In the end it was Sovereign who helped me. During lunch I left the table to get another notepad from Blake’s cottage, and on the way back through the mist I heard someone hiss my name. When I backtracked a few paces I saw her standing between two cottages, one finger to her lips, beckoning me with the other hand. She had a denim jacket pulled round her shoulders and dark circles of makeup round her eyes, like she was going on a date. I glanced over my shoulders to make sure I wasn’t being watched, then stepped into the alley.
‘I’ll take you over there,’ she said, leaning forward eagerly. ‘I know how to get to Malachi’s side without the cameras seeing us. There’s a blind spot.’
‘You mean the boat?’
‘No. Through the gorge. I’ve been looking at those cameras and I’m sure we can do it.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’ She grinned, her eyes shining with excitement. She pointed to a rucksack that lay up against the cottage wall. ‘Bottled water and walking-boots. It’ll drive Mum ’n’ Dad crazy, but I’ve got to live a little.’
I looked back over my shoulder down the narrow alley to the square of milky fog at the end. How long would it be before I was missed? Another ten minutes maybe? ‘OK,’ I said, bending to pick up her rucksack. ‘But let’s go quickly.’
‘No – wait. I need some money.’
‘Money?
’ ‘Yes. Twenty quid and I’ll do it.’
‘What’ll you do with twenty quid?’
‘I’m saving up for when I leave. Twenty quid or forget it.’
‘Jesus.’ I thrust the rucksack at her and began patting my pockets for my wallet. ‘You’re a businesswoman, Sovereign, I’ll give you that.’
‘I know,’ she said, her eyes on my wallet, as I found a couple of battered tenners and held them out to her. She grabbed them, like they might disappear, and shoved them into her jacket pocket. Then, instead of turning to go, she bit her lip and raised her eyes to mine. ‘And something else.’
‘What?’
‘I want a quick feel too.’
I paused, the wallet half-way into my pocket. ‘A what?
’‘A feel. You know what I mean.’ She glanced up to the end of the alley and leaned closer to me. I could smell her breath – a bit caramelly, like toffee. ‘A quick grope.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said, kind of awed by her. ‘You want a grope. And for that you’ll take me through the gorge?’
‘Yes.’
I pushed the wallet into my pocket. ‘And what does that mean? I grope you, or you grope me?’
‘Both.’
I gave a short, disbelieving laugh. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
‘No,’ she said. This time she was a bit uncertain. A bit hurt-sounding. ‘I’m serious.’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You can’t be—’ I stopped. Her face had dropped. All the bravado was dissolving. She looked suddenly smaller, like a kid, like she might cry. ‘Sovereign?’ I said. ‘Sovereign, listen. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘What wouldn’t be right?’ she said, her lip trembling now. ‘Why wouldn’t it be right?’
‘Because…’ I held out my hands: do I have to spell it out? ‘Because I’m thirty-eight, Sovereign. That’s, what? More than twice your age.’
‘I’m nearly eighteen.’
‘You’re nearly eighteen, and you’re very pretty, Sovereign, but you – you can’t go around saying things like that to men my age.’
I looked up at the sky, lost for the answer. Me and Lexie had been together for five years. We’d kept our vows, but in my imagination I’d been unfaithful about a million times. I’m not going to lie: in my head I’d done it with boatloads of them – the businesswoman with the ibook next to me on a long-haul to California, the girl who wrapped up organic chicken in the butcher’s in Kilburn, the nurse who once took my blood pressure when I had chest pains after a trip to Mexico. Even, strike me dead, some of Lexie’s friends. The list was endless. And, card-carrying pervert me, some of those girls were Sovereign’s age. Younger, maybe.
‘Why?’ she repeated, like she knew what I was thinking. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘It just is,’ I said lamely. ‘And, anyway, I’m married.’ I held up my hand, showing her my ring. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to my wife.’
Sovereign sniffed and pushed her hair behind her ears, biting her lip and staring at the ring. I could see tears in her eyes waiting to fall. ‘It’s so, so shit out here, Joe,’ she said, in a shaky voice. ‘There’s no one – no one. I mean, who am I supposed to have it off with? Blake, for Christ’s sake?’
I looked at her pityingly, resisting the impulse to put a comforting hand on her arm or shoulder. ‘Things’ll be better when you leave.’
‘But it’s four months.’ A tear broke and she pushed it away with her fingertips. ‘And all I want is—’ She paused, an idea striking her. ‘Can’t I at least smell you? That wouldn’t hurt.’
‘Sovereign—’
‘I won’t touch you, Joe, I promise. It’s just – I don’t even know what men smell like. I know what Dad smells like, but I want to know…’ She hesitated. ‘I want to know what you smell like.’
I glanced up along the alley. I’d been gone more than five minutes now. Soon Blake would start to wonder what had happened and here I was, trapped by a teenager who wanted to smell me. She was gazing up at me, her eyes big and wet. The whole baby-seal, no-fur campaign flashed through my head. I sighed, shook my head, thinking, I can’t believe this is happening, and pulled off my sweatshirt. ‘Be quick.’
She paused, looking at my chest in the T-shirt, running her eyes down to my bare arms. ‘Yeah, I’m a manky old sod,’ I said, looking down at her. ‘Bath shy. Don’t go thinking we’re all this gamey.’ She didn’t answer. She pushed away the last of the tears and stepped forward, stopping just a pace away. I was ready to take a step back, thinking she was going to throw her arms round my neck, when instead she closed her eyes and pushed her face forward, inhaling deeply. I looked down at the skin showing through the thin hair, thinking how weird this must look, me with my chest forward, arms back, and Sovereign in front of me, moving her head in slow circles, a smile spreading across her face, breathing in like she was smelling fine wine and not my stale old body. Blissed-out ecstasy. How totally, totally sad – this girl, with all her swank and ballsy nature, sniffing a guy’s dirty T-shirt in an alley. How was she going to cope when she left Cuagach? She thought she was totally sorted, streetwise, but she had no idea, no idea the fucking bunfight it really was out there.
‘All right?’ I said, ready to pull my sweatshirt back on. ‘Get the picture?’
She stepped back, smiling dreamily, her eyes still closed. ‘Yes. I get the picture.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Joe?’
‘What?’
‘I can’t wait to get to the mainland. I think I’m going to love it.’
I stopped at Blake’s cottage – still no sign of a posse ponying up and coming for me – and got my rucksack, shoving in my camera and some water. The wire-cutters were still at the bottom, but we didn’t need them to get through the gate – Sovereign used a key she’d stolen months ago. She was in a good mood, light-hearted, and the trip was much easier than it had been the night before. Even with white fingers of mist sidewinding through the trees the path up to the gorge was smooth and unchallenging. We passed the first gargoyle.
‘Mum’s idea,’ said Sovereign, giving it a dirty look. She skirted it like it might bite. ‘You see them and think they’re sane parents, but trust me, they’ve got secret freak bones a mile long. Sorry, but you can’t take Mum seriously. I mean, all that stuff about the devil and mine shafts – I ask you.’
‘There’re things she can’t understand,’ I said, keeping my voice low, I don’t know why. I didn’t want to discuss this on our way to Malachi’s land. ‘That’s what ninety per cent of my work is about, thinking about things people can’t explain.’
‘There are things she needs to drama-queen off about, more like.’
We came out on to the ledge and suddenly the misty drizzle of the forest vanished, leaving the sky above the gorge hot, dry and cloudless. The land below looked parched, the light so bright you had to squint. Sovereign wasn’t interested in the view, Malachi’s escarpment, wavering in the heat. She took a right along the ledge and walked fast, breathing hard, waving her hands as she talked. ‘That’s why I put the pentagram on the pig. Never thought everyone would fall for it.’
I stopped in my tracks. ‘What?’
She turned back to me. ‘Don’t look at me like that – I know I made things a whole ton worse, but I just had this, like, uncontrollable itch to freak her out.’
‘And the pig?’
‘Nope.’ She shrugged, turning and starting up the slope again. ‘That really did happen. Found it in the mantrap. And the stuff about the camera too – Malachi really did rip it down.’
‘Is that why he got a restraining order on the village?’
‘It wasn’t just me, it was everyone coming over here and bugging him. But I think the trap was the worst. Think of it: I might have caught him wearing his strap-on tail.’
We went almost half a mile, dwarfed by the huge red letters at our side, until we reached a dried-up streambed cutting into the escarpment. ‘Blake was lying when he said there was no way down,’ she said. ‘He just doesn’t want you going across there and getting caught on Malachi’s video.’
We half climbed, half slithered down the streambed, sending sprays of pebbles ahead of us. At the bottom you could feel how big the place was – the land seemed to go on for ever, chemical drums grouped in piles all over the place, rusting and falling apart, the yellow decals with their skull and crossbones flashing in the sun. Underfoot, the ground felt dead rubbery, like you might sink into it at any moment, and the few trees dotted around were dead and dried up, their naked branches fingering the sky like scorched scarecrows, one or two rattly dead brown leaves clinging to them.
Every now and then Sovereign paused and stared up at the video cameras on the far slope, her hand shading her eyes from the intense white light. ‘I swear, Joe, if we get caught on camera Blake’s going to kill us.’ She kept stopping and starting, changing her mind and heading off at an angle, or even reversing her footsteps. It was so hot I had to keep wiping my face with the bottom of my T-shirt. But at last, when my watch told me two hours had passed, we slipped under the range of the video cameras and began to scale the opposite slope.
The fence glinted from between the trees above, the pigs’ heads like strange, luminescent patches against the thick green leaf cover. It was a much gentler slope than on the centre’s side, and it wasn’t long before the parched yellow land began to give way to a slatier rock and vegetation: first, patches of heather and plantain, then stubby grass and the occasional wild flower. We arrived suddenly at the fence – before we knew it, it was less than ten feet ahead of us and rose at least fifteen in height. At the top, peering down at us from the trees, was a pig’s head, a halo of flies circling it, like a stain in the air. Its eyes had been eaten away by decay and maggots, but the teeth were still there, big and bare, like polished bone. The smell that had drifted across the island the day before was stifling now. I cleared my throat and ran my tongue round my mouth. Malachi, oh, Malachi, I thought, is this where you get up to your little rituals, you mad old bastard?
‘Hmmm,’ said Sovereign, brazenly, looking up into the trees inside the fence to where hazes of midges wafted among the trees. A weak breeze came off the sea and ruffled the branches. ‘You don’t suppose he’s put cameras inside the fence, do you?’ She squatted down and craned her neck up at the tops of the trees, narrowing her eyes. ‘Hello, Malachi, you old bonehead. Come and give it to us. Show us your strap-on tail.’ Beyond the fence the undergrowth was so thick that I couldn’t see more than a few feet – everything in there hung eerily still, like the heat of the day was trapped in the heavy leaves. There was no flicker of movement, just a low-level buzz of insect life deep in the trees that made me wonder about stagnant water.
‘I’ve never been this close,’ she said, ‘not since he put the fence up. He might be dead for all we know, in the trees somewhere – decomposing.’ She stopped. ‘Joe?’
I didn’t answer. I had straightened, my chin up, staring intently over her shoulder.
‘What is it?’
I put a finger to my mouth, my eyes locked on the enclosure, and slowly, disbelievingly, turned my head a bit to one side, wondering if I was seeing a trick of the light. Past the alarm tripwires, beyond the heavy-duty fence, something paler than its surroundings lay on the ground. It was the size and shape of a large snake, and the colour of weathered human skin. It seemed to emerge from the leafy shadow of a large tree-trunk. The hair all over my body stood up like a cat’s.
‘Joe?’ Sovereign was whispering. ‘He’s behind me, isn’t he?’
I blinked. ‘Yeah,’ I whispered.
‘He’s watching.’ She lowered her voice until it was almost inaudible. ‘Isn’t he?’ She turned slowly and stared into the forest, to where the trees beyond the wire fence were silent and still, only the haze of insect life moving in patches through the shadows, while the strange piece of flesh lay inert on the ground. ‘Oh,’ she breathed. ‘Oh.’
Silently I fumbled my camera out of the rucksack and crouched next to Sovereign, hastily fitting on the lens and pulling off the cover. Maybe flesh has a way of communicating its authenticity through channels and senses we don’t know anything about – because I was certain, I’d have put money on it, we were looking at something living. I raised the camera and was focusing when, suddenly, the tail gave a small twitch. Just like a cat. It twitched again, and next to me Sovereign leaped to her feet, breathing hard.
‘Fuck fuck fuck,’ she hissed. ‘Did you see that?’
Her voice alarmed the creature. The tail twitched again, then slid away into the trees and disappeared with a rustle, leaving nothing but leafy patches of shadow and sun.
‘Shit,’ I said, lowering the camera and staring at the place where it had been, trying to make sense of the light and shade.
Next to me Sovereign was backing away, whispering in a shaky voice, ‘What the fuck was it? What was it?’
‘Sssh!’
‘Joe, I want to go. Let’s go.’ She grabbed at my T-shirt, trying to haul me to my feet. ‘NOW! Please, I want to go home.’
Well, that was the choke point, of course. For the Psychogenic Healing Ministries, the moment Sovereign came fleeing across the gorge, crying and stumbling and covered with dust, I was instantly elevated to most-hated-individual status. By the time I’d given up waiting for the creature to re-emerge and had gone after her, the posse had arrived. They were watching us from high up on the graffiti ledge, and when Sovereign saw her parents she raced towards them, crawling up the streambed, scraping her knees bloody, throwing herself, sobbing, into her father’s arms. Benjamin stared at me accusingly over her head. As I climbed wearily up the last few feet Blake came forward and looked me in the eye.
‘I am so out of patience with you, Joe,’ he muttered. ‘As soon as the mist lifts I’m taking you back to the mainland.’
So there I was, the social equivalent of dogshit, excommunicated to Blake’s cottage, waiting for the weather to lift. But he wasn’t getting his wish: by nightfall the mist was still there, the island still shrouded like a ghost ship, and I was stranded, lying on my bed, empty supper plate on the floor. Downstairs they’d mounted a guard – Blake and the Nigerian missionary – in case I tried another great escape. As darkness fell outside the window I closed my eyes, my fingers resting on the lids, and tried to replay the few seconds of rustling wood, the way I’d replayed the tourist’s video time and again. How had Dove done it? I went through every imaginable Frankensteinian scenario: Dove in mad-scientist garb, galvanizing a shaved animal tail with an electric shock; Dove plotting in his lab over a cleverly engineered robot limb, maybe wrapped in meat. There wasn’t an end to my imagination on this one.
At ten I heard them spend a long time going round the house, dragging furniture about. By eleven the cottage was silent, and when I went downstairs I found a chest of drawers pushed up against the back door, the Nigerian asleep on a Zed Bed next to it, Blake in a chair next to the front door, like a sentinel. I stood looking at him for a while, his chest rising and falling. He was clutching an iron fire poker to his stomach – he must have thought he might have to batter me. Me, half his age and twice his size. I held up my hand to say a silent goodbye, feeling a moment’s pity for him – for his fear and for his ambition.
The drop from my bedroom window wasn’t bad. I lowered myself to a dangle under the sill, then kicked off, landing OKish on the grass, my kit banging on my back. Outside, like a silent sign from the sky, I was doing the right thing: the mist was beginning to clear, leaving a cold, moonlit night. As I headed off, wire-cutters at the ready, the only sound was the waves crashing distantly on the beaches. From time to time, going alone through those woods, across the gorge with its ghostly piles of drums, I broke into a soft whistle to keep my spirits up. Dead girlie of me. There was an explanation for what I’d seen behind the tree, I just couldn’t think what it was.
By midnight I was back at the place where me and Sovereign had stopped. The smell of the rotting pigs’ heads was stronger than it had been earlier. I began to walk along the perimeter, flashing the torch beam into the trees on the other side of the fence and sniffing the air. Dove’s land was very quiet, only a vague, vague squeak coming from somewhere deep inside, like the sound of rusting machinery moving in a breeze. The mine? I wondered. The old slate mine? I walked for more than five minutes, and must have been nearing the end of the gorge because I could hear the sea from beyond a bluff ahead of the fence. I thought about a decomposing body, about Malachi lying in the trees, his hands folded on his chest like he did in his prayers. I pulled off my sweatshirt, tied it round my nose and mouth, hauled the wire-cutters from the kit and went straight through the grass towards the fence, ready to go.
Like I said, the big thing with me is that I’m not a superstitious guy – nothing much rattles me. Which was why, as I got close to the fence and felt all the hairs on my arms and face stand up, bristling, at once, I paused, taken aback. I stared down at my hands, turning them over and holding them up so that the moon lit the hairs. What sixth sense had touched that off? Not like me – not like me at all. I peered through at the trees beyond the fence. No movement – nothing except the creak of machinery.
And the wind had died to a breeze, so it wasn’t that stroking my pelt the wrong way. Frowning, I opened the cutters, reached for the fence, and as the blades met, the answer came hard on the heels of the current, static electric field, you stupid fuck, a millisecond too late – five, six, seven hundred volts and fuck knew how many amps, spasming my pectorals and slamming my biceps up so hard that my arms shot out sideways, kangarooing me backwards across the rocks, slipping helplessly, my sandal strap snapping, the wire-cutters flying in a hot silver arc above my head.
SEF. Static electric field – makes your hairs stand up.
I lay on my back in the grass, like Scouser Tommy in army shorts, with my arms out to the sides where they’d fallen, only my eyes moving, tracking the clouds going across the stars and wondering about the heaven that half the world believes is beyond them. It’s a warning, old boy, a warning for the very dense. My nerves are dying, I thought, and the idea made me huff out a breath of laughter – the first clue that I’d live. OK, I thought, not dying, but breaking – my first nervous breakdown. My first electric shock. It burns a path through you. A big path of burned meat that they never know about until they cut you open on the slab. That’s what Finn reckons. That they can put a finger right through it and see which way the electricity went, just the way they can put a pen through a bullet path in a wall.
It was my left foot that came to life first. First my left foot, then a travelling, crackling wave of warmth – and now it was my left leg and the left side of my body. The fingers on my left hand flexed and I could feel my nose and ears twitch. Then, suddenly I could cough. With an effort I rolled sideways, on to my side, and spat into the heather, my right arm hanging like a length of dead meat against my back – like it had nothing to do with me. I raised my chin stiffly and looked around. I must have been lying on my back for a long time. Hours. The moon had moved and there was the beginning of a pink light in the east. Dawn. I wrenched my head sideways and stared over my shoulder at the fence. No warning. Military-compound gear and not a single high-voltage sign for the whole of the stretch I’d walked.
‘Hoo hoo,’ went something from the other side of the fence. ‘Hoo hoo.’
I froze, all the hair on my body standing up like a cat’s.
‘Hoo hoo.’
With my good leg I treadmilled myself round on the ground so I was facing the enclosure. The trees were dark, harlequined in shadow. Above me, one of the pigs’ heads, with its ever-moving halo of flies, looked down at me. I tucked my chin in and squinted painfully, arrows going up my neck. A rustle. A break of a twig. Then silence. I held my breath.
‘Haven’t they told you…?’
My pulse rocketed. I scrabbled round like a beached fish, flailing on the ground trying to face the direction of the voice. Someone was in there – a few feet inside the fence. I could see him: a pale, bloated shape down among the trees, low, like he was crouching. A pair of eyes moved rapidly in the darkness.
‘Didn’t they warn you about me?’
It was him. I knew, straight off. I could see a foot in a worn-out trainer and a white hand clamped round the handle of something. A weapon. Every instinct said I was in deep fucking shit. It was something about that froggy crouch – like he was thinking of pouncing. I thrashed like crazy on the ground, trying to get a response out of my body. When nothing would move I lay back, panting hard.
‘Didn’t they tell you? Don’t you know about—’
He broke off and there was a long pause. His breathing got louder, more congested, like an old man’s, and I could feel his interest tighten and close on me. This is it, I thought, panicking. He knows who you are. He got to his feet. I tensed, expecting his face at the fence, but instead he went backwards, disappearing between the trees. His huge body moved heavily against the branches. There was a crack of twig and a faint rustle, then nothing. The world went silent.
With all my energy I forced myself on to my side and stared into the dark space he’d left, heart thudding like a train, wondering if I’d imagined seeing him in there. The rocks, grass and trees were motionless. After what seemed like for ever, when nothing in the trees moved, and I’d been lying there so long that it was like the world had ticked a degree or two further into morning, I took a deep breath and, with all the strength I could find, pushed myself clumsily into a slumped sitting position.
I sat there, blinking in the pink dawn, digging my good fingers into my right biceps, trying to wake it up. I looked to my side, down the long expanse of fence. Silence. Was there a gate in the fence to let him out on to my side? Was that where he was heading? My rucksack – fuck knew where that had got to, but my torch was lying on the ground about ten feet away, its dying beam lighting up the sparse heather. And there, glinting in the beam, the wire-cutters. I swivelled round, propelling myself on my arse, like a baby that hadn’t learned to walk, scraping my legs in the rough heather. Wire-cutters. Get up, Oakesy, old mate. Do it now. Get the fuck up and get to them. I grabbed my numb right leg, moved it to one side out of the way and rolled clumsily on to my good left knee. ‘Come on. Come on.’ Somehow I got my left foot under me and straightened the leg, my right leg dragging uselessly. But I didn’t have the strength or balance to get any further. The effort had half killed me and I couldn’t get upright. I had to stay there, arse in the air, staring at my grazed kneecaps, swaying a bit, trying not to faint. Wondering whether to throw myself on the ground in the direction of the wire-cutters.
I saw him between my legs. Upside down and silhouetted against the pink sky. He crested the hill calmly, at his leisure, a huge shadow, like a mountain, blocking my vision. I had a moment where I couldn’t move, where I was frozen, clocking all these details. He was massive, wearing something threadbare and filthy, and over the years he’d grown himself man-breasts. There was no strap-on tail dangling between his legs. But he was carrying an axe. Yeah, I thought, my leg going weak. It is an axe. An axe.
‘Come on,’ I hissed at my kneecaps. ‘Straighten up, you fuckers.’ But I couldn’t. I’d lost it. I had to stay there like a fucking hairpin, swaying from side to side and shivering like I was drunk, while he came calmly up behind me. He didn’t change his pace or run or bulldozer me, he just walked up to me and casually bumped into me from behind.
I couldn’t stop myself: I went down, landing face first in the grass, my hands under my stomach, the sound of my nose crunching echoing through my head. A noise barked out of my mouth. ‘Uhhh.’ I lay for a second, head spinning, face mashed against the earth, a long rope of bloody mucus drifting out of my nose, like it was attaching me to the ground. ‘Uhhhhohjesusuuh.’
He got down on his knees behind me and gently, methodically, manoeuvred his body so he was lying on top of me, all his weight on my back, breathing against my neck like he wanted to fuck me. I lay there, heart hammering, forcing myself to breathe in and out with his weight on me, too scared to move, waiting to see what he was going to do. But he did nothing, just lay there on top of me, in this weird, kind of companionable way, with his face turned sideways so it lay against my cheek. A strand of his hair fell down the side of his face, just in the field of my vision. It looked about a hundred feet thick.
I flexed the fingers on my left hand feebly. You can probably still move, old mate, I told myself. I clenched my mouth a few times, trying to get my jaw to click. You probably can. I swallowed the blood that trickled down the back of my throat. If I rolled my eyes back I could just see the beam of the torch. The wire-cutters were right next to it. On top of me, Dove stiffened.
‘Whad?’ My voice came out of me thick and loud, like I had a heavy cold. ‘Whad you doing?’
‘Your peace of mind,’ he whispered. ‘Remember your peace of mind, Joe Finn? Well, now I’m fucking with it. I’m fucking with your peace of mind, Joe.’
He pushed himself off me and I rolled sideways, lungs sucking up air, arms coming up convulsively. He grabbed the axe, and before I could even begin to sit up he was swinging it down, blunt side first. I made a weak grab for it, blindly, my left wristbone colliding with the head and getting a slippery grip for a second before he hefted it away and I dropped back, my hands bleeding, the world rocking and bucking all around me.
And that was it. Bang bang! Maxwell’s silver hammer came down on my head. And, bang, bang, down went old Oakesy. Not dead, of course. But pretty fucking close.