Ritual

  'Did he say where he was going last night?' Caffery asked, with his back to the window. 'Anything at all?'

  'No,' Faith said, in a muffled voice. She had a tissue pressed to her mouth and it was hard to decipher what she was saying. 'All he said was he had a job. A special job. I've been thinking about it and thinking about it, but I can't remember anything else.' Tears rolled down her face. 'I didn't pay him much attention. I thought I'd heard it all before and I just . . .' Her voice trailed off into low sobs.

  'What did he mean, "a special job"?'

  She shook her head, more tears squeezing out of her eyes. Caffery raised his eyebrows questioningly at her ex-husband.

  Dundas cleared his throat, squaring his shoulders. 'He was . . . I don't know. Going to make a lot of money.'

  'How much is a lot?'

  'One thousand eight hundred pounds.' He looked sideways at his wife. 'That's what he told her anyway.'

  'One thousand eight hundred . . .' Caffery shook his head. 'Nearly two K? What sort of job was he going to do?'

  'I don't know.'

  'I mean, that's one hell of a night's work,' Caffery said. 'You've got to agree – it's one hell of a good night.'

  'I wasn't there.' He glanced down at the top of his ex-wife's head. 'Maybe if I was there I'd've . . .' His big face tightened, as if he was going to cry. 'I'm sorry,' he said, putting a finger on the end of his nose and closing his eyes as if that might calm him. 'It's hard to say what he was going to do when I wasn't even there.'

  Caffery picked up a T-shirt. It was balled tight, glued together by something white and crusty. He didn't want to think about what it was, so he dropped it and brushed off his hands. He eyed the pathetic mattress with its rucked nylon sheets and lumpy pillow. He told himself he'd been right not to have children with Rebecca. That he'd never have to be in Faith's position, in tears over the loss of someone who'd sucked him dry the way Jonah had his mother.

  'He's sold his belongings, hasn't he?'

  Faith stopped crying. She held her breath for a moment, then said, 'Yes. I believe he has.'

  'Things you bought him?'

  She nodded again.

  'To keep his habit going?'

  'I think . . . I think maybe.'

  Dundas pulled her closer. He looked directly into Caffery's eyes, a hint of anger there. Trying to protect his ex-wife from herself. 'He'd been telling his mother he'd found a way to pull out of his addiction.'

  'I see.'

  'It might have been the truth.'

  Caffery nodded neutrally. 'It might.'

  'He said he'd made up his mind. He was going to clear his debts and use the rest to get off the gear.'

  'And I suppose she gave him the money.'

  'Not this time. This time she said no.'

  Faith looked up at her husband, her chest in the marshmallow-pink sweater heaving. 'And now look.' She sobbed. 'Now look.' She buried her face in his chest, her voice rising higher and higher. 'And now look what's happened. Now they're going to cut off his hands, like they did to that other poor boy, and if they take his hands, if they do what they did to the other one, then I'll have to die too. Do you hear me? I'll have to die too.'

  At these words Dundas went very still. He lifted his eyes and met Caffery's. He didn't say a word, but it was the kind of look that said paragraphs. Whole pages. They both knew what the other was thinking.

  'Uh . . . Faith?' Caffery said. 'Why do you – what makes you think that's going to happen? What you said about his hands. What made you say that?'

  'He's been here,' she whispered. 'Here in this flat. He used to come here sometimes. Jonah told me.'

  'Who's been here?'

  'Him. That poor lad.'

  'Mallows?' Caffery glanced at Dundas and saw the words had come at him with a thump too. His face was grey, blue-veined. 'Faith?' he said. 'You're telling us Jonah knew Ian Mallows?'

  'They were good friends.'

  Caffery's thoughts moved very slowly, slowly but clearly – Jonah and Mossy. Jonah and Mossy. He put his face near to the window, staring past trickles of condensation trapped in the double-glazing. The brown lawns and parking spaces two hundred feet down looked as if they belonged to a different world, the people just specks of colour. In his head was BM's voice: He said people were going to get hurt. I remember him saying it now – said, 'There are some sickos out there, BM, and I don't know who they'd go out and hurt if it wasn't for people like me, stupid fuckers who give it up without a fight.'

  In the end there was something about the fear and misery in Jonah's flat that Caffery couldn't bear. He called a family-liaison officer for the Dundases and when she arrived he made his excuses, rode the eighteen flights down in the lift and sat locked in the car to make the rest of the calls. He spoke to the inspector at Trinity Road, then to his SIO, and within half an hour he had door-to-door teams organized, bringing in half of the team that were out interviewing the drugs charities. When he'd done that he tried calling Flea's unit phone even though he knew she wouldn't answer. The acting sergeant was understanding, gave him Flea's private number, but the call was diverted straight into her voicemail. He didn't know what to say, so he hung up.

  He sat for a while, watching a gang of hoodies glowering at him from the tower lobby – they could smell cop faster than they could spit, these kids – and he wondered about the money Jonah thought he was going to make. Eighteen hundred quid. Just a tad more than TIDARA were charging addicts to get clean. The pamphlet sat on the passenger seat and he picked it up, looking at the gnarled root, with his biro markings round it. He pulled out the phone again and called the multimedia unit in Portishead to tell them that when they'd found the CCTV footage of Mossy they needed to send a still of the guy in the white shirt to his phone. Then he switched the car engine on and slowly, slowly, let it ease out of the estate.

  He was thinking about ibogaine again. Ibogaine and Kaiser Nduka, who knew all there was to know about how it was used in religious ritual. His address was in the Mendips, not far away: just one exit along the M4. Not far. The team could pick up here – he'd have time to get there and back. And, anyway, he had an itch that Nduka was important to the investigation.

  Nduka lived in a part of north Somerset that had a look of France, with derelict stone buildings and wooded lanes that wound up and down the sides of hills.

  Caffery drove slowly through clouds of midges, stopping once for a string of riding-school horses to trail past. The entrance to the driveway was easy to find, an oval wooden sign tucked into the hedgerow, the words 'Dear Holme' carved into it – a relic from when the place was built, by the look of it. From the road the going got rougher. The driveway rose steeply and was unkempt, with ruts and potholes and overhanging cowslips that brushed the car and left pollen traces on the windscreen. He felt as if he was coming through a jungle, as if he was venturing off the map, and when he looked at his phone display he wasn't surprised to see the signal icon shrink then be replaced by a crossed-out phone.

  'Shit,' Caffery muttered. He shoved the phone into his breast pocket and drove on, losing all sense of direction until suddenly the overhanging plants and trees cleared, he passed a little area of overgrown grass, and the drive opened out. He was about a hundred yards from a ramshackle nineteen-fifties house, perched on the edge of a sweeping valley and surrounded by tumbledown outhouses. There were weeds in the asphalt, panes of glass – maybe dismantled greenhouses – piled up on the verge, and boards over some of the lower windows. It was deserted and forgotten-looking, but it wasn't the house that was making his heart thud. It was what was parked with its nose facing the front door.

  A silver Ford Focus.

  The number plate started 'Y9'. Flea's plate began with 'Y9'– he'd noticed that this morning in the car park at HQ. It wasn't much of a coincidence – there'd be hundreds of Y-reg silver Ford Focuses in the area. It was other things he'd noticed in the car park that bothered him more about this car: the tiny piece of material poking out of the closed boot
as if she'd carelessly shut it on something, and the navy force holdall on the backshelf. Those couldn't be coincidence too.

  Turning to the house, Caffery couldn't say why, but he had an image of things happening out here that couldn't be explained – of people doing brutal dances in the dark. Kaiser was one of the country's leading experts on witchcraft. He had a connection with TIDARA. Something cold trickled through his veins. What had Mabuza said? That the intellectuals were trying to set him up?

  He slowed the car, letting it creep forward. Going quietly, taking care not to do anything quickly that might alert anyone inside the house, he turned off the drive into the grass, making a U-turn so the car was facing towards the road. He killed the engine and got out, closing the door with a quiet click. He didn't like places like this, desolate and uncared-for: they reminded him of a place he had been to once in Norfolk, a place where he'd once thought he might find clues about Ewan.

  He stepped into the grass and approached slowly. There were no sounds, only the click-click-click of his car engine cooling behind him. A cat lying in the shade of a water butt opened its eyes and regarded him contemplatively. He got to the side of the house and stood in the shadow, the heat in the brick radiating against his back, feeling idiotic, creeping about like the SAS. He took off his jacket and draped it over the handle of a rusting garden roller, wiped his forehead with his sleeve and began to count. When he got to ten he'd walk to the front door and ring the bell, be official, say he wanted to talk about work. He'd laugh about it, stop tilting at windmills.

  And that's exactly what he would have done if, by the time he'd counted to five, someone inside the house, someone only on the other side of the wall, hadn't begun to scream.

  49

  He'd been in the job long enough to know when to follow his training and when not to. He knew this was a time when he should follow everything he'd been taught and put in a call to Control, but the red light on the radio was blinking, telling him it was out of range too. He wasn't going to drive back down into signal range so he did the exact opposite of what he should have done. He kept going.

  About four feet away from him, resting against one of the piles of glass, was a wooden handle. It had belonged to a pickaxe or a shovel and it was exactly the right size and weight. He snatched it up and backed into the lee of the house, standing with the handle out, his arms trembling. The screaming stopped and he edged forward to the nearest window, straining to hear what was happening. Then he squatted and crab-walked his way under the ledge, straightened and went to the corner of the house, put his back to the wall as if he was in a western shoot-out, and peered round it.

  A cloud had gone across the sun and the front of the house was in shadow, the greying pebbledash pocked in places as if it had taken shrapnel. The cat was still sitting there, washing its face, as if nothing was happening. About ten feet past it, what must have been the front porch was shrouded in plastic sheeting. Bricks had been piled on top to hold it in place. Caffery edged towards it, breathing hard, the wooden handle held out in front of him.

  He got to the porch and lifted the edge of the sheeting tentatively. From here he could see there was no front door. Instead the gap had been clumsily covered with blue membrane, the manufacturer's logo printed on it in white. Carefully, trying not to make any noise, he ducked under the plastic sheet and stepped inside, pressing a finger to the plastic membrane. It gave a little. He wiped away the cobwebs from his face and hair, and stood close to it, holding his breath. The screaming had stopped: he couldn't hear a thing, not a sound or a movement. A voice in the back of his head told him to back off, back off, idiot . . . but instead he got out his car keys and used the little Swiss Army knife on the fob to make a hole in the blue plastic.

  As the knife went in he stopped, thinking what it might look like from inside – a bulge and then the little nose of the knife poking through, glinting maybe. His heart was thudding and he could feel sweat run from his armpits, making his sides and back itch. He counted to ten, then, when no one came running out at him, he slid the knife cleanly down the membrane making a long, straight slit. He stepped back, shocked by the noise, breathing hard.

  After a minute or so when there was still nothing from inside, he crouched next to the slit and pushed one finger in, pulling it aside so he could see a few yards into the dim interior and listen. There was a smell of neglect and decay, a smell of raw concrete and stagnant water, and a lazy flapping, like slow wings beating somewhere in the darkness. Nothing else except the eerie silence.

  He used the wooden handle to push into the gap and moved aside the sheeting, feeling the cooler air inside shift across his skin. Carefully he put one foot through, and then, with a quick sideways twist, followed it inside, dropping into a crouch. He held his breath and listened again. It was a moment or two before his eyes were used to the dark, but when they were he saw what had caused the flapping noise: every doorway leading away from this area was covered with white plastic sheeting, taped at the top with slits at the sides, lifting and rippling on unseen currents. With the deathly hush and stale air he couldn't help thinking of mortuaries.

  Slowly he went to the first piece of sheeting and looked through into what had once been a utility area. The washing-machine was still in the corner, but it hadn't been used recently. Boxes of books were piled up in front of it, and the ironing-board was draped with filthy tea-towels. He moved to the next sheet and found he was looking into a kitchen – left-over food on the table, magazines piled everywhere, a guinea pig staring beadily at him from a cage on the work surface. He was about to go through the next sheet when, from the other side, the screaming started again.

  50

  Run until the world ends . . . Run until the world ends . . .

  As he lies on the sofa, his eyes moving under the lids, Skinny's words make patterns in Mossy's head, repeating themselves in long, feverish strings. Run until the world ends . . .

  He's too submerged in his thoughts to notice the shadow return in the corridor. It hovers there, yellowing eyes watching him thoughtfully, and it might have stayed there if it hadn't been for a door opening. The shadow scuttles away just as light floods into the corridor. There's the sound of another door closing and, in the background, low, vicious voices.

  Mossy opens his heavy eyes. His head is thick but he can see people out there – not just one or two but more. He can see shadows on the wall, can hear the muttered threats. Someone raises a hand and there's a scuffle. There's a noise too. It starts as a hoarse sob, then stretches into a long drawn-out cry, so high and thin it might be a girl screaming.

  'Keep the noise down,' someone hisses. 'Keep the fucking noise down.'

  Something heavy and clumsy falls on the floor and immediately the screaming stops.

  Mossy's awake now. He sits upright, staring at the gate. He can't see anything from this angle: whatever's happening is happening out of sight, but too far down the corridor to see. From the sounds he can guess. Whoever was screaming has stopped because they've been thrown down, maybe knocked out. There's a gagging sound, then a noise like water being poured on the floor or someone throwing up. Then silence.

  Mossy stays where he is, his heart leaping in his chest, wanting to cry. He prays that it's Jonah he can hear, arrived at last. He wants it so much that he knows he's not going to welcome him, be humble. He'll yell at him and strangle him, because the bastard needs to know that it's too late now, and that whatever happens next, whatever he'll go through, whatever sacrifices he'll make, none of it'll matter. None of it will matter because he's too fucking late.

  Caffery came through the sheeting into the living room fast, the wooden bar behind him, his hand over his breast pocket where his warrant-card holder was, neat and efficient. He might have appeared calm, but the aggression was there, more than it had ever been. He scanned the room: the standard 360-degree sweep. He'd come in behind a large sofa that faced a TV on the far wall where a grainy black-and-white image played – a young man dressed in a
khaki shirt squirming and turning on a bed, his screams filling the air. On the sofa a man's big carved face, a halo of greying curly hair, was turned to him.

  'Kaiser Nduka?' he shouted, above the screams. 'Are you Kaiser Nduka?'

  'Who are you?'

  Caffery flicked out his warrant card, holding it out to him, still ready to bring down the wooden handle if the weird fucker did anything. Flea wasn't in the room. An engine was in pieces on the floor and a pair of gardening shears on the table. He monitored the shears out of the corner of his eye while Nduka inspected the card, his big nose twitching as if he could smell it. Then he sat back resignedly on the sofa. 'I see,' he mouthed. His face was calm, almost mournful, as if it was a terrible shame it had worked out like this. 'I understand.'

  Caffery stepped carefully round the sofa past the engine. Mounted on the wall ahead was a cupboard, the doors open to reveal row after row of videotapes, about forty lined up, all bearing a white label. He snatched up the remote control from the table and turned down the volume. The sudden quiet in the room was almost as shocking as the screaming. On screen the man on the bed continued convulsing silently, his arms going up and down like a marionette's. He'd wet himself, Caffery saw. A dark stain was spreading across the sheet.

  'OK,' Caffery said. 'What the fuck's that all about?'

  Nduka shrugged pointedly, as if he was weary of the way the police behaved but knew he had to go along with it. 'An experiment.'

  'An experiment?' Caffery's fingers on the wooden handle were sweating. 'You weird fuck. You made that video for your clients, didn't you? To let them know how genuine the goods are.'