'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.