Ritual jc-3

by Mo Hayder

'Sorry, Ben, no argument.'

  Pearl was turning for the surface when a strong, determined hand gripped his arm. His flashlight rolled up and found Crabbick's masked face there, only a few inches away, the eyes dilated. He was shaking his head. Not speaking, but staring at his friend as if he was a stranger. Pearl wrote on divenet that it was like looking into the eyes of someone possessed. He said that if someone told him there was a devil at the bottom of Bushman's Hole, waiting to swim into the head of any diver who ventured down there, he'd believe them just from the look he'd seen in Crabbick's eyes.

  'Ben. Listen to me. It's Andy. Remember me? I'm Andy, and I'm telling you now we're turning back. You always say yes.' He gave Crabbick a slow-motion shake. A move that made his ears tighten and his head spin. 'You always say yes and you always turn back when I say so.'

  But this time, instead of speaking, Crabbick disentangled himself and headed towards the bottom. It was as quick as that: one minute he was there, the next he had gone into the darkness and Pearl was left with the image of a flipper moving in his flashlight beam.

  'Ben? Ben, you fucker?' he shouted. 'Stop. Stop.'

  Pearl stayed where he was for twenty seconds or so, his heart thumping, the sound of his breathing getting tighter and tighter in his ears, all the rules he'd learned rattling through his mind. Never dive beyond your own limits to tackle another diver — not even to save their life. It was written in stone. You'll over-exert yourself, forget to check your gas mix and dive computers, and the overwhelming probability is you'll end up with not one, but two deaths. You have to let them go. Pearl knew this — but Crabbick was his best mate. They'd been through high school together and you didn't check out on a friend that easily. His breathing got tighter still. He could almost feel the blood in his arteries, as if thickened by the pressure, struggling through his body. Then he thought that if Crabbick reached the bottom and was still conscious, he could be convinced the journey was a success, and they could turn for the surface.

  Pearl might have been right that he could make the bottom and still endure the twelve-hour labour of carrying a friend to the surface. Except that when he got to the bottom he couldn't find Crabbick. He gave himself thirty seconds to look, not a split second longer, and it wasn't nearly enough to find his friend. The floor of the sinkhole was dark and unspeakably lonely, and the shock of finding mud under his feet made Pearl's head spin for the first ten seconds. But even when it had cleared and the nausea lessened, he was still disoriented. His flashbeam wavered over the ghostly desert landscapes, over the long silt dunes, empty as far as the torch would reach. And no sign of Crabbick.

  Feeling sick now, his tired heart thudding uncomfortably, he gave the signal on the line that he was coming up.

  It was, he wrote on divenet, the worst moment of his life.

  37

  'The hardest part was keeping him still.' The Walking Man sat with his knees up, cupping a mug of hot cider in his filthy hands. The firelight played across his face, threw shadows up into the trees behind him. 'First I tried tying him to a chair, but that wasn't going to work. I could see that straight away.'

  'So what did you do?'

  'Tape.'

  'Oh, yeah, the tape. I read that in the report. Parcel tape, wasn't it?' Caffery rolled on to one side and rested his head on his hand. 'Handle With Care parcel tape — that bit made it to the media. They loved that detail.'

  The Walking Man grunted. 'I didn't choose it for how it would look. It was what was to hand.' 'So you taped him to the chair.'

  'But that didn't work either — I couldn't get at him. Then I realized there was an ironing-board in the garage, leaning up against the wall, so I took off the legs and taped him to that. Had to knock him out again, of course.'

  'But that worked?'

  The Walking Man smiled. 'Oh, yes. That worked. I put it up on the bench and it went perfectly.'

  Caffery had found the Walking Man's camp half by accident. It was late. He'd got a PC from Broadbury babysitting Mabuza at his house — told him it was for his own protection — and had gone straight from the office to one of the girls on City Road.

  It hadn't taken long and he'd come away feeling worse rather than better. He kept thinking about what the Walking Man had said: You're looking for death. He wondered about that as he drove home while the sun went down, the first stars came out and Bristol faded to an orange haze in his rear-view mirror.

  He wasn't consciously looking for the camp, but he knew he didn't want to go home where he'd be alone with nothing for company but late-night TV shows and shadows in the trees, so he drove, heading east, nearly into Wiltshire. He took roads he didn't know and was south of Bath on a small turn-off near the A36 when he noticed a small campfire in some trees just a hundred metres off the road. He stopped the car, got out and walked slowly across a rapeseed field to the wood. Usually the Walking Man would be asleep by now, but not tonight. Tonight he was awake, sitting in the middle of the field, looking over the fire in the direction of the Farleigh Park lake that lay at the bottom of the slope reflecting the moon. At first there seemed something troubled about him — he held up a hand to acknowledge Caffery but he wasn't looking at him. He was scratching his beard ruminatively and staring past him down the hill and across the field to the road where the car was parked. It was only when Caffery told him what he wanted, and handed him another bag of crocus bulbs, that the Walking Man responded. He added another litre of scrumpy to the mulled drink he was brewing in the Kelly kettle, and when they were both settled, with steaming mugs and lit cigarettes, he began to talk.

  'When I made the first cut in his nose he bit me.' He held up a grimy hand closed into a fist, and turned it in the firelight. 'Don't know how but he got his head off the ironing-board and bit me. He clamped himself here, round the wrist, like a shark. For a moment I thought it was over.'

  Lying on the ground, the cigarette between his teeth, Caffery closed his eyes and tried to picture it: Craig Evans taped to a board, blood pouring down his face. He knew what Evans had looked like before the attack because he'd seen the photos, but by screwing his eyes tight he could replace Evan's face with the one he wanted in his own fantasy. Ivan Penderecki's.

  'I punched him in the side of the head and he almost went out again. He let go and that's when I got him by the hair and taped his head to the board. The only part of him you could see was his face, his hands and…' he paused '… his balls and cock. I got those out straight away. Unzipped him and out they came. They were hanging there the whole time — just to, you know, remind me.'

  'Then what?' He focused on Penderecki's face in his head. 'What happened next?'

  'Then I went back to cutting off his nose.'

  'What was it like?'

  'Have you ever carved a chicken for Sunday lunch? I used to all the time — before Evans. You know the way it feels when you cut a leg off to put on a plate? The tearing? It was like that.'

  Caffery's hands were twitching. His teeth clenched tight, the enamel almost cracking with the pressure. He was seeing it all in his mind's eye: Penderecki screaming, the click and grind of cartilage as the knife went through his nose.

  'His eyes were easier than I'd thought. I'd never thought I could dig my thumbs into someone's skull like that, but I did. He passed out again then.'

  'And you waited?'

  'I waited until he woke up. He was trying to move around — to thrash about — but he couldn't. He kept puking too — every ten minutes or so he'd puke.' There was a moment's silence. Then the Walking Man said, with a smile in his voice, 'But we haven't even got to the best bit yet.'

  'No?'

  'Oh, no.' And this time he chuckled. Caffery fought the urge to open his eyes. He could believe that if he did he'd find a grinning gnome cackling at him. 'No. The best bit was cutting off his dick. I got more pleasure from that part than anything.'

  'Pleasure?'

  'Yes, Jack Caffery, Policeman. Pleasure. Because that is what we are here to talk about. The pleasure I g
ot. I am not going to cry about this — I am not ever ever ever going to show repentance, whatever you expect. I am here to tell you that the greatest pleasure I ever got in my life was hacking through that man's balls. I held them in my hands. I pulled them so they were as far out as they could stretch. And I slid the blade across the skin — it went through without me even pushing it — and it snapped back to his body like elastic and there I was, holding his testicles.'

  Caffery swallowed. He tried to keep his voice steady. 'And then? What then?'

  'And then his penis. I did that slowly. He kept passing out so I had to wait until he woke up each time.'

  'What was that like?'

  'That was like cutting through a steak. Not difficult. I tilted the board back and put a wooden block on his thighs to rest against. That way I got a better leverage. I had a serrated knife and I used that. The blood soaked into the wooden block.'

  For a long time neither man spoke. There was no sound, only the distant rumble of the A36, and occasionally of a car going past on the road. Caffery lay as still as possible, letting the moonlight bathe his eyelids, seeing Penderecki taped down so only his face and groin were visible, the floor and board around him soaked in blood. He'd have done it in the back room, one of those that looked out over the railway cutting because that was the last place Ewan had been seen. He'd have been able to see his own home, the lights on, the places he and Ewan played as kids. Caffery thought, although he wasn't sure, that he would have recorded it on video too, the way the Walking Man had.

  'Why did you crucify him?'

  'Why did I crucify him?' He gave a hollow laugh. 'That, Mr Policeman, is between me and him.'

  'It's a strange thing to do.'

  'Yes,' the Walking Man said calmly. 'And it's a strange thing for a man to rape an eight-year-old child. To rape her four times in three hours and then, when he had finished, to kill her.'

  Caffery opened his eyes. The Walking Man sat in the same position, clutching the cider, his eyes fixed on the distant horizon. A taste of metal came into his mouth as he wondered whether the Walking Man could see the death of his only child without closing his eyes. He himself had always been able to see Ewan's death, so why should it be any different for the Walking Man?

  'And?' he said, after a minute or two, when he was sure his voice would come out more or less even. 'What then?'

  'Then I went and called the ambulance.'

  'You were calm on the tape. The prosecution said you were talking as if nothing had happened.'

  'That's right.'

  'And Evans was screaming in the background.'

  'Yes. He was screaming. Do you know what he was screaming? You couldn't hear it on the tape and it never came out in the trial — but do you know who he was screaming for?'

  Caffery hesitated. He closed his eyes again and let himself sink deep, deep down inside, feeling a pull somewhere in his chest where he knew truths were. 'I don't know, but I think…'

  'Yes? You think?'

  'I think he was asking for his mother.'

  In the darkness the Walking Man let out a long breath. 'You're right. He was screaming for his mother.'

  38

  Night had come. Flea sat in the study staring at the screen, not stirring to switch on the light or close the window. Hours went by as the electronic discussion played itself out, the computer bleeping each time a new message sprang up. Andy Pearl was trying to explain how it felt to get to the first air stop on his line, to scribble a frantic message to the support diver, who didn't have through-water coms, that Crabbick was dead, and to get instead a shake of the head, a gloved hand pointing in the direction of the surface. No, Crabbick wasn't lying at the bottom of the sinkhole. He was alive and clinging to the line several metres above them in the dark.

  He had conquered the narcosis. Somehow — and no one was sure what alchemy had choreographed it — he'd hit the bottom, spent seconds there, then started back to the surface. Yes, he was in a poor way, and when at last they got to the top, ten hours later, he had to be pulled out of the water by support divers. He was pale, with broken veins in his eyes and round his nostrils, said Andy Pearl, and his breathing was as if he was trying to blow up an old airbed, laboured and slow, but he was conscious. He was alive. Able to talk for a few seconds before he was taken by the medics to hospital. And what he said to Pearl was what had made Flea's hand crab round the mouse. On the stretcher Crabbick had turned to his dive buddy, reached out a hand and said, in a blood-thickened voice, 'The Marleys. I saw the Marleys stuck on a ledge near the bottom.'

  She put her hand to her head, massaging the roots of her hair, trying to picture what Crabbick had seen. She imagined the sound of breathing through cylinders, the solitary torchbeam: imagined a skeletonized hand appearing in the swirling silt below. Mum and Dad, on the slopes of Bushman's Hole. Somewhere, she realized now, she'd been keeping a little light of hope alive: an illogical dream that they might have escaped the accident, that Thom and the support divers and the ibogaine had all been mistaken, that they'd found a way out of Bushman's Hole and had somehow got to safety.

  She wanted to type — she wanted to ask questions: Is Crabbick sure it's the Marleys? Did he take a photograph? Have you any idea of their coordinates? And, most importantly, how near is the ledge to the bottom? Five metres? Ten metres?

  But Pearl wouldn't be able to answer. She could see that from the way he was responding to the questions. Crabbick was still in hospital, unable to talk. Shall we give the guy a break? he kept writing on the forum when anyone asked him for more information. Give him some space to recover — at least let him get his butt out of hospital — then ask him?

  She looked through the posts, trying to work out how long ago it had happened. The first garbled report that they'd been spotted had been two days ago. Two days, this had been sitting in the public domain, and she hadn't known. She hadn't known, yet somehow she'd dreamed Mum warning her about it. This time they'll find us.

  She rubbed her arms, suddenly feeling cold. It wasn't possible, was it? Uncovering memories — ideas she'd never quite vocalized — yes. But actually speaking to the dead? Wasn't it more likely she'd gone into this site in the last two days and forgotten because of the ibogaine? She forced her mind back through the memory: Kaiser had been using the computer, she remembered him tapping away on it. Had there been a moment when he'd left the house and had she, working from instinct, got up from the sofa, gone to the computer and got into divenet? Kaiser, she thought, as the moon crested the line of cypress trees, Kaiser, what would you say? If I said I'd been talking to the dead, what would you say?

  She pulled out the mobile phone and dialled him. He was usually awake at this time of night, pottering around the outbuildings, hammering in nails, and often didn't hear the phone. So she gave him time to make his way back to the house, letting the phone ring thirty times, counting it off in her head, but still he didn't answer. She hung up and went to get Thom's car keys. She'd have to take his car and drive over there. She was putting on her coat when a sentence came back to her.

  Thinking they're going to speak to the dead because they inject some shit into their arm…

  Tig, she thought. How about you? What would you think? As she was pulling on her coat she dialled his number. He answered after six rings. He sounded out of breath, and she pictured him with his mother, slouching in her bedroom, doing her lonely thing with her dreams and the police scanner and Freeview TV.

  'Yeah,' he said, swallowing to get his breathing down. 'Yeah, what?'

  'Tig.' She zipped up her coat. 'Something weird's happened.'

  There was a moment's silence, then he sniffed. 'I'm glad you called,' he said tersely. 'I'm glad because it's what you said you'd do. Always nice to see you doing what you say you're going to do.'

  She hesitated, taken aback. Had she promised to call? And then she remembered: the last thing he'd said after Mabuza's was 'Please call', and she'd said, 'Yes, I promise.'

  'I've been waiting.' S
he could hear Tig moving around at the other end of the line, clanking things, as if he was in the kitchen. 'And now you're calling me. It's good, that's what I'm saying, it's respectful of you.'

  She finished doing up the zip, feeling beaten. 'I'm sorry.'

  'How's your filth boyfriend? Suited and booted and out for a little action?'

  'What?'

  Tig laughed. 'He likes his laydees very compliant, if you know what I'm talking about.'

  'No, I don't know.'

  'Ask him how he's settling into the area. Ask him if he needs a tourist guide — take him down City Road and show him around a bit.'

  'Tig, please. I called you because I needed you — really needed you. I'm sorry I didn't call earlier but, please, talk to me like a human being. Not in code. Or let's stop talking and do it another day. I'm going out now.'

  There was a beat of silence. Then he snorted. 'OK, then,' he said lightly. 'We'll do it another day.' And before she could stop him he'd put the phone down.

  She stared at the mobile display, not quite believing he'd hung up on her. Fuck fuck fuck. She flipped up his number and standing in the hallway in her coat composed a text in her laborious text language. It was half complete when the landline on the table leaped to life, making her jump. She dropped her keys into her pocket and picked it up.

  'Kaiser?'

  'No. It's Mandy. What's going on?'

  'Mandy.'

  'Yes — Mandy. Look, Flea, I've been trying his phone all night and he's either got it switched off or he's rejecting my calls. I need to talk to him.'

  Flea scratched her scalp hard, trying to think. 'Wait a moment.' She put the phone on the desk and went into the hallway. It was pitch black — she hadn't realized it had got so late. 'Thom?' she called into the darkness. 'Thom? Where are you?' She waited, counting to fifty in her head, then went back to the phone. 'Mandy, he's not answering. He must be in the shed or something. I'll get him to-'

  'In the shed? It's nearly eleven o'clock — pitch dark out there. What's he doing?'