Have you read Mo Hayder’s stand-alone thrillers?

THE DEVIL OF NANKING

Desperate and alone in an alien city, student Grey Hutchins accepts a job as a hostess in an exclusive club. There she meets an ancient gangster rumoured to rely on a strange elixir for his continued health; it is an elixir others want – at any price . . .

‘Left me stunned and haunted. This is writing of breathtaking power and poetry’
Tess Gerritsen

PIG ISLAND

When journalist Joe Oakes visits a secretive religious community on a remote Scottish island, he is forced to question the nature of evil – and whether he might be responsible for the terrible crime about to unfold.

‘The most terrifying thriller you’ll read all year’
Karin Slaughter

HANGING HILL

A teenage girl has been brutally murdered on her way home from school. The cryptic message ‘all like her’ is crudely written on her body. Headstrong DI Zoe Benedict knows she is getting close to the truth. But as she digs, she realises there are frightening parallels with her own dark past. Secrets that, if exposed, could destroy her . . .

‘An authentically disturbing, gripping winner’
Financial Times

Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Epigraph

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Read on for an extract from Wolf

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Mo Hayder

Copyright

PIG ISLAND

MO HAYDER

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
www.transworldbooks.co.uk

Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies
whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published in Great Britain
in 2006 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Bantam edition published 2007
Bantam edition reissued 2009

Copyright © Mo Hayder 2006

Mo Hayder has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781409083467
ISBN 9780553824865

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

‘And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.’

Revelation 20:2

Part One

CRAIGNISH
AUGUST

Oakesy

1

The alarms first went off in my head when the landlord and the lobsterman showed me what had been washed up on the beach. I took one look at the waves breaking and knew right then that cracking the Pig Island hoax wasn’t going to be the straightforward bit of puff I’d expected. I didn’t say anything much for a few minutes, just stood there, probably scratching the back of my neck and staring, because something like that . . . well, it’s going to get you thinking, right? However much of a big guy you think you are, however much you reckon you’ve seen in your life and however lairy you are about the mad stories that go round, looking down at something like that splashing around your shoes, it’s going to make you scratch a bit. Why didn’t I listen to those alarm bells, turn right round and walk away from the whole thing there and then? Don’t. Just don’t. I stopped asking myself that question a long time ago.

That summer what they called the ‘devil of Pig Island’ video had already been around for a couple of years. Disturbing thing, it was. Genius hoax. And trust me, I know hoaxes. It had been shot on a sunny morning by a tourist out on a boozy sightseeing tour of the Slate Islands, and when it hit the public the whole country went off on one, whispering about devil worship and general bad shit happening on the remote island off the coast of west Scotland. The story might have run and run, but the secretive religious group that lived on the island, the Psychogenic Healing Ministries, wouldn’t give interviews to the press or respond to the accusations, and with nothing to fuel it the story died. Until late August last year when, after two years of nothing, the sect decided to break the silence. They cherry-picked one journalist to stay with them on the island for a week to see how the community lived and to ‘discuss the widespread accusations of Satanic ritual’. And that canny old git of a journalist? Meet me. Joe Oakes. Oakesy to my mates. Sole architect of the biggest self-fuck on record.

2

‘Seen the old video, have you?’ said the lobsterman. It was the first time we’d met and I knew he didn’t like me. There were only four of us in the pub that night: me, the landlord, his dog and this moody old shite. He sat in the corner huddled up against the wood panelling, puffing away at his rollies, shaking his head when I started asking about Pig Island. ‘Is that why you’re here? Fancy yourself a devil-wrangler?’

‘Fancy myself a journalist.’

‘A journalist no less!’

He laughed, and looked up at the landlord. ‘Did ye hear that? Fancies himself a journalist!’

The place had that leery feel you sometimes get in these struggling local holes – like any minute a fight’s going to kick off behind one of the fruit machines even though the place is half empty. There were two alehouses in the community – the tourist one, with its picture window overlooking the marina, and this one for the locals, up a cliff path in the soggy trees. Stained plaster walls, stinking carpets and dingy, sea-dulled windows that stared out to where Pig Island lay, silent and dark almost two miles offshore.

‘They’ll not let you on the island,’ said the landlord, as he wiped down the bar. ‘You know that, don’t you? There’s not been a journalist on that island in years. They’re as mad as kettles out on Pig Island – won’t let a soul on the island, much less a journalist.’

‘And if they did let you on,’ said the lobsterman, ‘God, but there’s not a soul in Craignish will take you out there. No, you won’t catch any of us gaun out to auld Pig Island.’ He squinted through the smoke out of the window to where the island lay, just a dark shape against the gathering gloom. His white beard was nicotine-stained, like he must’ve been drooling in it for years. ‘No. Not me. I’d sooner go through the old hag’s whirlpool, pure fatal or not, than go round Pig Island and come face to face with auld Nick.’

One thing I’ve learned after eighteen years in this trade is there’s always someone who gains from supernatural phenomena. If it isn’t money or revenge it’s just good old-fashioned attention. I’d already been to Bolton to interview the tourist who’d shot the video. He had nothing to do with the hoax: poor beer-bloated sod couldn’t see past the next Saturday-afternoon league tables, let alone set up something like that. So who was gaining from the Pig Island film?

‘They own the island, don’t they?’ I said, twisting my pint of Newkie Brown round and round in the circular beer stain, looking at it thoughtfully. ‘The Psychogenic Healing Ministries. I read that somewhere – they bought it in the eighties.’

‘Bought it or stole it, depending on your position.’

‘Was an awful fool, the owner.’ The landlord leaned on the bar with both elbows. ‘An awful fool. The pig farm goes belly up and what does he do? Lets all the farmers in Argyll dump their dodgy chemicals out there. Ended up a death pit, the place – pigs all over the island, old mine shafts, chemicals. In the end he has to give it all away. Ten thousand pounds! They could have stole it from him, it’d be more honest.’

‘You won’t like that,’ I said, in a level, casual voice. ‘People coming from the south and buying up all the property round here.’

The lobsterman sniffed. ‘Doesn’t bother us. What we don’t tolerate is when they buy a place, then lock themselves away and get up to all their queer rituals. That’s when it bothers us – them hunkering down out there, consorting with the de’il, doing nothing but eating babies and giving each other a rare auld peltin’ whenever they’ve a mind to.’

‘Aye,’ said the landlord. ‘And then there’s the smell.’

I looked at the landlord. I wanted to smile. ‘The smell? From the island?’

‘Ah!’ he said, throwing the tea towel over his shoulder. ‘The smell.’ He fished under the bar for a giant bag of crisps and opened it, shovelling a fistful into his mouth. ‘Do you know what they say? What they say is the signature smell of the devil? The smell of the devil is the smell of shite – that’s what it is. Now, you go to anyone out there –’ He jabbed a crisp-covered finger at the window. Crumbs confettied on to his T-shirt. ‘– out on Jura or in Arduaine, and they’ll all tell you the same thing. The smell of shite comes off Pig Island. There’s no better proof of their rituals than that.’

I studied him thoughtfully. Then I turned and looked across the dark sea. The moon was out and a wind had come up and was whipping branches against the windowpane. Beyond our reflections, beyond the image of the landlord standing under the lighted optics, I could see an absence – a dark space against the night sky. Pig Island.

‘They piss you off,’ I said, trying to picture the thirty-odd people who lived out there. ‘They do their fair bit to piss you all off.’

‘You’re right about that,’ said the landlord. He came to the table and sat down, setting the crisps in front of him. ‘Do their fair bit to piss us all off. They’re not well liked – not since they fenced off that nice bit o’ beach on the south-east of the island and stopped the young folk from Arduaine going out with their boats. They’d only be wanting a wee game of footy or shinty in the sand, the weans, Godsake, no need to be so stern about it, is my opinion.’

‘Not your perfect neighbours.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re not.’

‘Where I come from, you behave like that you’re asking for a hiding.’

‘So you’re starting to see my point.’

‘If it was me I’d be trying to think of how to make their lives difficult.’

‘We’ve been tempted!’ The landlord laughed. He licked his fingers carefully, then put them to his eyes, like tears of mirth had gathered there. ‘I don’t mind telling you. Been tempted. Put some paraffin in their bottles of bevvy, maybe.’

‘You know, if it was me, I’d – I’d – I don’t know.’ I shook my head and looked at the ceiling, like I was searching for inspiration. ‘I’d probably try and set up some kind of . . . dodgy rumour. Yeah.’ I nodded. ‘I’d set up a hoax – spread a couple of rumours around.’

The landlord stopped laughing and rubbed his nose. ‘Are you saying we’re making it all up?’

‘Aye. Takin’ the piss, are ye?’ The lobsterman sat forward, suddenly flushed. ‘You takin’ the piss? Is that what your message to us is?’

‘I’m just saying,’ I met his eyes seriously, looking from him to the landlord and back, ‘it’s got a smell about it, hasn’t it? I mean, devil-worshippers? Satan walking the beaches of Pig Island?’

The colour in the lobsterman’s face paled very slightly. He crushed the rollie in the ashtray and stood, drawing himself up to his full height. He took a few deep, fighting breaths, and looked unsteadily down at me. ‘Laddie, tell me. Are you a man who is easily shocked? You’re a big man, but I reckon you’re one who’d shock easy. What do ye think?’ he said to the landlord. ‘Is he? Is he a man who’d go in a funk if he saw something peculiar? Because that’s how it looks from where I stand.’

‘Why?’ I said, putting the glass down slowly. ‘Why? What are you going to show me?’

‘If you’re so clever you don’t believe what we’re saying, then come with me. We’ll see what kind of a hoax is gaun on.’

Pig Island, or as it’s called in Gaelic Cuagach Eilean, lies in the small cup of sea at the edge of the Firth of Lorn, caught like a precious stone in a setting between Luing, Jura and Craignish Peninsula – like it’s been placed to block the entry to the Sound of Jura. It’s a weird shape: like a peanut from above, covered in grassland and dense trees, a wide rocky gorge running down the middle. Once, before the pig farm and the chemical dumping, there’d been a slate mine operating in the south of the island, with a community of miners and a regular ferry. But by the time I got there Pig Island was almost totally cut off. Once a week the Psychogenic Healing Ministries sent a small boat to collect supplies. It was their only contact with the world.

I knew a bit about that part of Scotland – wrote bits and pieces about it from time to time. But my bread and butter was debunking work. One of the things that comes as birthright to a Scouser is knowing the stripe of bullshit when you see it and I’m a natural sceptic, a full-blown non-believer: a Scully, a James Randi, an out-and-out hoax-buster. I’ve flown round the world chasing zombies and chupacabras, Filipino faith-healers and beasts in Bodmin; I’ve used glass vials to collect dripping milk from the breasts of Mexican virgin statues – and in that time I’ve worked up a hard skin. But even I had to admit there was something odd-looking about the Psychogenic Healing Ministries’ island. If you were going to believe in devil-worship you’d picture it happening somewhere remote and sea-wreathed like Pig Island. That night, as we jolted and bumped along a dark path that led to the end of the peninsula, I stared out of the window at its dark, desolate shape and for a moment or two there I had to tell myself not to be an old tart about it.

The landlord had crammed me into the back seat of the lobsterman’s beat-up rust-bucket of a car. We left the dog in the pub: ‘Because he’s a mad rocket when he comes out here,’ said the landlord, as the car pulled off the road on to a thin, muddy beach. ‘Makes him crazy and I’m not putting him in a paddy just because you won’t take my word for something.’

We got out of the car and I paused. I hadn’t been out on the lash or anything, but I’d sunk a fair old few in the pub and it felt good for a moment to fill my lungs with the night air. The beach was silent, and there was already a breath of autumn in the air. It was gone eleven but Craignish was so far north the sky was still edged with blue. You’d almost think that if you stood on tiptoe and squinted you’d see the land of the midnight sun peeping at you from over the horizon, maybe a reindeer or a polar bear on a giant mint.

‘See the pipe?’ The lobsterman walked away to the south, totally steady in spite of the whisky, his old shoes leaving dull prints in the mud, his moon-shadow long beside him. ‘The wee stank over there?’ He was pointing to the long, low shape of a sewage pipe straddling the beach ahead. ‘You get the conditions right – a nice westerly, an ebb and a spring tide – then everything from out at Pig Island gets washed up, not in the loch or even on Luing, where you’d expect it, but here, on this side of the peninsula. Most of it gets caught on the other side of that pipe.’

The landlord hung back, giving me a dubious look. His face was a little pinched seeming in the moonlight. He turned up his collar like it was suddenly dead cold out there. ‘Sure you’re ready for this?’

‘Yeah. Why not?’

‘It’s not for the faint-hearted, what’s caught up under that pipe.’

‘I’m not faint-hearted,’ I said, looking down the beach at the lobsterman. ‘I’ve seen everything there is to see.’

We walked for a while in silence, only the sound of the waves breaking on the beach, and the tinkle of a halyard on a boat moored somewhere out in the sea. The smell hit me first. Even before I saw the lobsterman hesitate at the pipe, looking down on the other side, before I saw him shaking his head and leaning over to spit out something in the sand, I knew it was going to be one of those stomach-turners. One of those times I’d regret the last pint. I took a breath and swallowed, tapping my pockets as I got nearer, hoping I’d find a stray bit of chewy or something to take the taste away.

‘Worse is it?’ said the landlord, approaching the lobsterman. ‘Got worse?’

‘Aye – there’s more. More than there was last week.’

I held my T-shirt up to my nose and peered down on the other side of the pipe. Dark shapes bobbed and buffeted in a yellowish foam. Meat. Decaying chunks of flesh – impossible to tell in the slime where one piece ended and the next began. The breaking waves forced them into the crevice under the pipe, tangled them in ribbons of tasselweed. Decomposition gas fizzed from under the raised flaps of skin, sending bubbles to the surface.

‘What the fuck’s this?’

‘Pig meat,’ said the lobsterman. ‘Dead pigs. Killt in one of them rituals on Pig Island and been washed off the island.’

‘Police have seen it,’ the landlord said, ‘and they’ve not cared to do anything about it – can’t prove where it’s coming from and, anyway, a few dead pigs aren’t hurting anyone, is their manner of thinking.’

‘Dead pigs?’ I looked up at the mouth of the Firth. The moon picked out the silvery tips of waves as far as the eye could see – to where Pig Island peeped round the end of Luing, silent and hunched, like a dozing beast. ‘All of this is dead pigs?’

‘Aye. That’s what they say.’ The landlord puffed out a series of short, dry laughs – like the world never ceased to amaze him. ‘That’s what the police say – everything here is just pig meat. But you know what I think?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think that when it comes to the lovers of Satan you can never be too sure.’

3

Let’s think about my mistakes with the whole Pig Island thing. Well, the first one was letting my wife come to Scotland with me. What was I thinking? I’ve had to stop punching myself in the face about it, because you have to find ways of hanging on to a bit of sanity, so I say whoever was to blame, Lexie was there with me. Course, I didn’t know she was there for her own reasons, didn’t know she had something on her mind. I thought she was totally made up with her job – a receptionist at a London clinic – besotted by the media-whore neurosurgeon who ran the place (you guessed I don’t like him, right?). The last thing I expected was for her to want to leave London. But one minute I say, ‘I’m coming to Scotland,’ next thing she’s on the web looking for holiday cottages.

She found a crappy one-bed bungalow on Craignish Peninsula that my budget stretched to. It was hot and unventilated and Lexie slept restlessly. The night I got back from the beach she was already in bed, turning over in her sleep, whimpering and pushing at the pillow. I got in silently and lay next to her, staring up at the ceiling. Tomorrow I’d be on Pig Island. I needed to think about what I was chasing. I was going to have to play it dead carefully. Going to have to concentrate, be ready for anything.

The Psychogenic Healing Ministries wanted me at their Positive Living Centre on Pig Island because of Eigg, the little Hebridean island fifty miles to the north. They hadn’t said it, but I knew it anyway. On Eigg the tenants had raised the money to buy the island from the owner. They got donations from everywhere, all over the country – even the National Lottery. Booted old Schellenberg and Maruma out. And how did they manage that? Good publicity. Simple as that. Someone was there to spread their story to the world. And that someone was me. I’d been there – helped break the story in the press. How I saw it now was the Psychogenic Healing Ministries probably had some legal hassle they wanted to raise money for. Thought I could help. If they’d known I had history with their founder, Pastor Malachi Dove, if they’d known that eighteen years ago I’d written an article on him under the name Joe Finn, that he’d been so arsed off about it he’d tried to sue me for libel, I’d never have got even a little bit close to Pig Island. But, like I said, canny bastard, me.

I lay awake half the night ticking off kit in my head: MP3 player, camera, batteries, spare camera card, phone . . . Didn’t get to kip until three in the morning and the next day I was on edge. After breakfast, when I’d packed and was ready to set off for Pig Island, I got the laptop out one last time.

I never had found out what came first – the rumours that the Psychogenic Healing Ministries were practising Satanism, or the video. But when the public saw it they made up their mind it was an image of the devil, brought down on to Pig Island by the Satanic ritual of the PHMs. A great steaming pile of bollocks, naturally, but even I had to admit there was something dead creepy about the video.

First of all, it wasn’t trick photography. It had been through every AV specialist unit in the country, passed every test, been torn apart frame by frame, but even with all that gadgetry thrown at it, it kept coming up clean over and over again. Whoever had cooked up this little bit of chicanery hadn’t used trick photography: something had definitely been on the island beach that hot 18 July two years ago.

That morning I played it again on my laptop. I sat forward on the edge of my seat, concentrating hard. I’d seen it a thousand times and knew every frame. It started off kind of ordinary, with the camera lingering on the horizon out to sea, tilting gently as the single-engined boat bobbed on the waves in the Firth of Lorn. I dragged the RealPlayer toggle to the bit where a shout went up on the boat. This was the exact moment when one of the other tourists saw something moving on the island. A few indistinct shouts came from the TV – a lot of camera movement as the surprised tourist whipped the videocam sideways, taking in one or two shocked faces on the boat, then focused across the bay on an indeterminate line of green-brown – the seaward shoreline of Pig Island. Someone close to the camera spoke. The words were totally unintelligible because of the wind on the soundtrack, but the BBC unit had added sub-titled dialogue to my copy: ‘What in fuck’s name is that?’

This was the important bit. You could feel the guys on the boat inching forward in curiosity, staring at the beach where a creature no one could put a name to moved ponderously through the foliage at the water’s edge. It stood at about five foot eleven; the BBC technicians figured this out from comparative measurements using sun and trees. In most ways it appeared like a naked human being – the video showed its back from the waist down; the upper half was concealed in shadow. Except it wasn’t human. There was something dangling from the base of its spine. Estimated to be about two feet in length, the same battered brown flesh as the body, it looked just like a fleshy tail. It banged once on the back of the creature’s legs as it moved.

Even in that stifling bungalow, with the sun coming through the picture windows, lying in great squares on the dingy patterned carpet, and Lexie a few yards away in the kitchen, I got this crawl of discomfort across my skin. I leaned nearer to the TV and stared at the wavery brown line of empty beach, the camera holding steady on the island in case the beast reappeared. A full three minutes elapsed until the tourist gave up waiting and turned the camera back to the other men on the boat. They stood at the gunwales, all four of them in their Bolton Wanderers shirts, holding the stanchion line and staring in silence at the spot on the beach where the creature had been.

The people at the BBC reckoned it was an actor, someone in a costume. Their AV unit had worked on the Bluff Creek Bigfoot film, and they thought this video had some of the same hallmarks: Sasquatch, as we all knew, was just some guy in a Hollywood gorilla suit – and the technicians decided that was probably what was happening in the Pig Island film. The problem was, because the video was taken from a boat about two hundred yards offshore, because the ‘creature’ emerged from the trees at frame 1,800 and had disappeared into the foliage by frame 1,865 (at a rate of thirty frames per second that meant a shade over two seconds), and because the movement of the boat had the picture jumping all over the place, the Beeb couldn’t get a good enough image to analyse it any closer. They could only say what it appeared to be.

Half beast. Half human.

‘I’ll put your lighter in the rucksack,’ said Lexie, suddenly, from the kitchen. ‘I’m putting it in the front pocket.’

I paused the video and turned to look at her. She was standing at the table, her hair held back in the Alice band she’d got for her snobby job, and a pair of shorts I had a vague idea I was meant to notice. I didn’t answer her straight off. Her voice was kind of casual, but both of us knew how serious she was. I’d ‘given up’ smoking months ago and I reckoned I’d hidden the occasional sneaky rollie pretty well. Except now there was the lighter.

I watched while she zipped up the rucksack.

‘It was in your jacket pocket,’ she said, reading my mind.

‘I got it for the stove. There’s no pilot.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, laughing. ‘You’re so transparent.’

I laughed too. Just a bit. ‘Transparent or not – I used it for the stove.’

‘OK,’ she said lightly. ‘OK. I believe you. You’re so believable.’ She set her tongue at the back of her front teeth and smiled up at the ceiling. Her smiling made the sinews in her neck stand out. She’d got skinny recently. I waited a few more moments to see if we were going to pursue this. Not dropping the smile or taking her eyes off the ceiling, in that same high voice she goes: ‘And there was tobacco in the shorts you had on yesterday.’

‘You’re going through my pockets now?’

‘Yes. My husband lies to me about smoking so I go through his pockets.’ She dropped her chin then and met my eyes and I saw she’d flushed a deep purplish colour – like her cheeks were bruised. ‘My husband thinks I’m stupid. So I have to fight back.’

The most important thing about me and my marriage was I didn’t fancy my wife any more. I’d known it for months and done nothing about it – it’s one of those things you can stick in the back of your mind and ignore if you’re clever enough. But, and this is true, I cared about her. Weird fuck I was, I did still care for her. And I cared, in some rusty old-fashioned way, about fidelity. Back in London half my friends were already blasting their way through first, second divorces: I was the sanctimonious one, believed in thick and thin, wasn’t going to end up in a frigid, three-minute-egg of a marriage. Touché, Joe Oakes, you pious arse. This’ll teach you.

I stood slowly and went to stand in the kitchen doorway, looking at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I am.’

She didn’t move for a moment. Then her shoulders slumped and she let out a sigh. ‘That’s OK,’ she said, shaking her head and holding out the rucksack to me. ‘It can’t be easy, giving up.’

‘No, but I’m working on it.’ I pulled on the rucksack. ‘Believe me.’

She forced a smile. ‘I’ve put some water-bottles in, at the bottom, and some factor ten.’ She smoothed down the rucksack straps across my chest and, finding an imaginary stain on my T-shirt, wet her finger and rubbed at it. A compulsive neatnik, Lex, this grooming, this shrimping, was her way of showing I was forgiven. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘I know it’s your turn to cook tonight, but you’ll be exhausted, so I’ll do a pasta salad. Avocado, bacon, olives. It’ll save if you’re late.’

‘Lexie,’ I said, ‘I told you. Didn’t I? I said I didn’t know if I’d be back tonight. I told you this. Remember? I said I could be out there a few days.’

She bit her lip. ‘A few days?’

‘We talked about it. Don’t you remember? I said I’d probably have to stay over and you said you’d be all right on your own.’

‘Did I? Did I say that?’

‘Yes.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, don’t worry about it. I mean I’d’ve loved some time with my husband on our holidays, and obviously I’d rather not be in this place on my own.’ She opened her hands to indicate the bungalow. She’d hated it at first sight. She’d booked it but turns out to be my fault it was so shitty. ‘But, don’t worry, it’s all right, I’ll be all right.’

‘Lex. I said it was work, remember?’ Remember how I said it was—’

‘Please!’ She cut me off, holding up her hand in the air. ‘Please don’t. Please just go. I’ll be fine.’

‘I’ll call you. If there’s a signal out on the island I’ll call you. I’ll tell you how it’s going – when I’ll be back.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t. Really – don’t. Just . . . just go. Do your thing.’ She drummed her fingers on the table, not looking up at me. ‘Go on,’ she repeated, when I didn’t turn to go. ‘Just go.’

I sighed and touched her shoulder, opened my mouth to say something, then thought better of it. I tightened the rucksack and left, not bending to kiss her goodbye, quietly closing the kitchen door behind me. That was how it went, these days. Outside I stopped. At the end of the bungalow’s long, rhododendron-crowded driveway the land opened into a funnel. There, basking in the glittering sea, was Pig Island.

4

‘Rage against the Philistines of science. Do not allow the arrogance of the medical community to rape and subdue your natural self-healing powers. Wrest control over your life.’

The Psychogenic Healing Ministries, volume 14,
chapter 5, verse 1

The Psychogenic Healing Ministries would say my problems with Lexie were all about my godlessness. They’d say that if I only opened my heart to the Lord, that if I’d only grow towards his cosmic love, in no time I’d find myself growing back towards Lexie. And she’d grow towards me too. I’d never been to the Positive Living Centre on Pig Island, but I knew more than I needed about what the PHM would say about me and Lex. I knew their philosophies like I wrote them myself.

What happened between me and their founder, Pastor Malachi Dove, all starts back in Liverpool twenty years ago. It’s the mid-eighties. Liverpool’s the unemployment capital of Europe, and my cousin Finn is the closest thing to a God I know. He’s a charm bird, totally does not look like my cousin with his blond, mosh-pit hair and ratty nose. The Kurt Cobain of Toxteth. He’s the first in our family to get into university and he comes home summer holidays to Self-pity City talking like a Londoner. He tells us all about university and the birds he’s shagged. He’s going to be a journalist, travel the world. Everyone hates him. Me – I think I can see the sun shine when he bends over.

It’s probably the girls that do it for me, because by the next year I’ve got a place at UCL and I’m ready to follow him down south. Me and Finn together, I’m thinking, the copping potential is unlimited. Then something happens. Something that changes the course of our lives. Finn’s ma gets cancer.

Now, I’ve always really liked his ma, always thought she was totally sound. Actually, what I’ve always thought is, she’s clever. But what does she do, good Catholic girl, when she’s told she’s dying? She refuses chemo. She scoffs down shark cartilage and flower remedies by the lorryload. She visits Lourdes. She ends up selling the house and trailing some faith-healer around the United States. His name is Pastor Malachi Dove. He believes in NO MEDICAL INTERVENTION. He believes in the power of prayer and positive thinking. Two months later she comes back to Toxteth and dies in agony in a hospice in Ormskirk. So it goes, as Vonnegut would say.

For me and Finn, religion’s what you get twatted for. Aled up on a Saturday night it’ll be Everton and Liverpool, or Papes and Prods that starts the fight. And seeing Finn’s ma die like that gives us a rage for Pastor Malachi Dove that won’t go away. We get copies of Charisma magazine and find he’s in the south-west US. With the money Finn’s ma leaves we get on the next flight to New Mexico. We think we’re gonzos. Bad Boys doing the Right Thing.

Oral Roberts has just told the world God will kill him if the congregation doesn’t stump up eight million and Peter Popoff’s just been outed on The Johnny Carson Show. We spend about a week on the breakaway-church circuit, trailing all these characters around the south-west, getting to know how it works: we meet rapture partisans, pretri-bulationists, preterists, post-wrathers and the midtribbers. We go to deliverance ministries and take part in prayer chains. Slowly we’re narrowing it down to our target. And in July it happens. We meet Pastor Malachi Dove. Chief minister and founder of the Psychogenic Healing Ministries Foundation.

It’s in a convention centre in Albuquerque. Air-con because it’s hot as hell outside. Finn and me, we’re about as out of place as you can get: there’s me in my beanie and striker’s donkey jacket, Finn in his Big Kahuna T-shirt and a mincy little Italian-style zip-up bag that would get him a good twatting in Seaforth; here it contains a loaded tape recorder and mic. We sit in row T, thinking everyone’s staring at us. Thinking everyone knows for sure why we’re there.

The first surprise is the stage. It’s kind of empty and clinical. Feels like a hospital theatre, not a church. The helpers, all women, are a cross between angels and theatre technicians: eighth Dan judo pants and gleaming white plimsolls on bare feet. On stage a stretcher is wheeled up to a screen with a blue sky projected on it. Me and Finn sit there muttering between us, all ready to start snickering. Then Malachi Dove comes on stage and we get surprise number two.

First off, he’s not American, he’s English. (From Croydon, we find out later, son of a paperclip salesman.) And he’s dead normal, not dressed in some huckster’s suit: he’s wearing a corduroy jacket and he looks more like a young teacher at a public school, with his soft, boyish good looks and thatch of blond hair flopping down over his forehead. Rimless specs on a tip-tilted nose and you can see his tendency is to get fat, not mean. Years later, when Leo DiCaprio is famous, me and Finn turn to each other and go, ‘Malachi Dove. Malachi Dove and Leo. Separated at birth.’

Malachi Dove doesn’t bound on stage. He comes on quietly, sort of shuffling, clearing his throat and tucking the specs in his jacket pocket, like he’s going to deliver a theology lecture. He sits on a little stool and looks seriously and thoughtfully into the dark auditorium while the place erupts: cheers, hoots, promises of undying love echoing off the walls. He waits till the noise dies down. Then he moves the microphone to his mouth, clumsily, banging it on his nose. He grins at the mistake. ‘Uh – sorry,’ he goes. ‘Technology’s not my strong point.’

The audience erupts again, applauds like crazy.

He holds up his hands modestly. ‘Look . . . let me explain who I am.’ The congregation goes quiet. The assistants take their seats at the edge of the stage. Malachi Dove waits. Then he fixes the audience with his pale eyes. There’s silence in the place now. ‘Whatever you think,’ he says, ‘we are all religious. We may believe in different prophets. My prophet is Jesus. Yours may be . . . I don’t know, Muhammad perhaps? Or Krishna? Some of you may think you have no prophet at all, and that, too, is fine. We don’t check your faith at the door.’

A murmur of laughter goes round the hall. They know that twinkle in his eye, that ironic twitch of a smile.

‘But one thing is sure. We all believe in the same God. I know your God. And you know my God. Maybe by a different name, but you know him.’ He breaks off and grins again, throwing a hand at the audience, like they just told him a risqué joke. ‘OK, don’t panic. I’m not going to quote the Bible at you.’

More laughter. Finn nudges me. He’s got the mic poking out of the little zip-up bag now, like the nose of an animal, pointed in the direction of the stage. We’re waiting for the wackiness to start so we can get outraged. On stage Malachi holds up his empty hands. He makes a great pantomime of studying first one bare palm, then the other.

‘Nothing special about these hands. Is there? Just your average pair of hands. I don’t pretend to have power in them. I can’t send a lightning bolt from them. I know all about my hands because I, like you, have not been content to believe what the tent-show evangelists tell me. I have made it my business to study the subject. Did you know, for example, that a soldier in the victorious army will survive wounds that can kill a soldier in the defeated army? Did you know that? Do you understand the dance of chemicals in your body? Your body . . .’

He points a finger into the audience. He’s smiling, and maybe he’s already got to me on some level, because I ignore this sudden image I get in my head that he’s not a human but a husky dog, staring into my eyes from the stage.

‘Your body can heal itself. It has the knowledge. It only needs the right chemicals. Since the day I left my parents’ home I have never crossed the threshold of a medical professional. And I never will!’ He looks at his hands again, one at a time, like they’re a mystery to him. ‘My faith allows me to channel my endorphins. And with a faith this strong I can channel it to you, too.’

‘What crap,’ Finn mutters.

‘What bukkakes,’ I say. We both shake our heads. But we’re subdued, and we’re not meeting each other’s eyes. We’ve both got a glimpse of what Finn’s ma saw in Pastor Malachi Dove. Straight off when the lights come on, a healing line forms in the aisle going to the stage. The disabled are wheeled out and helped on to the stage by relatives. One of Malachi’s helpers takes them by the arm: Asunción (we find out her name from the crowd), a total vision of horniness with her hair in a long squaw plait snaking down the back of her white judo jacket, keeps production-lining these invalids up on to the stage, keeping a hand on their arms, holding them back until Malachi is ready. Then she nudges them forward, half lifting them, half talking them up on to the stretcher where they lie on their backs staring up at Malachi, who stands above them, back to the audience, both hands on the stretcher, resting his weight there, his head bowed and eyes closed, like he’s waiting for a migraine to go. He doesn’t pray. He just waits. No hellfire. After a few moments he places his hand on the body part and closes his eyes again. Then he lifts his hands and whispers something to the patient, who gets up and leaves. Or is helped away by relatives.

‘Go on,’ whispers Finn, nudging me. ‘Go on. Get up there.’

I get up and join the queue. I feel like a twat because I’m the tallest. All I can see in front and behind and to the side of me are Sunday hats, little blue and pink feathers quivering in the netting. After about half an hour waiting I’m up on the stage under the heat of the spotlights. Malachi glances at me, and for a moment, seeing my height and my strength, he hesitates. But if he thinks it’s a trick he hides it.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Joe.’

‘What part of you has brought you here tonight, Joe? What part of your body?’

‘Bowels,’ I say, because that’s how Finn’s ma went and it’s the first thing that comes into my head. ‘It’s a cancer. Sir.’

I get on the stretcher, thinking about Finn sniggering in the audience. Malachi stands above me, head bent, eyes closed, sweat coming out from under his blond thatch. I register the pores in his cheeks. I see he’s wearing face powder or foundation. Suddenly I’m totally interested in what he’s going to say.

After what seems like for ever, he raises his head and frowns at me. ‘How did they know?’ he goes, in a hushed voice. ‘How could they tell? When it’s so small, how could they tell?’

I swallow. Suddenly I don’t want to laugh any more. ‘When what’s so small?’ I say. There’s a lump in my throat. ‘When what’s so small?’

‘The tumour. It’s less than a centimetre across. How did they even know it was there?’

‘What happened?’ Finn says.

I’ve come off stage. I’m covered with sweat and my head’s throbbing. ‘Two weeks,’ I mutter. I sit there sweating, rubbing my stomach under my jeans waistband. ‘Two weeks. Then I come back to a prayer meeting, and I’m going to pass the tumour.’

‘Pass the tumour? What the fuck does that mean, “pass the tumour”?’ Then he stops. He’s seen my face. ‘Oakesy?’ he goes, suddenly concerned. ‘Oakesy, what is it?’

‘I dunno,’ I mutter, getting unsteadily to my feet. ‘I dunno. But I want to get out of here. I think I want to speak to a doctor.’

The next ten days are a blur. I go from health professional to health professional. Finn trails along behind me, bemused and worried. I eat up half my aunt’s inheritance trying to get a primary-care practitioner to refer me for a cancer test on the grounds a faith-healer has told me I’m dying. I end up stumping up for a faecal occult blood test in the Presbyterian hospital. The doctor, I remember, is called Leoni. It’s in grey pastel letters on her badge. I remember staring at her name while she reads me the results, my heart banging in my ribcage.

Negative. No tumour. No cancer. Did I really believe what an evangelical preacher told me? She’s got pity in her voice.

Well, that does it for me. If I hated him for what he did to Finn’s ma, now I’ve got big fucking rocks in my head for Pastor Malachi Dove. By the time we go back to the Psychogenic Healing Ministries prayer meeting I want to do one thing: kill him.

This time we’re in Santa Fe. The stage looks the same. Asunción’s in an embroidered baptism shift, and when she spots me in the queue again – almost shaking, I’m so fucking pissed off – she takes my hand and leads me back through the crowd. ‘Where are we going?’ I can see the exit door approaching. ‘What’s happening?’

She doesn’t answer. She just leads me, with this totally surreal calm, through the back door of the chapel and left through a door into the toilet block.

‘Move your bowels, please,’ she goes, pointing to one of the toilets.

‘What?’

‘Move your bowels to complete the treatment.’

I stand there stunned, looking from the bog seat to her then back again. ‘I can’t just—’

‘I think you’ll find it easier than you expect.’

I stare at her for a long time. I’d like to slap someone right now, but even at eighteen I’m clear enough to see a story when it comes my way. My hands hover on my belt. ‘What about you? Where are you going to be?’

‘I’ve seen it several times before.’

‘You’re going to watch? You have to be—’ I break off. She’s looking at me with one of those faces that doesn’t need any words – eyebrows slightly raised, chin tilted down, arms crossed. An SS guard, may as well be. Her mouth is closed in a firm line: Argue all you want, it says. I’m not budging. I sigh. ‘OK, OK. Just stand back a bit, for Christ’s sake.’ I unbutton my trousers, pull down my shorts and sit on the toilet, elbows on my bare knees, hands dangling, looking up at her. ‘Well,’ I say, after a while. ‘I told you, nothing’s going to happen—’

Before I know it, Asunción’s conjured a wad of toilet paper out of thin air and is thrusting it down under my arse, forcing it up against me. There’s a moment of uncomfortable slithering as I struggle, ‘What the fuck do you think you’re – get your hand out of—’ and an unfamiliar wet, cold sensation around my arsehole. Then she steps away, pushing her hair triumphantly out of her eyes, the tissue bunched in her fingers.

‘You fucking lunatic!’ I go. ‘What was that about?’

‘The tumour,’ she says, holding the paper under my nose, making me recoil at the fucking awful smell. A wad of something black and slimy sits in the petal-white tissue, something that smells of putrefaction and death. ‘You passed it.’

‘Here,’ I say, making a grab for it. But Asunción is too quick. She whips it out of reach and spins on her heel, throws open the cubicle door and stalks out. ‘Hey – stop.’ I follow, hopping, skipping and almost tripping over my unbuttoned trousers, trying to do up my belt and flies at the same time as push open the doors she’s slamming her way through. In the hall as I catch up with her she’s making a triumphant entrance, hand held high, titanic smile like a boxing-match ring girl, me stumbling after her as she marches up the aisle. Up ahead the pastor’s staging a shocked pause in the proceedings, his eyes widening dramatically at the procession approaching him. ‘Asunción,’ he calls. ‘Why the interruption?’