Pig Island

by Unknown

  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.'

  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

  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.'

  'I'll be getting a second opinion before I share my thoughts.'

  'Mr Radnor?'

  'No. Someone here, I expect.'

  He shovelled the X-rays away, but that grey and white and black image stayed in my head. A ghostly imprint of a human. I looked round at Angeline being arranged on the MRI table. The radiographer asked her to move her feet forward and as she did the gown moved a little and I saw behind her calf a fat, sausage-coloured slab of flesh, the skin slightly hardened like a cuticle. She realized what had happened but she didn't try to hide it. She was staring blankly at the glass window. She didn't even seem to register me – there was this thoughtful, distant look on her face. I turned back to Guy Picot.

  'I know why you won't let me see. I know.'

  He shook his head, opening his nostrils and continuing to watch Angeline, as if I was a fly bothering him. But I wasn't going to be put off. 'I can read an X-ray, you know – I'm not imagining what I just saw. I saw calcium. In the growth, I saw a mass of something and I'm sure it was calcium, and that means—'

  'That means?'

  'Bones,' I said. My voice wasn't much more than a whisper, because something vague and distant was going through my head. Ectoderm, endoderm, mesoderm ... a few half-remembered words from the journal. There was a long silence while I looked at Guy Picot without blinking. Heterogeneous elements...'

  'But it can't be,' I murmured. 'It can't be. She should be dead...'

  2

  In retrospect, I can see it was right after the hospital appointment that Oakesy's behaviour, as if it wasn't bad enough already, took a turn for the worse. The next morning, when I was still half asleep, he leaped out of bed as if he'd been bitten, disappeared into the bathroom and stayed there, in the shower, for almost an hour. When he came out he looked awful, just awful, his skin all grey and damp as if he had a virus. He wouldn't speak to me, just slunk around looking really shifty, pale and uncommunicative, finding every excuse to keep a distance from me and Angeline, not meeting our eyes, sitting at breakfast with an uncomfortable, drawn-up look on his face, shutting himself in his room upstairs the moment he had a chance.

  'What did the doctor tell you?' he asked me, later that night. We were in bed. 'What were you talking about? When you said you saw calcium on the X-ray, what did that mean?'

  I tipped my head sideways and frowned at him. It was almost the first thing he'd said to me all day. He was staring at the ceiling, really unhappy seeming, moving his tongue around as if he'd found something foreign in his mouth.

  'I don't know,' I said. 'There's only one thing it could be.'

  'What?'

  'A tumour. But the only tumour I know that's got bone in it is ...'

  'Is?'

  'A teratoma. And if it was that she wouldn't have survived. They go malignant, teratomas. I'm sure I remember r
eading that somewhere – they go malignant.'

  'Then what? What is it?'

  'I don't know.'

  'You must have an idea.'

  'No,' I said.

  'But you must.'

  'No,' I said, irritated. 'I haven't got a clue.' Up until now Oakesy couldn't have cared less what was wrong with Angeline. Now all of a sudden he was showing this interest? And expecting me to have all the answers? 'I just told you, I don't know. We've got to wait for Mr Radnor to call.'

  It wasn't until much later, when he'd gone to sleep and I was lying awake listening to that ghostly wind coming across the playing-fields and rattling the windows, that it dawned on me what was going on in Oakesy's head. I rolled my head sideways on the pillow and looked at him, hunched up, the duvet pulled over his head as if he wanted to shut out the world. He must have seen the growth, like I did, in the MRI room, with its slightly unreal, rubbery-looking skin. Suddenly everything made sense – the way he'd gone around all day yellow-faced and distracted, the way he couldn't meet Angeline's eyes. I stared at the bulge of his shoulders, the duvet rising and falling as he breathed, and I pushed out a dry, irritated laugh. How typical of a man. How bloody typical.

  Overnight a wind came up from the Irish Sea and pounded the west of Scotland, blowing round the house, rattling the windows and shaking drifts of leaves from the trees at the edge of the estate. When I went downstairs in the morning the kitchen was dark as if winter was already here. Out of the window, rain pelted the road, dark clouds trailed long fingers down to stroke the roofs and the flame-effect gas-fire in the living room barely took the chill off the air. In the night someone had left a shopping trolley on the pavement outside the boarded-up house opposite. It just sat there, occasionally moving a few inches in a gust of wind, the chain at the coin slot dangling back and forward.

  'You know,' I said, when Oakesy came down for breakfast. It was just the two of us: Angeline was still asleep, her door closed tightly. He sat opposite me, not meeting my eyes, pretending to be reading the proposal he's putting together for Finn. 'You know it would behove you to hide your feelings a little better.'