Angeline’s mother, it turned out, had been dead for two years. Angeline had been on the island all her life and she had no contact with friends or relatives on the mainland. There was nowhere else for her to go. Danso said, ‘Look, hen, a doctor can examine you if you want, see if you need any psychiatric care or medical attention.’ Here, he glanced vaguely down at her hips, then back at her hair, which looked, I agreed with him, diseased. But for all his offers she just stared ahead of her, occasionally looking warily at him and grunting an answer. It was only after about ten minutes that she spoke. ‘Him,’ she said stiffly, nodding at Oakesy. ‘I want to go with him.’
A plain-clothes officer came with us in the Fiesta to the bungalow. They’d had a team out there, checking the place, and they said it was clear. Oakesy wanted to go back and collect our things, then go on to the safe-house. Danso had to take us out the back of the station because by the time we were ready to go–after Oakesy and Angeline had given their fingerprints–the press had gathered in front, growing in number from two or three incongruously battered cars at ten a.m. to forty or fifty now, all lined up in the seasidey street, their drivers’ doors open, the occupants waiting patiently, a BBC television van in their midst. ‘Fucking hyenas,’ Oakesy muttered, apparently forgetting what he does for a living. ‘Grubby little shits.’
Oakesy drove–I went shotgun. The ‘babysitter’, a small shaven-headed man in a poloneck who had shadowy patches on his fingers that looked as if they might have once been LOVE/HATE tattoos, sat in the back with Angeline. He didn’t speak much. All the way through the narrow back-streets he hooked his hand on the back of the seat and stared out of the rear window, watching the other cars.
The nights were drawing in, and by the time we got to the bungalow it was dark. There was an unmarked car at the foot of the driveway and a marked one parked at the top, the blue lights flashing silently on and off, lighting up the interior of the woods like an electric storm. Oakesy stopped the Fiesta and he and the babysitter got out and went to speak to the driver, leaving Angeline and me sitting in the car with the engine still running. Our headlights made yellow cones, reflecting off the police car and the men’s faces, but beyond this halo of light the woods, the driveway and the bungalow were cloaked in the sort of compressed, borderless darkness that you never see if you live in the city. I stared in the direction of the bungalow, my eyes swimming in and out of focus it was such an impenetrable black, wondering why I hadn’t thought to leave a light on before I left. It wasn’t like me not to–I always leave a light on. So why had I forgotten to do it this morning? I shuffled forward in the seat and put my hand against the windscreen, shading my eyes and trying to see past the lights up to the bungalow, my breath steaming up the glass.
The driver had got out of the marked car and all the men were standing at the side of the driveway now, just at the very edge of the pool of light, all peering at something on the ground. Oakesy said something, and both policemen glanced at his face, then looked thoughtfully back along the driveway for a while, then at the police car. The driver went to it and got down on his haunches to examine the front wheel, pulling a pen out of his pocket and digging into the tread as if he was searching for something. The other two men watched him, exchanging a sentence or two, and after a while the driver stood up and shook his head. Oakesy and the babysitter came back to the car.
‘What?’ I said as they climbed in, bringing a whiff of night smoke and the chill of an early frost on their clothes. ‘What did you see?’
‘When?’ said Oakesy, turning his eyes to meet mine.
‘Just now. Over there.’
‘Nothing.’ He disengaged the handbrake and swung the wheel round. ‘Just tyre marks.’
‘Tyre marks? Whose tyre marks?’
‘His.’ He nodded at the marked car. ‘That’s all.’
I stared at the car as we drove slowly past it. The policeman was in the driver’s seat now, studying something–a map or a notebook, a penlight shining down, making a reddish blur of his profile. ‘Are you sure?’ I said, trying to keep my voice level. Earlier I was sort of excited. But now it was beginning to be nasty all over again. ‘Are you sure they were his? Could he have got them confused?’
‘I’m sure.’
He stopped at the bungalow and switched off the engine and we all leaned forward and peered at our reflection in the huge plate-glass window for a moment or two.
‘Has anyone been inside?’
‘Checked it before we got here and it was all locked. No sign of anyone.’
‘Do you think they switched the light off?’
‘I don’t know. Probably.’
The other policeman started the engine of the car behind us and switched on the headlights, coming up the drive and stopping behind us, the lights dazzling us all.
‘Bastard,’ said the babysitter, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare bouncing off the rear-view mirror.
‘Coming?’ Oakesy opened the door.
I shivered and glanced up at the bungalow. ‘No, thanks.’
‘OK. Won’t be long. Ten minutes. Going to take a meter-reading for the landlord too.’
‘Don’t crease my clothes. Lay them flat.’
He looked at me for a long time, as if he was trying to decide what to say. Then he sighed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, climbing wearily out of the car. ‘I won’t crease your clothes.’
When they’d gone the car began to get colder and colder. The officer in the car behind switched off his lights and the engine and, slowly, silence came down. The darkness seemed to stretch round the car and the bungalow. Behind me Angeline sat chewing a nail and staring blankly out of the window. For ages it was just me and her, and our breathing, which seemed to get louder and louder in the quiet.
‘Angeline?’ I said, after a while. ‘Do you think your father’s going to try to find Joe? I mean, do you think he could have been here? In these trees?’
There was a pause. ‘Don’t know.’
I waited for her to go on, but she just went silent again. So, I thought, no more communicative than when we were at the police station. I dropped my head back against the seat and put my hand in my shirt pocket where I usually kept my mobile, but of course it was still inside the bungalow. It was so odd to have no contact with the outside world. With Mummy or Christophe. I had a picture of Christophe in my head. I tried to keep it there, so I didn’t have to think about the woods around us.
Eventually I sat up and swivelled round in the seat. Angeline hadn’t moved. She was sitting near the window, holding the handle above the door, using it to lift some of her weight off her backside. A little stray light was shining off her forehead, which looked big and domed because of the weird haircut. In the car behind, the silhouette of the police officer was motionless. ‘Angeline,’ I said carefully, ‘what do you think the detective meant? DS Struthers? About the devil? The devil of Pig Island–do you know what he was talking about?’
At first she didn’t answer. She just looked out at the bungalow, at the door where Oakesy had gone, her eyes fixed, the skin round her mouth tightening. I put my elbow on the back of the seat and lowered my chin on to it: watching her.
‘Angeline? I was asking if you knew what he meant. Because I think I know. I think I’ve seen what he was talking about. I’ve seen it on a video.’
There was a moment’s silence. Then she turned very quickly and stared at me. I could see a vein beating rapidly in her temple.
‘Didn’t you know? There’s a video, Angeline, a video of something. Walking along the beach of Cuagach. It’s a bit blurry. But there’s no doubt what it is. It’s a creature on the beach–half man, half beast.’ I licked my lips and glanced out of the window at the police car. Suddenly it seemed important that no one was watching me too carefully. ‘Or maybe,’ I said, in a low, clear voice, leaning over the seat and pinning her gaze meaningfully, ‘maybe it was half beast, half woman…’