Mo Hayder - Pig Island

'The family's gone now, off to their home in London. Left us with a key, but we've checked. It's clean.' He turned to the west, pointing a long finger, pale in the half-light. I looked across the sky to where the stars and a few clouds were reflected in the loch. 'The Vauxhall was over there, at the far end, just parked in a layby at teatime on Weunesday. You can't see the layby from here. Then we've got a taxi-driver says he stopped for a whizz down here, at the bottom of this path where we've just left the cars, and he looks up and sees Malachi Dove standing in the door of the bothy, staring down at him. Said it was like being watched by an eagle.' Danso turned and began to walk up the path. 'That's when the night shift DS gets on the phone and gets me out of the first decent sleep I've had in a week.'

I followed him, keeping my eyes on his good shoes that his missus must've picked for a quiet day in the office but which kept slithering on the hummocky grass. Sheep lumbered away from us in the darkness, heavy, cloudy shadows, hoofing into the higher slopes. The wind scattered leaves and parted the grass like hair, but under my coat I was sweating. I tried feeling inside myself, trying to put a finger on my fear, but I couldn't. Dove wasn't here. He wasn't here. In front of me Danso walked with his shoulders wide, back stiffened, his face and chest open. He was scared too, I saw. But he wasn't going to tell me that.

We crossed a cattle grid and there was the bothy, tucked between two sheer rock faces. Ten feet away we paused and looked at it in silence. The roof was moss-covered, the window-frames rotted away into two dull sockets. A thin line of police tape flapped in the wind.

'It was locked when we got here,' Danso said. The wind took his voice and blew it into the empty building, battering it against the cold walls. 'The SG sergeant kicked the door down like it was a matchstick. Here.' He handed me a torch. 'Have a look.'

I approached the building and slowly opened the door, nothing more than five planks nailed together and hung from rusty hinges. It was dark and there was a smell that sent an uncomfortable prickle along my hairline. For a moment I thought I could hear breathing, something reedy and thin bouncing off the walls. I clicked off the torch and waited, my heart thudding. Then the wind changed direction and popped my ears, and I decided I'd imagined it. I shone the torch into the darkness. I saw flashes of a bare earth floor, plants growing on the inside walls, a stack of White Lightning cider bottles in the corner.

'What're they?'

There was a pile of towels bunched in the corner.

'We think he was injured. There was blood on some of them. The science boys have got them over in the labs now, trying to make a match.'

I stepped away from the bothy. I went up a small path to where the land rose so I could survey the area. I clicked the torch on and off, a nervous tic. 'What's out here?' I murmured, looking at the faint greyish line of the path winding back down to the road, the glimmer of the loch beyond. 'What's here?'

'The chalet?' Danso came and stood beside me. 'It's only over there.'

'No. The chalet is how he knows this place… but it's not why he came here. He came for something else.'

I switched off the torch and we stood in the darkness, our ears reaching out across the mountains and the forests, pinging our thoughts like sonar against the glassy surface of the loch. I turned to Danso. He was staring at the sky, a gnawed-at, hungry look to him — the way people get when they're close to the end of their energy.

'He scares you,' I murmured, 'doesn't he?'

There was a moment's silence. Then he said, 'I've never worked a mass death before. Missed Dunblane, Ibrox, Mull, Lockerbie. Missed them all. I've never seen more than three dead bodies in the same place at the same time and that was an RTA.'

'I don't mean that. I mean him. He scares you.'

He hesitated, shuffled his feet. 'I'd like to know how he knew we were coming.' He glanced over his shoulder at the bothy. 'No one saw him leave. When the SG kicked the door in they thought he was in there. You'd think he had a tunnel or something, the way he got out so quick.'

'That's what I mean. He scares you.'

Danso met my eyes. He held them seriously for a long time. Then he clicked on his torch and shone it down on my shoes. They were covered with black slime. 'Sheep shit,' he said. 'Sorry. I forgot to tell you to put boots on. There're sheep all over the place here.'

Dear Mr Taranici,

Please believe me when I say things have gone very wrong. Very wrong indeed. I've done so many things in the last hour, said things that I can never, ever take back. Really I think I might be going mad because the world is upside-down. The worst thing is, I don't know who to believe any more. I've discovered I'm being systematically lied to. And no, before you even think it, I am not being paranoid. I know it for a fact.

I was on the sofa this morning watching the news — more about the hunt for Malachi — and Oakesy was up in his room, working. It was another awful day, with rain lashing the house, and I was vaguely aware of someone upstairs moving around, but I wasn't really paying attention. It was only when I heard a door slam that I muted the TV and looked up at the ceiling: someone was walking around on the landing. Another door opened and closed. The floorboards were creaking in the bathroom, a bath was running. At first it was just that and the rain pelting down outside. Then from the landing I heard Oakesy say, very sadly, as if he was about to cry, 'I love my wife.'

I stared at the stairs, my mouth open. I love my wife? A toxic little bubble of suspicion detached itself from the bottom of my stomach and floated upwards. He must be talking to Angeline. But why was he talking about me? I leaned over and switched off the TV, feeling suddenly very cold. A whole stack of images shuttled down behind my eyes, unbelievable, ridiculous things, things that had been staring me in the face when I thought about it: Oakesy standing in front of the sink, kicking the cupboard; Oakesy stricken and sick-looking in the car on the way back from the hospital, echoing my words, Disgusted? Disgusted. And Angeline beginning to look after herself since the visit to the hospital, even washing and putting on makeup, combing her hair so it covers the bald patches, somehow getting her skin cleared up, all in all looking quite wholesome. I looked at the cupboard. It couldn't be. Couldn't possibly be…

And then he appeared, coming heavily down the stairs. I went to the foot of the stairs and when he saw me he stopped. He shook his head silently, as if he didn't trust himself to speak, as if what he had to say was just too awful.

'Joe,' I said faintly. 'Joe, why did you just tell Angeline you love me?'

Well, he could have answered any way he wanted and I'd have probably listened. He could have denied it, or laughed, or been affronted. But he did none of those things. He did something worse. Much worse. He said nothing. He just stood there, staring at me.

'It seems such a funny thing to say,' I said wood-enly, feeling as if someone had put their hand inside my ribcage and was squeezing my heart. My skin went hot and cold, then hot again. 'Joe? Please, Joe, please. Tell me you're joking. Come on. This is a joke.'

'I'm sorry.' He pulled his jacket from the banisters and threw it on, pulling his keys out of his pocket. 'Lex, you won't believe me, but I'm sorry.'

He pushed past me and headed for the door.

'Joe?' I stared at him, disbelief washing up and over me. 'Joe? Wait. Wait -' He pulled the front door open. A gust of wind and rain came into the hallway, nearly taking me off my feet, but he leaned forward into it and went out, into the streaming day, his jacket whipping and slapping around him like a parachute, leaving me in the doorway. I stood there for a few seconds, thinking stupidly that my shoes were lying on the floor in the kitchen and I couldn't go out without them. Then I saw him hold the key up and heard the beep as the car doors unlocked and I knew then it was real and he was going. I ran out barefoot into the rain, the wind driving water into my eyes. 'Wait, Joe. Wait!' He was already swinging into the car. He slammed the door, and as I got to the kerb I heard the central-locking system clunk closed and that made me panic. I scrabbled at the handle, the wind driving me flat against the car. 'Open the door!' I hammered at it with my bare hands. I could see the side of his face through the greasy, rain-drenched window. He looked grey, cold. He wouldn't look at me as he reached down and turned the key.