by Mo Hayder
'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.'
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 ...
I can say it all quite calmly now, a few days later, but as much of a professional as I am, as much as I've seen with Christophe's work, I'm not completely atrophied, you know. I couldn't even look at Oakesy as he told me. I listened with my eyes locked on the frozen blades of grass at the edge of the layby, my arms folded, half of me wanting to scream at him, 'Shut up.' When he was finished I was quiet for a long while, feeling my heart knocking deep against my stomach. Then I turned round to where Pig Island just peeped out beyond the headland. It was too far away to see anything, of course – not the village or the chapel or anything – just this great silent shape taking all the light away.
'Lex?' He put his hand on my foot. 'You OK?'
I looked down at his hand. 'I've seen things, you know. At work.'
'I know,' he said, rubbing his eyes. 'I know.'
There was a bit of a silence while we both thought about the island. Then he stood and felt in the back pocket of his shorts. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and passed it over. I took it, my eyes not leaving his face.
'Well?' I said. 'What's this?'
He didn't answer. He put his hands in his pockets and stared out to sea, as if he'd just handed me one of those awful private-detective photos – him with another woman. I unfolded the paper shakily, my heart thumping.
'It's the rental agreement for the bungalow.'
'Yes.' He bent his head and scratched the top of his scalp hard – the way he always does when he knows he's done something wrong. For a moment I thought he was going to start crying again. 'Found it in Dove's cottage,' he said, his voice all thick. 'I took her to get a bag packed and I found it. I never said, but it was missing from my rucksack – after he gave me that twatting.' He paused. 'You know what it means?'
My blood was racing now. Oh, yes. I knew what it meant. Now everything made sense. Like why he'd called me and told me to lock the doors. Like why he was so anxious. 'My God,' I said faintly. My legs felt like jelly. 'He knew where I was? All that time?'
'I'm sorry.'
'All that time.' I looked back down the long, empty road in the direction of the bungalow. I was scared out of my mind. I kept picturing the woods surrounding the bungalow, thinking how close I'd been. Maybe he'd been out there, watching me. Maybe he was there now. 'My things. Oakesy, I left all my things in the bungalow.'
'Yeah.' He got to his feet and put his hand on my back. 'The police'll deal with it.'
The walk back to the car was only a few yards – but it felt like miles. I kept my back stiff, resisting the impulse to whip round. I knew if I turned all the mountains and clouds would be glaring down at me, scrutinizing my back. As Oakesy put his hand on the driver's door he stopped and looked round quite suddenly as if someone had called his name. He stared up at the mountains, at the dark green, almost black ribbons of trees on the upper slopes.
'What? What did you hear?'
'Nothing,' he said. He gave a long, violent shiver as if he wanted to shake something off his back. He threw a glance out at Pig Island, then got into the car, locked his door and leaned across me to lock mine. 'Come on,' he said. 'Let's go.'
3
I don't know if this is a good time to point something out, but you may as well know, if you haven't already guessed: your comments about Christophe really hurt my feelings.
'Lexie, would it be very difficult for you to accept that Mr Radnor wanted nothing more than a professional relationship with you?'
That's what you said. Remember? Well, I've thought about it and the other day I remembered an incident I should have told you about before. It's something that absolutely proves there is more to Christophe's relationship with me than you could ever guess at.
It was one morning when I'd been at the clinic for only about a month. He came in early because that was his habit – all clean and scrubbed and smelling of aftershave – his Telegraph tucked under his arm. Usually he'd just raise a hand as he passed my desk, but that day, maybe because no one else was around, he stopped and looked at me curiously.
'Good morning,' he said, as if he'd never seen me before and was impressed with what he saw. I was wearing a very neatly pressed white blouse with a matelot collar and a rather sweet black skirt that ended mid-thigh. But Mr Radnor is too much of a gentleman to be staring at my legs. Instead he pretended to be admiring the vase of fresh yellow ranunculus I'd placed on the counter-top. 'This all looks very attractive,' he said, taking in the gleaming floors the magazines lined up neatly, the plasma screen monitor polished carefully. 'Yes,' he repeated. 'All very attractive.'
Well, off he went into the lift and that was where the exchange ended, short and polite and not very remarkable. But I'm not stupid. I knew quite well the message he was sending. His choice of words, very attractive (used twice), wasn't lost on me. From that day on I kept the reception area shining and bright, squirting perfume into the air and sweeping the floor every time a patient walked leaves and dirt in from the street. Every day Christophe came breezing through; no matter how late he was or how stressed, he always found time to comment on how attractive it looked, and every day I worked harder at it, always thinking ahead, trying to do what would please him.
I think I've told you – and you probably knew anyway – about all his pro bono work, the fabulous things he's done for people around the world too poor to pay for operations? Well, I'd saved a lot of the press cuttings, interviews and photos of him with the people he's helped, and it suddenly occurred to me how nice it would be to have them framed. I found someone in Tottenham Court Road to do them quite cheaply and two weeks later I got to work early and spent an hour hanging them around the reception area until they looked perfect. Then I polished everything, swept the floor, straightened my blouse and sat neatly, waiting for him to come in
He was a few minutes late. He came in, shaking his umbrella and propping it in the corner. 'Good morning, Alex.'
'Morning, Mr Radnor,' I said, my smile getting wider. I could hardly keep still I was so excited. 'What filthy weather.'
'Dreadful.' He looked up, and when he saw all the pictures arrayed behind me, his expression changed. He paused, then came forward slowly, a hesitant smile on his face. 'Those are nice,' he said uncertainly. He stopped at the desk, unbuttoned his raincoat and seemed to be thinking hard. Then he said, 'Maybe not entirely suitable in Reception? I wonder if they look a little – uh – showy. Do you think?'
My smile faded. 'You've got a lot to be proud of, Mr Radnor.'
'I tell you what,' he said kindly, 'don't you think they'd look rather good in my office?'
'Your office?' And then, of course, I understood. He wasn't upset or angry – he was being modest. That's the sort of man he is. I stood up behind the desk, very erect and proud. 'Yes. Your office. Your office it is.' I turned and began to take them down, piling them efficiently on the counter. 'I'll carry them up for you.'
'Oh, no no no – no need for that.'
'None of the staff'll be here for half an hour. I can lock the door.'
'It won't be necessary.'
'But I'd like to.'
I stood on tiptoe to reach the top ones, and here I blame myself – because I didn't give a thought to what it might do to him to see my skirt ride up and reveal the tops of my legs in my black tights. When I got the last picture down and turned to him, his expression had hardened. He was red in the face.
'Come on, then,' he said, picking up half of the pictures. 'I'll get the lift.'
I'd never been in his office because that dragon of a secretary guards it like Cerberus. Well, it was absolutely exquisite, with oak-panelled walls and elegant curtains and a marvellous view of the rain-spattered roofs of Harley Street. You could even see the tops of some of the trees in Regent's Park. I stopped and sighed
, looking around me.
'Oh, it's lovely, just lovely, up here. It's exactly what I expected.'
'Thank you,' he said, taking off his raincoat and hanging it on the hatstand behind the door. 'You can put them on the window-seat. I'll deal with them later.'
So I took the pictures to the window-seat, with its lovely raw-silk cushions in a dusty apricot colour, and put them in a pile. Then I loitered for a moment or two, next to the window where the sun could come through and show the highlights in my hair. Christophe sat down at his desk and switched on his computer.
'Was there anything else?'
I smiled and stretched up on tiptoe once or twice, my shoulders up, I was so full of excitement. This was like a secret game we were playing.
He smiled, a little tightly. 'Sorry. I said – was there anything else?'
'Your secretary's got a great job,' I said. 'It's the sort of job I'd love.'
He nodded, and looked at the door, then at the computer screen. Then he rubbed his top lip a little anxiously, with the side of his finger.
'Don't worry,' I said, because I know that's the thing with men and sex – it overwhelms them, like a wave. He needed time to come down to earth. 'I'm going. Call me if you need anything. I finish at five.'
I stopped at the door and turned round to give him a last little wave, but he was busy with the computer, clicking through his appointments – like the professional he is – so I went back to my desk and spent the whole day glowing with that amazing feeling you get when you know you've met someone who is going to change your life.
I didn't tell you any of this before out of respect for Mr Radnor – the medical community is like a grapevine, isn't it? And, God knows, it's not easy for a man of his age, struggling with these feelings. But don't think I'm dismissing what you said: in fact, when you said, 'professional relationship', I think you were closer to the truth than you realized. Because in the last few days it's become very clear to me: what Christophe needs is an excuse to have a closer professional relationship with me. He needs a bit of breathing space to relax around me, so the real thing between us can develop. What's ironic is I didn't see any of this until what happened that awful morning with Oakesy and Angeline Dove.