Ritual jc-3

by Mo Hayder

  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.

  '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 u
sed 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.