Pig Island (16 page)

You remember I told you we were up here for him to cover a story on Cuagach Eilean? Pig Island? Well, yes, I can just see your face now because you must have heard that name in the news this week. I assume you’ve already put two and two together and guessed who has managed to get himself caught up in the whole dreadful thing. And now he’s the centre of attention and I’ll never get listened to or my needs met.

Honestly, it’s been horrible, just horrible, from the moment we got here. I’d spent ages choosing my wardrobe for this holiday—I mean, the attention I paid to detail. I bought three sets of shorts, quite shorty ones. Yes, I can hear you saying, “Alex, are you sure you should be sexualizing another negotiation?” Well, you’d be very pleased with yourself in this instance, because the shorts didn’t work. He just spent the whole time on his computer, hardly noticing I was there. And to cap it all he left me on my own in this horrible bungalow with water that’s piped down through peat so it’s an awful brown colour and makes the toilet look dirty, and this huge picture-window, which lets the sun come in and bake everything until you can’t breathe. You couldn’t imagine it in your worst nightmares. Fake beams, squares of cardboard daubed with pink ant-killer in every corner, not a soul for miles around.

How long do you think he was gone for? One day? Two days? Ha! No. Try again.
Three. Three days
I was there, miles from the nearest house, with nothing to do but go back through my credit-card statements for the zillionth time, or stare out at the clouds of midges in the trees. Just when I was really panicking, when I’d gone through nearly all the money he’d left and was thinking there was no point in hanging around in Scotland at all because he wasn’t going to be interested in talking to me anyway, suddenly he turns up on the doorstep.

Well, that was almost the end for me. He’d been in a fight. He was totally unrecognizable—half paralysed and bloody, half his hair missing where it had been pulled out. I really had to struggle to keep my temper with him. Oh, I put him to bed and did the devoted-wife number, but I was furious. It turns out that Malachi Dove (you’ve heard
that
name in the papers a few times this week, I bet), Oakesy’s nemesis for years, is alive and kicking and living on Pig Island. And, typical of Oakesy, he’s gone out of his way to provoke a confrontation with him. Honestly. He could have been killed.

It’s a class thing, Mummy says. Remember I told you she’s got this bee in her bonnet about Oakesy being my rebellion against her? That marrying outside my class is a guarantee cracks will come to the surface sooner rather than later? Well, I’ve got to the point where I’m almost agreeing with her. I mean, why does he have to drink so much? Where are his social graces? (Incidentally, I’m convinced this is why there were such sparks between me and Christophe—and whatever you say there’s no doubt there were sparks. It’s a simple fact of life. We looked at each other and recognized someone from the same class, and that’s all there is to it.)

It took Oakesy two weeks to get back on his feet. And then he was straight back out there, hiring a boat to take him to Cuagach. But if I thought that put me on edge, sent my stress hormones into overdrive, I had no idea of the
nightmare
that was about to start. Early Sunday it was, and I was asleep when the phone rang. It was you-know-who calling from his mobile, shouting above the noise of a boat engine, saying something about getting dressed because we were going out when he got back. I propped myself up on the pillow and looked at the clock. It was four in the morning.

“I’ll be home in half an hour,” he shouted. His voice kept going in and out of range. Fading away. He hadn’t even waited to get a good signal. “Get … and don’t … in a hurry. Get dressed.”

“For heaven’s sake,” I mumbled. My head was all thick and cottony with sleep. “For heaven’s sake…‘

‘Just do it. Get dressed.“

And when he said that it really jolted me awake. I sat up in bed, suddenly thinking about Malachi Dove, about all the nightmares I’d been having. ‘
Oakesy
?“ I said, scared now, looking up at the window, at the curtains and thinking of the silent woods out there and the long driveway surrounded by rhododendrons. ”What’s the matter? What’s happening?“

“Wait next to the front door. I won’t be long. And, Lex, don’t take this the wrong way, but it might be a good idea to—‘

“Yes? Might be a good idea to
what
?”

“To lock all the doors and all the windows.”

“What?
What do you mean
? Oakesy?” But the phone hissed static back at me. ‘
Oakesy
?“ He was gone, leaving me sitting bolt upright in the dark, clutching the receiver, staring at the window.

You know how level-headed I am. Don’t you? You know it takes a lot to rattle me. But with that twenty-second phone call he’d got me scared—really anxious about how dark the bungalow suddenly seemed. I got out of bed and went shakily to the kitchen, getting the first knife I could find out of the drawer and standing with it pointing out in front of me in the darkness.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but lock everything
. I went round the bungalow without switching on a single light, holding the knife in both hands, double-checking every lock, my hands shaking. When I tested the window locks I did it really quickly, only slightly opening the curtains, not the whole way. I didn’t want to find a face staring back at me through the glass.

In the bedroom I put the light on and got dressed with my back to the wall so I could see the window and the door, my hands shaking so hard I could barely do up my jeans. I got my shoes on and went to sit in the living room, on a chair against the wall between the window and the front door, the knife still clutched in my hands. I kept thinking of the acres of wood surrounding me, pressing in on the bungalow. Every sound was magnified a hundred times: the strange click-click-click of the immersion-heater coming on in the airing-cupboard, a bird walking across the shingled roof. When the phone rang again I snatched it up, my heart thundering.

‘Yes? Is that you?“

“I’m outside. I’m going to let myself in.”

I heard the key in the lock. The door opened and he came in wearily, dropping his rucksack on the floor.

‘
What is it
?“ I jumped up and stood in front of him. ”What’s happening? You’re frightening the life out of me.“

He didn’t answer. He stood there, looking at me with bloodshot eyes, his T-shirt torn and covered with blood. Hadn’t shaved, of course, and his skin was all leached and sick-looking under the tan. There was a pause and then another figure shuffled in from the darkness and stopped just inside the door, blinking and turning round in a confused circle. It took me a moment to realize it was a woman because her hair was really short and black, with these patches of skin showing through, and she was very tall, almost as tall as Oakesy. She was wearing this awful belted imitation-leather coat, and a denim skirt that reached all the way down to her chain-store trainers—you know the sort, with flashing lights in them, except the lights didn’t seem to be working. When she turned and caught sight of me she put her hands up defensively as if I was going to pounce on her from the darkness.

“My wife,” Oakesy said. He slammed the front door and bolted it. “Lex.”

She subsided a little. Slowly she lowered her arms and turned her head sideways, a wary eye fixed on me. She would have been quite pretty in a way if her hair didn’t look like it’d been cut with pinking shears and she hadn’t got that closed-up, sullen scowl on her face. She had the appearance of those teenage white boys you see hanging around the town centre in Oban sniffing glue, with their washed-out skins and shadows under their eyes.

“Who’s she?”

“Angeline,” he said. “She’s Angeline.”

“Angeline?”

“Angeline Dove.”

“Angeline Do—‘ I stopped. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. ”Angeline
Dove
?“

“His daughter.”

I turned to stare at her. “Is that true?” Oakesy had never said anything about children. “Is it?” She didn’t answer. She just went on studying me doubtfully as if she was ready to run away. “Hey,” I said, waving a hand to get her attention, “hello-oh. I asked you a question.”

“It’s true,” she muttered quickly. “It’s true.”

“It’s all right, Lex,” Oakesy said.

I swivelled my eyes to him. “All right?”

“She’s cool.”

“Cool?”

“Yes. Really.”

I shook my head, putting my fingers to my temples. I’ve lived with all the stories about Dove for long enough and I think I can be forgiven if I was a little taken aback. Can’t I? “Oakesy?” I said, turning from him to Angeline, and back again. “Do I deserve to be told what’s happening?” I stared at her coat—filthy and cheap and covered with grass stains—then at him: just as bad with his T-shirt all stained and ripped, his bare legs grazed, dirt and gravel embedded in the congealed cuts. “Why is
she
here? What’s happened?”

“I’m sorry.” He sounded so sad. I’ve never heard him sound like that before. “I’m sorry, Lex, we’ve got to go to the police.”

Chapter 2

Outside the world was silent, as if it was holding its breath. It was still dark but there was a faint flush of morning starting at the horizon. We stood in the doorway, blinking out at the trees, listening for movement. It was silent. No dawn chorus, no flutter of wings in the branches. Oakesy paused for a second then hurried us out—
come on, come on –
across to the cold little Fiesta, our feet crunching in the gravel, ushering us into the car.

He wasn’t telling me what had happened. He wasn’t telling me why he was scared, why he locked all the doors as soon as we got into the car. He started the engine really quickly and we were off—jolting down the driveway, out on to the dark lane that led to the top of the peninsula. When we got out on the coast road he kept leaning forward to peer out at the forests and the little rocky coves rushing past outside as if he was searching for something, slowing at one point as we passed a pebble beach to study a boat pulled up there.

“Oakesy? What’s happening?”

But he shook his head as if he was concentrating on something very important—the sort of focused look he’d get if he was trying to balance something on the top of a very thin stick. He wouldn’t answer. And in the back Angeline Dove was as silent as he was. She sat awkwardly cantilevered over on to one side, her hand up to grasp the seat in front of her as if she was injured. I glanced at her from time to time in the wing mirror. She had her nose to the window and was staring really hard at Pig Island with her shadowy eyes. Whenever we turned a corner and it disappeared behind the headland her eyes went blank, as if she’d retreated back into herself.
She’s cool
, Oakesy had said.
Cool
. Cool? Well, she wasn’t like her dad, that was certain—she looked like she’d lived in a dungeon all her life: her skin was pinched and sallow, and now it was getting light I could see she had a rash of acne round the corners of her mouth. The haircut was so bad there were bits of curls in one place and patches of scalp next to them. My God, what a mess. I wondered who her mother was.

We’d gone about three miles when Oakesy started tapping his fingers agitatedly on the steering-wheel and swallowing noisily.

“What is it?” I said, looking at his hands. “What’s the matter?”

But before I could finish the sentence he swerved the car off the road, pulling it into a layby with a spume of gravel. He threw the door open, jumped out and walked away from the car half bent over, his hands pressed to his stomach. Oh, God, I thought, here we go, he’s going to be sick. I got out of the car. It was really cold and still outside. My breath was hanging in the air as I crunched across the layby towards him. He heard me coming and turned, and I saw that he wasn’t being sick, he was
crying
. His face was swollen and red. His nose was running.

“I shouldn’t,” he said, hunching his shoulders and wiping his face on the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “I shouldn’t—I mean, look at her. She saw the whole fucking thing and she’s not crying.”

“What whole thing? What
whole thing
? How can I talk to you if you won’t tell me what happened?”

“It’s all my fault, Lex.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and shook his head, taking deep breaths, slowly getting the crying under control. “If he’d never found out they let me on that fucking island in the first place—‘ He took another few shaky breaths, then drew himself up, red-eyed. He raised a hand towards the firth, glittering and twitching pink in the dawn. ”People are dead, sweetheart.“ He shook his head, sad and exhausted. ”Out there, on Cuagach, people are dead.“

I’d taken a breath to answer before his words sunk in. When I realized what he’d said I closed my mouth and turned my head to one side, lowering my voice. ‘
Dead
? Is that what you said?
Dead
?“

“Yes.”

‘
What do you mean dead
?“ I took him by the sweatshirt, at a point just above his belly-button, and turned him so he had to look me in the eye. ”You said people are
dead
. Dead how? Oakesy? Tell me this isn’t what those types in the pub were telling you about.“

He closed his eyes and sighed. “You don’t want to know, Lexie, please, believe me you—‘

‘
Don’t patronize me, Oakesy
. Whatever’s happened to you out there I can promise you I’ve seen it before. Don’t forget who I work for. Now, tell me.“

And in the end he did. He sat down wearily on the freezing gravel on the side of the road and while Angeline peered at us through the steamed-up car window, and the sun spread orange and molten across the horizon, he told me.

I’m sure you think you know what he said because it’s all been in the papers this week, and everyone probably imagines they know exactly what happened, but I can promise you don’t know the half of it: some of the things he kept coming back to—over and over again as if they’d got stuck on a loop in his head. I mean, you never saw in the newspapers about a face peeled off, did you? But Oakesy kept coming back to that, showing me with his hands how big it was, the way it had been hanging, drooped over the edge of something. And you never read in the
Sun
about pigs tearing apart a teenage girl and carrying her foot away. Or the way her foot had tried to stay attached to her leg bones. Or the guy blown by the blast on his side, just his little toe facing the ceiling, or—I could go on and on—the people with no heads, their necks just red stalks, a bit of vertebra protruding from the flesh, half a skull with its contents sucked away by the explosion …