Mo Hayder
Pig Island
Acknowledgements
After leaving school at fifteen, Mo Hayder worked as a barmaid, security guard, film-maker, hostess in a Tokyo club, educational administrator and teacher of English as a foreign language in Asia. She has an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University, where she now teaches.
She is the author of Birdman and The Treatment, which won the 2001 WH Smith Thumping Good Read Award, and Tokyo, which was shortlisted for the CWA Gold and Steel Dagger Awards for Novels of the Year, 2004. Pig Island, her fourth novel, was a Sunday Times bestseller.
For more information about Mo Hayder, please visit www.mohayder.net
www.booksattransworld.co.uk
'And he laid bold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.'
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.