Mo Hayder - Pig Island

'No,' she sobbed, her hands reaching up to me. 'Please-'

But I pushed her hands away. Her vagina gaped a little. I saw a little bit of moisture there, glinting silver at me, and then I saw her smooth reddish perineum leading back, ducking away to a V shape, and behind it the flat slab of the tail, a faint pucker running along it, like the seam that leads down the underside of a scrotum. Then, and I don't know what made me, but then I inserted two of my fingers into her vagina. She gasped, but I pushed my fingers in deeper, digging them in, the idea flashing through my head that if I only dug deep enough I'd find whatever it was that Oakesy wanted. And if I found it, I'd pull it out of her, and give it to him, wrapped in a bloodied handkerchief.

'Get off. Get off me.'

She grabbed my wrists and tried to twist away, her feet scrabbling on the bed. But I followed her, moving my fingers from her vagina to her anus. I thought of membranes tearing as I pushed my fingers up there, feeling her muscles clamp on me, feeling the smooth insides of her even though she was scrabbling at my wrist, digging her nails in. The twin was in there somewhere — I pictured its face, hands, fingernails, gut, spine, all concertinaed down to a bundle of bone and muscle the size of a foetus inside her pelvis. Maybe I was going to brush against a nose or an ear. Poke my nails into its eyes.

'Get off me!'

She rolled away and my nails raked along the inside of her as my fingers came out. She let out a long gasp and rolled out of my reach, clamping her hands between her legs. I stood back, sweating and trembling, breathing hard, my head pounding.

'He's disgusted by you. Do you know that? You make him sick.' The tears were rolling down my face. 'He said that the first time he saw you he went away and puked. Did you know that?'

'No.' She lay weakly on her side, shivering and crying. 'He didn't say that.'

'Yes.' I looked down at my fingers, splayed out, sticky and shaking. 'That's what he said. Believe me.'

I went woodenly to the bathroom and washed my hands, using hot water and lots of soap, my teeth chattering as if I was freezing. I knew I'd crossed a line. I knew I couldn't go back. I kept washing and washing and washing until my hands were raw and the urge to cry had left me. Then I went into the bedroom and changed my trousers and blouse. I've made up my mind. It's time to go to London. I haven't got anything to show Christophe — but if I don't see him, talk to him, I'm going to go crazy.

People get lines in their head like a record, grooves they move along when they think they know everything they need to know. They stop trying. With Lexie, I thought I knew her so well I'd stopped thinking about her in the right way. That was why I never expected what I found when I got back to the rape suite that day.

It took two hours, dawdling along the tourist roads, stuck behind caravans chugging out sooty fumes, testing strategies as I went, the Massive Attack CD ramming itself into my head. I'd thought about Lexie so much I should have felt better when I pulled up outside the rape suite. Instead I felt like the king of all shits, caught flat-footed, and busy eating myself alive from the inside out. I couldn't go in. I had to sit for a long time, my hands on the steering-wheel, staring at the lines of grime under my fingernails, my thoughts inching laboriously into opening sentences, mentally walking myself into the house, mentally sliding into the conversation. The storms had passed. The streets were wet, glistening in the late sunlight, but the curtains in the living room were closed and I pictured her sitting in there, bolt upright in one of the blue Formica chairs, staring at me when I came in. Angeline would be upstairs.

When I'd been there for five minutes and I still couldn't think of an opening sentence, I started the car and moved it forward a little, coming to a halt at the crossroads. I looked left, right. The police surveillance car was in its usual place, facing me about ten yards to the right, parked casually, just far enough along for the officer to see the front of the rape suite. The sunlight bounced off the windscreen and for a second or two I didn't realize there were two people in the car. Then a cloud rolled across the sun, the light dimmed, and I saw Angeline in the passenger seat, a handkerchief jammed into her eyes. The officer had his arm across the back of her seat. Not actually touching her, but only inches away.

I parked the Fiesta and jumped out, crossed the road, knocked on the window. The central-locking system disengaged and the officer shot a thumb over his shoulder. I opened the back door and stuck my head in. 'What's going on?'

'An argument.' He turned to me. He had very messy red hair and I noticed he didn't take his arm off the back of Angeline's seat. She was inclined towards him, as if at some point she might have been crying on his shoulder. She kept pinching her nose, like she was trying to hold something in. She's a cripple, mate … have you noticed? A cripple. Let me tell you about what she's got under that coat. …

'Two young ladies. Had a wee misunderstanding.'

I got into the back and closed the door. They had the heating on full blast and one of them had been drinking. Or both of them. It stank in there like a south London minicab.

'Well?' I said to Angeline. 'What's happened?'

She shook her head, pressing her eyes with the handkerchief. The sound of her tight breathing filled the car.

'I'll know eventually, so you may as well tell me. What happened?' The officer shot me a glance in the mirror and I caught it, raising my eyebrows calmly at him. If he said, 'Don't be harsh on the lass,' I'd ask him why he had his arm round her and why he had a face like a dog's arse. 'Angeline. I asked you a question. What's been happening while I've been gone?'

She dropped the tissue from her eyes and met my eyes unsteadily in the mirror, this congested look on her face. So, I thought, it's you who's been drinking.

She's no one, Oakes, no one to you. You've known her five minutes. …

'I took some money from your briefcase.' She wiped her nose and began to pull things out of her pockets, placing them on the dashboard in front of her. Two packets of kids' sweets, three miniature Stolichnayas, four miniature brandies and a couple of empty Doritos bags. It all went rolling across the dashboard, into the air vents and on to the floor. The officer had to pull his arm off her seat and make grabs for it all.

'Easy there, hen. Ea-sy.'

'She was in your bedroom and I went into the kitchen and borrowed money from you.' She jerked her chin in the direction of the Spar shop on the other side of the estate. 'Got all of this and some vodka and I'm already drunk. You see?' She pulled a handful of notes and change from the other pocket and dropped it on the dashboard. A five-pence piece rolled off, hitting the gear lever and falling tails up, an inch from my toe into the leather sleeve at the bottom of the handbrake. 'I'm a thief and I'm drunk and I'm probably just like my father because I hate her and I hate you too …'

'Hey, hey, hen, go easy on yourself.'

He put his hand on her shoulder and she dissolved into tears. I sighed and looked out of the window at the rape suite. What a shitty fucking place to be doing this, a godforsaken abandoned scheme with its crap lying around everywhere, dead lawns and the horizon bruised yellow, like there was a poisonous cloud coming up from the west. A car nosed out of the street parallel to the rape suite, the road that went to the playing-fields. When it saw our car it did a hasty right and disappeared. Fly-tippers. Offload your shite. Come here to Shitening Grove Estate and offload it. Leave it on the tracks. Someone else'll deal with it.