Mo Hayder - Pig Island

If there was any evidence worth preserving in the living room Angeline and I had already destroyed it, walking back and forward down there, waiting for Danso to arrive. But the bizzy habits were in Danso's blood, and he went carefully, automatically tearing off a length of kitchen roll to pick up the bottle because with these break-ins they always make a beeline for the booze. When he saw the cracked cupboard door he took a step back, like he'd been slapped, holding his hands up.

'Me,' I said dully, shaking my head. 'Me. The other day. Bull in a china shop.'

He looked at it a bit longer, then slowly lowered his hands. He got a cracked Rangers mug from the back of the shelf, splashed a couple of inches of JD into it and handed it to me. The mug smelt of coffee and sour milk, but I sipped it gratefully, hearing my breath come back at me from inside the mug.

Danso went to the chair. 'This her bag, then?'

'Yes.'

'And she hasn't taken any clothes?'

'Nothing.'

'Your bedroom just as you left it?'

'It's just the bathroom. The bathroom's the only place that anyone has-' I broke off and pressed my fingertips to my throat, moving my Adam's apple in a circle as if that would stop me choking. 'Anyone has… you know…'

'Yes,' Danso said quietly. 'Yes. I know.' He scratched his head, then pinched up his trousers by the knees and sat on the sofa next to me, his giant spider's legs black and sharp and thin. 'When you came in, did you notice anything unusual about the house? Anything strike you as odd?'

I stared out of the window in silence. Danso's driver was standing next to the car, speaking into a radio, one hand on the car roof, one on his hip so his coat was pulled back just far enough to show the glint of handcuffs on his belt. Every now and then he turned and stared off in the direction of the red line of trees, their shadows lying flat and long across the playing-fields.

'No,' I said. 'Nothing.'

Danso tapped his fingers on his knee. There was a long silence. Overhead the immersion-heater came on, a chirruping, tapping noise like a trapped beetle in a joist. 'The back door was locked.' He leaned over and stared out down the corridor, as if to reassure himself that he had remembered correctly. 'And the front door was-'

'Locked.' My mouth was numb, drugged. The words were coming out painfully — like pulled teeth. 'I used the key.'

'And is there anywhere she could have gone? Has she got any friends or relatives in the area?'

'Her ma's in Gloucestershire. She'd have used her mobile to call. But the only calls on it are to me and to the Royal Infirmary…' I trailed off and turned to look out of the window, a memory coming to me.

'Joe?'

'A car,' I said faintly, my finger floating up to point out at the street. 'There was a car in that road half an hour ago. It was leaving.'

Danso sat forward, frowning at me. 'A car?'

'White.' I half stood, staring at the boarded-over houses opposite. 'White or silver, maybe…'

'Saloon? Hatchback? Estate?'

'Saloon — I…' I was on my feet, throwing the front door open, walking out stiffly to stare down the road in the direction it had gone. The officers in their cars stopped their phone and radio conversations and turned to watch me. Danso came out of the house and caught up. He stood shoulder to shoulder with me, staring at the same grey piece of road between the houses. 'It was fly-tippers,' I said faintly. 'I mean, I thought it was fly-tippers.'

'Don't suppose you got a registration number?'

'It went too quickly.' I blinked, staring out at the road, trying hard to force the thoughts. There had been something… something…

'Did you see who was driving?'

'No.' Was she in the car, you fucking twat? Did you sit there and watch him drive her away? Something about the back of the car… 'I only saw it for a couple of seconds — couldn't see who was driving or if there was anyone else in the-' I broke off. It had come to me in a flash. 'Boots,' I said. 'Football boots. Little ones — the ones you hang off a mirror. And a miniature Celtic strip. Right up there, hanging over the back shelf, like there could have been kids in the car. That's why I didn't think anything of it.'

As information went it was piss-poor, but it was all I could force out of my memory. Danso took it to the officer, and he sent a PNC marker on his radio. Danso's face was tense as he turned, a little apprehensively, to scan the fields and the empty streets behind him. Then we traipsed back inside, feeling beaten. I sat down next to Angeline. Upstairs the immersion-heater began to knock rhythmically, as if it had come loose from its moorings.

'I'm sorry,' Angeline said quietly. 'I'm really sorry.'

I looked at her. She was still in her coat, bunched-up and miserable-looking, her chin almost on her chest as if she was beyond crying or moving. That flushed-drunk look had gone. Now she was wiped clean of colour. Her feet in the brown boots were turned inwards, like she was trying to disappear. 'I shouldn't have left the house.'

'It's not your fault,' I said. 'It isn't.'

'It's my dad. My dad. And I shouldn't have gone out. You told me not to. It's just that we — Lexie and I — we had a fight and…' She broke off. 'If I hadn't been staying with you he'd never have come here.'

I shook my head sadly. 'It's not your fault.'

She nodded and tried to smile but I could tell she didn't believe me. Danso sat down and was about to speak when the noise from the immersion-heater interrupted him. He turned his eyes to the ceiling. 'That's a noisy wee set of apparatus up there.'

'Everything's falling apart in this place.'

'I'll speak to maintenance about…' He trailed off as the knocking got louder. Now Angeline and I turned our eyes upwards to stare at the place on the stained Artexed ceiling where the sound was coming from. For a long time none of us spoke. Then Danso lowered his eyes and met mine. A little wash of pale pink was already creeping across his cheeks. He swallowed and gave me a pained smile. 'Joe,' he said evenly, as if he was asking me nothing more serious than what time it was. 'Before you called us, did you check all the rooms upstairs?'

'I need some space here.'

'And I don't? I've got to get this Hartmaan's in. You told the consultant you'd keep out of our way.'

The forensic examiner, a female GP from the south of Glasgow, was arguing with a liaison nurse from the Burns Unit. The doctor's cardboard kit sat on a chair in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary's Intensive Care Unit, open, spewing out sealed tubes and latex gloves. The nurse kept having to squeeze past it as she moved round the bed where Lexie lay motionless, legs swaddled in webbed petroleum bandaging, monitors on mechanical arms hovering above her, three different tubes connecting to taps on the Venflon central line going into her neck.

'Why's that green?' said the doctor. She was pointing to the catheter bag. 'Is that something you're giving her?'

'Propofol.' The nurse pushed past her. 'Neurologist doesn't want her moving around. Wants deep sedation until they know what swelling she's going to get from that head injury. Now, would you like to check her fluid output or do you trust me to manage?'

'Just trying to do my job,' the doctor muttered. She bent and took a sealed tube from her bag. 'Just trying to do my job.'

Danso watched from the corner of the private room, face grey, arms folded. He'd asked me to leave for this bit, but I'd said, no, I wasn't leaving her, whatever happened. I sat inside the privacy screen on a wobbly plastic chair, silent, watching numbly as the doctor examined Lexie's limp hands, carefully scraping under the fingernails, sealing the wands into test tubes, each labelled and dated, checking the wall clock for a time and handing the tube to Danso to sign. It was seven o'clock and the day had gone in a blur. Lexie was alive. Alive. But no one could figure out why. She should be dead. That was what they kept telling me.