Ritual

by Mo Hayder

  Centuries ago, the Marleys' garden hadn't belonged to the cottage but to the neighbouring Charlcombe Hall. And now Katherine and Giles Oscar, the new owners of Charlcombe, wanted to reinstate the garden, wanted a clean sweep down to the valley from the back of their overbuilt, over-decorated house. Sometimes Flea thought selling her section of the land was the smart thing to do, release a bit of equity. After the accident Thom hadn't wanted to stay there, 'with the ghosts', so they'd agreed she'd keep the house and give him a loan against her share of the life-insurance money that would come after the statutory seven years. The Oscars' money would make life easier.

  But no. She crumpled the paper and shoved it into the belly of the Aga. She wasn't going to budge, no matter how hard it got to maintain her parents' house. It was the closest she could get to her childhood – and maybe that made her soft, but she needed it. She'd been born here, grown up knowing every inch of the ageing lawns that dropped in terraces out of sight, past ponds and a lake, ending somewhere vague among the fields. She'd grown up with the distant views of Bath, hazy mist settling in the valley in the autumn mornings so only the church spires were visible like sunken trees in a lake.

  She waited for the newspaper to catch, then kicked off her shoes and went down to Dad's study. In the electric light all the belongings looked a little frozen, as if she'd forced them to sit in unnatural positions. Kaiser's boxes stood in a row under the table, untouched. She went to the shelves and ran her fingers along the book spines until she found the bound thesis her father had done at Cambridge. She pulled it out and opened it, looking inside the cover. It was typical of Dad to write in books – he didn't revere them, he used them. The only good book, he said, was one that had been added to by the reader and the inside cover of the dissertation was covered with scribblings– tiny notes to himself. She stood under the light and studied the list, looking for anything, anything, that could be a list of digits for the safe.

  After a while, when she couldn't find any numbers and she couldn't think of any other place he might have hidden the code, she put the dissertation back, crouched on the floor and pulled out the three boxes of Kaiser's stuff, each secured with thick parcel tape. She slit them, using the sharp edge of a ruler from her father's desk and began pulling out the contents – three stacks of periodicals bound with rubber bands, a sketch of what looked like an African tribal dance, book after book on religion and psychology – all covered with plaster dust; at some point they must have spent time in Kaiser's house.

  The book Kaiser had been talking about was at the bottom, another dissertation, it seemed, produced on a dot-matrix printer. The cover illustration was a line drawing of a plant root photocopied. The pages were bound with a red plastic spiral. The Use of the Tabernanthe Iboga Root in Shamanic Initiation, it said, above the author's name and the University of California, Berkeley's copyright line. She pulled it out and sat down in her father's chair to leaf through the pages of graphs and research methodology sections.

  By the time she'd got to the end of it she understood more. Ibogaine was root bark. It was used by the Bwiti believers in Cameroon and Gabon to give them what they believed was access to their ancestors – they described using it as 'cutting open the head to allow the light in'. The book was dotted with poor-quality black-and-white photographs of an African tribe, some dressed in raffia skirts, some in cat fur, a tribal elder holding a torch made of tree bark. There was a section about fatalities from ibogaine. The book's author said he had no reliable way to estimate the number of those who died as a result of using it: it was sometimes used to treat withdrawal symptoms after chronic heroin addiction so there was little documentation of a participant's physical health at the outset. Anecdotal evidence suggested up to one in a hundred users may have died as a result; the heart and the liver were the two organs most commonly affected.

  Flea put the book under her arm and was about to switch off the light and take it back to her bedroom when something on the floor caught her eye. In the litter of books at her feet some had fallen open. One photo in particular made her stop, a photo that showed a pair of severed hands – shrivelled and black in colour. She turned the book over and read the title. The back of her skull crawled.

  She put the dissertation down, sat on the floor and, slightly dazed, turned the pages of the book, looking at the photos, reading slowly. In the corridor the grandfather clock ticked patiently, but she was numb to time passing: the words in the book crept slowly, nastily, into her thoughts, freezing everything else.

  When she'd finished she raised her eyes to the window, the moonlit garden with the ghostly creepers hanging round the window. She should be rolling safely into bed now. Instead she was sweating. The windows were open but she was hot – sitting upright and alert on the floor, pulling unconsciously at the neck of her T-shirt. Suddenly she'd forgotten Kaiser and ibogaine and Tig. Suddenly she'd forgotten her self-pact – her promise never, ever to get involved again in theorizing about a case. Suddenly she couldn't think about anything except hands buried under a restaurant. And, most of all, that the owner of the restaurant was African.

  17

  8 May

  He's never fought like this in his life. He's fought and fought, half killed himself, and still he can't get out. No matter how many times he's rammed himself into the locked iron gates, blundering like a darted animal at the walls, no matter how much he's bellowed and tugged at the grating on the window, in the end he can't find the strength and he gives up. He lies down on the sofa, face in his hands, and begins to sob. 'Please,' he cries, 'I've changed my mind. I don't want the fucking money.'

  Skinny is sitting against the wall watching this. His knees are up and his eyes are wide. He looks scared. He looks as desperate as Mossy feels.

  'Please, I mean, really fucking seriously please, let me out of this place. I swear I won't tell a soul – I swear.' He breaks off, tears running down his cheeks, his hands up in the air in front of his face, half ashamed of his fear. His hands. His fucking hands. It's his hands they want to take, and it's all too un-fucking-believable, this place, with the bars and the locks. This insanity. He goes on crying for a while. Then Skinny makes a strange noise. He gets to his feet and turns to the gate. He taps three times on the bars – a signal.

  Mossy drops his hands. 'What you doing?' he yells. 'Where're you going? Don't fucking go.'

  'Uncle,' he says quietly. His voice is thick, a little embarrassed. He doesn't turn to him. 'I'm going to speak to Uncle.'

  'Who?' Mossy says. 'Who the fuck's . . .' There's a noise in the corridor. A shaft of light, a figure appears in silhouette and the words stick in Mossy's mouth. He goes really quiet. Moving very quietly, not taking his eyes off Skinny, he gets up and picks his way to the back of the sofa, squatting in the corner, sitting on his hands like that will protect him. It's too dark to see who this new person is but it looks like a man. The driver? There's a moment when he can see gloved hands unlocking the gate, then Skinny slips out. There's a clang as the gate is closed, locked, and Mossy is left on his own in the silence.

  He doesn't move for a long time, just stares at the closed gate expecting someone to come back through it. But minutes tick by and nothing happens. After what seems like an hour, when no one reappears, he gets up cautiously and moves around, breathing fast, like an athlete, which is a joke for someone with a body like his, trying to keep his legs springy, half bent, facing the gate so he never has to take his eyes off it for more than a few seconds. He goes round the place checking every corner half by feel.

  The room is perfectly square. It must have been a bedroom because there is girls' wallpaper in some places: a frieze of ballerinas. At one end there is a small corridor and at the end of that a bathroom. Briefly he takes his eyes off the gate to check it out. And then he wishes he hadn't.

  There's some heavy-duty S&M equipment riveted to the walls – no doubt what's gone on in here in the past. Coiled on the floor is a yellow, industrial hose, the type used for cleaning factory equip
ment. The hose says more than anything: it says that what happens in here, or what's meant to happen, needs to be cleaned up after. There's a half-broken bog with a window above it. It's barred, the window, with SITEX again, no getting out of that, but back in the corridor there's another window, and on this one the grille, which is oversized and goes all the way down to the floor, is bent, just at the bottom, as if something has squeezed through it.

  He gets down on the floor with his back to the wall and tries to push his head up into the gap. He gets his shoulders in – and if he turns his head he can see the grey daylight above. This must lead outside, but as he tries to push a little higher he realizes he's stuck. He can't go any further. He kicks a bit, tries to push it that last inch, but the grille is digging into his spine so hard it feels like it's going to break his back. Someone could be coming in through the gate any second and find him trapped here, so he shuffles himself down, pulling back into the room, inch by inch, the grille digging into his skin. He comes out with his T-shirt over his head and the skin scraped off his back.

  He stands and pulls the T-shirt down, shivering now. He hates this room. Apart from the gate and the two windows there is only one other entrance. He remembers this from last time because then it reminded him of an animal's cage. It's a hole in the wall, hacked roughly into the breeze blocks, the shape and position of a fireplace. An iron gate is set into the sides so it's barred too, like the one Skinny's just gone through. You could imagine a lion in there, or a tiger. He squats and on the other side of the grille sees a pile of clothing. He's just about to reach for it when the gate to his right opens.

  Mossy darts behind the sofa, cowering, starting to cry again in his fear, but it's only Skinny. There's a figure behind him, locking the gate, but now Skinny's standing on his own in the room. His eyes are bright, he isn't smiling, but he hasn't got that sad look on his face any more. The other person moves off down the little hallway and when they've gone Skinny comes forward and kneels on the sofa.

  'What?' hisses Mossy. 'What is it?'

  'Do you have a friend?'

  'A friend?'

  'Someone who needs money too?'

  'What're you talking about?'

  'Uncle. He say maybe you have a friend who can come instead. And then you can go free.'

  Mossy stares at him. 'What?'

  'Someone to come here in your place. Someone to have his hands cut off.'

  'You mean if I do that he won't cut my hands off?'

  'That's right.'

  Mossy lets out his breath. He's having trouble keeping up with this. 'You mean,' he says, looking intently at Skinny, because now, more than ever, he needs the truth from this person, 'you mean the moment someone else turns up I can go?'

  'Yes. You can go.'

  Mossy eyes Skinny. His heart is thumping now. He's trying to think fast because he knows this is his chance. There are people all over Bristol he'd like to see with their hands cut off – some he'd cut off himself given half a chance – but none of them are stupid enough to get themselves into the position he's in right now.

  But then he realizes there is one person: one person nasty and stupid. In fact, dopey as shit. Jonah. Jonah Dundas from the Hopewell estate. He raises his eyes to Skinny, a smile twitching at his mouth, because he's just about to save himself by sacrificing someone else.

  And, to tell the truth, it feels good.

  18

  15 May

  At seven a.m. the following day the big IDENT1 computer, having kicked up five comparisons, had whittled the prints from the severed hand down to one person: Ian Mallows. A twenty-two-year-old drug addict from the Knowle West housing estate. By the time the good residents of Knowle West had started breakfast and looked out of their windows the place was crawling with uniformed cops: nine of Avon and Somerset's finest, knocking on doors.

  Caffery, feeling the effects of last night's scrumpy, was standing in the doorway of the Community Contact van in his shirtsleeves. He was tired and his back ached. But he knew the case was squeezing a little, a bit less ragged round the edges, and he had an idea that if he stepped on it they might even get the crucial evidence by the end of the day – the rest of Mallows's body. Or even Mallows alive, if the CSM was right. He had a DS interviewing Ian Mallows's probation officer, and some of the support unit had forced an entry into Mallows's flat, but it was empty and the CSM was doing a forensic search of that now. The other officers were crawling over the estate, each waving a picture of Ian Mallows, and the same comment had come up over and over. 'Ask BM. BM knows everyone round here. Ask BM.' And, from looking casually around the estate, from the squat brick buildings to the skanky bits of grass covered with dog shit, within five minutes Caffery could see exactly who 'BM' was.

  He was standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs, his hands in his pockets, one foot up against the wall, dog-tags jangling round his neck. He was wearing a grey hoodie under a black blazer-type jacket and his face was white, sort of upper-class English, with a Roman nose and slightly pink cheeks that looked as if he might have got them on the rugby pitches at Harrow. But close up you could see he was a Knowle West boy right to the core: it was the way his eyes kept going from side to side, the way his body was already soft and spreading, the tops of his thighs rubbing together.

  'Wha'?' said BM, when Caffery approached, warrant card extended between the thumb and fingers of his right hand. He pushed himself away from the wall and eyed it suspiciously. 'What's going on?'

  'Got a minute, son?'

  'No. No, I haven't.'

  'Suit yourself.' Caffery put the card back into his pocket. He pulled up his collar and stood for a moment, contemplating the stairwell with graffiti and water running down the walls. BM glared at him, waiting for him to speak, waiting for him either to go or to start a row. But Caffery didn't. He coughed loudly, smiled at the lad, then went back to gazing up the stairwell, as if they were two people standing at a bus stop, waiting for the same thing. As if he had all the time in the world and could wait for ever if he wanted to, and maybe had the most patience of the two of them. Somewhere in his head he really didn't care if BM spoke to him or not.

  Since last night all he'd been able to think about was what the Walking Man could tell him. Still, he thought, he had to concentrate: he still had a duty to the sorry drug-prowling drop-out who'd got his hands cut off.

  BM took his own hands out of his pockets, sucked his teeth at Caffery, the way the Jamaicans used to in Deptford, and swung himself on to the stairs, heading up.

  'BM,' Caffery said calmly. 'Used to know someone called BM in London. D'you know how he got that name?'

  On the stairs BM hesitated. Caffery could see the dirty bottoms of his Ice Cream Reeboks. 'He got that name because he was someone's Bag Man. BM. Bag Man. Don't suppose that's how you got your name. Or should I be asking your probation officer?'

  There was a silence. Somewhere a television was playing the theme to This Morning. After a moment or two BM crouched and put his face through the railings. 'Don't have a probation officer,' he hissed. 'Haven't got a record.'

  'Do you want one?'

  There was another long silence. Then BM sat down. There was the sound of him breathing, then of him surreptitiously taking a baggie from his pocket and squeezing it under someone's front door. Caffery heard it, noted where the door was, but didn't move. The thing was to let BM keep face. After a few moments his trainers squeaked as he came back down the stairs, hands in the pockets of his low-slung jeans.

  'What?' he said sullenly. 'What you going to do?'

  Caffery showed him the photograph. BM rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, stepping from side to side in his Reeboks. 'That's Mossy. Innit? Where's 'e to, then? Got himself in the nick, has he?'

  'He's missing.'

  'And you think maybe I took him?'

  Caffery put the photograph back in his pocket. 'Someone cut his hands off. They used a hacksaw; sort of thing you could pick up in a hardware shop at the end of the road. Pro
bably killed him, but we don't know for sure because his body never turned up.'

  BM lost all the pink in his schoolboy cheeks. He sat down suddenly on the bottom step, his feet planted wide. For a moment his hand wavered, as if he was trying to reach the banister for some support, but Caffery was watching so he stopped himself and shakily rested his elbows on his knees. 'All right there, son?'

  'That's what he meant,' he muttered. 'That's what he meant.' A little line of perspiration beaded his lip. 'Ages ago he said something to me. He was in the agonies when he said it and I just thought it was him going crazy, you know, saying stupid shit.'

  'What did he say?'

  'Said he'd met someone. He'd been at one of those charity dry-out places, places that're supposed to get you off the gear but don't. Everyone just hangs around reckoning they're going to meet someone and score.'

  'You remember which one?'

  'Could have been any in about a hundred.

  They're all over the place. The only one it wasn't was the Knowle West one. I can tell you that straight away, because no one on the estate who's still using would show their face there.'

  'So, who did Mallows meet?'

  'Dunno.' BM put his hands in his pockets and went to look out of the stairwell at the bleak estate, police everywhere, going along the alleys and balconies, from door to door. Then he came back into the stairwell, shrinking into the shadows, making sure no one was listening. When he turned to Caffery his face was drawn, none of the rosy-cheeked schoolboy left. 'He said something weird. 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." '