Ritual

by Mo Hayder

  'Yes.'

  'Can you tell me about him?'

  'He gives a lot of money to charities. He's known in the industry – if you can call this an industry.'

  'And you? Did he give you a lot of money?'

  She smiled. 'No. He didn't give us any.'

  'I'm sorry?'

  'He didn't give us any. In fact, he didn't approach us and we didn't approach him.'

  'But you know him?'

  She laughed. She had the whitest, most even teeth he had ever seen. 'It's a small world but not that small. I've never met Mr Mabuza. I know him by reputation but I've never seen him face to face.'

  'Or had any business dealings with him?'

  'Or had business dealings.'

  'Are you sure?'

  She stood up, went to a filing cabinet and brought out a manilla folder stamped with the name of a firm of accountants. 'Here.' She pulled out a bound report and placed it on the table. 'The details of my investors.'

  Caffery studied the details, scratching his forehead distractedly. 'TIDARA,' he said. 'Is that a name of something?'

  'Tabernanthe Iboga Detoxification and Rehabilitation Association.'

  'And are there any others called that?'

  'I sincerely hope not. We're a registered company.'

  'No other branches?'

  'Just us. Why?'

  The woman's cool was making him feel inefficient, like Columbo in a creased raincoat. He pulled out the photo of Mossy and pushed it in front of her. She took a pair of reading glasses from a slim ivory case and perched them on her nose. He kept his thumb on the corner, and was ready to pull it back, but she frowned and rested her forefinger on the other side and drew it closer.

  'Ring any bells?'

  She was silent, studying Mossy. Then she went to the door. 'Chloë,' she said, to one of the receptionists, 'would you?'

  There was the sound of a chair being pushed back, then the taller of the two girls, her black hair tied in a neat ponytail at the nape of her neck, came into the doorway. Tay handed her the photo. 'I was thinking about last week,' she said, 'when we were waiting for that delivery – remember?'

  The girl studied the photo. 'It could be.' She held the photo at arm's length, considering it with her head on one side, nibbling at her thumbnail. 'Yeah – I mean,' she looked at Caffery, 'he was only here for a second or two, but it could be. Why? What's he done?'

  Caffery came to stand in the doorway with the two women. Outside, the sun slanted through the trees in white stripes, filling the reception area with light. 'What happened when he was here?'

  'Not much. He came in, asked how much treatment would cost. I only remember because, to be honest, it's not usually his type here. Can't afford it, and people don't just wander in off the streets. We're not a drop-in centre.'

  'How much is the treatment?'

  'Depends. If you have a full medical with us it can be up to seventeen hundred pounds. But his type, he could probably get the medical done at his GP's if he was clever and said the right things. Anyway, I told him how much and he goes, "OK, see ya", and that was it – he was gone.'

  'On his own, was he?'

  'Yeah – I mean, he came in on his own, but he, you know, had his mate waiting outside for him.'

  'His mate?'

  'Yeah. He went out and must've told him how much it was, because the other guy got straight on the phone and was telling someone.' She gestured at the front to where a varnished tree-trunk had been carved into a bench and set into the concrete just outside the glass doors. 'They were right there. And when they stopped talking on the phone the two of them just sat, really quiet, not even looking at each other. I got the feeling they were upset, as if they were sort of scared to speak to each other because everything was awful. But there you go,' she said. 'A lot of people are like that round here.'

  Caffery stared at the bench in the dappled light. 'What was he like?' he said. 'The friend? Did you speak to him?'

  'He stayed outside. Never come in.'

  'Do you remember what he looked like?'

  'Not really.'

  'Nothing? Was he white? Black?'

  'Oh, black,' she said, as if that much was obvious. 'But I don't remember what he actually looked like.'

  'Was he old?' She had pushed a finger into her mouth and was sucking it thoughtfully, trying to remember. She wasn't nearly as sophisticated as he'd thought at first – he could see the places her lip-liner had gone wrong. 'Young?'

  'I really don't know.'

  'Tall?'

  'He was sitting down.'

  'What was he wearing? What was his hair like? Did he have anything unusual about him? Anything at all?'

  'I think he might have been wearing a white shirt,' she said. 'Maybe a jacket over it. I'm not sure. I wasn't paying attention.'

  'OK,' he said eventually, a little vague because he was trying to think too. Even if Tay thought Mabuza hadn't got a connection here she was wrong. There was a connection, but maybe she wasn't aware of it.

  'OK.' He patted his pockets. 'I need to make a phone call. I'm going to sit outside for a minute or two.'

  'Please,' Tay extended a hand to the door, the creamy cuff riding up her slim arm, 'I'll put your juice in the fridge.'

  Outside it was warm. The world was getting hotter and who knew what parts of this country would still be above water in fifty years' time? The trees stood, as they must have for decades, on the south side of the slope, native deciduous trees and small, Oriental saplings lining the path, keeping the entrance to TIDARA shady. He looked back into the reception area. Chloë and Tay had their backs to him, both bending over paperwork. He went behind the bench, half sat on its hard back where he was out of sight, and pulled his tobacco pouch from his pocket. He had lied about the call. He needed a smoke. And to think.

  It was the character in the white shirt and jacket he was interested in. He lit the cigarette and filled his lungs, letting the poison touch his body in all the places he knew it shouldn't. Someone had been sitting on this bench next to Mossy on maybe the last day he was seen alive. Pretty fucking interesting in its way. He exhaled, letting the smoke make a snake trail, up, up into the pine needles, curling subtly around the hand-like ginkgo leaves and heading up into the blue.

  Something in the trees moved. He caught it out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned there was nothing, just a few frayed shadows dancing across last year's leaves on the ground. He stared hard at the tree-trunks, trying to decide if it had been an animal or a branch moving, or just something scampering around on the inside of his brain. There was something creepy about this part of the world anyway. The land he was sitting on had once been under water. Until the seventeenth century Glastonbury Tor had been an island. But then had come the drainage of the Somerset Levels, and Glastonbury had spread as a town with its reputation as a centre for witchcraft. It was funny, he thought, it didn't matter which country or culture you came from, somewhere superstition and witchcraft had a hold. Tay had said the ibogaine was used by an African tribe. Used ritually, she had said. Ritually . . .

  He pulled the TIDARA pamphlet out of his pocket. Clenching the cigarette in his teeth, he fished inside his breast pocket for a pen. With the pamphlet folded on his knee he drew a hard, deep outline round the picture of the plant root. Tabernanthe iboga root. Ibogaine. He'd never heard of it until today. But somehow it was connected to what had happened to Mossy. And maybe that connection was witchcraft.

  He put away the pen and tucked the pamphlet into his pocket. He was bending to crush the cigarette against the bench – not in the bark underfoot because he could picture the reaction from Tay Peters – when something above the front door arrested his eye. A small circle of glass above the front door. He smiled. An ironic, relieved smile.

  Thank God, he thought, shredding the cigarette with his nails and sprinkling it in the bark mulch. Thank God for the humble CCTV camera.

  41

  18 May

  When Flea woke, the sun was h
igh above Solsbury Hill, quivering hot and orange at the crest of a towering cloudbank. The air was humid and oppressive, making her head thud. She'd had only five hours' sleep. Last night when she'd gone upstairs to speak to Thom she'd found he was gone. Vanished. His beat-up car had gone too – he must have sneaked out of the cottage, taken the handbrake off and rolled it down the hill. The little sod, being quiet so Prody wouldn't hear. She'd spent an hour calling his phone, and by the time she'd given up, accepted he wasn't going to answer, her head was aching so hard that she hadn't wanted to go to Kaiser's, just to swallow paracetamol and sleep. But when she woke the headache was still there, and so was everything else: the unsettling sense that the ibogaine really had let her communicate with the dead, just as Kaiser had said. She had to see him – ask if he really believed it was possible.

  There was a message on her mobile: the team didn't want to bother her on her day off, but she should know they were going to be working near the Wiltshire border today where a celebrity had gone missing without trace. Misty Kitson, the very pretty estranged wife of a premier-league footballer had wandered away from a private rehab centre some time after three the previous afternoon. The POLSA officer had set search parameters, superimposing Blue8 software over the local Ordnance Survey map, and the first thing he'd noticed, two miles away from the rehab centre, was a large man-made lake. That was enough for the Underwater Search Unit to be called in. It might turn into one of the sexiest, highest profile cases the unit would ever deal with, but Flea wasn't interested in missing celebrities. Let the team handle it. She had a question for Kaiser. She deleted the message, showered and dressed quickly, got into the car and by nine thirty was heading in the direction of the Mendips.

  But fate wasn't going to let her get away with it that easily. She was halfway down the M5 when the phone on her dashboard rang. She recognized the unit mobile number and for a moment thought about not answering. Then, muttering, 'Fuck fuck fuck,' she hit the answer button. It was one of the unit PCs.

  'What d'you want? I'm on annual. I've told you.'

  He cleared his throat. 'I know, Sarge, but I really think you ought to come down. It's important.'

  'No way. Just 'cause she's a celebrity doesn't make her more important than anyone else. You can deal with it.'

  'It's not about her, Sarge.'

  'Not her? Then who?'

  There was a pause. 'It's Dundas, Sarge.'

  'Dundas?' Dundas was supervising the dive today – he'd never let her down before.

  'Sorry, Sarge,' said the PC. 'He's not talking to us. Think you'd better come over, that's all.'

  And so, swearing under her breath all the way, she reversed her route, coming back up the M5, then the M4 until she was at the search site. Avon and Somerset had picked the case up because the rehab centre, Farleigh Wood Hall, stood deep in the countryside a little to the west of the leafy Wiltshire border. As she arrived, driving slowly past the gate, she could see that the old Palladian building was already heaving with reporters. The rehab centre had brought in a private security firm to deal with them – men in Secret Service headsets and sunglasses wandered the grounds, glaring through the wrought-iron gates at the press.

  She continued down the road for almost two miles, parking next to a hedge. She jammed her feet into her trainers, the laces undone, and set off across the field towards the little kissing gate at the head of the path, flashing her warrant card to the PC at the site entrance.

  Down in the valley the lake was surrounded by staff equipment and cars, the unit's Mercedes van in the middle. No one was in the water but she could tell, from the centrally placed orange buoy, that Dundas had chosen a circular sector search pattern, exactly the pattern she'd have chosen herself with a lake like this: it was round and small enough for a single diver, and although it had weeds it was motionless enough to allow some visibility. But, and this knowledge came to her naturally, the lake didn't contain Misty Kitson's body. No doubt about it. Wherever Misty Kitson was found – sleeping on someone's sofa in a Chelsea pad, or being papped leaving Heathrow for the Caribbean – it certainly wouldn't be in the lake.

  She went through the kissing gate and continued down the path between a rapeseed field and a meadow, searching the figures for Dundas. One of her team was talking to a guy in a suit – she recognized him as a chief inspector from E District. A DCI, not because finding Misty Kitson would be more difficult than finding another misper, but because the press would be all over them and they needed the highest rank possible. As she got close the PC caught sight of her. He broke off, but instead of starting towards her, pointed silently up the hill. She looked to where the field rose in a series of undulating bumps, ending in a small line of trees at the top.

  Just visible against the trees the small figure was instantly recognizable from his red hat. He was walking away from the lake, and there was something oddly sad about the way in which he was moving. She hesitated, then started up the hill.

  'Rich?' she called, as she got closer. 'Rich?'

  She saw him hesitate, then turn to her. She slowed, shocked by the expression on his face. 'Shit,' she muttered, hurrying up the hill, her trainers slapping. 'Rich? What is it?'

  He shook his head as he took a deep breath.

  'What?'

  He looked more ill than she'd ever seen him, and just as she reached out to touch him he sat down on the grass with a thud, as if he was faint.

  'Rich.' She crouched next to him, her arms round his shoulders. 'My God, what's happened?'

  'It's Jonah,' he said at last. 'I just got a phone call from Faith.'

  'Oh, Christ.' Flea patted his back. If there was one thorn in Dundas's side it was his useless sodding son. Always in trouble, always bringing problems to his doorstep. Everyone was fed up with him, including Dundas, who had got to the point of refusing to get involved or bail him out. He'd learned to let Jonah's problems wash over him. But something was different here. 'What's he done this time?'

  'That's just it. It's not "this time". It's not like the others.' Dundas raised his eyes to her and from their red rims she could see he was scared. 'He's gone.'

  'Gone? Gone where?'

  'Faith gave a party for some friends last night. Jonah was supposed to turn up, but he never did.'

  Flea tipped forward on to her knees and rubbed her legs, feeling awkward. She didn't want to say it, when Dundas was looking so awful, but drug addicts, especially those who were on the game to pay for their habit, well, they weren't the most reliable people. She looked down the hill at the sunlight reflecting off the top of her car. She had to get to Kaiser's.

  'I know what you're thinking,' he said. 'You're thinking that people like him don't turn up to things all the time. And you're right – he's a waster and a piece of shit and not fit for Faith to wipe her feet on and, yes, he's done some terrible things, but when it comes to family he always, always, keeps his promises.'

  Flea stopped rubbing her legs. She always believed Dundas. He had more integrity than anyone else she knew. If he said his son could be relied on, it was true. 'OK,' she said. 'Tell me what happened.'

  'He owed Faith money. Nothing new there, she's soft as shit with him, he always owes her money, but he said he was going to pay her back this morning. He said he had a job that was different, that would pay back everything he owed.'

  'What sort of job?'

  'I don't think it was just another trick.' Dundas swallowed. He was an old copper. He knew the language of prostitution but it had taken him years to get used to using it for his son. 'If it was just another trick he was turning it must have been a spectacular one. He owes Faith nearly eight hundred quid, and you don't make that sort of money in Knowle West. And he'd've called if he was going to be late. He had his phone with him. She's been ringing him all morning but it's switched off. He'd've called if . . .' He let the word carry across the grass. 'If he could.'

  They sat without speaking, looking out at the sky, at the long field leading away from them and the lake nes
tling in the grass like a silver coin. About five feet to their right there was a blackened area where someone had made a fire, recent because the smell lingered. No bottles or rubbish, so kids maybe, or someone on the run. There was a tramp in this area, an ex-con the public had monikered the Walking Man, and it made her think about all the people in the world who would have no one to notice if they vanished tomorrow. Lost souls. She turned to Dundas and hugged him. 'Don't worry. It'll be OK.'

  'No,' he said. 'I don't think so. I don't think it will be OK.'

  She stood up and gazed at him, at his big old face, at the way the skin on his neck was red and mottled, permanently sunburned from years of diving. She knew there was no replacing Dad, no such thing as a replacement father, but now she felt so tender towards Dundas she had to fight an overwhelming impulse to hug him again. 'Rich?' she said. 'We're going to do our best.'

  'Yes,' he muttered thickly. 'Yes. Thank you.' There was a long pause, while he seemed to squirm a bit, as if something was coiling through his stomach. 'Thank you.'

  42

  11 May

  Everything Mossy finds out about Skinny's brother is creepy. He never sees the little bastard but he knows he's there – he's seen his fucked-up shadow on the wall. He's smelled him, and heard him. But there's worse: from everything Skinny's said about the way he acts, the things he does, Mossy's come to the conclusion that the brother's deformity doesn't stop at his baboon body: it's got into his brain too.

  It's Mossy's opinion that Skinny has the exact right attitude about the fucked-up business they're in: there's money in human parts. It's taken Mossy a long time to accept it, but now he understands it's the way Skinny has to survive. But his brother has totally the wrong attitude. The brother – and sometimes just thinking about it makes Mossy feel cold in the head – actually believes in the muti. He's never asked if the brother has actually swallowed human blood – or if he's eaten pieces of the skin the two of them trafficked – but he's made guesses.

  Because the brother believes the muti can do more than just cure him. He thinks it can do more than just straighten his spine and unlatch his baboon hands. He thinks it can influence others around him. In the times he's out of the flat, doing whatever weird thing he does out there, the brother has fallen in love. Never slept with her, only seen her at a distance, but it's love. She's a street girl, one of the City Road girls, called Keelie. Mossy knows too well that, of all the bad people in the world you can fall in love with, a street person is the worst – but the brother's got it into his head, Skinny says, that the muti is going to work here, too. It'll stop the girlfriend shagging other men for money.