesy and I were in the glass-panelled control area with Guy, where we could hear what was happening through the intercom system. Oakesy sat in the corner, all preoccupied — probably worrying about the thirty-first victim Danso had been telling him about. I was next to the window watching Angeline, and Guy was at the intercom mic, barking instructions to the radiographers: 'Get her comfortable. Doesn't matter if she's on her front.' He pulled Angeline's X-rays out of the brown folder and held them up to the light. 'That's it — that's the way.'

He switched off the mic and turned away, stopping when he caught me staring at the X-rays in his hand. He knew I'd got a glimpse of them. He knew from my expression.

'Are you going to let me have a look?' I said. It had been only a few split seconds, but it was long enough for me to know there was something very odd about those X-rays. Very odd indeed. 'I'd really like to see them.'

'I'll be getting a second opinion before I share my thoughts.'

'Mr Radnor?'

'No. Someone here, I expect.'

He shovelled the X-rays away, but that grey and white and black image stayed in my head. A ghostly imprint of a human. I looked round at Angeline being arranged on the MRI table. The radiographer asked her to move her feet forward and as she did the gown moved a little and I saw behind her calf a fat, sausage-coloured slab of flesh, the skin slightly hardened like a cuticle. She realized what had happened but she didn't try to hide it. She was staring blankly at the glass window. She didn't even seem to register me — there was this thoughtful, distant look on her face. I turned back to Guy Picot.

'I know why you won't let me see. I know.'

He shook his head, opening his nostrils and continuing to watch Angeline, as if I was a fly bothering him. But I wasn't going to be put off. 'I can read an X-ray, you know — I'm not imagining what I just saw. I saw calcium. In the growth, I saw a mass of something and I'm sure it was calcium, and that means-'

'That means?'

'Bones,' I said. My voice wasn't much more than a whisper, because something vague and distant was going through my head. Ectoderm, endoderm, mesoderm … a few half-remembered words from the journal. There was a long silence while I looked at Guy Picot without blinking. Heterogeneous elements…'

'But it can't be,' I murmured. 'It can't be. She should be dead… .'

In retrospect, I can see it was right after the hospital appointment that Oakesy's behaviour, as if it wasn't bad enough already, took a turn for the worse. The next morning, when I was still half asleep, he leaped out of bed as if he'd been bitten, disappeared into the bathroom and stayed there, in the shower, for almost an hour. When he came out he looked awful, just awful, his skin all grey and damp as if he had a virus. He wouldn't speak to me, just slunk around looking really shifty, pale and uncommunicative, finding every excuse to keep a distance from me and Angeline, not meeting our eyes, sitting at breakfast with an uncomfortable, drawn-up look on his face, shutting himself in his room upstairs the moment he had a chance.