Mo Hayder: Pig Island

I put on jeans and went down the stairs, pulling on a T-shirt. Every step was a bit closer to panic. By the time I got to the hall my teeth were chattering. I ran outside in my bare feet, hesitated, went back and unhooked the keys from above the phone, then slammed the front door tight behind me. In the car opposite the police officer turned his head in my direction as I came down the path. I couldn't see his face — it was behind the sun visor — just his chapped hands resting calmly on the dashboard. I ran into the middle of the road, the cold biting my feet. I turned to check both ways up the street and was about to continue over to him, to hammer on the car window, when I saw her in the distance, coming down the road towards me.

It nearly snapped me in half, the relief. I limped back and leaned on the gate, getting my breath, lifting my head to watch her approach. She was carrying three newspapers and her eyes were bright.

'Joe!' she said, speeding up when she saw me. 'It's in here!' She waved one of the papers at me. 'She said I'm beautiful.'

'Come inside.'

She hesitated, her smile fading, her arm falling slack at her side. 'You haven't got any shoes on.'

'Just get inside.' I took her arm and led her down the path, not speaking. Inside I locked the door and bolted it, put the chain on. She stood in silence as I locked the back door, up-ended the coffee jar on the floor and sorted through the keys until I found the security key. I went round each room locking the windows. I drew all the curtains, then went back to the hallway and took the newspaper from her limp hand.

'Is this it? The article?' I put it on the kitchen table and began to leaf through it. 'Does she say we're living together?'

'No,' she said, unwinding her scarf. Cautious. 'She doesn't mention you at all.'

I found the page and placed my hands flat on it, leaning down to study it. Above me the electric ceiling light moved in a slow circle, its shadow rotating across the newspaper like a divining stone. The article was a two-page feature, a large head-and-shoulders shot of Angeline in the centre, and two insets: one of Dove and one taken offshore at Pig Island, the police tents and boats clustering round the village.

I skimmed the text rapidly. It was standard who-what-why-when journalism: the horror of the massacre, the number killed, Malachi Dove on the run, Lexie's death, all covered in the first paragraph. Then it went on to describe Angeline. There was her favourite line: a beauty, hints of a piercing intelligence. It said she had been disabled from birth and walked with a limp. Nothing more specific than that. Then there was a synopsis of her life on the island, her impression of the murdered cult members, finishing with a reference to the book, due in August. I didn't get a mention.

I bent nearer and examined the photo, looking at the reflection in her eyes, half expecting to see my own face there, standing in the shadows of the studio, anxious and jealous-looking. But there was nothing. Just the photographer's flash.

'Joe. You'd better tell me. What's happening?'

I shook my head and sat down at the table, pressing my fingers into my temples. I needed a painkiller. I pulled the paper towards me and stared at it glumly.

'But, Angeline says, the members of PHM treated her well. "They were all so sweet to me, I think they knew what was happening to me. "'

'They were so sweet?' I looked up at her. 'Is that what you said? "I think they knew what was happening to me?" Those are not the words I remember.'

'No.' She coloured. 'I didn't want to…' She rubbed her nose, embarrassed. 'I didn't want to sound bitter.'

'Didn't want to sound bitter?' I sighed. 'Listen, you think you know what you're doing but this is dangerous crap we're dealing with. It wasn't smart talking to them.'

'It's just self-preservation.'

I looked at her stonily, my words coming back at me like an echo. 'You think this is self-preservation?'

'Yes. Yes. I do.'

'You know what it sounds like? You know what it sounds like to me?'

'What?'

'Not only does it sound like you've given a different story from the one I'm giving, which is going to be a bit fucking embarrassing since that part of the book is already with the publishers-'

'Please don't swear.'

'Listen,' I said, holding up my hand. 'Let me finish. Not only does it sound like that, but it also sounds to me like antagonism. It sounds like you're baiting your dad.'

'Baiting him?' She blew a little air out of her nose. 'Well, that's stupid. How could I be baiting him? He's dead.'

I dropped my hand from my head and looked at her seriously. 'Sit down.'

'Why?'

'Just do it.'

'Joe?' she said, sitting at the table opposite me, her face paling a little. 'You're scaring me.'

'They're coming down from Oban to speak to us. Something's happened.'

'All the way from Oban?'

I sighed. 'Angeline, you think you saw your dad in that mortuary but…' I put my hand over hers '… it wasn't him. They ran a DNA match.'

She snatched her hand away from me, all the colour leaving her face. 'What're you talking about?'

'It wasn't him. I know you… I know you wanted it to be him, and I know why — but it wasn't.'

'My God,' she whispered, putting both hands to her face. 'My God, you mean it, don't you? You really mean it. It wasn't him.'

'It's not just your fault — they wanted it to be him as much as you did. But looking at it now, I think you and Danso both, you were clutching at straws.'

She breathed in and out a few times through her nose, moving this information around her head. Then slowly, very slowly, she raised her eyes to the kitchen window, to the curtains drawn tight against the morning. She turned and looked down the corridor to the lock on the door. 'Oh, no,' she whispered. She put a hand to her throat. 'This is a barricade, isn't it?' She looked at me. 'Isn't it? A barricade? They think he's on his way.'

I didn't say anything for a long time. Then I took her hands. 'They'll be here in two hours. There's a police car outside. We're going to be fine.'

For the last few days the skies over London had been draped swollen over the rooftops, inert, not breathing. But late that morning, just before lunch, the clouds gave up their stalemate. They dropped a barrage of hailstones on the little terraced houses of north London, which bounced off the roofs like buckshot, danced pogo in the street.

We didn't speak much that morning, but I was sure Angeline and me were both thinking the same thing: that Malachi was clever, that he could slip through air vents and up chimneys and through knotholes in the floorboards. She had turned on all the lights, looked under the beds and checked inside every cupboard. Then she went to sit in the living room and tried to read her newspaper. But she couldn't concentrate. From time to time she'd get up and go to the french windows, flick open the curtain and stare at the rain-drenched garden. 'There's someone in a tree,' she said at midday, putting her nose against the glass. I came to look. It was a police officer, dressed in boots and a blue sweater with epaulettes. When he saw us he waved. We raised our hands in reply. After that Angeline stopped peering out at the garden. She left the curtains closed.

I wasn't content with the locks on the windows: I'd hammered nails into the runners of the sash windows to seal them and closed up the letterbox with packing tape. I took a torch into the attic, ripped my jeans as I crawled around checking all the tiles, every brick, every rafter, every rotting roll of insulation, the hail clattering on the roof inches above my head. It was like hearing hell fall out of the sky.

'The cellar,' I said, when I'd finished. Angeline looked at me from the sofa, where she sat biting her nails and anxiously watching the clock. 'I'm going to check the cellar.'