Ritual Read online

  'And so,' he said, 'my new friend, Flea. Tell me, what do you know about my country?'

  'Very little.'

  'You see, what's on my mind is what on earth the police in England think of my country.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'There has been a terrible business at my restaurant – I'm sure you've followed it on the news. The police, you see, interviewing my staff, keeping my business closed. Even I'm not allowed inside, they tell me. Now, I don't know, my friend, what beast or inhuman brought this terrible ungodly thing to my door, but I have lived long enough to know that it is a slur – an attempt to sabotage me.' He opened his hands and held them out. 'You see the colour of my skin. You hear my voice. I'm an African, Flea, and the African will always be the leper of the world.'

  Flea sniffed. She patted her jeans, pretending to feel for a tissue. She pushed her left hand into the front pocket and, with a surreptitious flick of the finger, released the chunk of carpet. Then she rested her hand on her thigh. Mabuza's eyes followed the movement.

  'You see,' he said, after a while, letting his eyes linger on her hand. 'I am not wanted in this society – so someone . . .' He slowed down and repeated the word, '. . . someone has taken the most appalling risk to discredit me. But . . .' He gave her an unexpected smile. His teeth were white. One was missing, next to his right canine. 'My enemies have taken a wrong turn here. That is the joke. No one can point a finger at me – I am not a savage.'

  'Mr Mabuza,' she said levelly, 'you're talking in riddles.'

  'Riddles? Hardly. What I'm trying to explain is that I have never had any dealing with the police.' He said the word very deliberately, enunciating every syllable. 'The police. I don't know what they must be thinking about this black South African.' He raised his eyes and locked them on hers again. 'And you? Do you know what they're thinking?'

  He knows, Flea thought. Damn and fuck, he knows who I am. 'No,' she said steadily. 'I have no idea what they might be thinking.'

  There was a long silence. Next to her on the sofa Tig was fidgeting, clearing his throat. She was about to say something to him when the carriage clock chimed. Immediately he was on his feet. 'We should be going,' he said, holding out his hand to Flea. 'Come on. Let's go. Now.'

  She got to her feet a little shakily, setting the cup down so hard the spoon fell off the saucer. 'I need to use the toilet, Mr Mabuza. I just want a bit of tissue to blow my nose.'

  There was a moment's hesitation. She didn't imagine it – she knew she didn't. Mabuza's eyes flickered to Tig's, came back to hers, then returned to Tig's. And then he smiled, graciously, holding up his hand to show her out of the room. 'Of course,' he said calmly. 'Of course you must.'

  The toilet was on the first floor directly above the hallway. She climbed slowly, the stairs curling round above the hallway where the two men waited for her. On the staircase she passed four or five niches in the wall. In each stood a crucifix, some small, some big, all clean and new in spite of the dust that lay everywhere else. The walls were panelled below waist height and she couldn't say what it was, but something about the panels made her uncomfortable – she held her hands across her chest so she didn't have to touch them. They made her think of things being shut away – of shadows snapping at her heels.

  She got to the landing, with its low lighting and faintly clinical smell. The feeling was still there – that someone or something was watching her. At the top of the staircase a door faced her, just where Mabuza had said it would be. She pushed it open, pulled the cord and the little room lit up – primrose-yellow porcelain, a box of Kleenex tissues on the cistern, and her reflection staring back at her from the mirror above the sink. She held the door handle tightly, studied her face, the hair that hung in hard coils round her forehead, the circles under her eyes. After a moment or two she stretched up on tiptoe so that she could look at the reflection behind her, down at the panels behind her calves. There was nothing. Why had she thought there would be?

  Just as she was debating what to do a noise to her right made her turn. A few feet across the landing a door was half open. She hadn't noticed the room because the light was off, but now she couldn't take her eyes off it. The sound was coming from inside, of someone sniffling, as if they'd been crying.

  She pulled the toilet door closed, shutting it tightly so it would be heard downstairs. The two men were at the foot of the stairs, talking, in low, confidential voices, and their tone didn't change so she took an experimental step across the landing towards the open door. The floorboards were solid – no creaking or sagging – and in a few short steps she was standing just to the side of the door. The men went on talking below. From here she could crane her neck and see most of the room beyond.

  It was an odd bedroom, lit only by two standard lamps in the corners. It made her think of a pioneer home with bare floorboards, gingham check and a lollipop flower-stitched quilt. There was a suitcase on the floor and a few feet away from it a white woman on her knees in the middle of the room, facing the bed. She was a little younger than Mabuza, blonde and enormously fat – her body seemed to flow out of the plain white dress she wore. Her chest heaved and shuddered with the crying: a strange sound that Flea somehow knew wasn't connected with sadness.

  The woman put both hands on the floor and bent, her enormous arms dimpling, dipping her head so that she could see under the bed. Even from the doorway Flea could see the tears shivering in her eyes as she squinted into the dark, and at that moment it struck her what was odd about the crying. It was the sound of fear. The woman was crying because she was afraid of what she thought she would see under the bed.

  She craned her neck to peep into the far corners, and when she seemed to have found nothing she tilted back on her heels and turned, very slowly, to look directly at Flea. The tears were standing on her cheeks, but she didn't speak, or seem surprised to find someone watching her. She just gazed at her steadily as if she'd known she was there all along.

  Without a word Flea went back to the stairs, expecting any second to be shouted after. Ignoring the charade about the toilet – she'd meant to open and close the door, run a tap or something – she headed down the stairs as quickly as her legs would carry her. At the bottom the two men stopped talking.

  'It was nice to meet you,' she said to Mabuza. She didn't stop walking or offer her hand to him, just went straight to the door, ignoring Tig coming up behind her. 'Very nice. I'll see myself out.'

  Outside she went fast, going in a straight line, her arms folded. The air was warm, but she couldn't help shivering, glad to have the feel of the house off her. What she'd seen was enough. In the morning she would go straight to Jack Caffery.

  'Hey.' She'd got halfway down the street by the time Tig caught up with her. He grabbed her arm and swung her round to face him. 'What the fuck do you think you're doing?'

  'He knows who I am, Tig.' She swept her hair off her face and held his eyes angrily. 'Couldn't you tell? Didn't you see the way he was looking at me? It was weird.'

  'The only thing that was weird was you forcing him to talk about the case. That was weird.'

  'I didn't force him. He wanted to talk about it.

  And anyway – there's something wrong in that house.'

  'Flea. Flea.' He pulled her a little further down the road so they were completely hidden from Mabuza's front gates. It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening, but the sky was still blue, and the businessmen who owned the houses in this community were returning home in their Audis and Mercedes. Some eyed Tig and Flea. One parked his car, then stood in the driveway, his sunglasses in his hand, watching them. 'Listen,' Tig said. 'Don't you think you're being paranoid? You went in there worried – you didn't say anything but I could tell you weren't comfortable. You're making things up.'

  'I'm not making up the way he was staring at me. When he asked what the police would be thinking.'

  'Flea, look, I'm not saying I know him well, that'd be a lie, but I know enough to tell you he doesn't do things in wei
rd ways. He's not underhand.'

  'Oh, yeah?' She wasn't convinced. 'You sure?'

  'Yes,' he said, and walked towards the car. 'I'm sure.'

  She waited a while, watching him leave, her heart still thumping. The man in the driveway lost interest and aimed the remote control at the garage door. Eventually, when there was nothing else to do, she followed Tig to the car, getting out her keys. She opened the door for him, then got into the driver's seat, sinking down with a sigh.

  'I'll tell you something else,' she said, pulling on the seatbelt. She could still feel the thin layer of grease on her hand from Mabuza's handshake. 'They're not going to church this evening – at least, not to any church you or I would go to.'

  'Oh, come on. What're you talking about?'

  She stared back in the direction of the house – an ordinary enough house on the face of it. She thought about the idea she'd had that shadows were running round the panelling at knee height. She thought about the woman searching under the bed, the fear on her face. She thought about the crucifixes. And then, in a second, she realized what was wrong with the house.

  She turned back to Tig, her eyes stinging. 'I'm just telling you, Tig, those people aren't Christian.'

  21

  By eight o'clock, when Caffery got back to the office, the HOLMES team had finished entering their actions for the day and had packed up. One of the team wanted some overtime so Caffery gave him the only drugs groups on the list that had evening sessions. Soon the place was deserted.

  Enjoying the silence, Caffery footled around for a bit, pretending to himself he was being efficient, reading his messages, looking up biogs on some of the newer team members and doing a lackadaisical search on the force intelligence network for key words in the waitress's statement: River. Juvenile. When he typed in exposure the screen filled up so quickly the scroll-bar tab shrank to the size of a nailhead. The HOLMES operator had been right – just about a thousand guys in Bristol waggling their knobs at local girls in the dead of night. He didn't have the stomach for that list of entries.

  He went to the window, pulled apart the blinds and a weird wave of despondency came over him. The halal butcher's opposite was closed, but the takeaway next door hadn't opened yet. He checked his watch. Eight thirty p.m. Kind of early. But it wasn't long before sunset. And that meant the girls would be out on City Road if you knew where to go. His fingers tightened on the blind, harder and harder, until he thought he'd break it if he stood there any longer. He got out his mobile and pulled up the number Flea'd given him – an old friend of her mother, she'd said, who ran his business from home.

  The phone rang a few times and he was about to put it down, thinking he shouldn't be calling so late, when the nurseryman answered and said, rather slowly, that the Remembrance, well, now, she was getting on a bit, the Remembrance, in terms of what was popular, but he might be able to get 'some of she' ordered in the next couple of days, if Caffery didn't mind waiting, but Caffery'd have to drive out to Bishop Sutton to pick them up because he didn't do deliveries, mind. And while he had Caffery on the phone how was Flea Marley, love her? Wasn't it a tragedy what turned around and happened to that poor girl, her not even thirty yet?

  'I think . . .' Caffery tapped a finger on the desk, feeling strange to be the only one not in on a story that everyone else knew. 'I think,' he said, 'considering everything, she's getting on OK . . . but I'll tell her you were asking.'

  They talked a bit more about inconsequential stuff, payment, and Caffery didn't sound like he was from around here and just how did he like it in the West Country? Caffery talked calmly, but when he finished the call he was frowning, tapping his finger a little harder, wondering about what the nurseryman had said. A tragedy in Flea Marley's life. What sort of tragedy? he thought, and then he found himself wondering if she'd had a boyfriend to help her through it. And that was where he had to stop himself. Normal to be curious, old man, he thought, it's what made you a detective. That and the drinking. But don't let it go any further. There was a lot of damage he could do with thinking like that.

  He went to the area map on the wall and put his thumb on Bishop Sutton, then stretched his hand until his little finger sat on Shepton Mallet. At first the Walking Man's routes had seemed random. But since the other night, when Caffery'd seen the stash of cider in the hedgerow, he'd come round to thinking there was something planned about where he went each day. He'd plotted out all that he could, using the few reports the intelligence database had hung on to, adding in the other night's stopover near Vobster quarry and now, standing in the badly lit office, he began to see a shape. It was like a half-open fan, or a slice of pie, its base at Shepton Mallet, the top arcing from Congresbury almost as far as Keynsham, the A37 marking the flat, leading edge. He stared at the shape a little longer, then pulled his jacket off the back of the chair and felt for his keys.

  The thing about the Walking Man was that he moved all day long, every day. To find him you had to move too. Either that or you had to know what he was thinking. Keeping the fan shape in his head, Caffery drove out to the A37, an old route used by the Knight's Templars, one of the oldest in Britain. He passed Farrington Gurney and into Ston Easton, the hamlet's steep, dripping walls rising directly up either side of the road, slimy clumps of vegetation in the stones making it feel as if he was driving through the drained bed of an old canal. Outside the hamlet he slowed. There was no other traffic on the road, so he dawdled along, the headlights making icy filigree domes of the branches above. He kept his window open, leaning out on his elbow and searching the inky blackness on either side of the road for signs of the Walking Man's fire.

  After a while he passed a small track on his right. He'd gone on a hundred yards when something made him stop and swing the car round in a U-turn. He pulled it well over on to the verge so that both wheels were off the road and he didn't need to use his hazards. Then he got out and climbed over the low fence into the neighbouring field. The countryside was black and unfathomable, only the greyish shape of a tree or hillock disturbing the darkness. Suddenly it was cold. He pulled on his jacket and stood with his hands buried in his armpits, letting the darkness come down over his head and round the back of his neck. He strained to hear the crack of a twig or to smell campfire smoke.

  The Walking Man had cut off a man's nose using an Exacto blade from a craft kit. It had happened in the back of his garage in Shepton Mallet and he'd kept the guy still – Craig Evans, his name was – by taping him to an ironing-board using red and white 'Handle With Care' parcel tape. After the nose, which had made Evans puke blood for a bit, the Walking Man had used his thumbs – his thumbs, that bit got to Caffery more than anything – to press the man's eyes so hard into his head that they'd slipped out of the sockets. When he'd finished he'd propped the ironing-board against the wall and nailed his hands to the breeze blocks. Crucified him.

  The police knew everything because he'd videotaped it so he could watch it later for his pleasure. They knew that he'd put both eyes, and the long slippery red trails that hung from them, on to a shelf, then he'd smashed both kneecaps with a crowbar, cut Evans's dick off, gone inside the house and coolly put the bits and pieces – the eyes, the nose and the dick – into a Cadbury's Selection biscuit tin. When the police found it, they'd decomposed so much they'd popped the lid.

  Caffery breathed in, letting the cold sting his nostrils, thinking about the darkness. He listened to the silence a bit more, watched the mothy-grey spectre of an owl hurtle across the sky. Then, when he couldn't hear anything in the dark he went back to the car. He got in and sat there, looking at the clouds through the lattice of branches, shredding and sliding round the moon.

  There was that faint ache in his limbs again, and it struck him that this time it was connected not to tension but to tiredness – and that the tiredness, in turn, was connected to the conversation he'd had with the nurseryman. Wasn't it a tragedy what happened to that poor girl?

  It took a while for him to put his finger on it, t
o remember the feeling he'd had – of being on the outside of something. That he was the new one, the outsider looking in. Maybe he'd do some asking around about what had happened to her. Nothing so obvious that he'd look like a twat, though. And then he heard the Walking Man's voice: Don't miss it when you start thinking of it as something other people do in another life. Yeah, he thought, he's right, forget it. You'd've done it once – gone down every route to find out about her, about her secret, about what happened to her. But not now. Your world's a changed place now.

  He switched on the engine and swung the car into the road. It was gone ten and by the time he got to City Road it'd be near enough eleven, which was the time Keelie came out on the street. He opened the window and the bitter smell of fumes and earth came into the car. Even if he really concentrated he couldn't remember Keelie's face, couldn't remember what colour her hair was. But what he could remember was she had the grace never, ever to look him in the eye when he was fucking her. And that, he supposed, had to count for something.

  22

  9 May

  A day later, and Mossy's lying on the sofa with one foot dangling above the floor, his lower lip resting on his upturned thumb, watching the gate and waiting for Jonah to appear.

  But day becomes night and night becomes day and nothing happens and no one comes. Sometimes he thinks the sun's got stuck in the sky because every time he opens his eyes, for what seems like years and years, daylight comes through the grille. Then other times he thinks he's in a time machine on fast-forward, with the sun crossing the sky rapidly like in a silent movie, because one minute he feels sure it's morning and the next he opens his eyes to see a sunset sending red fingers of light through the boarding, lighting up the filthy, dusty room that has become his torture chamber.