Pig Island by Mo Hayder Page B

I’d noticed it when we first came in—a huge iron one that could be opened from either side. The key was on the inside and it was supplemented with bolts all the way up the interior of the door. The windows had no catches because they had been built not to open. For whatever reason, the PHM felt a need to lock this chapel, miles away from the mainland. “Pretty secure. Feels like a bunker.” I gave him a sly wink. “But I think that’s something else you’ll tell me about. All in God’s good time?”
    Blake drew himself up to his fullest height and took a deep breath. “You’ll stay with us tonight, won’t you, Joe? I’ve got no plans to go to the mainland. There’s a bed made up in my cottage.”
    I gave a short laugh. “Of course I’m going to stay, Blake. Of course.”
     
     
     

Chapter 8
     
     
    After the tour Blake let me off the leash for an hour to get some photographs in—I was allowed to go anywhere, as long as I didn’t stray further up the slope towards the cliffs. He sent the teenage girl along as a chaperone. She carried the bag when I was shooting, held the reflector for me, and didn’t say much until we were out of sight of the cottages. I was busy changing a lens when she crept up next to me and said, almost in my ear, “They’re on the other side of the island.”
    I stopped and looked at her. Her face was very pale. Her eyes were watery and cold blue, like a swimming-pool.
    “The pigs. You wanted to know about the pigs. And I was just saying, they’re over there.” She rolled her eyes in the direction of the cliff face, nodding up there, as if she’d have liked to point but thought she might get caught doing it. “Over there. All the way across the other side. But no one’s going to, like, just let you go over there or anything.”
    I lowered the camera. “Why? What’s over there?”
    “I can’t tell you that. We’re not supposed to talk to you about it. Blake’s going to tell you.”
    I studied her. She had lank blonde hair pushed behind her ears and was so pale and thin it was pitiful, with spidery fingers and her feet like a skeleton’s, blistered and sore, crammed into pink jelly sandals. “And who are you?”
    She grinned and wiped her hand on her shorts and held it out to me. “I’m Sovereign. Yeah, I know, Sovereign . It’s what my parents called me. Because I was, like, so valuable to the community when I arrived. Apparently.”
    “You were born here?”
    “Yeah, and this place is so not what I’m about. The day I turn eighteen I’m total history .” She made her hand into a plane and glided it out into the air, off towards the mainland. “Bye-bye, toot toot, train—you won’t see me for dust. Only four months now.”
    “Who are your parents?”
    “The Garricks. You met them. The ones with the sticks up their butts?”
    “Yes. I met them.”
    “I know what you’re thinking—like, geriatric ward, yeah?” She grinned, showing a missing canine in her left jaw. No medical treatment, my mind flashed. “They waited until they were thirty-eight before they had me, totally ancient. How gross is that? But that’s how it is round here. Bunch of retards.” She stopped smiling and took a few moments to look at me, jiggling her legs a bit, chewing her thumbnail. “You know, you don’t look anything like a journalist.” She took her thumb out of her mouth. “Anyone ever tell you that? I watch a lot of TV and I know what a journalist should look like and the first thing I thought when I saw you was, uh, like no way , he rully doesn’t look like a journalist.”
    I glanced down at my battered shorts, my big stained hands and sandals all dirty and fucked from walking everywhere. I had to smile. She was right—in spite of the psychology degree, the cushy detached house and the job, somehow I never had got the Merseyside docker out of my bones. I only did it once over the summer, helping my old man out, but it was in my family and stuck inside me like