by Mo Hayder
He clenched his fists, held them, then released them. Did it once again. Then he looked sideways at Nduka. 'You open it,' he said, feeling something under his sternum squirm. 'Go on. You open it.'
Nduka pressed a finger against his temple. 'Well,' he said, 'if I must.'
He stepped forward and pushed the door inwards. Beyond it there was a small well-lit room, books stacked floor to ceiling, a reading light hung low. There wasn't much space in there with the desks and the huge box files crammed with paper, but in the centre Flea sat, in a black sweatshirt, her hair in a ponytail. On her lap was a pile of papers. As the door opened she turned her eyes, seeming surprised.
'You?' she said, blinking at him. 'What are you doing here?'
Caffery didn't answer. He didn't care, he told himself. He didn't give a shit about her. He said it to himself slowly in his brain, his eyes closed, the sun filtering through his eyelids: You don't care if she lives or if she dies.
51
He was the last person she'd expected to see: Caffery standing in Kaiser's conservatory in his shirt, dust on his sleeves, clutching something that might have been a pitchfork handle. One moment she'd been sitting there, going through the thirty-year- old paperwork Kaiser had given her, a slow feeling of dread as she read, knowing that this was connected somehow to her father, and the next moment the room was flooded with air and light.
'Kaiser?' she asked, but his face was blank, as if something awful had happened between the two of them. There was no expression on Caffery's face either, just his watery eyes on hers, emotions working their way through him. For a moment she thought he looked sad. Then she got the impression that it wasn't sadness but anger, that he was about to hit her. Lastly came something cold creeping into his face, as if the only thing he felt for her was contempt. He took his hand off the door and turned away into the conservatory.
'What are you doing here?' she repeated, putting down the stack of papers and getting to her feet. 'How did you get here?'
'Fucking hell,' he muttered. 'I'll never get used to this, the way people lie to each other.'
'What?' she said. She followed him into the bright daylight. 'What does that mean?'
But he wasn't listening. He threw the pitchfork handle on to the floor — it spun away, hitting the wall — then grabbed Kaiser's arm. Before she knew what was happening he'd pushed him roughly back into the little room. Kaiser didn't resist, just allowed himself to be manhandled, not objecting when Caffery closed the door and turned the key.
'Hey,' she said, reaching out to grab his hands. 'What do you think you're doing?'
He snatched away his hand and pocketed the key. 'Shut up. Or you can go in there with him.' He headed back to the corridor.
She paused — not believing this was happening — then caught up with him. 'You're supposed to be looking for Jonah. You promised. What're you doing here?'
He didn't answer. Instead he went into the kitchen and began to open the cupboards, pulling things out, crouching to look inside. 'What?' She stopped in the doorway and watched him. 'What're you looking for?'
He ignored her, straightened and opened the utility-room door, roughly pulling aside boxes and bin-liners. 'I said, what are you looking for?'
'For Mallows's body.' He pushed past her, going back into the hall. 'Remember? The one who got his hands cut off.'
She stared at him as he mounted the stairs two at a time. At first the name Mallows didn't make any sense. Then the daze broke. 'Mallows?' she said, following him. She caught up with him on the landing where he was opening doors, pulling aside curtains, delving into wardrobes.
'What the hell makes you think he's here?'
He went into the bathroom, kicking at the bath panelling, looking into the airing cupboard. 'Your mate downstairs is a little too close to the last place Mallows was seen alive. And you know about the videos he's got, apparently. Strange that, a serving police officer knowing about videos of people being tortured.'
'The videos?' She licked her dry lips. 'Yes, yes, I do. But they're…'
'Torture. They're videos of someone being tortured.'
'But not Mallows.'
'Are you sure?' He went into the next bedroom, picking his way through the piles of clothes and books. He checked under the bed, then threw open the wardrobe door. 'You're telling me one of those in that bookcase of his doesn't show Mallows having his hands taken off, having his blood taken? Is that what you're saying?'
'They're old films. They happened in the eighties.'
'That's what he says.'
Flea came into the room and closed the door behind her. She didn't like it being open, with the echoey rooms downstairs, the row after row of videos beneath and Kaiser locked in the study. She went to the bed, sat heavily on it and massaged her temples, thinking about Mum saying, 'If you want my opinion what he did really was immoral. It was outrageous.'
Caffery was staring at her. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. 'Well?'
'Oh, Christ,' she whispered, rubbing her arms because goosebumps had come up on them. 'I don't know. He's my father's friend, and I always knew he did something wrong years ago, I just never knew how really, really fucking wrong it was. I haven't worked it all out yet, but he was…' She trailed off, not liking the words. 'I've seen eight of the videos — they're all the same. Electrodes. That's what he was using. It was an experiment.'
'An experiment?'
'I know. All done in the name of science.' She pushed her fingers into her temples, as if that would get rid of the pressure. 'Things must have been different then, and it wasn't here, it was in Nigeria, in Ibadon — and, you know, maybe the ethics were different because nobody stopped him. Not until the very end. The, uh, the people you saw-'
'I only saw one.'
'There are more, lots more, but they consented. I've seen the consent forms — that's what I was going through when you came in. They were mostly research students. The others came off the streets, did it for money.' She paused because something had just hit her. Thom's night terrors. He'd always been convinced Kaiser used to hunt people in the streets at night. She felt cold. Maybe Thom had always known the truth. Or suspected it. What she'd said to Caffery was true. The videos could be explained away — sinister, but not as sinister as he was thinking. But on a deep level, in a low part of her stomach, she knew they were sinister because they said something about Dad she didn't want to think about.
She wiped her forehead, trying to keep her face composed. 'So — you see what I mean? Nothing to do with Mallows.'
Caffery took a weary breath. He looked as if he hadn't slept in years. 'I should at least lodge a report at Weston and get a section eight warrant raised.'
'Technically,' she muttered. 'Yes, you should.'
'Except I can't nick him here in the UK. Unless he was a public official in Nigeria at the time. Which I take it he wasn't?'
'No.'
'In that case it's over to-'
'Interpol,' she said. 'I know — I've already thought about it.'
He held her eyes a little longer. Then he let go of the door and pulled at his tie until it was loose enough to lift over his head. 'Come on,' he said, as he thrust it into his breast pocket. 'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now I've got something else I want to talk to the old bastard about.'
'Secondary attention. The "path of the heart". A place, a crevice in our consciousness we sometimes stumble into — the place of enlightenment.'
Kaiser talked quietly as he allowed Caffery to lead him back down the corridor, his oversized trousers hanging half off his skinny frame. Flea followed a few paces behind, wishing she could stop him talking. She didn't want to hear what he might have to say about Dad and the videos.
'The Christian Church,' he went on, 'tries to pretend it doesn't exist. But other religions aren't so coy — the ancient religions, I mean, the ones born out of passion and intelligence, an understanding of the earth and the way the seasons move, not the ones spread and imposed thr
ough politics and imperialism.'
'What were you doing at that clinic?' Caffery said, propelling him into the living room.
Kaiser settled down on the sofa and, as if he hadn't heard the question, continued, 'The ancient religions understand that there is a place we rarely have access to that is the place of true enlightenment. It is a difficult, very difficult, place to access. To study.'
'Kaiser…' Flea said. She was facing him with her back to the open cupboard: the cupboard she'd believed all her life had contained drugs, her fists held clenched behind her back. 'Answer the question, Kaiser.'
'It exists in all of us. Every one of us can find it, but only a few ever do. Except, of course, when we die. For the few seconds before we die our neural pathways are programmed to close down in such a way that they allow us the briefest entry to that place — the place I am drawn to.'
Caffery picked up the pair of gardening shears from the floor and set them at the back of the room. Then he crossed his arms and leaned against the window. In one hand he was holding a bundle of papers: the consent forms Flea had dropped on to the floor. 'I asked you what you were doing at the clinic. Can you answer that question?'
'Ah, yes, but I am trying to explain why I was forced to use pain as the nearest approximation to death. Some believe another route exists through certain hallucinogens. For example, Phoebe's father-'
'Kaiser! ' she said abruptly, startling him. 'Answer the question.'
Kaiser looked at her, shocked. 'What question?'
'My question.' Caffery moved away from the window and pulled out a chair from the dusty dining-table. He set it in front of the sofa and sat, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, scowling at Kaiser. 'My question was, what's your involvement with TIDARA?'
'TIDARA?'
'In Glastonbury. It's the last place Ian Mallows was seen alive.'
'Ian Mallows?'
'Don't pretend you don't know who I'm talking about.'
Kaiser blinked. He looked at Flea for interpretation. She held his eyes. Kaiser: one of the only friends she'd thought she had. And now it was all upside-down. She had to struggle to keep her voice in control.
'I'd know if he was lying,' she muttered. 'He doesn't know anything.'
Caffery sighed. He cast the consent forms on to the table and sat back, putting his hands behind his head and stretching a little, as if he'd come in from a hard day and was relaxing. But it was an act. She could see that he was shaking, as if the adrenalin from earlier was still in his system. 'They told me you'd been observing their work.'
'Ah, yes.' Kaiser took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. 'It was part of a body of research I was doing. The results will be published in the British Journal of Psychology this September. The use of ibogaine in withdrawal from the opiates.'
'So tell me about it. Tell me about ibogaine.'
Standing behind Caffery, Flea gave Kaiser a fierce look. The last thing she needed was Caffery knowing she'd taken it. Kaiser gestured to the books on the shelves. 'If I may?' he said. 'I have some literature.'
'Go on, then.'
Kaiser got up stiffly and went to the shelves, hauling books down and piling them in front of Caffery. He propped broken glasses on the end of his nose and sat down, leafing through the books, holding out photos of tribal dances, fetishes and masks for Caffery to look at. 'Ibogaine is from the Bwiti tribe. It is used to dislodge memories from the mind.'
Flea came to the sofa and sat on the arm. She wanted to be ready to stop Kaiser if he went too far. But Caffery spoke: 'Is it used in black magic? In African witchcraft?'
'African witchcraft?' Kaiser peered over his glasses as if Caffery was a mystery. 'I'm not sure which of those two words is the most ignorant and patronizing. To describe a deep-seated cultural belief as «witchcraft» or to apply the universal label «African» instead of using the name of a tribe or, at the very least, a country. Even if the concept of a country is a colonialist construct, it's better than giving them all one title — «African». Tell me, do you recall the case of that poor child's torso in the Thames?'
'I know what you're talking about, yes.'
'The way it was handled by the police — another astonishing Western misconception of how the African continent works. The child's genitals weren't removed, if I remember correctly?'
'That's right.'
'So even before your people conducted the tests I could have told them that South Africa muti was the wrong place to look for his killers. In South African muti he would have had his genitals removed — it would have been the first thing. And yet how strange it was that although the child came from Nigeria your police gravitated to South Africa. That they talked to Nelson Mandela. One asks oneself what Nelson Mandela has to do with a small Nigerian child. So when you say "African witchcraft" you're conveniently forgetting you're not only talking about a deeply rooted faith but about the beliefs of forty-seven different countries and countless different tribes. Medicine and mystic belief vary enormously from region to region.'
Caffery had opened his mouth to speak, but something in Kaiser's last sentence seemed to strike him. He was silent, thinking about it, then he frowned. 'You can be specific about what area a belief or superstition comes from?'
'Fairly specific — fairly.'
Caffery studied him thoughtfully. 'Have you heard of the Tokoloshe?' he asked.
'The what?' Flea said.
'The Tokoloshe,' Kaiser said. 'People say he's the result of a mating between a human female and a baboon and, indeed, one does occasionally hear anecdotal evidence of women trying to conceive a Tokoloshe.'
Caffery raised an eyebrow. Kaiser smiled. 'Yes — it shows the belief and respect some people invest in him, doesn't it? Of course, left to his own devices the Tokoloshe is hardly a danger, only a nuisance. But he's a witch's familiar and it's then, when he's under the influence of a witch, you need to have regard for the Tokoloshe. That's when you need to take special precautions.' Kaiser held up a book. 'This man claimed his truck had run over a Tokoloshe on a Drakensburg highway. A fake, naturally, but can you see how clever it was — you can understand why people were taken in.'
When Caffery took the book she could tell from his eyes that he was looking at something monstrous. She could half see its reflection, but more clearly she could see the effect it had on him.
'Can I look?'
He held out the book for her to see. The photo showed a man in rolled-up shirtsleeves holding up a small dried-out corpse, flattened into a round, blackish pancake the way rabbits and badgers were flattened on the local Somerset roads. The black arms were out to the sides like an angel's, the squashed head turned sideways, mouth open. She felt a finger of unease work its way up her back as she stared at this strange, twisted corpse.
'An ex-colleague in Nigeria got hold of the cadaver,' Kaiser said. 'In fact, he paid for it, almost three thousand rand I'm told, because the man drove a hard bargain. It turned out to be a baboon with a human skull grafted on to it, both burned then left out in the sun. I think there was a police inquiry, but they never found out whose head it was. One assumes it was retrieved from some unfortunate's grave.'
'And this was in South Africa?'
'Yes.'
'Is Tokoloshe specific to South Africa?'
'Water sprites like him crop up all over the continent with different names — the crocodile god, for example. But in South Africa and up into parts of Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe he's the Tokoloshe.'
'What about the tradition of offering him a bowl of human blood?'
'Human blood? Yes — off the top of my head I'd guess that tradition comes from Natal or Gauteng, not from the Cape.'
Caffery grunted. 'Thank you.' He closed the book and got to his feet, holding out his mobile phone to Kaiser, showing him the screen. 'Anywhere round here I can get a signal?'
'There's a mast in the north of the valley. I don't use a portable phone but I'm told one can get reception from the back of the house. Go thr
ough the conservatory.'
Caffery left the room, and Kaiser — suddenly seeming a little lost — sat back, deflated. Neither spoke for a while. She stared at him, the droopy brown eyes, the huge head and the thought of the way he'd appeared to her in the doorway: an animal skull in a white shirt. She'd always thought she and Kaiser were close — now she wondered whether she knew him at all.
'The videos,' she said eventually. 'Dad knew about them, didn't he?'
Kaiser sighed. He inclined his head, nodding almost imperceptibly. 'I can't lie to you, Phoebe. Yes, he knew.'
'He was involved in the experiment, wasn't he? I heard you talking about it the night before the accident.'
'This is something we shouldn't be discussing. David is gone now. He can't explain it to you because he hasn't got a voice any more.'
'No,' she said bitterly. 'No, he hasn't.'
Kaiser shifted in the chair. 'Well? Is that what you came here for?'
She didn't answer. She didn't want to tell him about Mum and Dad's bodies being found, or ask him how she'd known it would happen; she didn't want to talk about ibogaine or whether she'd been on the computer during the trip. No, she decided. I won't tell you anything. You said once that there are roads I have to travel alone, and you're right. This road is a long one, and at the moment I don't trust you to walk it with me. She closed the book, shutting away the picture of the awful dead Tokoloshe.
'Phoebe?' Kaiser said, but she stood up and left the room, going down the corridor, into the conservatory to find Caffery.
He was standing in profile with the phone to his ear, looking out at the valley. He ended his call and turned. 'What?' he mouthed through the glass. 'What is it?'