Mo Hayder - Pig Island

She had changed. It had happened so gradually I hadn't noticed it. But now, seeing the men following her with their eyes as she made her way to the lighted building, I could tell she was a different woman entirely from the one they'd first met shivering with fear at the Oban station. She'd left the embroidered coat on the back seat and was wearing a tight, ribbed sweater and a greyish skirt. She'd put her hair back in a beaded slide she must've got from Lexie's drawer. She looked like she was going to a dinner party. Struthers kept shooting glances at the skirt out of the corner of his eyes as we went into the building.

Two men waited in a wallpapered side-room: the family liaison officer and the pathologist, dressed in a suit and tie, his reading glasses tucked into the breast pocket. They stood to introduce themselves to Angeline, explaining who they were, why they were there, what was going to happen next. The procurator fiscal has asked me to perform a postmortem… .

Danso waited a moment or two, then put a hand on my arm and beckoned me back into the corridor where we couldn't be heard.

'Joe,' he said, closing the door behind us, 'just needed to say something. This character we've got on a slab, he's carrying no ID. The doctor's thinking he won't be getting any prints because of slippage.' We stood against a painted pink panel on the wall, our faces sick-looking in the fluorescent lights. 'Do you know what that is? That's when the skin starts to slide off.'

'Decomposition?'

'Aye. And you can't get a print off it.' He went and peered through the glass panel into the waiting room. Inside, Struthers had brought Angeline a cup of something and was standing facing her, not speaking, just watching her with this arsey smile on his face. 'Discussed it with the chief. We're going to back ourselves up before we go public, get DNA. But that'll take till next Monday and, the idea goes, this is the quickest way for us to get the PM done.' He cleared his throat. 'But, look, when I say there's slippage on his fingers…'

'Yes?'

'There's some on his face too — that's what I'm trying to tell you. I almost called and said, "Forget it, we'll wait for the DNA." Not sure I want her to go through this.'

We both watched Angeline through the glass panel. She was standing in the middle of the room, holding herself straight, listening to what the pathologist was saying. She was holding the drink in both hands. Usually her hands would be hovering self-consciously behind her. The back of the skirt stood out from her small waist like a bustle.

'But you know what?' Danso said, smiling slightly. 'You know what? Not sure now what I was worried about. The way she looks right now she could handle anything.'

The smell in the mortuary was nothing like I expected. It was fresher and sweeter, even tame in its way. Even the viewing room didn't smell of death. It had the whiff of a newly cleaned industrial kitchen, vases of fresh yellow flowers in each corner. Seven or eight seats were arranged round the walls, a Bible and a blue box of paper tissues on each one, and along the far end of the room, side on, a linen-covered shape lay on a trolley. A mortician in a white coat stood next to it, watching as we all filed in. His hand was resting on the white-and-blue-striped towel that covered the corpse's face.

'You're aware of the circumstances of the discovery of this body,' the pathologist said. 'You know there could be some discolouration on his face. If this is your father he might not look exactly the way he did when he was alive.'

'I know.'

He nodded, studying her carefully.

'Well now,' he said. 'You take your time. Look for as long as you want and if you need a break we'll take you out and you can have a breather. Come back inside later. We've got all the time in the world.'

'I'm ready.'

I held my breath, my heart knocking at my ribs. The mortician folded down the towel. Dove lay on his back, just his face showing, the sheet pulled up to conceal the rope he'd hanged himself with. The first thing I thought was, Christ, he's thin. He must've lost about five stone. He looked totally different: his jaw was so far relaxed it melted into his chest, his jowls drooped in folds, touching the sheet. His thick fair hair was reduced to sparse patches on the skull and his skin had lost that burned-looking red colour — even under the skim of makeup the mortician had used you could see it was yellowish-brown, the weight of it pulling at the rest of his face so you could see the sharp bone in his nose. I stared at him, not blinking, listening to my breath going in and out. In my head I'd been here, in this mortuary, a hundred times, looking at his dead body.

'Angeline,' said the pathologist, clearing his throat, 'are these the remains of your father, Malachi Dove?'

She turned to me, her hand over her mouth. I put my arms round her and she buried her face in my chest. 'My God, my God.'

'Angeline?' said Danso gently. 'What's happening with you, pet?'

'Yes,' she muttered, nodding into my sweater. 'Yes. It's him.'

'Are you sure, lass? You sure you don't want another wee keek just to be sure? You can take your time. He's lost some weight — living rough all this time.'

'Doesn't matter,' she whispered. 'Doesn't matter.'

'Doesn't matter?'

'No. It's him. I'd know him anywhere.'

'You all right?' After the viewing Angeline went to get a cup of water with Struthers and I went outside for a ciggy. Danso came to stand with me, his hands in his pockets, looking out at the car park, the ferroconcrete fire escape that led up to the Pathology Unit. 'Don't look happy to me.'

I shook my head. I took a drag on the ciggy and looked up at the stars. It was a clear night, just a few clouds, horror-movie clouds, floating across the sky. 'I've been waiting half my life for this.'

'Aye. I'll bet you have.'

'And you know what's weird?' I turned my eyes sideways to him. 'What's weird is I never pictured it like this. Always thought it'd be different.'

'Different how?'

I gave a short, dry laugh. 'Don't know. S'pose I couldn't ever get rid of what he said: "My death will be memorable." Do you remember? "Memorable."' I turned to look at the mortuary. The windows threw square panes of light on to the gravel. 'Not like this.'

'You mean you thought it'd be staged?'

'Yeah.'

'It was.'

I blew out some smoke. 'It was?'

'Yeah.' He pulled a clear plastic wallet of photos from inside his coat and handed them to me. 'Not supposed to show you these, OK?'

I put the ciggy between my teeth and held up the photos so the light from the lit walkway overhead fell on them. At first I thought I was looking at a bundle of clothes caught in a tree. Or a parachute tangled up. Then I recognized hands, and I could make out the outline of a body among all the material, stiff like a scarecrow, the head flopped down on to the chest.

'Rope round here,' Danso said. 'Round the trunk. Jumped out of the tree, rope broke his neck. The branches caught his arms. This stuff here is some groundsheet he had wrapped round him — been living up there rough for weeks.' He paused. 'Look at him Joe. He looks just like an angel, doesn't he?'

I didn't answer. I was staring at the groundsheet, the way it extended from the outspread arms like wings.

'An angel. That groundsheet was flapping like mad in the wind. Put the creeps up the lads — you could hear him before you saw him. Blak-blak-blak coming out of the trees. And smell him too.' He sniffed the air, like the smell was still in his nostrils. 'And smell him.'

I handed him the photographs, flicked away the ciggy and sat down, back against the big door the undertakers used, elbows on my knees, head down.

'Joe? You OK, son?'

I nodded, but I didn't look up. I was staring at the ground between my feet, pictures going across my head like a train: Finn's ma; me and Lexie; the evil way Dove dissolved out of the trees and lay on top of me. Danso wanted me to jump up and punch the air or something. I knew that was what he wanted — it was what I'd always pictured too — but I couldn't do it. All I felt was this great fucking ocean of tiredness open up inside me, and spread and spread, until I knew I was tireder, much tireder than I'd ever been in my life.