Mo Hayder - Pig Island

'Wait here,' I told Angeline, opening the door. 'When I come back we've got to talk.' I hesitated then tapped the officer on the shoulder. 'I'm going to be ten minutes. But I'm only over there. I can see you from the front window.'

He started to say something, but I closed the door on him. I stood, zipping up my jacket, turning up the collar and staring across at the rape suite. Like High Noon or something, which is a joke, because when I got over to the house all I was facing off with was stale air and some ageing soft furnishings. Lexie wasn't there. She wasn't in the house.

I stood in the living room, blinking at the chairs, the blank TV, the cold kettle. I went up and checked in our bedroom, but she wasn't there. She'd gone. I stood in the hallway for a few moments, my head thumping, thinking, She's left me. Not the other way round — she's left me. Then I went back to the car. This time the officer didn't wait for me to knock. He opened the window and looked at me blankly.

'She's not there.'

Angeline turned, her cheeks red and mottled, and looked past me to the house. 'She was there when I left.'

I put my elbow on the roof and dropped my face into the window close to the officer's. 'Well?' I said slowly. 'What time did she go?'

A line of red appeared across the bridge of. his nose. Another travelled from his neck up to his forehead. There was a few moments' silence, and then it dawned on me.

'Oh, you fucking clown. You left your post. Didn't you?'

He glared at me, grinding his jaws in small, tight circles.

'You left your fucking post.' I slammed the roof of the car, making him jump.

'He came to find me,' Angeline said. She got out and faced me blearily over the top of the car roof. Her breath was white in the cold air and I could see she was suddenly panicky, looking over my head at the rape suite. 'It was my fault. I went for a walk and he came to find me.'

I didn't answer. I looked around myself at the empty streets, the bleak houses and the burning horizon. The curtains closed in the rape suite. I turned and headed for the house, a sweat breaking out over my skin. Angeline limped behind me, unsteady, worried. 'Don't panic,' she said. I could hear in her voice she was as scared now as I was. She was sobering up quickly. 'I'm sure everything's all right. She said she was going back to London. She said she was going. I'm sure she's OK.'

A J-cloth had been hung over the kitchen tap to dry. As I waited for Lexie's mum to answer the phone I watched a drip forming under the cloth, slowly fill until it was too heavy, then drop with a metallic ping into the sink. We didn't get on, me and Lexie's ma. She'd never quite swallowed the fact that her daughter had married me, a Scouser who didn't even make a token effort to conceal his working-class roots. Where she came from, you boasted that the kids had got into Oxbridge; where I came from, you boasted that they'd stayed out of the nick. And another thing, she'd told Lex, I didn't make enough money. Not nearly enough. So you can see it was never going to be the world's best relationship. When the phone rang six times, then shuffled over to answerphone, part of me was relieved. I didn't leave a message. I called the house in Kilburn and left a message: 'Call me, Lex, when you get in.' I hung up and went into the kitchen to make a brew.

The house was silent. Angeline had gone upstairs. Probably knew the stray voltage that would crackle up if we tried to talk just now. I listened for her as I made the tea, threw some milk into the cup, turned to put the teabag into the bin and…

I stopped, the bag extended on the spoon, a little pulse beating in my temple.

Lexie's bag was hanging on the back of the chair.

It was her brown leather Gap bag. Her favourite because it had straps that could make it a rucksack or a tote bag. I'd got it for her for Christmas last year — she used it all the time, swimming or shopping or the pub. She was never separated from it.

Very slowly, like a quick or unexpected movement would make the bag leap up and scuttle away, I dropped the teabag into the bin, threw the spoon into the sink, unhooked the bag from the chair and unzipped it with trembling hands. A faint smell of leather and Airwaves berry chewing-gum came up from it, and inside I found a pocket packet of tissues, a half-finished tube of Lockets, her spiral-bound diary and a spare pair of tights, still in their packaging. I fumbled it all out on to the table, my mouth dry. At the bottom of the bag was her wallet. Her wallet, her keys and her mobile phone.

I stared at the phone in my hand, at the zigzaggy signal icon, my pulse falling to a low, monotone thud. The wallet was closed, and when I opened it I found some loose change, our joint NatWest card, a newspaper cutting of her boss, her library card and a tattered picture of me, tanned and with lots of young-man hair, standing on the Tarmac in front of a Boeing 747 at Athens airport on the way back from our honeymoon in Kos.

I stared at the picture, blank and welded where I stood, all the light and sound in the kitchen muffled. Lex, Lexie — you wouldn't have left this if you were going to London… would you? I went woodenly into the hallway and began to climb the stairs, moving arthritically, clutching the wallet in my numb fingers. I was at the top when I saw Angeline, coming out of the bathroom door. I knew instantly something was wrong.

'Joe,' she whispered, her eyes bright and glittering. 'Joe. Look in the bathroom. I think you'd better look.'

'This is a crime scene.' Chief Inspector Danso stood on the landing with his hands in the pockets of his navy raincoat, peering into the bathroom. Earlier when I came upstairs the door had been standing half open, just enough for me to tell that no one was in there. But I hadn't bothered to push it open wide. If I had I'd have seen the shattered glass in the window above the sink, letting in a cold square of greyish outside light, I'd have seen the towels thrown untidily in the bath, the shower curtain ripped from the rings overhead. 'I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call it a crime scene. Let's go downstairs. The Crime Scene Manager'll be here any time now.'

We went down in silence. Police car lights flashed blue outside. From the moment I'd seen Angeline's face on the landing I'd known. I'd known that whatever I thought I'd seen over at Crinian, Dove had been here in Dumbarton all the time. The driver in the cap was a doppelganger — a spectre, a blind coincidence. It was only now, with Danso here and back-up cars on the way, that shock set in. As I got to the bottom of the stairs I began to keel sideways.

'Hey up.' Danso came up behind me, catching me under the arm. 'There you go, big man. That's it, through here, let's sit you down before you fall.' He led me into the living room and lowered me on to the tattered sofa where I sat heavy, my feet planted a pace apart, my hands on my knees, staring at nothing, solemn and stony as old Lincoln in the Washington memorial. Angeline sank on to the sofa opposite me, blinking rapidly, her eyes puffed from crying. 'Still with us, eh?' Danso, bent over with his hands on his knees so he was eye-level with me, studying my face, reassuring himself I wasn't going to fall over like a skittle. He straightened and scanned the living room and kitchen. 'Have you a drop of something about the place?'

'Jack Daniel's.' I nodded automatically. 'Yes, Jack Daniel's.' I looked up at the kitchen, and then, like the noise of my own voice might drown the static in my head, I repeated it a few times, 'Jack Daniel's. Jack Daniel's. Jack Daniel's. Over there. See it? In the kitchen.'

'Will I fetch you a drop, then? Just a little — just to get your head back on, eh?'