Ritual

  Ten minutes had gone past and Caffery's body was so clenched and tense it had started to ache. He opened his eyes and, moving stiffly, sat up a little. He had to rub his eyes they'd been closed for so long. The moon had moved in the sky, but the Walking Man was sitting exactly where he'd been, on a rolled-up chunk of foam, staring vacantly into the fire as if he'd forgotten anyone else was there.

  'I've been thinking.' Caffery cleared his throat. 'You know you told me I was looking for death?'

  The Walking Man didn't nod or respond so he got painfully to his feet. He could feel the cold in his bones and now he remembered how tired he was. He looked down at the Walking Man, who still hadn't made a sign that he'd heard. He took his keys out of his pocket and jangled them a little, waiting for a response. The Walking Man wiped his eyes, as if tears had been there, but his face remained the same – stony and distant, as if he was off somewhere, fighting a war in a different universe.

  'What did that mean?' Caffery asked, in a quieter voice. He stood next to the man. 'I can't get it out of my head – that I'm looking for death. What did that mean? You said you were the same, that you were looking for death.'

  The Walking Man didn't move. He sat, the cup still in his hands, his dark, intelligent eyes reflecting the dying flames.

  Caffery bent to place his own mug next to the fire. He had straightened and turned to go when a hand grabbed his ankle. He twisted, surprised, and there was the Walking Man splayed out on the ground like a snake, his face turned up to Caffery's, the sinews in his neck taut and shadowed, the moonlight glinting in his eyes.

  'Death and I are best friends,' he hissed. 'I know death better than I know anything.'

  'What?'

  'Can't you see it in my eyes? Can you see how well acquainted I am with death?'

  'Hey.' Caffery moved his leg, not liking the vicelike grip. He could feel the blackened nails digging into his skin. 'Let go now.'

  But the Walking Man wasn't listening. He dug in his nails harder. 'I see death everywhere I go. I am the rod that attracts death. I bring it to me. I saw it tonight – over there.' He nodded in the direction of the road beyond the field. 'I saw death tonight – I looked it in the eye before you came. I was that close. And from that I know it will be my constant companion.'

  Caffery wrenched his foot free and stood above the Walking Man, breathing hard, staring at his face, at the wild hair, the night sky reflected in his eyes. 'What is this bullshit? What shite've you started spouting now?'

  The Walking Man rolled back his head and laughed, as if he'd never heard anything so funny. He got on to his knees and pushed himself to his feet, laughing even harder. 'Goodnight,' he said, holding up a hand. 'Goodnight, PO-LICE-MAN. Have a good night.'

  And he turned away, pulled his sleeping-bag out from a waterproof bag, and began to get ready for the night. Caffery watched him for a minute or two, then headed wearily back across the field to the car.

  There was a light on in the Oscars' – in one of the windows Katherine Oscar liked to use when she was watching the Marleys. Flea noticed it the moment she opened the door to let PC Prody out. She noticed a shape there too – something that might have been the curtain slightly out of kilter, but might have been a person. She ran through the possibilities of what Katherine had seen: Thom coming through in the car maybe, Prody at the door. She thought about it for a few seconds and then, because she would never allow the Oscars to upset her again, she put it out of her mind and forced a smile at Prody. 'Goodbye,' she said calmly. 'Goodnight.'

  She held the door for him, but he seemed reluctant to leave. He took a step on to the gravel drive and looked up at the stars. Then he took in the lawns sweeping down to the lake, the row of pollarded poplars lining the garden and the steps leading down. She waited for him to say it. To say that she'd done well for herself, a twenty-nine year-old on a sergeant's salary, done well to have a spread like this. But he didn't.

  'I didn't hear about the hands,' he said instead. 'I admit. But I did hear about the other thing.'

  'What?'

  'The car-jacker. Last year.'

  'Oh,' she said. 'That.'

  'Yeah. That. And, for what it's worth, I thought you got a raw deal. I mean, you were only trying to help.'

  'You like your gossip, do you? Over in Traffic?'

  He leaned his head back a little and scratched the underside of his chin. 'You know what they said in Traffic? In Traffic, they said you were on your way to joining the suits.'

  She looked at him stonily. 'Why would they say that?'

  'Because around these parts CID have got their heads up their arses, and what they need is people who think outside the box. You know, laterally. People like you – thinking about the car that guy took and about why he took it.'

  Flea stared at him, not answering. It took PC Prody a moment or two to see from her face that the conversation was over. He gave a shy smile, took his keys out of his pocket and half turned towards the car. Then something seemed to change his mind.

  'Just one last thing,' he said. 'You had your reasons for running away from me – but you need to be careful along there, the A36. Been three RTAs last month – remember that little girl thrown through a windscreen? No seat-belt. Did the last twenty feet on her face.' He shrugged and looked up at the cottage, then down, past the cooling Ford Focus, to where the lake glinted silver and black. 'Yes,' he said. 'If you ask me she was lucky it killed her. Wouldn't want the parents to see her like that.'

  He got into his cruiser, touched his forehead, a mock-salute, and started the engine.

  Flea watched him pull away. When his headlights had faded it was just her, the night and the shadow of an owl swooping past the distant city, by turns blotting out the church spires, the abbey, the hills beyond. She felt a cool presence envelop her, starting in her middle and moving up to her head, wrapping her like a second skin. She kept still, knowing, without understanding how, that Mum was touching her, telling her it was all right. Kaiser could wait until the morning. For now, deal with Thom.

  She let a few minutes go by, breathing slowly, until the presence had melted and passed away, and the night was just the night again. The owl swooped away into the trees and disappeared into silence. She turned to go back into the house, registering, but not caring, that the light in the Oscars' window had been switched off.

  40

  18 May

  It was ten o'clock in the morning, very sunny, and Jack Caffery was thinking about redemption. Last night, after the Walking Man, he'd gone home and lain awake thinking about Craig Evans – crucified, strapped to an ironing-board – and about Penderecki, about the ache he still got knowing that the overweight old Polish guy had cheated justice twice – once by getting away with Ewan's murder and then by taking his own life. Caffery had found him hanging from a ceiling surrounded by flies, barbiturates and his own shit. The guy who'd killed Ewan had never been brought to the same balance Craig Evans had been. And now it was morning something else that the Walking Man had said came back to Caffery as he stood in the sun-blistered car park of the Mangotsfield community hall. Don't try to make me believe about redemption, he'd said. You must not try to make me believe in redemption.

  He'd come back to those words today because he'd spent the morning finishing off interviews with the trustees of the remaining drugs charities and now he found himself at one of the last on the list of Mabuza's beneficiaries: Tommy Baines, the chief trustee of the User Friendly charity. He looked up at the church hall, the mullions and ornate cornicing work casting sharp shadows. The analysis of Mabuza's bank account linked with the list the Bag Man had given them showed that every one of the eighteen drugs groups BM had mentioned as a place Mossy might have gone was a beneficiary of Mabuza. Some got more money per annum, some less, but the South African had contact with all of them. But for some reason Caffery's head was twitching more about Baines's charity than any of the others.

  He pushed open the front door and went into the cool, his footsteps muffled o
n the navy industrial cord carpet. 'Tig', Baines called himself. Caffery remembered that as well because it had irritated him, the nickname, and he found that when he thought about 'Tig' he got a feeling he couldn't put a finger on. He wondered if it was a kind of residual anger, a pissed-offness that Penderecki had got away with it, that people like him and Tig always seemed to get a second chance. And then he thought, as he rounded the corner to the office, even though it was petty, the one small thing he could do was to make life uncomfortable for 'Tig'.

  'You again?' Baines said, looking up from the photocopier as Caffery entered the room. There were two older women in the office, in nondescript sludgy-coloured dresses, pottering around holding sheets of paper. Next to them Tig was a total contrast, standing in his vaguely aggressive way, wearing a Duke Nukem vest, camouflage trousers and Dr Martens. 'I've got a session at eleven and they start arriving before that so whatever it is make it quick.'

  Caffery gave a small laugh. This was exactly the way he'd expected Tommy Baines to react. 'I'd like to talk to you,' he said, 'somewhere quiet.'

  Tig looked over his shoulder at the two women. 'We can use the hall,' he said, jamming a palm on to the photocopier stop button. 'No one in there yet.'

  They stood in front of a board covered with notices about Pilates, children's cooking courses and hall-hire tarif charts. Tig's arms were crossed tightly, like a bouncer's, a vein in one of his arms standing blue and hard-edged as if he'd been pumping just before Caffery had arrived. But Caffery was taller and he took advantage of that. He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets, his head forward a little, making sure Tig was aware that he had to bend a little to look into his face.

  'Mabuza,' he said. No preamble. Better this way – just give him the name, and check out the response. 'Gift Mabuza.'

  'Mabuza?' Tig frowned, trying to act surprised, but Caffery could see he wasn't. Not at all surprised to hear that name. 'Yeah, of course I know him. What about him?'

  'How do you know him?'

  'He's a benefactor of the charity.'

  'He gave you money.'

  Tig didn't answer at first. He didn't back away but took his time eyeing Caffery, making sure he knew it was happening. Classic aggressive behaviour, Caffery thought, but go ahead, take your time, if it makes you feel better.

  'He gave me a one-off donation for the charity. That's all.'

  'Why do you think he did that?'

  'He's done it to all of us.' He turned away and began to study the board, pulling notices off and reordering others. Another classic tactic, Caffery thought. Just show me how disinterested you are. 'If this is something to do with that photo you gave me, you're making connections where there aren't any.'

  'Am I?'

  'Yeah.' Tig screwed up a couple of out-of-date notices and chucked them into a bin, moving casually so that Caffery would know he wasn't intimidated. 'Mabuza's son was an addict – did you know that? He's recovering now, thanks to someone a bit like me. Where I come from that makes the money straightforward. He has a thank-you to say.'

  'But not to you. It wasn't you helped get his boy off the gear, was it?'

  'No. But he knows how to spread it around.'

  'So he's got other thank-yous to say? Do you know to who else?'

  Tig shook his head. 'Nah. Nah – see, this is where I can't help. I really can't. I can't be talking to the police about him behind his back.'

  'Why not?'

  'There's nothing to tell. Even if I wanted to, there would be FA to say.' He turned from the noticeboard and held Caffery's eyes. 'Fuck All.'

  'And what happens if I move the goalposts? What happens if I tell you he might be involved in a killing? The mutilation we were talking about? Ian Mallows – not even out of his teens. What do you say then?'

  The word 'killing' got Tig. He blinked once or twice and swallowed. 'You know, it's just occurred to me this conversation is over.'

  'I don't think so. You've got more to tell me.'

  Tig turned back to the board and began fiercely jamming in drawing-pins, turning them with his thumb as if they'd fall out without his help. But Caffery could see the effect on him. He could see colour starting in a band on the top of the man's shaved head and spreading down the back of his scalp, finding a spidery network of veins on his neck and going down under his T-shirt. Sometimes it got people like that, when they heard words like 'killing'. It was then that some realized, for the first time, how serious things were.

  'Like I said, I think you've got more to tell me.' He waited, but Tig didn't answer. He went on with the drawing-pins, working furiously as if his life depended on it. 'What? Nothing else? Even when I remind you of the way they cut off his hands? When he was still alive?' But still Tig didn't answer. Caffery got his card out of his pocket and stepped forward, used a pin to fasten it to the board. 'There.' He tapped it. 'That's for if you remember anything.' He considered the side of Tig's face, then walked away, swinging his keys on his forefinger.

  He was at the door when Tig spoke, so low that at first Caffery thought he'd imagined it. He turned. Tig still had his back to him, but he'd stopped the furious jamming in of pins, and was standing with one hand resting at the top of the board, the other pressed into his side, his head down like a runner recovering from a stitch. As if he'd surrendered.

  'What did you say?' Caffery walked back across the hall, his feet squeaking on the laminate floor.

  'TIDARA.' Tig said it quickly, as if that would excuse him spilling the beans. 'The name of the clinic.'

  'Clinic? What clinic?'

  'The place he gives money to. It's the only place he won't talk about and I don't know why.'

  'TIDARA? Where is it?'

  'I don't know anything about it, just the name. TIDARA. But you didn't hear that from me.' He raised his head cautiously. 'Not from me – OK?'

  In spite of the bad state this guy was in, in spite of the way he was trying to help even though he didn't want to, it was difficult to summon up any liking for him, Caffery thought. He nodded, then came back and unpinned his business card from the board and put it into his pocket, patting it to show it was safe.

  'You never even spoke to me. I was never here. Never set foot in here. And . . .' He tipped back on his heels and looked at the door, at the empty hall. No one was watching them.

  'And?'

  'And I never said thank you. OK. That bit never happened either.'

  He found TIDARA through a directory search and drove the ten miles out of Bristol to a tree-surrounded complex near Glastonbury, with laminated-glass walls and water flowing discreetly across flat white pebbles. Specialists of every description had clinics here – aromatherapists, acupuncturists, chiropractors. TIDARA occupied a light-filled building, surrounded by green bamboo and reached along wooden walkways that spanned the running water. The reception area resembled the entrance to a swanky spa, with two girls in matching cream waffle yukatas smiling up at him from the desk.

  TIDARA had been open for ten months and its director – Tay Peters, a coolly attractive Malaysian in her forties, dressed in cream linen and expensive sandals – was relaxed and courteous as she showed him into her office. She poured two tall glasses of juice and pushed one towards him.

  'Acai,' she said. 'From Brazil. Twice the antioxidants of blueberries.'

  Caffery put his finger into the lip of the glass and tipped it towards him, inspecting the liquid. 'Thank you,' he said, pushing the glass to the side. He picked up his folder and pulled out a file. 'And thank you for seeing me so quickly.'

  She held up her glass to him and smiled. 'You're very welcome.'

  He took out his notebook, loosening his tie and getting comfortable. He didn't really need the notebook – used it as a prop, a way of giving himself room to think. 'I wanted to know about your funding.'

  She raised her eyebrows and lowered the glass. 'Our funding?'

  'It sounds like I'm going round the houses, doesn't it? But bear with me because I am heading somewhere. You've been
open – what? Ten months? And you started from scratch?'

  'I did. I had some seed money from my husband, but the rest of it was my own work – you know, business plans, executive summaries, a mail-shot, then interviews, presentations, et cetera, et cetera. It was all me – on my own.'

  'And your investors?'

  'All private, no public money. Some are venture capitalists, but I've got my angels, you know, my private investors, and even some philanthropists giving me donations. Philanthropists because of what we do here.'

  'You get people off drugs?'

  'Yes, but not in the usual way.' Tay opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a leaflet. On rough, unbleached paper, the word 'TIDARA' was embossed in pale grey. 'We use all natural products. This,' she opened the first page, 'is the Tabernanthe iboga root.' Her manicured finger rested on an illustration of a gnarled root, coiled like a basket. Above it were two or three leaves. 'We create an alkaloid from it we call ibogaine. It's a psychoactive drug, used ritually by the Bwiti tribe in Cameroon. It reduces the craving for heroin and crack cocaine, helps the user understand his or her motives for taking the drugs and, more importantly, reduces the symptoms of withdrawal.'

  Caffery studied the picture, thinking: Ibogaine. Ibogaine.

  'The withdrawal symptoms are the reason most people come to us. The other two effects are sort of side benefits – a happy coincidence, if you like. And all completely legal. Please.' She closed the leaflet and passed it to him. 'Keep it.'

  He took it and flipped through it. 'I'll pass it on to someone in Community Safety – I think they keep a list of organizations.' He put it into his pocket. 'There's a name I want to give you. You might know him as one of your philanthropists.'

  She shrugged. 'I've got nothing to hide. All my donors are extremely high-class individuals.'

  'Is the name Gift Mabuza familiar?'