Mo Hayder: Pig Island

'Do you have to?' She sprang to her feet and limped after me to the cellar door. 'Can't you stay up here? They'll be here in a minute.'

'I won't be long.'

I went down the rickety steps, fumbling with the torch. Angeline stood at the top of the stairs, watching until I disappeared from view into the gloom. I'd bolted the garden door from the outside and pushed the lawnmower against it, but now I hammered an extra four nails into the wood until I was sure it would never move. When I'd finished I sat down on an old deck-chair and clicked off the torch, letting the darkness come to rest round my head and shoulders. It smelt of moss and petrol in here, and something older, more familiar. Overhead Angeline had left the doorway and was in the kitchen, making the floorboards creak.

I switched on the torch and shone it up into the braces under the kitchen floor, listening to her moving about, watching the little puffs of dust coming out of the ceiling. She'd stiffed me with those comments about the PHM. She couldn't see it, but she'd totally stiffed me. I was going to have to talk Finn into getting that bit of the manuscript retracted. I let the beam travel down the wall into the box-vaulted recesses that stretched out under the front garden. Everything was as I remembered it, all the crap piled up, the fridge-freezer glinting dully at me. Strange how nothing down here had changed when upstairs everything was so different.

The doorbell rang. I went up the steps, clicking off the torch and running the bolt on the cellar door, giving it a kick to wedge it into place. 'They're here.' I went to the front door. I switched on the porch light and pressed my face close to the window. 'Yeah?' I called. 'What d'you want?'

'It's us,' came Struther's dry answer, raised above the clatter of the hail. 'All the way from sunny Oban.'

I pulled off the chains and bolts and opened the door. They stood huddled in the porch, cold and sombre in the overhead light, their shoulders wet with hailstones. In the dark street beyond, another marked police car waited, lights flashing lazily, its driver turned in his seat to watch us, resting his elbow on the steering-wheel.

'Our ride from Heathrow,' Danso said, when he saw me looking. 'I admit I wasn't expecting that kind of co-operation from the Met, the stories you hear.' He leaned back and cast his eyes around the front garden, first over one shoulder, then the other. 'Joe?' he said, peering past me into the warm hallway. 'Hate to bother you, son, but it's cold out here.'

I stepped back to allow them in, placing the torch nose down on the windowsill. 'He's not dead.' They came in and I shot the bolts. I put the chain on and turned to them, my back to the door. 'Is he? Not dead. And you know where he is.'

Struthers nodded. 'We know where he is.'

'Listen,' said Danso. 'Can we-' He looked around the hallway. 'I think we should go and sit down for this.'

I stared at him, suddenly angry. 'He's here, isn't he? In London. And you've known it for days.'

'I think,' Danso said, more slowly and deliberately this time, taking in me and Struthers with his tone, 'we should sit down for this.' He put his hand on the living-room door. 'This way, is it?'

We went into the living room, me angry, Danso weary, his feet dragging. Struthers came behind, ostentatiously checking out the room, lifting the curtain and peering out at the police cars in the road. 'Nice place,' he said, dropping the curtain and looking around at the posters and the drab houseplants. 'But, then, it's a nice job you've got.'

'There you are,' Danso said, raising his hand to Angeline. She'd appeared at the kitchen door, wiping her hands on a tea-towel. 'Hello, wee lassie. Saw you in the paper this morning. You're famous.'

'Hello,' she said, with a weak smile. She looked at Struthers. 'Hello.'

'Hello,' he muttered, standing stock still staring at her, at the low-cut sweater, the glitter of something at her neck, her hair caught up in a slide so little curls just covered her ears. 'How are you?'

'Yes. Yes, I'm-' She swallowed and put the tea-towel on the counter. She limped into the living room and stood in front of Danso. 'It wasn't him, then? That's what Joe said. The man you showed me, it wasn't Dad.'

'We're so sorry, hen.' He gave her a sad smile. 'So sorry you had to go through all that.'

'I'm sorry I made a mistake.'

'No.' He shook his head. 'Don't be.'

We all stood for a moment, looking at each other, embarrassed. 'Well,' she said, with a tired shrug, 'you'd like a drink?' She pointed at my drinks cabinet, at the VSOP Armagnac Finn got me last birthday. 'I've got brandy. Or some gin. There's lime-flavoured tonic water in the fridge. Oakesy only drinks Newcastle Brown Ale and you won't want that.'

'No, thanks, pet, we're on duty.' He indicated the sofa. 'Can we?'

'Sorry,' she said. 'Of course.'

Struthers took off his coat and draped it over the sofa arm. He dropped down, settling himself comfortably with his legs stretched, patting the sofa and nodding approvingly, like he was in a showroom, testing the furniture. 'Joe,' Danso lifted up the tails of his coat and sat down on the sofa, with a soft 'ooof' like any movement pained him, 'we need to ask you a few questions.'

'Ask me some questions? What about I ask you some questions and what about you give me some answers? Is Malachi in London?'

'If I give you my assurance you're safe, would you believe me?'

I hesitated.

'I mean it, you're quite safe. You and Angeline. But we've got to follow up a new line of investigation and that's where you come in. Bear with us, son. It's going to sound like we're going round the houses a bit.'

'But we're not,' Struthers said, still checking out the sofa, bouncing his arse up and down to test the springs. 'We're going somewhere.'

I sat on the other sofa opposite them, moody. There was an empty glass on the table between us — the G and T Angeline had been drinking. 'Well?' I folded my arms, trying to calm down. 'What?'

'Look, I know we've done this to death,' Danso put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward to look at me, 'but, see, it's that car again. I want to go back and think about that car you saw outside the house the day Lexie was attacked.'

'The saloon?'

'Because the surveillance PC's version is different from the version you gave us. The lad's saying you first came to the house from the east. From the road that ran along the bottom of the playing-fields.'

'That's right.'

'Right?'

'Yeah. But I never saw the car parked up. I've thought about it and I'm sure.'

Danso sighed. 'Joe, Joe, why didn't you tell us this earlier? You never said you came from the east.'

'Didn't I?'

'No. You said you'd come along the main road, that you'd parked opposite the police car.'

'Yes, but I…' I closed my mouth. Opened it, and closed it again. 'So? So I forgot. What difference does it make?'

'It means that when you drove up to the main road you'd already been to the house.'

'Yes. I mean, no, not inside the house. No. I'd stopped outside the house. In the car.'

'Joe?' Struthers leaned forward, elbows on knees like Danso. 'Remember when we went out to Cuagach?'

I looked from him to Danso and back again. 'Yeah,' I said cautiously. 'For the forensics. Why?'

'Remember how I asked you if you'd been in the chapel? And you said only for a few minutes to take photos? You can't think back now, I suppose, and recall something else happening in there?'

'Something else?'

'Something that would have left your DNA?'

'No. Fingerprints. I told you, probably just some prints. Can you get DNA from prints now? Maybe you can.'

'I'm thinking about blood. Remember our thirty-first victim? Our hair and skin on the floor? Blood.'