Pig Island (13 page)

Someone was laughing.

I backed silently from the shaft, clicked off the torch and sat back on my haunches, looking around at the trees. It was a heinous laugh—like a cartoon witch’s—echoing around the deserted rocky hollow. My skin tightened. The laughter stopped and another noise joined it—of someone speaking in a long, low, uninterrupted monologue. There was something about the quality—something so familiar that—

I stood slowly, a smile on my face.
Television
. I was sure of it. Somewhere up ahead, among the deserted rocks, a television was playing.

The house was like a large Victorian cottage—bizarre out here on its own in the woods. Maybe it was built for someone senior in the mine. It stood on a weed-cracked hard-standing; the paint had been allowed to peel and drop and the windows were mossed and dirty. But there were signs of life: lace curtains tacked up, oil drums stacked against the generator at the side and a television—an old black-and-white movie, from the Celia Johnson accents—playing beyond an opened downstairs window.

I stared at that window. Something about the lace curtains lifting on the cool breeze, something about the darkness inside—the way it seemed almost designed to suck in the attention—made every nerve ending sing out ‘
Trap’
. Slowly I raised the bolt-cutters above my head.
You’re not the fucking Special Squad, old mate. Don’t get your head stove in for nothing
.

I approached, cautious step by cautious step, coming from a wide angle, meeting the house at the far end of the wall and sliding along with my back to it, conscious of the warmth of the bricks on the back of my neck. Hardly breathing now, cutters still raised, I bent slowly, slowly, to peer into the room. It was in disarray—filthy, crisps packets, dirty cups and empty yoghurt pots scattered around—the sunlight falling on sedimentary layers of dust. The back of the TV was to the window, and beyond it, facing me, was a sofa, worn shiny in the place opposite the screen. Beyond that another window, closed, its matching lace curtains hanging silent in the autumn sun, embroidered with dead-fly carcasses.

Using the tip of a finger I gently touched the door. It swung open to reveal the length of the tiled hallway. I took a step inside, my sandals sinking into the filth. In the room ahead the
Neighbours
theme tune started up, making me think incongruously of my soup-and-bread-roll lunches in Kilburn, when Lexie was out at the clinic and I was home working. I stood still and listened. Beyond the noise of the television, nothing stirred, only the occasional click of the net curtains moving in the breeze.

I stepped into the living room. It was small and clogged with furniture and rubbish. A reproduction of Blake’s
Christ
hung above the fireplace, thick with dust, and in an alcove stood an almost life-size plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, the sort of thing I’d seen for sale in the Tijuana immigration lines, every inch of her painted a different colour, her cowl blue, her lips and cheeks red, her eyes a brilliant cornflower. She’d been draped with things—flower stems and tinsel trailed from her on to the floor. The house of a religious maniac, I thought. Just the sort of thing I’d—

Behind me something whirred to life.

The word
trap trap trap
went through me with a crack. I turned, bringing the cutters up ready to strike, expecting Dove or worse. But the living room was empty. In a plant pot on the windowsill a child’s seaside windmill, lolling at an angle, had caught the breeze and was zipping round and round and round. I stared at it, blinking, as it speeded, slowed, speeded and slowed again, winding down with a lazy clickety-clickety-click, until I could see the individual colours, red and yellow, and at last came to a rather uncertain halt.

I didn’t move. I stared at the windmill and let my heart thump out the remainder of the adrenaline. After a while I lowered the cutters. The house was still again, only the television still churning out its drama behind me. Clenching my teeth, I glanced at the pile of clothing in the hallway, then back at the windmill. Some of those clothes belonged to a child—there were a little girl’s clothes in that pile. I entertained a brief, electrifying thought: that a child, or children, was here—maybe imprisoned. I raised my eyes to the ceiling, let the thought stay, and then, knowing that if I was going to keep sane I couldn’t go forward in my imagination, I went into the front hall and started to search the cottage.

It turned out to be empty. Not a soul in the place. All I was getting from the cottage was that Malachi was as looped as they come. He had no regard for hygiene or civilization. And that maybe women, or a woman, or even children had been in the house at some time. One of the rooms was weirdly clean compared to the rest, a single bed made up neatly, curtains secured back, books lined up on the shelves. Where the occupants were now I didn’t want to think. The second I was off this island I was calling the bizzies and getting them to check their missing-persons records.

You’re a smart one, Oakesy. A smart one.

I stood at the edge of the clearing, my back to the cottage, breathing hard and wishing to Christ I hadn’t let Lexie come to the marina. I hadn’t had a chance to pick up any tobacco and, right now, I’d have given my kidneys for a tug on a rollie. I was staring at a trampled path that led away from my feet into the woods in the direction of the gorge, and I knew it had been walked along recently. The bad thing was that
I
was going to have to follow. On the heels of Dove’s crooked beast. His
biforme
.

Time to drop this dread in my heart. I made a fist and knocked myself on the head with my knuckles.
Get going, you fucking arse
. I hiked up my kit, chucked the bolt-cutters on to my shoulder and set out.

The path wound and detoured, but I knew it was taking me in the direction of the gorge. The trees cloaked the air, warming it and deadening sound, making even my footsteps sound muffled. After half an hour I saw, glinting through the trees ahead, the fence. I picked up speed, sensing the gorge in the way the air had started to move. The wind would blow down the clefts in those rocks like through a tunnel. I could feel my sweatshirt and shorts starting to press against me, then flap and billow away, snapping and whipping around like sails. About twenty feet from the fence the trees cleared and I found I was standing on a stretch of grassland, the blades pressed down into random shapes with each gust. A dead pig lay next to the fence in a flat, deflated way, the shrunken skin lying tight and leathery against its ribs, the grass hugging it one moment, the next rolling back to reveal its mummified jaw and teeth. Something about its position made me think it had been thrown on to the ground, and then I noticed the black smudge on its snout—the stain of electrocution. I raised my eyes grimly to the fence, to where it glinted and creaked in the wind, and saw that a path had been trampled through the grass to a gate which stood open. My heart picked up speed.

I pulled up my kit, stepped over the pig’s corpse and approached, looking out over the gorge. Someone or something had come through here recently.

The wind was blowing the dead trees, making them bow and scrape; the sun glinted off the old chemical drums. Almost a quarter of a mile away, above the PHM’s scrawled message—
Get thee behind me, Satan –
the trees billowed and heaved, and for an odd moment that side of the island was almost as alien as this enclosure had once seemed. I looked behind me at the wind going through the trees, dipping in and blowing open holes in the leaf cover, revealing patches of different colours beyond, flashes of more trees and sky. There was no one on this side of the island and suddenly I was more sure of that than I had been of anything. I turned back to the gorge, gazing at the far escarpment, at the gate standing wide, and a weird feeling crawled across my skin, the words coming to me like a whisper:
Dove’s gone to the village. And he’s taken his devil with him
.

Chapter 12

It took me three hours to cross the gorge. By the time I got to the edge of the community I had finished all my water and my tongue was a piece of raw meat in my mouth. There were blisters on my feet and an ache in my shoulder from carrying the cutters. I’d been on the island for four hours and the sun had dropped low in the sky. The wind, which in the gorge had twice set me off balance, had fallen quiet on this side of the island, almost like a memory, leaving my ears ringing and my face burning.

I came down the wooded path that led into the community and paused. The gate stood wide open. The shadows were getting long, evening wasn’t far away, and there was an odd silence. An unearthly stillness. I rested for a bit, then headed through the gate, trying not to think about what it all meant. As I came down the wooded path, the rooftops appearing from out of the leaves, I knew something was wrong. Usually at this time of day there would be a prayer meeting, or someone busying across the green with a bowl of vegetables to be peeled, but now all I could see were empty windows and, beyond the cottages, the deserted green.

About a hundred yards to my right something moved. I became very still, concentrating. It was down near the ground, in a small, V-shaped depression, which continued in a straight line like a dried-up river, then disappeared between two cottages. It was something a bit paler than the surrounding grass. I took a few steps forward. It was a pig, snouting in the ground, its excited tail curling and uncurling like fishing bait. I approached silently, not wanting to disturb it. It was eating—its snout fixed in one spot while its hindquarters circled and shuffled and circled, trying to get a purchase on the food. I took a few more steps forward and—

“Shit.”

I shrank into the trees and sat down on the ground, staring blankly at it. The animal looked up in mild interest—not fear. It wasn’t going to be scared away from this meal. Its snout was smeared with something that looked like vomit, but must be, I thought, my heart falling, the stomach contents of the human being it was eating.
Fuck fuck fuck
. I stared at the thin white foot in the pink plastic sandal.
Sovereign
?

“Oh, shit,” I said again, gripping hold of my ankles and dropping my head. Not much fazes me, it’s true, but now I gave in to a violent fit of trembling.

It was the same with dogs, I remembered later. Dogs were omnivorous: they always went for the victim’s stomach first, for whatever half-digested plants and seeds and nuts they found, before moving on to the meat and bone. Maybe man had done the same, back in his hunting days. After a long time I got up and began to gather up stones, feeling like I might keel over every time I bent down. I straightened, took aim and was about to start hailing stones at the pig when I wondered suddenly if I was being watched.

I lowered my hand, turned and studied the wood I had come through. My ears were buzzing, my head pounding. That gate was open. But there was no one here. Except a corpse. The pigs hadn’t killed her—they’re not predators—but had they been the ones who had ripped her to pieces like that? I rubbed my head hard with my knuckles, trying to dislodge the thought. I looked down at the cottages. Everything silent, motionless. The cafeteria block was only a hundred yards away—the sliding doors stood open, reflecting back the beginnings of a sunset. I couldn’t see anyone in there.

More adult pigs appeared from the trees, the same blunt feeding expression in their eyes, and began to strip the flesh from Sovereign, pulling long lumpy strings from inside her, ripping at the silvery connective fascia. I watched, in a detached way, as one, a junior from its size, made do with a leg. It bit through the bones with a splintering noise, then trotted away almost jauntily with the foot, pink plastic sandal and all, into the trees where I could hear it gnawing for what seemed like for ever, choking and gagging on the plastic. I dropped the stones, pulled out my mobile and checked the display for the faintest chance that a signal had appeared on Cuagach overnight. But no, just the no-signal icon. Shit, I thought, pocketing the phone and rubbing my forehead, what now?

After a long pause, I sighed and got to my feet. I hefted up the bolt-cutters, hesitated. I wanted to run, but I didn’t. I walked. I kept my eyes on the cafeteria, my ears open to the woods, the expanse of silent grass on either side of me, the bolt-cutters held at just the right angle if anything rushed me.

There is no such thing as the devil. No beast. No biforme…

Then what the fuck did
that
to Sovereign?

It was late and shadows were falling between the cottages. I got to the refectory windows and turned to check over my shoulder. The woods were totally silent: nothing moved. The sun was dropping below the treetops. I turned back and squinted into the gloom of the refectory. It was dark in there, shadows gathering in the corners and niches. All I could make out were the trestle tables, empty of any cutlery, the surfaces scrubbed clean and shiny with disinfectant, just like the community always left them after dinner. I opened the door and stepped inside, a brief glimpse of my reflection: an anxious face floating out at me, sunburnt, trails of sweat like pencil lines in the dirt. I closed the door behind me and stood for a bit, my eyes getting used to the gloom.

For almost thirty seconds I thought I was alone. The kitchen door at the far end was open a crack and I could see the plates all stacked, the tea-towels hanging in a line above the cooker to dry. I took a step forward, was heading towards it, when something made me stiffen. My hands tightened on the cutters. I turned, raising them, ready to defend myself. Blake was watching me from the shadows to my left.

He was sitting in his usual place at the head of one of the tables, his back to the big fireplace. Dressed in a neat polo shirt, with both hands placed flat on the table. His head was at a slight angle, a bit back and to the side. It took me a few thudding heartbeats to realize that he wasn’t going to lurch at me, screaming and yelling. He was dead. His mouth was open, his neck sinews tightened up. The staring eyes were almost opaque and the bottom of his shirt was streaked with blood.