Ritual

  'I need your help. I wouldn't ask if there was anywhere else I could go.'

  'OK,' he said cautiously.

  'Richard Dundas – you met him, he's in my team.'

  'Yes. I remember.'

  'His lad's gone missing. Jonah. Told his mother he had a job that was going to pay a lot of money. Went out and she never saw him again.'

  'A job? What sort of job?'

  She sighed, scratching her head distractedly. 'He's a hooker. That's why I came to you. If I just send this through the duty inspector at Trinity Road it'll never be taken seriously. He's on the game, he's a user. He's a mess.'

  'And it's not the first time he's disappeared?'

  'No – it is the first time. That's the problem. I know Dundas and if he says something's wrong then something's wrong. I came to you because I thought . . .' Her stomach clenched. 'Because you seem like someone who'd do something about it.'

  Caffery was looking at her mouth, as if he was considering the words that had just come out of it. He seemed about to say something, then apparently changed his mind. He stared up at the sky, as if he was thinking about the weather, maybe, or trying to catch a scent on the air. He was silent for such a long time she wondered if he'd forgotten she was there. When at last he turned his eyes back to her she saw instantly that everything had changed.

  'What?' she said. 'What is it?'

  'I'll do it. I'll do it now.'

  He pulled out his keys, seemed again about to say something, then nodded, almost to himself, and walked away from her, one hand raised briefly to say goodbye. He got into the car and drove out into the lane, past Security, leaving her in the sun, wondering if it had really been that simple, if he'd meant what he said or if he'd have forgotten about it by the time he reached the main road.

  45

  Mossy lies on his back, tears running down his face. The room is still now. At last it has stopped its rolling, its thumping like a giant heart, and he's grateful at least for that. He takes a few breaths. It's daytime and on the other side of the grille, very close, a car's just pulled up. Maybe it's the others coming back because the place has been empty for hours. They've left him here with the locked gate, Will Smith looking at him impassively over his rocket-launcher and Brad Pitt frowning, the sun glinting off his breastplate.

  It's the first time in what seems like a lifetime that the pain has gone down to a level where he can concentrate, to think about his situation. He's no idea how long it's been since Uncle took his hands. Lately time's been slipping all over the place, he's been in a fever, he knows that, and somewhere in the fever he's lost track of who he is and where he's located in the world. He closes his eyes and tries to think his way back, but all he can remember are the first few hours when he came round from the drug.

  It was like being hurtled into a white wall, or taken into space and set spinning with no sense of up or down. It was a pain like nothing he'd experienced, worse than the agonies, worse than the ulceration he'd had on his leg at Christmas. He lay on the sofa and howled, his arms clamped between his legs, the inside seam of his jeans pressed hard on the wounds as if that might stop the agony. He didn't dare look at what they'd done to him.

  Skinny sat with him, trying to keep him calm, giving him a hit regularly, using his hard little fingers deftly and pushing the needle gently through the skin, always taking time to find a place that wasn't already broken. It was only on the second day, when he'd screamed just about all he could, that Mossy got up the courage to look. He waited until Skinny had given him a hit and, gulping hard because he thought he'd puke, he did it. He looked at the place his hands had been. He held his arms up. His head went dead for a moment, wouldn't move, and all he could do was stare. His first thought, when it came, was ridiculous and surreal: it was how short his arms were. Someone had wrapped the stumps in bandages, the sort you could get from a first-aid kit. They were thick and crusty with blood and fluids and had been taped secure with lots of ordinary Elastoplast, all with black gum round the peeling edges. Shaking so hard his teeth were chattering, he laid the stumps on his thighs and stared at them for a long, long time thinking how fucking short his arms were. He kept coming back to that – that his arms were tiny. He wondered how he'd never thought to notice this – or to notice how big or small his hands were.

  And then it hit him, a dead weight slamming him in the chest. He'd seen them every day of his life but he couldn't remember what his hands were like. He'd never see them again. His own fucking hands and he'd never look at them again. He dropped his head back on the sofa.

  'You fucking bastards,' he screamed. 'Give me back my hands.' Tears rolled down his cheeks. Skinny crawled across the floor and knelt next to him, stroking his forehead, but there was a howling hole of sadness at Mossy's centre that couldn't be smoothed away. 'My hands. My hands. Mine. They're my fucking hands.'

  And it is this he keeps coming back to. They are my fucking hands. Over the last few days, while the pain has lessened, while Skinny has changed the dressings in the best way he knows how, Mossy's just kept up the rage that someone's dared to take something of his own away from him, that if he could just see them he'd be able to do something about it, reverse it maybe. He is more jealous of his hands than of anything he's ever owned. There's no boyfriend, no gear, nothing he could ever have felt this way about. They are something no one could replace – something his parents gave him, and this thought makes him cry even more. That his parents gave him something precious. He hasn't given a toss about his parents for years, but now he can't stop thinking of their sadness if they find out his hands have been taken from him. His capacity to feel something about Mum and Dad makes him wonder how he ever ended up a scag-fag like this.

  A smell has started to come from the wounds. Three days ago, when he was trying to turn over on the sofa, he felt something inside the bandages on his left stump give with an unzippering sound that made him want to puke. A thick, milky fluid leaked into the bandages. Within a few hours the fever set in and Mossy was taken away again to another world, a world of pain where his body was nothing more than a giant pulse. For days he sweated and thrashed on the sofa, getting brief moments of clarity, the Men in Black staring down at him. Sometimes the poster read, Protecting Scum From the World and sometimes it read, Get the Fuck Out of the Universe, Mallows, YOU Scum. Whenever the world stopped turning, he screamed about his hands, rolling sideways on the sofa and yelling into the dark grille, Give me back my fucking hands, you cunts.

  And now his strength is gone. His body has given up and all he can do is lie there, breathing weakly, and listen to the empty building creaking around him. It's easy to pretend that none of this has happened, that he never went to that counselling session, that he never met Skinny, and thinking about what it was like before it all went wrong makes his heart feel like it's cracking. Now that he's thinking straight he knows the truth. There's no going back. He's going to die here. He lets the voices come into his head, lets the few weak rays of sunlight come into his eyes and he knows it's the last sunshine he'll see.

  And then, outside, behind the grille where the sunlight is and trees are green, the car's engine cuts and a door slams.

  46

  The interior of the Ford smelled stale, so Flea wound down the window as she drove to Kaiser's. It didn't take long. In less than half an hour the Mendips had her, with their dense forests and unexpected ravines, and she remembered how lonely the world could be. She came slowly up the drive, parked in the gravel bay, cut the engine and wound down the window. The sun was nearly at its zenith, with clouds flitting across it, the ground parched, the house uncared-for. A cat, asleep in the shade of a water butt, blinked and raised its head sleepily, but apart from that nothing moved. She looked up at the boarded-up windows, the curtains closed in all the others, and thought about the times she'd been here as a child. She tried to remember whether Kaiser's place had always seemed sinister or whether that feeling was new.

  After a while, when no one came, she got out
of the car and slammed the door. The noise echoed round the empty field and she hesitated, wondering if Kaiser had heard it inside. But when he didn't appear she took off her sunglasses and, stopping once or twice to pat one of the legion of dusty cats that came out of the weeds and rusting old machinery and butted her calves, went to the front porch and peered inside the plastic sheeting. When she couldn't hear anything she went round the side of the house. The back door was unlocked and Kaiser's car was there, the rusty old Beetle, but there was no sign of him, neither in the outbuildings nor in the greenhouses. She went into the kitchen and stood there.

  The plastic sheeting leading from there to the hallway was flapping very gently into the room as if a window was open somewhere. There was a half-eaten sandwich on the table – a few flies buzzing round it – three halves of avocado on a wooden block, their cut stones leaking a thick, blood-like liquid, and everywhere else the usual chaos of Kaiser's life, piles of National Geographic on the sideboard, a guinea pig staring at her, huddled on the floor of a cage on the table. She took off its water bottle and refilled it, wedged it between the bars and watched the little animal fasten its pink mouth round the nozzle, sucking noisily. Then she picked up the board and shovelled the avocados, with their leaking hearts, into the bin.

  In the living room there was a plate with a paper napkin and crumbs on it, and in the centre a lawnmower engine in pieces lay on newspaper. Flea shook the mouse on the computer at the desk, but the screen was dead so she went to sit on the sofa where she'd spent Saturday and tried to remember lying there for eighteen hours. She pressed her hands into the sofa, peering down at it, as if she might get a flashback from its fabric. She tried to recall getting up and going to the computer, but all she could think about were the hallucinations: her parents' skeletonized bodies in the swirling waters of Bushman's Hole. And her mother saying, This time they're going to find us . . .

  She sat back, her arms folded. Arranged across the walls were the locked cabinets, the ones Mum used to say Kaiser kept his drugs in. Beyond that was the doorway where he'd stood yesterday, in his white shirt, his face in ruins. She thought of a picture she'd seen in his witchcraft book, the one in Dad's study. It showed a shaman dressed in a beaded shift, on his headdress a goat's skull, the eyes picked out with silver foil. She massaged her arms, and glanced over her shoulder, feeling momentarily cold, as if a draught had come in from the window behind her. Kaiser's African masks stared back at her. She'd seen them a million times. No reason to feel strange. Just that everything was weird now, with the way she'd spoken to the dead, the way she'd known her parents would be found.

  She went into the hallway and called up the stairs. 'Kaiser? Are you there?'

  No answer. She looked down the hallway, at the tattered walls, the paper hanging off in strips, the metal stepladder with a discarded plasterer's float tipped on its side. For all Kaiser's labours this house didn't get any more like a home. She understood why Mum and Thom were uncomfortable here – with the draught coming down the hall they'd never wanted to go further in.

  She wondered if she should search the other rooms, check Kaiser wasn't lying somewhere with a broken leg, or the victim of a stroke maybe, and then, when there was absolute silence, just the distant clack-clack-clack of a loose window moving in the wind, she went back into the living room.

  A red standby light shone on the television set and the video-player was whirring, the green numbers clicking by. She watched the numbers, she let her thoughts roll, and then, because she'd never known Kaiser watch videos before – in fact, she'd never known him watch television – she got the remote control and idly switched on the TV. It crackled reluctantly, then burst into life.

  The sound was down, but before she could reach out for the remote control to turn it up an image came up on the screen. Shot in the slightly brown-stained colour of old film, it showed a man lying on a bed. What he was doing made her grip the remote tightly.

  He was young, black and very thin. There were sweat stains on the plain khaki shirt he wore and his face and body were contorted with pain, his torso sprung up in the air like a bow, his jaw clenched. She couldn't see where the pain was coming from but it was real: sweat ran down his face. He stayed in that position, his face locked in agony, his body distorted, for about five seconds. Then something changed. The tension in him went. His eyes flew open as if he'd come back to consciousness. There was a breathless pause in which he remained bent up, away from the bed, eyes flicking backwards and forwards, unable to believe the pain had stopped. Then, in one shudder, he collapsed into a foetal shape, holding his knees. The screen flickered, then went blank.

  Flea stared disbelievingly at the screen, not sure of what she had seen. She kept as still as she could for as long as she could, and then, when she couldn't think what else to do, she got up and ejected the videotape, dropping it on the little table, pulling her hand away as if she'd been burned. Her heart was thudding. Torture. That was what she'd watched. Torture. What the hell was Kaiser doing with a tape of torture in his house?

  A noise from behind made her spin round, her mouth dry. Kaiser was in the doorway. He was wearing the same grass-stained white shirt as yesterday and was holding a pair of long-handled shears.

  'Kaiser?' she said, her voice slow and suspicious. 'Kaiser – I don't get it . . .'

  He didn't answer. Instead he gave a sad smile. It was the sort of smile that said he'd always hoped the world would never have brought him to this moment. It was the sort of smile that said this was one of those nasty necessities in life.

  'Phoebe,' he said slowly. 'Phoebe. I think it's time we had a talk.'

  47

  The sound of the car door slamming makes Mossy come to a little. He opens his eyes and blinks, turning his head painfully to one side. He uses his upper arms to rub his eyes, trying to clear his vision, wondering why he's suddenly alert. It isn't unusual to hear cars outside. But there's something in the sound of this one that's different. As if it's got a purpose that's connected directly with him. Maybe it's the Peugeot.

  He cranks his head back so he can see the gate, expecting light to flood in, to see Skinny. And there is something in the corridor, but it isn't Skinny. Mossy's heart starts to beat hard and monotonously, a trickle of fear coming cold in his veins. He's sure he can see it – something moving out there in the dark – something small, close to the ground. Something that might have been a trick of the light, but might also have been a shape moving fast. A shape with eyes.

  'Hey?' he whispers. 'Who's there?'

  Silence. But – he feels cold as the thought comes to him – he knows who it is. The brother. The one who took the bottle of blood out of the fridge and drank it. So he hasn't been alone all this time after all. The brother's been there all along. His heart goes even faster. Somehow he's sure the smell of his stumps will bring the brother in, make him sniff around.

  'You fucker,' he hisses, his head seesawing sickeningly, making him want to puke and cry at the same time. 'You try anything, you fucker, and I'll have you.'

  The dark shape seems to hear him. There's a moment when it looks more like a shadow than ever, as if it might run straight up the wall, but then a tension comes into it, as if it's listening.

  Jabbing his elbows into the arms of the sofa, Mossy struggles into a half-sitting position, head wobbling, teeth chattering. 'You arsehole,' he mutters. 'I'm ready for you.'

  The shape reacts quickly to this. It coils itself into a ball. There's another pause, while Mossy hardly breathes, trying to get his body ready to fight. He raises his head and bares his teeth, ready to take a chunk out of the little bastard if he comes near. But nothing happens. The shape doesn't come towards him. Instead, after a moment or two, it slips silently away, leaving him staring at the space it left, his head pounding.

  Mossy stays there for a long time, his eyes locked on the gate, his body tense, breathing hard. He wishes Skinny would hurry. If that was him in the car he wishes to Christ he'd come straight through. He fights
the nausea he got from sitting up, wishing the little African was here, until at last he gives up and something pink and familiar and dark, like the insides of mouths and wounds, swims up inside his eyes and takes him back down.

  48

  In spite of all his instincts, he'd decided not to go to Kaiser Nduka's. For a moment, standing in the car park looking at Flea, Caffery'd had the feeling he was balanced on an edge, that a breath of air could send him one way or the other: to help her, or to keep going on his usual pattern of following the job regardless. In the old days he wouldn't have been swayed by what a woman said, so what did it tell him that with Flea he'd fallen effortlessly on to her side of the fence? He'd made a solemn promise to investigate the disappearance of a scag-head who was too busy whoring himself to turn up for one lousy meeting with his mother. Still, it had been a promise, and the choice he'd made – of doing something to help Flea – well, he had a feeling the Walking Man would say something about it. In fact, he had the weirdest feeling the Walking Man would approve.

  And now here he was, looking at the bedroom in Jonah Dundas's tiny flat. It was small, just enough space for the single mattress and a large milk crate containing some balled-up T-shirts and a pair of trainers. The top pane of the metal-framed windows had been smashed through and carrier-bags from a supermarket – Eezy Pocket – had been taped over the hole. They sucked and blew, in and out, as the air currents fifteen storeys up moved and buffeted the building.

  Faith Dundas and her ex-husband Rich were in the doorway, trying to see the room through Caffery's eyes, hoping he would pick up a clue they'd missed. Faith was an unremarkable woman, dressed in a plain navy blue skirt and a pink sweater, neat low-heel pumps on her feet. Her hair was greying, scraped back in a bun, and she didn't look like the mother of a drug addict, except that her eyes were swollen from crying. It made her look as if she'd been punched in the face. This was the thing with the parents of addicts, Caffery thought: either they kicked the kids out and let them take their chances in the world, or they became cuckoo parents, killing themselves to keep up with the child that took more than its fair share of everything.