by Mo Hayder
'No,' she tried to say, but no sound came. She moved her arms back, panicked, trying to cry out. Mum and Dad, in their graves. But before she could cry, another sound started. It was like a wind rushing through a crack in mountains, deafening, and then came a swirl of water and a flash of light, like a door opening, and then, in no time, the bodies were gone and there was silence in her head.
She opened her eyes and lay motionless, registering what she could see. In front of her there was a curtain lit from behind, dirty windows, a flask of coffee on the table, the cupboards on the walls that were always locked. Kaiser's masks, his family's masks, the ones he'd let her play with as a child, looked down at her from what seemed a great distance. There was the noise of a single-engined plane droning overhead and light in her eyes, and she saw how stupid she'd been and that she wasn't in Bushman's Hole, but lying on a sofa in Kaiser's house.
Somewhere she could hear a fly buzzing and Kaiser tapping on the computer keyboard. But when she turned in that direction her head spun and she thought she'd be sick, in spite of the Kwells. So she carefully shifted position and, when she was comfortable, kept very still, trying to focus on the flask. When she was sure her head had stopped spinning she closed her eyes again. Instantly colours bubbled from the corners, like oil on water spreading under her eyelids, pulsing bigger and bigger until they filled her head and ballooned into her nasal passages, suffocating her as if the pressure would make her skull explode, it was so enormous.
She half raised a hand, moving it weakly towards her face, trying to wipe away the colours, making a little noise in her throat, a begging sound, wanting it to stop. Then, just when she thought she couldn't take any more, they popped, like a bubble, leaving nothing. Just cold, clear darkness. It took her a moment or two to realize she was back in the freezing water of Boesmansgat.
'Mum?' She tried to speak but her tongue was heavy. 'Mum?'
She moved her arms in the water, wanting to see her mother's face through the mask, wanting to see her eyes.
'Mum?'
Without warning a face appeared inches from hers. It was partly skeleton, wearing a diver's mask, and round it floated blonde hair and something white and diaphanous — a white shirt billowing like a cloud in the water. Startled, Flea pulled back.
'Oh, Flea…' said the voice. 'Is that you, Flea? My baby… where are you?'
'Mum?' She reached out her hands despairingly, opening and closing them in the darkness in case she might feel another human hand in hers. 'Mum, I'm here. Over here. Mum, please, I've been trying for so long. Oh, Mummy, I miss you, Mummy, so much.'
In spite of herself, in spite of the fact that she was in the water, trying not to tumble backwards, Flea knew her corporeal self was crying. It wasn't happening down in the cave, but up where her body was lying on Kaiser's sofa. There was wetness on her cheeks.
Silt billowed round the awful ruined face. A wave of nausea overcame her, and Flea tilted her head to compensate. Then the picture stopped seesawing and Mum spoke again: 'Flea. Don't cry.' Her voice was odd — not the same as before. It was soft, low and a little flat. 'Don't cry, Flea.'
'Mum, what were you trying to tell me? What did you mean, "We went the other way"?'
'Look down, Flea.' She pointed downwards with her skeletal hand. 'Can you see?'
Heart thumping, Flea, sculling her position to keep stable, peered in the direction Mum was pointing. Now she could see that they weren't at the bottom of the hole at all: they were on its gently sloping sides. And there, lit eerily in the gloom, she could see it — the bottom. It must be more than twenty metres further down.
'You didn't get all the way. That's why we couldn't find you.'
'Now listen, Flea. They didn't find us last time, but this time they will. This time they're going to find us…'
'This time?'
Flea reached out again, into the silt. She couldn't see her mother any more and that made her panic.
'It's important, Flea, so important. Don't let them bring us to the surface. Can you hear me?'
'Mum? Mum?' Tears were backing up in her throat. 'Mum? Come back. Please.'
'Don't let them bring us out of the Hole, whatever happens. Leave us. Just leave us.'
'Don't go, Mum. Mummy…'
But the silt blocked out everything, even the voice, and there was mud in her mouth and dirty water washing through her body and the nausea came back. It sent her spinning round — it was worse than any narcosis or CO2 overload she'd known, and she had to open her eyes and grip the sofa. Above her the ceiling was whirling out of control, the grubby yellow light-fitting twirling like a centrifuge, the daylight flashing in and out of her eyes, and she could hear a strange noise, a high-pitched whimpering coming from her mouth. She tried to sit up but as she did so she knew she was going to be sick.
'Ohmigod,' she muttered. 'Ohmigod.'
She just managed to get to the bowl Kaiser had put out and hung there, heaving and crying, until it was over and she was back in her body, crouched, a long line of saliva connecting her to the bowl, her mother's voice disappearing, as if into a long tunnel, behind her: Whatever happens … leave us…
30
'The one thing Jack Caffery still hasn't told me is why it's me he wants to see. I'm not a clairvoyant or a mind-reader. I have no magical powers — no eyes like a god's. But I don't think it's police business brought you here.'
'It's not police business. It's my business.'
'And what business is that?'
Caffery rubbed his nose. The day had been weird. That some people would pay to have human blood in their house was beyond him. But with the earthenware bowl being tested at HQ and surveillance on Mabuza, he'd come to the end of what he could do at work. He'd tried going home to sleep, but he couldn't get rid of the feeling that something was watching him, that the shadows around the house were all wrong, so he'd got into the car and come looking for the Walking Man. He hadn't expected to find him so quickly. And he hadn't expected the Walking Man to start so quickly at pulling out the truth.
'Jack Caffery?' The Walking Man was wearing his sheepskin slippers. He had stuffed each of his boots with a piece of cloth and now he tied them inside a plastic carrier-bag and wedged them into a small ditch that ran along the hedgerow. He wiped his hands. 'I'm asking you a question, Jack Caffery. What is your business?'
Caffery looked at the fire, at the way some of the logs at the bottom had white and red crusts of heat like scabs. 'Someone went,' he said eventually. 'Someone was taken. Out of my life.'
'Your daughter?'
'No, no. Not my daughter. I've got no kids. Never will have.'
'Your woman?'
'No, I left her. Two months ago. Walked out on her.'
'Then who?'
'My brother. This was back in the…' He trailed off. 'It was a long time ago.'
'When you were children?'
'Yeah — it was. It was back in London. We… Well, you know how it is.' He held his fingers in the cavity behind his lower jawbone, pressing lightly because he'd learned it was one way to stop himself crying. 'We, uh, we never found him. Everyone knew who'd taken him, but the police, they couldn't get anything to stick.' He swallowed and took his hand from his throat, holding up his thumb to the firelight, turning it round and round. 'On the day he went missing I got a bruise on my thumbnail that wouldn't budge. It should have grown out but it didn't. No one could explain it, not the doctors, no one.' He gave a sad smile. 'I used to look at it, all those years, and think that the day I found my brother my nail would start growing again. But look at it.'
He held it out. The Walking Man straightened and came back, on his slippered feet, to peer at the nail.
'Nothing to see.'
'Nearly four years ago. After all that time it suddenly started growing again. The bruise grew out. And with it the feeling went. The feeling for the place it had happened went — just like that. It vanished, as if I'd been told the answer wasn't where I was — in south-east London — but somew
here else.'
'Here?'
'I don't know. The countryside — maybe here, maybe somewhere else.' He dropped his hand and stared at the lights of Bristol, thinking about the east, about Norfolk.
'Something else happened,' the Walking Man said. 'Four years ago something else happened.'
'Maybe.' Caffery shrugged. 'I think I came close to finding him — that's all.'
'Someone died. I think that happened too.' The Walking Man took two or three breaths. 'At the time you lost the connection, I think someone died.'
Caffery nodded. 'Yes,' he said quietly. 'Someone died too.'
'Yes?'
'The one who did it. Penderecki. Ivan Penderecki. He died. Suicide. If you're wondering.'
'I wasn't.' The Walking Man prodded at the fire.
Several minutes went by while Caffery tried to shift this new idea round his head, that maybe Penderecki's death had severed his connection. He'd never asked himself that before. Then the Walking Man spoke again, his voice completely different. 'What,' he said quietly, 'was his name?'
Caffery was caught off balance. No one had asked him that in years. They just referred to him as 'your brother', or 'he', as if they thought his name would be too awful to say. 'It was… Ewan.'
'Ewan,' said the Walking Man. 'Ewan.'
The way he said the name, gently, as if he was speaking it to a child made Caffery's throat close. He had to press his finger under his jaw again until the feeling passed and he could breathe. He opened a jar of cider, drank a little and pulled his coat collar up round his ears. He gazed at the stars and let himself think, not about Ewan but about Flea at the dockside, cupping someone else's hand in hers and looking up at him, as if she was saying: 'Don't worry, I can take care of this. You go and sit — go and be with yourself for a bit.' For a reason he couldn't explain he wanted to rest on that look in her eyes.
He reached into his pocket for the small brown bag. The crocus bulbs inside were little grainy balls with papery brown skin that slipped off as he touched it. As the Walking Man pulled on his socks, Caffery held out his hand, the bag sitting on his flat palm, the firelight making the dark shapes inside the brown paper glow like coals.
The Walking Man stopped. He stared at the bag for a while. Then, without a word he stood and took it. He pulled out a bulb and held it up to the light, turning it in his blackened fingers.
'The Remembrance.' He examined it reverently, as if it had a message written across its sides. 'When it comes out, the Remembrance, it's a perfect Delft blue. Just a little orange down in the centre, like an egg yolk. Or a star.'
He put the bulb back into the bag and poked his finger around a bit, like a kid counting sweets on a Saturday-morning street corner. Then he folded the top carefully and tucked the bag into the breast pocket of the filthy coat he wore and, as if nothing had happened, went on stoking the fire.
They didn't speak for a few minutes. Caffery drank cider and watched the Walking Man begin his nightly ritual, taking off his clothes and wrapping them, putting them under the sleeping-bag where they wouldn't attract any moisture. At night he wore specially designed sleepwear. It was filthy, but you could tell it was expensive, hi-tech, from one of those extreme-sports suppliers. There was an O3 logo that Caffery recognized from Flea's dry suit. When he'd finished, the Walking Man pulled on his coat and began to potter around again, feeding the fire for the night.
Caffery knew his time there was almost over. 'Look,' he said, clearing his throat, 'I've given you what you wanted. Now you — it's your turn. You have to tell me what it was like, what you did to Craig Evans.'
'In my time. In my time.'
'You said you'd tell me.'
The Walking Man snorted. 'I said, in my time. I need to think about you first.' He threw another log on to the fire, then brushed off his hands. 'Tell me, what do you see when you look into the faces of those girls? Those prostitutes you don't sleep with enough.'
Caffery frowned. He had to pick up his tobacco pouch and roll a cigarette before he answered. 'I don't look,' he said, lighting it. 'I try not to see. I mean, whatever happens, I don't want to see my own reflection.'
'Yes — because if you see it do you know what you're really seeing?'
'No.'
'You're seeing death.'
'Death?'
'Yes. Death. Oh, you've still got a choice. But at the moment the choice you're making is the same as mine.'
'The same choice? I'm not making any of the same choices as you.'
The Walking Man smiled and tossed the last log on to the fire. 'Yes, you are. And for now you've chosen death. Yes. That's what you're looking for. You're looking for death.'
Caffery opened his mouth to say something, but the Walking Man's words stopped him. He sat there, his mouth still half open.
The Walking Man laughed at his face. 'I know. A shock, isn't it, when you first turn round and see the bridge you're crossing? A shock to realize you're giving up on life. That what you're really hoping for is death.'
Caffery closed his mouth. 'No. That's wrong. I'm not the same as you.'
'Yes, you are Jack Caffery, Policeman. You're exactly the same as I am. The only difference is that my eyes are open.' He used his filthy thumb and forefinger to open the lids, revealing the reddish tops and bottoms of the eyeballs. He was suddenly monstrous in the firelight, every night monster, every chimera. 'See? I'm not looking the other way. I know I'm trying to die. And you?' He laughed. 'You don't even suspect it yet.'
31
17 May
Once, when Caffery had first started living with Rebecca in his family's three-bedroom terrace house in south-east London, after a particular bastard of an argument, she'd taken his face in her hands and said, in a voice that was tender, not angry: 'Jack, sometimes being with you isn't like being with someone who's still alive. It's like being with someone who's dying.'
For four years he'd kept those words contained somewhere in the back of his head, trying not to forget them but trying harder not to think about them too much, so they got like a memory of her perfume, or a half-remembered tune. Then, of course, along came the Walking Man and jumpstarted the memory.
It had opened something in him. It was as if a new channel had appeared in his head, making the back of his neck ache. Somehow, without understanding how, he knew the Walking Man would point to Keelie and the other girls on City Road and say they were about death, about him hoping for death. And then he'd point directly at Caffery's job. 'And as for that,' he'd say, 'more than anything else that is about your death.'
The next morning in his Kingswood office, a cup of coffee and a sandwich from the convenience store on the desk as he opened the orange courier's package that had come overnight from Marilyn, Caffery was thinking about his job, thinking about it as a kind of death. Marilyn had scribbled a note to him on a bit of Met stationery: 'Call if you need any more ADVICE Love M x.'
'Thanks, Marilyn,' he said, with a wry smile. He crumpled up the paper and was about to put it into the bin, then changed his mind. He found Sellotape and taped it to the wall so that Marilyn could do what she'd always wanted to do — monitor him constantly. Then he went back to the package, slowly pulling out the various wallets and bound folders. There was everything in here he could want: photocopied theses on African ritual; a folder of newspaper cuttings about Adam, the boy in the Thames; a list of contacts at universities in the UK and abroad. One, he noticed, was in Bristol. There was also a disk labelled 'Swalcliffe.pdf' in a clear pink cover. An Adobe Acrobat presentation. He slotted it into the computer.
Marilyn, he decided, as the Metropolitan Police logo came up on the screen, had put this together herself. She'd been a HOLMES inputter when they'd worked together and she'd always loved her computers. It was designed as a lecture, with bigger files appended to the presentation through hyperlinks, and that morning, as the sun got higher in the sky, as the Kingswood station came to life around him and people came and went from the shops outside his window, he silently
blessed Marilyn for her nerdishness. In two hours he learned more than he'd ever known about a continent that had been a mystery to him for years.
Muti, like she'd said, was a much bigger picture than he'd imagined. It started on the ground with witch doctors 'throwing the bones', casting sacred objects, bones, beans or stones, in a circle to divine the needs of the client. From the witch doctor's divination sprang the remedy, and of these the list was bewildering: there was bushbaby fur for babies who cried too much, chitons to stop your partner cheating on you, pangolin, porcupine fish, aardvark claw. Every part of almost every animal, it seemed, had a place in muti.
Caffery tried to read the page to the end, but the words blurred after twenty entries so he went back to the main lecture. When he clicked on it, he knew instantly he'd moved into a darker place: human body parts. The first thing that came up was a picture of a human skull, laid out on a pathologist's table, a measuring tape next to it. He read the text carefully, giving it time to sink in. Most muti human body parts were stolen from corpses, but the muti from the already dead was weak compared to that from the living: the medicine would be more powerful if the victim was alive when the mutilation happened, the louder the screams the better, and of the living by far the most powerful medicine came from a child. It was all about purity.
He looked away from the screen, suddenly overloaded, his eyes tired. He took time to spoon some sugar into his coffee and watch it make a little island and slowly sink. Vaguely, he remembered hearing that in South Africa six men had been charged with raping a nine-month-old baby, believing that sex with it would cure them of AIDS. The thought made parts of his mind ache.
The next section of the lecture defined the difference between human sacrifice, in which the death of the person was the most important thing and would appease a deity, and muti murder, where the aim was the harvest of body parts for use in traditional medicine. Brains endow the client with knowledge. The breasts and genitals of either sex bestow virility. A nose or eyelid can be used to poison an enemy. The next slide showed a piece of severed flesh lying on a towel. It wasn't until he read the caption that he understood what he was looking at. A penis can bring success in horse-racing.