Mo Hayder - Pig Island

Where are you now?

Just like it wanted to answer my question, a car on the road slowed to watch me. I closed the map very slowly, staring at it. It was an English car, dark blue. A cold line of fear traced its way up my spine, into my hair: the car stolen from the Crinian car park was a dark blue Vauxhall. I was at least two hundred yards away but I could tell it was a bloke driving it — a bloke with sandy or blond hair and dressed in something pale: a golfing sweater, maybe. Shit, I thought, my heart thudding, my limbs going a bit numb. Is that you? Is it?

I opened the door and threw the map inside, trying to look calm. The car didn't move. I took the keys out of the Fiesta's ignition. Staying casual, even though I was shaking, I turned and began to walk towards the road. I was going to speak to him. Just talk. That's what he wanted. A flock of birds twisted and banked in the flat blue sky above us, menacing as a stormcloud, and from somewhere distant came the thin, briny cry of a curlew. I didn't look up at the sky — just kept walking, my paces even, measured, my breathing steady.

As I got nearer I could see that what I'd thought was sandy blond hair was a baseball cap, pulled down close over his ears, and just as I was about to get a good view of the driver he floored the accelerator and sped away. I broke into a run, skidding in the gravel, stopping at the centre of the road, feet planted wide, staring at the dwindling dab of darkness on the road: vanishing to the south, in the direction of Lochgilphead, away from Craignish Point.

It's not him. Of course it's not him.

I stood there, suspended for a few beats of time in a silent bubble of disbelief, that dot of colour disappearing in my retina. Why would he be so casual? It was just a local — slowing down to see if I was on the rob. But my blood was up now. I raced back to the Fiesta, fired it up. Not a chase car, it struggled and whined as I forced it along the road — sixty, seventy, eighty, my heart pounding. Off the peninsula and right along the coast. The car reached a forest, then abruptly, with no warning, swung to the right and we were in the flat marshlands near the river Add. Over a bridge and the road became a narrow canalside single-laner. The Fiesta screamed along it, passing a turning to the right — that way, or stay on this road? — and another, and another. Then a bridge to the left over the canal and a glimpse of red-painted narrow-boats, bikes chained to the roofs. Rusty chimneys puffed woodsmoke into the cold air.

I fumbled the mobey off the front seat and switched it on, my eyes going up and down from the display to the car in front. It chimed out a tune, the screen flaring up. Twenty-five missed calls from Lexie, and before I had time to jam in Danso's number, it jumped to life. Lexie again. I tossed the phone on to the passenger seat, and floored the Fiesta down the narrow lane. I turned another corner and saw, less than a hundred yards ahead of me, a camper-van lumbering along, fat-bellied, taking up the whole of the road, brushing the hedgerows. I jammed on the brakes and came to a halt in the middle of the road, hands clenched on the wheel, leaning forward, my nose almost pressed to the windscreen, breathing so hard I could've run the last few miles. I was beaten. I knew it. These roads were straight and uncompromising, but they were a warren for a chase. Dove could be anywhere by now.

The camper-van waddled and swayed until it was swallowed into the distance. On the seat the mobey rang again. I pulled the car over and waited for Lexie's call to go to answerphone, then I snatched it up and jammed in the number for the Oban incident room. Got Danso to send out a couple of patrol cars. Then I drove around, slowing to peer down any driveway or farm path or layby. Every five minutes the phone rang on the passenger seat, twisting and turning on the upholstery, arsed off I wasn't answering. She wasn't giving up. I couldn't talk to her. Not now. I took a left and continued in an arc over the head of the Crinian canal. After about twenty minutes I saw one of the police cars — unmarked, but you could have spotted it a mile away — cruising slow, predator-wise, in the opposite direction, the driver and passenger both chewing hard, craning their necks and staring, gagging to get into a high-speed chase. I didn't acknowledge them, just drove past, anonymous. I knew it was over. All I could do now was check the same places again and again. The phone began to ring and this time I nosed the car into the hedgerow and snatched it up impatiently.

'Look, I'll call you back.'

'No, you won't,' she said coldly.

'We'll talk later.'

'Fuck you, Joe. We'll talk now. Don't insult my intelligence. Please.'

I killed the engine, pulled the phone out from where I'd wedged it under my chin and clamped it against my mouth so she'd hear me better. 'Lex, we're going to talk, but not now. I'm in the middle of something.'

'I'm going to ask you a question,' she said, in a controlled voice. 'And when you answer it's going to be an honest answer. I want to know the truth. The truth, Joe,' she said emphatically, like it was something I was a complete stranger to. There was a long pause. Then she said, 'Do you love me?'

'I'll come home. We'll talk-'

'I said, do you love me?'

I took a deep breath. In the distance a car pulled on to the road and headed towards me. I stared at it, just a dot, my eyes aching.

'It's an easy question. Not quantum physics, Joe. Do you love me, do you fancy me, do you still want to fuck me, the woman who has stuck by you for years and fucking years while you piss away your degree up a wall, or do you want to fuck some ugly shitty little shitty little bitch cow?' She broke off, breathing hard. I could almost smell her bitter breath down the phone. 'Do you know what's wrong with her, Joe? Do you? Have you got any idea, or are you just content to leave it to me — the one who's actually bothered to get herself some kind of medical training?'

I stared blankly at the road, a tightness straddling my windpipe. I wanted to sort it in my head, find a response, something to say. But I couldn't. Just couldn't get my head to work.

'She's a freak of nature and if you fancy her you are a pervert — and you should be put out of your misery, you fucking horrible, horrible freak -'

'Lex, listen-'

'I'm going upstairs now and I'm going to tell her that she DISGUSTS YOU. YOU get it? And then, when you come back, you're going to go into her room and tell her that SHE DISGUSTS YOU. You're going to tell her you don't fuck freaks.'

She broke down into a series of staccato sobs, her breath hitching and catching. The car drew nearer, the grey sky reflected milkily on its windscreen. My hand was stony on the steering-wheel. Grey. There was a long time while I listened to her sniffle and get herself under control.

'You're not saying anything,' she muttered, after a while. 'You've gone quiet.'

'When I get home we'll sit down and talk about this.'

'No, fuck you, Joe. I'm not sitting down with you and-'

'Fuck you, Lexie.'

She took a furious breath, gobsmacked that I'd answered her back. 'Don't you dare talk to me like that. Don't you d -'

'What? You get to talk to me like that but I can't do the same?'

'I'm not the fucking adulterer in this relationship,' she screamed. 'Being cheated on gives me some rights.'

'I haven't cheated on you.'

'But you want to. Don't you? Don't you?'

I didn't answer. I thumbed the cancel-call button, switched off the phone, dropped it in my lap and put my elbows on the steering-wheel, resting my chin on them. I sat there for a long time, moving my chin back and forward so that the skin wrinkled and stretched, wrinkled and stretched, watching the car draw near and slow to a crawl to pass me: it was a 2.4 family in an SUV, two stocky, buzz-cut kids in the back, battering each other with helium Nemo balloons. Not Dove. Not him at all.