Mo Hayder - Pig Island

I turned stiffly, like my head might explode. Angeline was there, sitting a few feet away, white and shocked, staring unblinking at me. All day long I hadn't spoken to her. I hadn't even acknowledged her.

'You'll talk to her,' I said. 'When she wakes up you'll tell her what to do.'

She opened her mouth. It looked to me like she was moving in slow motion. The inside of her mouth was pink. 'What?' she whispered. 'What did you say?'

'What to do now she's…' I paused and turned to look at Lexie again. They'd put her on a dark blue air mattress that was supposed to take the pressure off the burns that ran all the way down the backs of her legs. Her airways were clear, none of the burns circled her legs, and the consultant said all of this was promising. But no one was pretending there'd be any getting away from the disfigurement. That was hers. For life. The first paramedic to arrive at Lightning Tree Estate had gone pale when he saw the burns. I remember him trying to wrap her legs in clingfilm, the crime-scene manager yelling at him to hurry up, hurry up, and I knew from everyone's faces there wasn't much could be done about those burns. 'It's the pensioner syndrome,' someone muttered in the confusion. 'Saw it once on an old stiff I got called to. Died in bed. When I got there he'd been simmering on an electric heating pad for six days.'

The noises from the immersion-heater hadn't been the sound of it switching itself on: that had already happened a long time before I got back to the house. What Danso, Angeline and I had heard from the living room was Lexie's heels drumming out a reflex tattoo on the hot-water tank. It was a neurological spasm, a tic, because she was unconscious when I opened that cupboard door. She'd been placed on top of the tank, legs astride the copper pipe that led up to the tank in the attic, her arms flopped backwards. Her mouth was open and her head was back against the wall, not lolling but alert and upright even though her eyes were closed. That weird angle to her head wasn't an accident: she'd been pinioned there, her head jammed over and over again into a nail that stuck out of the wall. He'd done it so hard, and so many times, that there was a hole in the back of her head the size of a shot glass and he must have thought for sure she was dead. He'd have loved to see my face when I found her.

I'm fucking with your peace of mind, Joe.

The doctor unsnapped the kit from its Cellophane and began to lay out its contents. A dull ache started in my back and my knee joints: the tiredness that sets in after an adrenaline jag. I knew what that kit was. I knew what she was going to do. Lexie's legs were burned so badly because Dove had removed her tights and knickers before he hauled her up on the tank. The lagging had come loose so the top of the hot copper tank had been in direct contact with her thighs and buttocks for two and a half hours. I managed everything else, all the stuff about the nail rammed through her skull, about the bruises on her face, the red welts on her neck where he'd strangled her, but that detail of there being no underwear… It was that detail took my legs out from under me, sent me dry-heaving over the kitchen sink.

Danso helped me like he was my father: he kept close to my face, talking to me constantly, kept me from losing it. He stayed with me while we went to the station and I went through the miserable process of giving DNA, because, yes, we were still sharing a bed even though the sex was pretty much dead and buried. I let the arse of a doctor take what he needed: hairs and a tube of blood. I spent the rest of the day trying not to picture a lab technician somewhere in Glasgow sorting my DNA from Dove's.

I'm fucking with your peace of mind, Joe.

The nurse stopped what she was doing and watched as the doctor pulled a speculum from the kit. 'Is that what I think it is?' she asked. 'Did the consultant tell you that was OK?'

The doctor peered at her over the top of her glasses. 'As a matter of fact, yes. I believe he did give his permission.'

'Because that burn to the perineum. That's really complex. You know that, don't you?' She moved closer to the bed, to where the doctor was pulling the sheets down, gently moving Lexie's legs apart. 'It's the worse for swelling.'

I looked up and found Danso's eyes on mine. I knew what he was saying: You don't want to be here for this, you don't want to be here. I held his eyes, the blood pumping in my head. The doctor peeled the wad of bandage from between Lexie's legs, careful not to move the catheter tube — and that was enough for me. I stood shakily and left the room, standing in the corridor and breathing carefully. A moment later there was a click and when I turned Angeline stood behind me, expressionless. She had unbuttoned her coat in the warm hospital air and was clutching a tissue in her right hand, maybe to dab her forehead or her eyes.

'What?' I said. 'I had to come out here. I can't watch that.'

'I know.'

She stood there for a while, looking at me, saying nothing.

'What? What do you want?'

'Joe?' she said quietly. 'When she wakes up?'

'Yes?'

'When she shows you. You won't…'

'Won't what?'

'You won't let her see you're disgusted?'

I stared at her. For a few minutes I wasn't getting it. 'What?' My head was so drum tight, nothing was sinking in. 'What did you say?'

There was a pause. Then she said, 'Don't let her think she disgusts you.'

'Angeline.' My voice was stiff. 'I didn't say it. Whatever you think… I never said it.'

Nine the second morning Lexie's ma arrives, trailing luggage. Bony calves in expensive hosiery poking out from under her tweed skirt. A Harrods astrakhan hat crammed on to springs of auburn hair.

'This was always going to happen, Joe,' she says crisply, as she comes in. 'And forgive me if I blame you. You and your job.'

I don't answer. I watch her kiss Lexie. I watch her summon the nurse to clean the thin line of saliva that runs down Lexie's chin. I watch her survey the room and get comfortable, hang up her coat and hat, arrange her belongings, and sit down primly, one hand on her skirt because I'm definitely enough of a pig to try getting a look at her knickers, the cacky old mare. And I don't say a word.

We sit like this for thirty-six hours, locked in a monumental battle of wills: the first to wilt, to give up the vigil, is the loser. I spend my time slumped in my chair, staring sullenly across the room, a leaflet they've given me crumpled in my hand: Managing the Future After Burns: Psycho-Social Needs. She sits upright, her mouth pursed as she peers at the Telegraph crossword over the top of her specs. I keep studying her, making sure she never tries to switch on her mobile phone. We've all been told not to have any contact with the outside world, not even with relatives and friends, and I'm not going to give her a chance. Because the police have got a problem.

At first when the word came through about Lex everyone up at Oban was secretly relieved: Malachi Dove had done his bit to fuck with my head and it had taken out just one person, not hundreds like they'd been afraid. But now they saw the catch: in Dove's head his job was over because he thought Lex was dead. Reality was different. A local reporter had got wind of a 'domestic' at the rape suite. He hadn't connected it yet to the Pig Island massacre, but when his usual police contact stonewalled him over it he knew there was more and he was starting to dig. Danso was going crazy trying to contain it: he knew Dove was finished now, but Danso wanted to be sure before they let anything out to the papers. We wanted Dove's body. There were blinds on the private room and every nurse and doctor who came through was warned not to speak to anyone. Not even a friend. Still, you got the feeling that any time now the bag was going to split and it was all going to come out. If Lexie's ma so much as moved her hand near to her phone I was going to be on her.