by Unknown
A plain-clothes officer came with us in the Fiesta to the bungalow. They'd had a team out there, checking the place, and they said it was clear. Oakesy wanted to go back and collect our things, then go on to the safe-house. Danso had to take us out the back of the station because by the time we were ready to go – after Oakesy and Angeline had given their fingerprints – the press had gathered in front, growing in number from two or three incongruously battered cars at ten a.m. to forty or fifty now, all lined up in the seasidey street, their drivers' doors open, the occupants waiting patiently, a BBC television van in their midst. 'Fucking hyenas,' Oakesy muttered, apparently forgetting what he does for a living. 'Grubby little shits.'
Oakesy drove – I went shotgun. The 'babysitter', a small shaven-headed man in a poloneck who had shadowy patches on his fingers that looked as if they might have once been LOVE/HATE tattoos, sat in the back with Angeline. He didn't speak much. All the way through the narrow back-streets he hooked his hand on the back of the seat and stared out of the rear window, watching the other cars.
The nights were drawing in, and by the time we got to the bungalow it was dark. There was an unmarked car at the foot of the driveway and a marked one parked at the top, the blue lights flashing silently on and off, lighting up the interior of the woods like an electric storm. Oakesy stopped the Fiesta and he and the babysitter got out and went to speak to the driver, leaving Angeline and me sitting in the car with the engine still running. Our headlights made yellow cones, reflecting off the police car and the men's faces, but beyond this halo of light the woods, the driveway and the bungalow were cloaked in the sort of compressed, borderless darkness that you never see if you live in the city. I stared in the direction of the bungalow, my eyes swimming in and out of focus it was such an impenetrable black, wondering why I hadn't thought to leave a light on before I left. It wasn't like me not to – I always leave a light on. So why had I forgotten to do it this morning? I shuffled forward in the seat and put my hand against the windscreen, shading my eyes and trying to see past the lights up to the bungalow, my breath steaming up the glass.
The driver had got out of the marked car and all the men were standing at the side of the driveway now, just at the very edge of the pool of light, all peering at something on the ground. Oakesy said something, and both policemen glanced at his face, then looked thoughtfully back along the driveway for a while, then at the police car. The driver went to it and got down on his haunches to examine the front wheel, pulling a pen out of his pocket and digging into the tread as if he was searching for something. The other two men watched him, exchanging a sentence or two, and after a while the driver stood up and shook his head. Oakesy and the babysitter came back to the car.
'What?' I said as they climbed in, bringing a whiff of night smoke and the chill of an early frost on their clothes. 'What did you see?'
'When?' said Oakesy, turning his eyes to meet mine.
'Just now. Over there.'
'Nothing.' He disengaged the handbrake and swung the wheel round. 'Just tyre marks.'
'Tyre marks? Whose tyre marks?'
'His.' He nodded at the marked car. 'That's all.'
I stared at the car as we drove slowly past it. The policeman was in the driver's seat now, studying something – a map or a notebook, a penlight shining down, making a reddish blur of his profile. 'Are you sure?' I said, trying to keep my voice level. Earlier I was sort of excited. But now it was beginning to be nasty all over again. 'Are you sure they were his? Could he have got them confused?'
'I'm sure.'
He stopped at the bungalow and switched off the engine and we all leaned forward and peered at our reflection in the huge plate-glass window for a moment or two.
'Has anyone been inside?'
'Checked it before we got here and it was all locked. No sign of anyone.'
'Do you think they switched the light off?'
'I don't know. Probably.'
The other policeman started the engine of the car behind us and switched on the headlights, coming up the drive and stopping behind us, the lights dazzling us all.
'Bastard,' said the babysitter, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare bouncing off the rear-view mirror.
'Coming?' Oakesy opened the door.
I shivered and glanced up at the bungalow. 'No, thanks.'
'OK. Won't be long. Ten minutes. Going to take a meter-reading for the landlord too.'
'Don't crease my clothes. Lay them flat.'
He looked at me for a long time, as if he was trying to decide what to say. Then he sighed. 'Don't worry,' he said, climbing wearily out of the car. 'I won't crease your clothes.'
When they'd gone the car began to get colder and colder. The officer in the car behind switched off his lights and the engine and, slowly, silence came down. The darkness seemed to stretch round the car and the bungalow. Behind me Angeline sat chewing a nail and staring blankly out of the window. For ages it was just me and her, and our breathing, which seemed to get louder and louder in the quiet.
'Angeline?' I said, after a while. 'Do you think your father's going to try to find Joe? I mean, do you think he could have been here? In these trees?'
There was a pause. 'Don't know.'
I waited for her to go on, but she just went silent again. So, I thought, no more communicative than when we were at the police station. I dropped my head back against the seat and put my hand in my shirt pocket where I usually kept my mobile, but of course it was still inside the bungalow. It was so odd to have no contact with the outside world. With Mummy or Christophe. I had a picture of Christophe in my head. I tried to keep it there, so I didn't have to think about the woods around us.
Eventually I sat up and swivelled round in the seat. Angeline hadn't moved. She was sitting near the window, holding the handle above the door, using it to lift some of her weight off her backside. A little stray light was shining off her forehead, which looked big and domed because of the weird haircut. In the car behind, the silhouette of the police officer was motionless. 'Angeline,' I said carefully, 'what do you think the detective meant? DS Struthers? About the devil? The devil of Pig Island – do you know what he was talking about?'
At first she didn't answer. She just looked out at the bungalow, at the door where Oakesy had gone, her eyes fixed, the skin round her mouth tightening. I put my elbow on the back of the seat and lowered my chin on to it: watching her.
'Angeline? I was asking if you knew what he meant. Because I think I know. I think I've seen what he was talking about. I've seen it on a video.'
There was a moment's silence. Then she turned very quickly and stared at me. I could see a vein beating rapidly in her temple.
'Didn't you know? There's a video, Angeline, a video of something. Walking along the beach of Cuagach. It's a bit blurry. But there's no doubt what it is. It's a creature on the beach – half man, half beast.' I licked my lips and glanced out of the window at the police car. Suddenly it seemed important that no one was watching me too carefully. 'Or maybe,' I said, in a low, clear voice, leaning over the seat and pinning her gaze meaningfully, 'maybe it was half beast, half woman ...'
7
Lightning Tree Grove (God, doesn't the name just say it all?) is the nearest thing to hell on earth. It's an abandoned estate between Dumbarton and Renton, one of those wretched fifties and sixties examples of bad urban planning, and it's basically already dead and just waiting for the undertaker's hearse to arrive. Number twenty-nine Humbert Terrace is a three-bedroom semi at the edge of the estate and when I lift up my head from writing this letter and look out of the window, what do I see? Three hundred houses shivering at the edge of miserable, deserted fields, some of the windows grilled up by Environmental Services because they've found asbestos in the attics, all the walls covered with graffiti, tiles flapping around on roofs, and a cul-de-sac where cars come from Dumbarton to fly-tip, so that the streets are littered with Buckfast tonic-wine bottles and dirty nappies. It's going to be con
creted over so they can build a leisure centre, but there are still about twenty people clinging on to their pitiful lives here: mostly squatters and asylum-seekers – lots of women in headscarves loping along the streets with long, timid faces. God knows what they must think of the place. Talk about out of the frying-pan and into the fire.
Of course, when we first arrived it was dark so we had no idea how horrible it was. It just seemed very, very quiet and deserted. The babysitter unlocked the door, struggling a bit with the unfamiliar keys, and let us in, clicking on the light. We all filed in behind him, to this horrible, damp little house. Oakesy went straight to the windows and began rattling them, checking the locks, and Angeline, who hadn't said a word on the journey, shuffled sideways and sat down on the nearest sofa with her coat pulled tight round her, glaring at the floor. I stood in the middle of the room, looking around feeling really depressed.
It was much, much nastier there than at the bungalow, I could see that straight away. Everything was rather stiffly positioned, as if it had been doing a mad dance in the dark before we arrived and had to freeze when the babysitter's key rattled in the lock: two peeling fake leather sofas sat at untidy angles, and a dust-covered TV on a black veneer video cabinet was pushed into the corner. All still and noiseless, you could imagine the place was waiting for us to leave, tensed, hating our intrusion. It was open-plan, the ground floor, and beyond the seating area was a kitchen someone had tried to make cheery with bright yellow-papered walls and turquoise tiles, primrose yellow mugs on a rustic mug tree. But it felt like a deserted institution: 'Do NOT use the grill!!!!' said a sign taped to the oven. 'The grill has been disabled for your safety!!!!!''
'Aye.' The babysitter wandered over to the corner, where a bundle of wires poked out of the ceiling above an empty bracket. He hooked a finger round the bracket and gave it a small tug. 'Used to be a camera here. And over there. Which means somewhere there'll be a ...' He opened a cupboard in the kitchen, peered inside, then closed it and went into the hallway where he opened a door under the stairs. 'Yes, here. The console room.' Oakesy and I crowded round and saw a little control panel, all the electronics ripped out, the holes pocked with spider-webs. An ageing rota sheet was thumbtacked to the wall. 'Yes.' He put his hands on the doorframe and leaned his head back outside the cupboard, craning his neck to follow the wires that led up the wall and out of sight under the stair carpet. 'They told me this used to be the rape suite.'
'The what?' I said. 'The what suite?'
'Rape suite.' He turned to me and the instant he saw my face his expression changed. 'Yeah,' he said hurriedly, ducking back out and closing the door. 'I know. Daft expression. It's just what the lads call it. Some of the lassies who used to come here had been—' He broke off, blushing and scratching his head in embarrassment.
'Raped, you mean? We know. The chief inspector told us.'
'It's somewhere safe, isn't it? Safer than being in the station. You're safe here.'
'Are you sure?'
'Of course. And, anyway you can coorie down here better. It's more cosy here than the station.'
I rubbed my eyes and sighed. Cosy? Cosy? It was horrible. Just horrible. If you ask me, all those raped girls and abused children and victims of racial harassment must have left something behind them in the house – some of their distress still clinging to the rag-rolled wallpaper – because when I did the rounds that night shivers went down my spine, just as if something very bad had happened there. Or was going to happen. At the back of the house, behind the kitchen, there was an examination room, still with a couch in the corner, as if we needed reminding what the place was once used for. None of the rooms had been properly cleaned – there was a stained baby's cot in one of the bedrooms with a patch of dried vomit on the wall behind it, dead flies all over the carpets and a used condom in the kitchen sink. Viva bureaucracy, I say. I hooked the condom out with the end of a spoon and dropped it into the bottom of a white bin-bag, where it lay, dried out and brown, as transparent as old human skin.
8
When the police had gone we carried our bags upstairs and chose rooms – Oakesy and me took the front room, Angeline the one at the back. Later, when I went in there, I saw she'd unpacked the bag she'd brought with her and put all her clothes on hangers arranged along the plaster picture rail. Dreadful things she had: long denim skirts and ageing blue and white Kappa T-shirts, all washed so many times they'd faded or gone grey.
Downstairs we made a dinner from the things we'd brought from the bungalow, a bit of tomato sauce that I poured over some sausages and called a casserole. I wished I could have put some broccoli or something on the plate because she didn't look as if she'd ever had a vitamin inside her. She ate a little bit, not looking at either of us, her head down so all we could see was that big, chapped forehead. It was only much later when I was at the window, my back to the room, peering out at the broken windows and the police car parked at the top of the street, and Oakesy was in the kitchen washing glasses, that she spoke. 'I think,' she said, out of the blue, 'I want to see the video.'
I dropped the curtain and turned – disconcerted to hear her voice after all this time. In the kitchen Oakesy had stopped what he was doing and was looking at her in surprise, the glass he was holding dripping water on to the floor. She was sitting on the sofa, her shoulders slumped, her head hanging, and although she'd said it quite clearly you could be forgiven for thinking she hadn't spoken at all, because her eyes were on the floor and she was chewing her lip, that paranoid, defensive look to her as if she'd never be able to meet another person's eyes.
'Did you say something?' said Oakesy.
'Yes. I want to see myself.'
He blinked. 'You know about it?'
'I want to see it.' She raised her eyes to him. 'If I'm in it I want to see it.'
There were a few moments' silence while Oakesy took this in. He turned to me.
'She had to know,' I said, opening my hands. 'Someone was going to tell her eventually.'
He didn't say anything. I think he was too tired to argue – or maybe he could see the sense in what I was saying. He went resignedly to the hallway and picked up the laptop from where we'd leaned it against the wall. He brought it back to the kitchen, pulled one of the chairs away from the table and spoke to Angeline. 'Sit down. Here.'
She hesitated, then got up and limped over unsteadily, resting her hands on the table to hold her weight and tentatively lowered her awkward body on to the tiny aluminium chair. Oakesy switched on the laptop and put it in front of her. He got a beer from one of the carrier-bags and switched off the kitchen light so the screen was the only illumination and Angeline's face was bathed a greenish-blue.
I sat next to her at the table, hunched forward, my chin cupped in my hands. I made it seem as if I was concentrating on the computer, but I wasn't. My eyes were rotated sideways to watch her. I got very close to her until I could see every detail of her face – the colourless skin, the big forehead illuminated by the computer, and the small nose, like a young boy's.
'This was taken west of the island.' Oakesy leaned between us and clicked on the RealPlayer icon. The video started. 'Two years ago. Before the fence went up. Here.' He pointed to the end of the tree-line. 'Just here – watch this bit.'
I didn't turn to the screen – I'd seen the video enough times before. This time I watched its mirror image reflected in the glassy curve of Angeline's left eye: the bobbing motion of the boat, the men in their football shirts holding up beers to the camera, and then the long grey expanse of Pig Island's flank rising above the waves, below it the woods coming down to meet the beach. I knew exactly the place on the screen where the blurry figure would appear, with its lurching walk, coming out of the trees for one or two steps on to the sand. I knew the pause, the quick turn back, the disappearance into the trees, the shouts of the men on the boat.
When it was over Oakesy leaned over and stopped the video. I sat motionless, staring at her eye, fascinated by the way it was flickering f
rom side to side as if it were trying to escape. Then a clear disc of liquid appeared, bulging rapidly, trembled for a moment on top of the iris, then broke and fell down her face. She put her palms together, the tips of her fingers on her nose, and started trembling, as if the temperature in the room had plummeted.
'You all right there?' Oakesy said. 'You want to—?'
'I was born like it,' she said. She pushed the chair back with a screech and put her fists to her eyes, pushing at them as if she'd like to punish them for leaking. 'It's not my fault. I was born like it. You can't blame me for it. You can't.'
Oakesy and I exchanged a look. He leaned forward a little and I think he was going to touch her, but something must have stopped him because his hand got half-way to her shoulder then stopped and went uncertainly back down to the table. 'Listen,' he said, 'nobody thinks it's your fault.'
'They'll think I'm trouble. Like they did on Cuagach. They thought I was a—' She broke off, took deep breaths. Her face was bright red now and there were two lines of snot coming out of her nose. 'They said I was an abomination. That's what they said. They said I—'
'You didn't really believe all that,' I said. 'You're disabled, that's all.'
'Lex,' Oakesy said.
'Well, Oakesy, we've all seen it now, the three of us. There's no point in being coy. And anyway ... I'm sure there's something that can be done for you, Angeline.'
When I said that she went really still. She stopped crying and all the colour drained out of her skin. She lowered her hands and stared at me with an odd, cracked look, her irises slightly off-centre as if her eyes had broken.