Read Online Pig Island by Mo Hayder - Free Book Online Page A

to sell?”
    “No. But if we can raise the legal fees and prove he’s insane we can get him into something like the Court of Protection, here or in England. Get a judicial factor appointed, then we’ve got power of attorney and we can buy the island. We won’t cheat him—we’ll give him what he paid for it.”
    “Insane?” I bent to light a cigarette, screwing up my eyes. “On what grounds?”
    “On the grounds he’s practising Satanism on Cuagach Eilean.”
    I paused. The lighter faltered and went out. I raised my eyes to Blake. He looked back at me steadily.
    “I said on the grounds that he’s practising Satanism on our—‘
    “I heard you.” I flicked on the lighter again, lit the cigarette and raised my head. “He’s still on Cuagach? Is that what you’re telling me? He hasn’t gone back to the States? London?”
    Blake pushed back his chair with a loud, scraping noise. “You’d better come through, Joe.” He beckoned me with his cigar. “Come through here.”
    We went into the corridor at the back of the house.
    “I was one of Malachi’s first disciples,” he said. “Me and Benjamin Garrick and Susan, his wife. This cottage was the first place we built on Cuagach and this was our meeting room. I haven’t had the heart to change it.”
    He unlocked a heavy, planked door, switched on the light and let me into a small annexe to the house. It was built in the same stone as the rest of the cottage, with a small mullioned window, but it was cold and unswept—unlived in, the carpet thin and patchy. The walls were decorated with 1970s Malachi Dove tour posters and I walked slowly round the room, studying them: Dove on stage, a spotlight creating a halo behind him, a studio portrait of him, his chin resting on hands, looking into the camera with a frank, intimate expression. Another showed him laid out on his back, eyes closed, hands on his chest, like he was in his coffin. I peered at the picture carefully. He was bloated and old without his glasses. Under the photo were printed the words: ‘When God calls me I will go to His side.“
    “What’s he doing?” I said. “What is this?”
    “He’s praying. This position, on his back, was the only way he could concentrate. Still does, for all I know.”
    I squatted down to sort through a stack of framed photos leaning against the wall. More pictures of Malachi Dove, but this time they all seemed to have been taken on the island. One showed him with a young Blake and the Garricks, arms linked and smiling into the camera. Behind them the cottages were all freshly painted. Mrs Garrick was ringleted in a piecrust-collar Laura Ashley dress. Only Malachi seemed wrong. He looked tired and flabby, his eyes distant behind his glasses. He wore a kaftan to disguise his weight gain, and there was something tight and shiny about his face, like maybe he’d had a lift.
    “He looks ill.”
    “He was agitated. He was suing a journalist in London. He was very depressed by it.”
    “A journalist?” I didn’t look up. Didn’t want him to read my mind. I closed the stack of photos. “When was this?”
    “Nineteen eighty-six. But he never followed it up. Events stopped him.”
    “These are the events you’re going to tell me about?”
    Blake leaned over and pulled from the stack of photos a gilt-framed one showing Dove with his arm round a woman in a drawstring Greek-style blouse. “His wife,” said Blake, tapping the glass. “Asunción. A good Christian girl.”
    Oh, Asunción, I thought. Light of my life. So you married her. A reward for all those old ladies’ arses she had to stick her hand up.
    “They prayed for a child. But when it happened Malachi’s faith collapsed.”
    I raised my eyebrows. Blake shrugged. “Yeah—I know. We didn’t expect it, but Malachi was weaker than any of us thought. When Asunción went into labour you could tell by the way she was breathing there was a problem. It was right here, in this room, it happened.” He pushed