Mo Hayder: Pig Island

'I thought you'd forgotten.'

He wagged his finger. 'You'll find we're very friendly, very friendly folk here at the Psychogenic Healing Ministries, Joe, but please believe that we have rules for your own protection.' He raised his eyebrows and flashed me another smile. 'We do it because we care, Joe. We want you to enjoy your time here, not regret it. Now, won't you join me for lunch?'

He led me back towards the cottages, his hands outstretched to show me the community — like he was trying to sell it to me. 'We'd like to get to know you,' he said, grinning over his shoulder, as we came back to the green and crossed it. He slipped down a path that led along the side of the breezeblock building, still speaking over his shoulder. 'We'd like you to stay with us and to get to know us. We want you to feel you're part of our family.' At the head of the path he paused, holding out his hand with a theatrical flourish. 'This way,' he said, with a wink — as if to say, 'I just know you're going to LOVE this!'

I stepped forward and turned the corner and saw, arranged at two trestle tables, thirty faces gleaming up at me. Dove's followers. One or two of them half rose from their seats, grinning broadly, not sure what the etiquette was — and from somewhere at the back someone applauded timidly. The tables were loaded down with food; a breeze moved among it, lifting festively coloured napkins and tablecloths, ruffling blouses and rocking the massive enthusiastic sign strung above their heads: 'WELCOME TO CUAGACHEILEAN!!!!'

'Joe,' Blake said, holding out his hand to indicate the diners, 'Joe Oakes. Meet the Psychogenic Healing Ministries. Welcome to our family!'

It was probably only then that I really believed no one on Pig Island had linked me to Joe Finn of twenty years ago, the great nemesis of Malachi Dove.

Everyone knows the story about Aleister Crowley, right? The one about when the 'Great Beast' Crowley tried to raise Pan? Well, it's dead simple. It goes like this: Crowley's disciples locked him and his son, McAleister, in a room at the top of a Parisian hotel, promising that under no circumstances would they re-enter the room until morning, whatever noises they heard. They waited downstairs, huddled together and wrapped in blankets because the hotel had gone inexplicably cold. All night they listened in horror as the ritual upstairs unfolded in a series of bangs, shouts and splintering of wood. Usual shite. At last, at daybreak, when silence had fallen, they ventured cautiously upstairs to find the door locked, the room silent. When they broke down the door they saw Crowley's ritual had been a success. His son McAleister lay dead at one side of the room and on the other crouched Crowley, naked, bloodied and gibbering. He needed four months in a lunatic asylum before he could speak again.

Well, it's famous, as stories go. Only problem is, it didn't happen. It's just a myth, just part of Crowley's impulse for self-promotion and showmanship. That's what Satanists are, in general — a bunch of theatrical types whose main aim, IMHO, is to get a crafty shag. So what was I expecting of the Psychogenic Healing Ministries? I can't remember exactly — but probably the usual shite: Gothic robes, altar rites, chanting in the trees at sundown. What I didn't expect were these ordinary, mostly middle-class people, dressed, on the whole, like they were off for a spot of shopping on a Saturday afternoon.

'You see, Joe, we're quite normal,' said Blake, showing me to my seat. 'We're not going to eat you!'

'No,' laughed one of the other diners. 'Or try to convert you!'

And that was supposed to be the first impression I got — normality and sunny wholesomeness through and through, from the gingham tablecloth to the homey food: thick-crusted quiches sprinkled with chives, misshapen pork pies, large institutional metal bowls of potato salad. There was even wine in cloudy-looking carafes placed at intervals down the table, and everywhere I looked I saw pleasant-faced people grinning back at me, sticking out their hands and saying, 'Hi, Joe!' But no matter what they did, I couldn't help it, that REM song kept chuntering away through the old grey matter: 'Shiny happy people'. Something a bit sinister about anyone that happy… 'Shiny happy people'. And the fucking sunshine, too. Sunshine in a bottle. That was what they wanted me to think.

What they were doing was staging this totally elaborate game of musical chairs. My neighbour kept changing every ten minutes. Everyone who sat next to me did this dead intense PR job on the community, working their nuts off to tell me about how much hard work went into maintaining the Positive Living Centre, how much love and honest brain-power had gone into Cuagach Eilean.

'Everything's done with total, like, sensitivity to the environment — we recycle, don't use pesticides or herbicides, we celebrate what Gaia and the Lord give us through Cuagach Eilean. We want to repay them in some small way. Those trees over there? The tall ones? Planted by us.'

'The more we love the soil the more it repays us. We grow all our own fruit and vegetables. If I say it myself, when it comes to size and taste our vegetables can give Findhorn's a run for their money.'

'See the refectory building? I made the windows. I was a carpenter by trade before I came here, through God's grace. It's all timber from renewable sources — some of it from Cuagach herself. I'm working on new doors for the cottages now.'

There was a tall African guy in a dashiki, who told me he'd arrived in England as a missionary to spread the word of the Lord to the British: 'This proud nation that has forgotten God.' (Get that? A Nigerian bringing Christianity to us — what a turn of the tables is that?) But no one had mentioned Dove's name yet, which I thought was kind of odd. I waited long enough so that when I spoke it'd sound like normal curiosity. Then I said, 'What happened to your founder, Malachi Dove? I don't see him here.'

The missionary was smiling at me, and when I said the name his smile got a little fixed, his eyes a little distant. But he didn't stop beaming. 'He's gone,' he said, with a fake cheerfulness. 'He left years ago. He lost his way.'

'Suicide,' I said. 'Story goes he had a thing about suicide.'

He didn't blink. The smile got tighter, wider. 'He's gone,' he repeated. 'Long time now. Lost his way.'

'Thank you for asking about Malachi.' Blake was suddenly at my side. He put a hand on my elbow to turn me away from the missionary. 'Our founder, Malachi, the messenger. We hold his name dear, though many have forgotten it.'

'I did some homework and seems like he topped himself.' I looked across the table at the bloodless faces of the women eating, one of them methodically working a piece of gristle out of her teeth with a broken fingernail. 'Can't think why. On this Paradise.'

'No, no, no.' He flashed me that cookie-cutter smile — the one the missionary had just wheeled out for me. 'Our founder is not yet with the Lord.'

I paused. Now this was interesting. 'He's alive?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Then where the hell-' I stopped. 'Then where is he?'

'He's — he's gone. Gone, a long time ago.'

'Where? New Mexico?'

Silence.

'London?'

'Gone,' he repeated, the smile fixed, a veil coming down behind his eyes. 'Thank you, Joe, for your interest. In God's good time I will tell you all you wish to know about Malachi Dove. All in God's good time.'

While the sun crossed the zenith and the shadows of the trees on the cliffs moved like the hands on a clock, I met at least half of the community: big-chested men in denim smocks and Birkenstocks, who put their heads sympathetically on one side when they spoke; an elderly ex-professor of theology in wire-framed glasses, who had located the fresh-water well they used and created the pumping system that fed the community; serious-faced girl students in flowery skirts, who could talk intensely for hours about the theory behind the Psychogenic Healing Ministries.