Pig Island (27 page)

“What is it?”

I sat so close to the screen that the static popped against my nose. I clicked the video, frame by frame, until Dove came backwards into the walkway and turned to the chemist’s window again. “I want to know what he’s staring at. We’re not seeing something. We’re not seeing this through his eyes. There’s something here …‘

I searched the screen a little longer, trying to decode the blurry pixels, the areas of grey and black and white, and when I still couldn’t figure out what I was looking at I pushed the chair back, got the Ordnance Survey map from my jacket pocket and opened it on the kitchen table. I ran my finger down the list of place names: Inverary, Inveraish, Inveranan. I drew a pencil ring round Inverary and stared at it, looking at what surrounded it. A scattering of estates, a sewage-treatment plant, a power station.

“What’s there, Malachi?” I murmured, tracing the line of a Forestry Commission sector with my thumbnail. “What’s there?”

Danso got up and came to the table, looking over my shoulder, so close I could smell the dry-cleaners’ chemicals on his suit. “If we could look at this through his eyes, tell me, what would we see?”

I shook my head. “Twenty years ago I could have told you. Believe me or don’t believe me, it’s true. Twenty years ago I could have told you what he had for breakfast.”

“And now?”

“Now…‘ I sighed and turned to look at him, rubbing my temple, wishing my head would stop thumping. Now, the answer was no. I didn’t know.

“That’s because he’s changed,” Danso said, reading my thoughts. “He’s killed thirty people and it’s made him a different creature. There aren’t any rules any more.”

Chapter 13

Danso had twenty officers on door-to-door in Inverary. He’d issued stills from the videotape to the press and was talking to profilers every hour on the hour. But the unease wouldn’t let up. He wasn’t sleeping. Long nights trying to catch some kip curled up on a desk or an armchair in the station had caught up with him and the chronic disc herniation in his third and fourth lumbar vertebrae had flared up. The sleeping pills his GP had given him weren’t working.

“This is killing me,” he said. “Had a Casualty Bureau meeting seven o’clock this morning. Signed two
laissez-passers
, one for the US, one for Nigeria and all before eight o’clock. I do
not
call this a civilized timetable.”

It was Tuesday morning. Angeline was due at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary at eleven, and Danso was driving us. He knew Glasgow traffic better than we did. But I guessed the real reason he’d offered the lift. There was something he had to tell us.

“George is saying how usually when something like this happens you get hundreds reported missing—ten times more than you’ve got bodies to match. But—‘ He checked in the rear-view mirror. He indicated and changed lanes, crossing the traffic on the Dumbarton Road. In the back Angeline and Lexie sat in silence, staring out of the windows at the decaying railway bridges, the stained and graffitied pebbledash houses lining the street. ”But this thing on Cuagach happens and only twenty people come forward.“

“That’s how they worked—the PHM. Cut off ties with relatives. You wouldn’t expect anyone to know where they were living after all these years.”

“Yeah, but
twenty
. That’s eleven fewer than the bodies we’ve got.”

We’d driven on for a while and passed two roundabouts before what he’d said sank in. I turned to look at him. “You don’t mean eleven. You mean ten. You just said eleven.”

“I mean eleven.”

I laughed. “Peter, I have to tell you, I was maybe one of Mrs Leeper’s worst students for sagging, but when it came to maths I was the four-foot genius. Twenty plus ten makes thirty. Always did, always will.”

“I mean eleven. That’s what I want to tell you.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “There were thirty-one people in that chapel when it blew up.”

“No. There were only thirty members of the PHM.”

He made a face, pushing out his lips and nodding, like this was a reasonable thing to say. Like I could even be right. “So you said. You’re sure you didn’t forget anyone?”

I stared at him. Then I fumbled a pen out of my pocket. I had a glimpse of Angeline watching me, her eyes puzzled and unblinking in the rear-view mirror. I scribbled down the initials of all the people I could think of on my arm. I’d been through all this before with George and I knew I was right. Blake had said thirty members. The website had said thirty. I’d met thirty.

“See?” I said, holding up my arm in front of him.

He pushed my hand away. “I’m trying to drive.”

“There were only thirty. I’m not missing anyone.”

“They weren’t hiding someone?”

“Hiding them?”

“Yeah.” He licked his lips and glanced in the rear-view mirror, checking the cars behind us. “Pig Island was that sort of place. You say it in your statement: ”the sort of place people
migrate
to when things go wrong“. It wouldn’t be the first time a community has taken in someone on the run. There couldn’t have been a wee hidey-hole on Cuagach?”

“If there was they kept it quiet.”

“Aye, well, someone was out there. It doesn’t come down to much—not much more than a wee bit of skin and hair. The rest is just—well…‘ He shot a look at the women in the back, then leaned sideways towards me and lowered his voice. ”Might not find the rest of him.“

“Him?”

“Aye.”

“Dove? Injured in the explosion?”

“Already thought of that. DNA doesn’t work.”

“One of them was pregnant?”

“The hair’s adult.”

I shook my head, looking out at the rows of thirties houses we were passing, the boarded-up petrol stations, the businesses: Larry’s Laminate Land; Kwik-Fit; Fred’s Foamwash and Valet. “I don’t know. Another hack maybe? Perhaps when I left they got another hack out there. Someone else to spread their message. Or a lawyer.”

“I don’t know.” He set the indicator and crossed the traffic again. We were getting to the city centre. “But have a think about it for me. See if you remember anything.”

The car went on, the dull rocking motion of the engine in the soles of my feet. I put my head against the window and stared up as we went under the spindly Erskine bridge; high overhead, cars teetered along it, dark against the sky. I wasn’t thinking about that extra victim. I was thinking of what Dove had achieved with a bit of fertilizer and picric acid, what he could achieve on the mainland. I was thinking about Inverary and the chemist’s and the Forestry Commission land. I was thinking of one word: ‘memorable’.
Why is your death going to be memorable
? It’s ironic that that was how my head was working because, looking back now, I see that what I should have been concentrating on was that sentence of Danso’s:
Have a think about it for me
.

Because it was this that turned out in the end to be the best piece of advice I got in the whole sorry episode: to try to figure out who that thirty-first victim was. Didn’t know it at the time, but I’d learn my lesson. Oh, fuck, yes. Given time I’d learn my lesson.

Lexie
Chapter 1

Dear Mr Taranici

I’m writing again because I’ve got this dreadful,
dreadful
sense that time is … I don’t know, that it’s running out somehow. It’s quite ridiculous, of course, because as you know I’m too level-headed to believe in premonition, but I can’t tell you how horrible this feels. Just horrible. At first it was sort of exciting, knowing we were in the middle of a drama all the country was reading about. But now it’s gone beyond funny and, honestly, I’m wishing it had never happened.

Oakesy’s keeping something from me. He and Danso are always talking secretively, looking at maps and reading through Dove’s paperwork. If I ask Danso, he says don’t worry, everything’s going to plan: they’ve filed reports on all the DNA they found in the cottages, developed ‘profiles’ on the relatives they’ve traced, and all the human remains have come off the island and been transferred to a temporary mortuary (that’s basically a warehouse on an industrial estate near Oban. It’s big enough for them to drive the refrigerated trucks inside and Oakesy says they like that because they can unload out of sight). But, I say, if it’s all going to plan then where’s Malachi Dove?

I’m sorry. I can’t help it. This morning I opened the window and looked at the solid grey Ballantine’s factory, and the playing-fields that come away from it and sweep down almost to the front door. I’ve never seen a soul on those fields. They’re always completely silent, the trees at the side all dark, and you can’t help imagining there might be someone in those trees, just like at the bungalow, someone watching the house. No one—not the police or anyone we ask—can explain why those fields aren’t being used. At night, when I wake up, I imagine something out there gathering, closing in on us. I have a nightmare of it clinging to the house in the dark: pulsing like a giant heart.

I’ve thought about getting away. I’ve worked out what to do—I can’t drive the car because it’s a manual, but if I told Oakesy I was going to Mummy’s and made up some excuse about my bankcard not working I could buy the rail ticket on our joint account. I’ve ferreted away almost thirty pounds too, just from the loose change I empty out of his shorts at the end of the day.

But, of course, I’m not going to leave. How could I leave when there’s so much at stake? When I’m this close to Christophe. I can’t just drop it because I’m
scared
, for heaven’s sake. I had to wait it out—a whole week until this wretched doctor at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary would see us. The reply to my email was pretty quick: ‘Mr Radnor regrets he cannot see you personally. Without an examination it is very difficult to make a diagnosis and ordinarily it would be appropriate to refer you to a GP. However, given the circumstances, he is delighted to refer you to a colleague.“ No prizes for guessing which self-appointed arbiter of human values was behind
that
. Somehow she’d weeded out my email and stopped it getting to Christophe. Of course I knew that the moment the doctor saw Angeline he’d be on the phone to Christophe double quick and then it’d all come out and Cerberus would look pretty stupid, not passing on my messages. But in the meantime there was nothing I could do except wait. So you can imagine, given the circumstances, that by the time the hospital appointment rolled round I was jumpy. Very jumpy indeed.

Guy Picot was waiting for us in the office, dressed in something lightweight and elegant. I was surprised by how good-looking he was. He hasn’t got Christophe’s force of personality, of course, but he really knows how to dress. If we’d met under different circumstances, if I hadn’t been so anxious, who’s saying there wouldn’t have been sparks between us?

“After this consultation,” I said, when we’d all filed into his office, “will you speak to Mr Radnor directly?”

“I’ll send him a letter. Out of courtesy.”

“A letter?” A letter wouldn’t reach Christophe’s desk. Not with her guarding the postbag. “Can’t you phone him?”

He gave me a long look. “I’ll send him a letter. And I’ll send one to Angeline,
the patient
. With all the pertinent points of our meeting today. I’ll need an address.”

Oakesy wrote down the address of the PO box we’d rented at the local shop and I relaxed a little after that because I’d have access to the mail every day and at least I wouldn’t be completely sidelined. Guy Picot made us green tea in gorgeous half-glazed Japanese bowls (green tea in the NHS!!!), then settled down, tapping a patella hammer distractedly on the desk and looking thoughtfully at the way Angeline was sitting.

I didn’t say anything, but I noticed all the questions seemed to be lifted directly from
my
email. He might as well have been reading from a script. Was she continent? Did she have mobility in both legs? What, both? But when he put her on the examination couch he didn’t invite me in. He pulled the screen tight, as if he thought I was trying to sneak a look. Next thing, I thought, I’m going to be accused of
prurience
, so instead I went very quickly to the opposite side of the office and stood looking out of the window, my back very firmly to the room so anyone could see I wasn’t interested in
peeping
, for heaven’s sake.

When he came out he was red-faced and flustered. “I’ll be honest,” he said. “I wasn’t warned what to expect. I was expecting something smaller.” But apart from that he made every effort not to talk to me or acknowledge how unique this case was. Of course, I wasn’t fooled: he managed to arrange not only an X-ray but also an MRI
in under three hours –
and how many times have you known an NHS doctor do that? He even got two radiographers to give up their lunch-hour for the MRI.

“No pacemakers? Surgical clips, pins or plates or cochlear implants?”

By one o’clock Angeline was in the MRI room, dressed in a pale blue hospital gown, going through a questionnaire with one of the radiographers.

“No IUDs?”

“What’s an IUD?”

“A coil. No, never mind. We’d have seen it on the X-ray.”

Oakesy and I were in the glass-panelled control area with Guy, where we could hear what was happening through the intercom system. Oakesy sat in the corner, all preoccupied—probably worrying about the thirty-first victim Danso had been telling him about. I was next to the window watching Angeline, and Guy was at the intercom mic, barking instructions to the radiographers: ‘Get her comfortable. Doesn’t matter if she’s on her front.“ He pulled Angeline’s X-rays out of the brown folder and held them up to the light. ”That’s it—that’s the way.“

He switched off the mic and turned away, stopping when he caught me staring at the X-rays in his hand. He knew I’d got a glimpse of them. He knew from my expression.

“Are you going to let me have a look?” I said. It had been only a few split seconds, but it was long enough for me to know there was something very odd about those X-rays. Very odd indeed. “I’d really like to see them.”