Ritual jc-3

by Mo Hayder

  'Yes, I am.'

  'No, you're not.'

  Skinny looks at him for a long time. His eyes are sad. Then he goes to the gate. He peers through it, listens. Then, when he seems satisfied they're not being watched, he takes off the robes and puts them in a pile on the floor. Underneath it he's wearing old-fashioned Y-fronts and nothing else, and his slight body is dark and slick next to the saggy material. He comes to the sofa and eases himself on to it next to Mossy. He cups a hand round his ear and upper neck and presses his face close, as if he's going to kiss him. But he doesn't. Instead his hot cracked mouth comes up against Mossy's ear and he whispers, 'You don't tell Uncle, you don't tell him.'

  'I ain't going to talk to him, am I?'

  'Me and my brother. We is runners in Africa. The gang we worked for — we took they money to come here.'

  'Runners?'

  'Trafficking. You understand.'

  'I know what fucking trafficking is. What did you traffic?'

  'Skins. Carry them through borders. They is taken in Natal or in Mozambique and they is sold in Tanzania.'

  Mossy pulls away from him and drops his chin to peer at Skinny's face. 'What kind of skins?'

  'Of people.'

  'Human skins, you mean.'

  'Yes,' Skinny says, as if it's nothing. 'That is our business, me and my brother. People skins. They make very powerful medicine.'

  Mossy feels the watery vomit come into his mouth. He has to lean his head back and swallow while his stomach heaves. He's heard of people selling their kidneys — a friend of his reckoned he'd sold a kidney in India to buy his airfare home, had everyone believing him. But all of that was supposed to belong to another world.

  'Fuck,' he mutters, his body going hot and cold. 'Fucking shit. Is that what you did with my blood? Is that what — oh, Jesus — what you want to do with my hands?' He pushes Skinny off the sofa. He's shaking now. 'It wasn't just someone wanted to watch me — it was you wanted to sell the fucking things?'

  Skinny crouches next to him on the floor, his eyes bright. 'Not me. Uncle. Uncle is the man who makes the money. Me — I don't have no choice. I don't have no proper visa — you know? Uncle, him tell me all the time, him can send police to me any time him choose.'

  Mossy closes his eyes, and gulps a few more times, getting himself under control. He's always thought that the world he inhabited meant he understood the sickest things people could do to each other. He thought he knew how bad people could get. But now he sees how dense he's been. Now he sees there's a whole universe out there, a universe he's ignorant about, a universe of horror and despair darker than he's ever dreamed possible.

  25

  16 May

  The grandfather clock said twelve and at the back of the house the sun shone directly along the line of trees, casting their shadows on the gravel. Spring was here. Already the wisteria was hanging its long racemes at the windows, fingering the pane as if it'd like to get inside. The Marleys used to do the gardening together, but since the accident Flea had never had the time or the inclination and certainly couldn't afford a gardener, so now the gardens sprang up in the summer, jungly and throbbing with insect life. Two years on and you couldn't get down the terraces to the bottom of the valley without a hacksaw. There was a folly down there too, meant to look like the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. It spanned a small ornamental lake, but the limestone mortar had weakened and last winter the stone had sunk into the lake until only the very top of the arch was visible. The sensible thing would be to sell the garden to the Oscars, but she couldn't bear it. She couldn't bear the thought of the Oscar children running up and down the lawns she and Thom had grown up on.

  'Falling in around my ears, Mum,' she muttered, standing in the kitchen that lunchtime. She could see the solar panels Dad had fitted in a line outside the garage. They had broken months ago and there wasn't any money to repair them, and on top of everything moss was covering the tiles and grass was growing in the gutters. From a distance the roof looked like another lawn. 'I'm so sorry. I never meant it to get like this.'

  She lifted the pasta off the stove, dumped it in a colander, and, squinting in the steam, set it on the counter next to Dad's safe. Kaiser had told her she was going to be hungry, that she would probably be on the trip for more than twenty-four hours and when it was over she would want carbohydrate and vitamins. Preparing food afterwards — or doing anything that needed concentration — would be difficult. Pasta was the thing, Mum's favourite. She could save it in Tupperware and microwave it tomorrow. She peeled the skin off the beef tomatoes she'd been scalding in boiling water, running her fingers under the tap when they got too hot. She took the skin to the bin and paused, her foot on the pedal, the lid open, looking at the slippery pile in her hands, the juice leaking down between her fingers. Into her head came the mound of human skin she'd shown Caffery that morning. It stayed for a moment or two, then she dropped the tomato peel into the bin, wiped her hands on a teatowel, and let the image go.

  'Flea?'

  She turned. Thom was in the doorway, standing in that nervous way of his with his feet placed at an odd angle, like a foal, not sure its legs would support its weight. 'I'm sorry,' he said apologetically. 'The door was open.'

  'Oh, sweetpea. That's OK.' She came forward, reaching to touch his face. Her little brother. Poor, poor Thom. 'It's so nice to see you.' He smiled. His skin was still as pale and fragile as it had been when they were children, and the bags under his blue eyes, which always made him look as if he was too scared to sleep, were pronounced today. 'Here. Sit down,' she said, pulling out a chair and patting it.

  He sat, his awkward hands resting on his knees.

  'I'll put the kettle on — make you tea.'

  'What are you doing?' he asked, gesturing at the things she'd been cooking with — the olive oil, the garlic, the jar of pasta.

  She took the heavy frying pan from the stove and scraped the garlic and onions into the tomatoes. Then she set the pan in the sink, running water on it.

  'Flea?'

  'Yes,' she said. 'What?'

  'What are you doing?'

  'What does it look like?'

  'Cooking. But you're acting strange.'

  She paused, standing at the sink with one hand on her hip, the other on the tap, and watched the yellow circles of fat float to the top of the water. She could hear the crows cawing in the cedars along the edge of the garden, she could feel her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. She thought about Mum staring at her from the path in the trees, whispering, We went the other way.

  'Flea? What is it? You're scaring me.'

  She turned. 'Thom, I know you don't like to talk about it.'

  'About what?'

  'About — about, you know, the way it all happened. The accident.'

  There was a moment's silence, while they both stared at each other. Slowly Thom's cheeks went red. The rest of his face stayed pale.

  'The accident,' she repeated, more softly this time. 'One day we're going to have to talk about it. About what you remember.'

  There were a few more seconds where he didn't do anything, just went on staring. Then he began to drum his fingers on the table. A little humming noise started in the back of his throat. There was a scar in Thom that no one should mess with, things he couldn't bear to think about. Guilt he carried everywhere. He scraped his chair back and got up. He went to the stove and stood with his back to her, looking down at the pan of tomatoes. He shook the pan, moving things around, collecting spoons and spatulas, as if he had purpose. His hair was so fine and blond you could see the tanned scalp underneath, the back of his neck so vulnerable where the hair hung away from it.

  'You know what?' he said conversationally. 'I'm not doing well in my job. I'm really not getting on in it.'

  'Thom, I just want to-'

  'If I'm honest, I'd say it's even starting to affect us. Me and Mandy.'

  'Please listen to me-'

  'And if I'm telling the truth, I feel trapped. Trapped lik
e I've never been before. All because of the job.'

  Flea closed her mouth. She knew people could go into denial, but she'd still imagined, in some corner of her conscious mind, that one day Thom would talk about the accident if he was forced to. She thought that by now he'd have worked the guilt through, rationalized it. But no, there he was, blanking her, as if he hadn't heard a word she had said. She sighed and sat down at the table.

  'I can't bear it any longer.' He poked at the tomatoes. 'I'm trapped.'

  'Are you?' she said flatly, half annoyed with him, half pissed off with herself for bringing that subject up in the first place. 'I had no idea.'

  There was a long silence while Thom stirred the tomatoes and Flea sat watching him.

  'Anyway,' he said, after a few minutes. He tore off kitchen towel, put the spoon on it, and cleared his throat. 'Anyway, I think I've got a new thing going.'

  'What sort of new thing?'

  'Some people I know. They import chandeliers from the Czech Republic. They're beautiful, better than any you've seen in the antique shops round here.'

  Flea pressed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger because she could feel a headache starting. Since what happened in Bushman's Hole, Thom had lost every job he'd had. He'd worked for travel agents and magazines selling advertising space, he'd worked as a telephone researcher for seven pounds an hour. When he wasn't employed he'd used the loan on his insurance money to start businesses. In two years he'd been involved in no less than six failed ventures. From selling slimming pills he'd imported from the US to selling pixels on a web page, to investing in a piece of land for which he later found he couldn't get planning permission. All had gone wrong, leaving him almost broke.

  'Thom, we've talked about this. You said you'd stick with a job. You can't keep taking these risks.'

  'It's not a risk, it'll be fine. I just need an alibi.'

  'An alibi?' Flea dropped her hand. 'What sort of alibi?'

  He pushed aside the pan and came back to the table, sitting opposite her, elbows on the table. She could see in his eyes that he had wiped the accident from his mind. It was weird, the way he could do that.

  'It's a really good venture but I've kept it from Mandy-'

  'Because she'd say exactly what I'm saying and-'

  'No, because I want it to be a surprise when it works.' He looked at her anxiously. 'But I need your help. Things have gone a bit wrong.'

  'What?'

  'I keep going off to meet them and Mandy's starting to think I'm seeing someone else.' Flea raised an eyebrow. 'I know,' he said, and suddenly the pallor had gone and his voice was excited. 'I know — she's even been following me. Brilliant, isn't it?'

  'Brilliant?'

  'I've seen her sneaking along the road behind me. You know what it means.'

  'No,' Flea said. 'I don't.'

  'It means she loves me. She's jealous! She really, really loves me.'

  Flea shook her head wearily. She looked at the smooth skin of Thom's throat, faintly transparent and white where it covered the Adam's apple. Mandy was his first serious girlfriend. There had been a series of women he'd imagined he was having a relationship with — he'd fall ridiculously, childishly in love and end up devastated when they didn't return the attention. Until Mandy. And, like a child, he mistook Mandy's possessiveness for true love.

  'She thinks I don't know she's following, but I do. So, now I've got an important meeting with these people, make-or-break. If I'm not there I can say goodbye to the whole thing.'

  'And you want me to lie for you?'

  'If I tell Mandy I'm here she'll believe me.'

  'Here? No, she'd come and check.'

  'Probably. But she'd never knock on the door because she thinks I don't know she's on to me. I'll take your Focus — I'm insured — and leave my car out the front on the road. That way if she follows or drives past I'm covered.'

  'When do you want to do this?'

  'Monday night.'

  Monday was the day after tomorrow. Flea's last night off work. Kaiser had promised her the ibogaine would be out of her system by then.

  She stood, picked up the pan and ladled the tomatoes into the pasta. She dropped in some olives, some sliced sausage and left the lid off to let the sauce give up its moisture. Then she spent some time wiping the surfaces.

  Thom watched her, his eyes fixed on her. 'Well,' he said eventually, 'will you do it?'

  'You know the answer to that, Thom.' She sealed the Tupperware box and put it into the fridge, closing the door hard. She didn't know why but she felt angrier than she should. 'Because you know I'd do absolutely bloody anything for you.'

  26

  When Flea had gone the office was quiet. He sat for a while in thought, thinking about the word 'muti', wondering why he hadn't thought about it before. He took the time to read the web page carefully. The human skin, he realized with a jolt, wasn't someone's skin but the skin of two people — two teenage boys. They hadn't known each other in life, but in death their existences had been inextricably combined, displayed in a box as an exhibit about smuggling in Dar es Salaam. The skins had been confiscated from smugglers whose trade was to flay people in Tanzania, then export the skins — sometimes to Nigeria, sometimes to South Africa — for huge sums.

  He stared at the picture for a long time, conscious of his own skin, of its shape, its inadequacy. Muti. Even the sound of the word was bad. The owner of the Moat, Gift Mabuza, had come back into town without telling the police. He was African, and in some countries it was a superstition to bury hands under the entrances to businesses. A basic equation.

  Caffery thought about Mabuza for a few minutes, tried to imagine what species of human he was. He was ready to bring him in right off, but when he thought about it he saw it would be a mistake: he wouldn't have the PACE adviser on hand if they needed to make an arrest. Best to build some intel, get the fibres back from Chepstow and know how to hit him. He'd called the immigration officer attached to Operation Atrium and asked him to look into Mabuza's immigration status. Then he'd got on to his SIO and talked him into okaying directed surveillance for twenty-four hours, just to know that the guy was staying put. But as he was putting the landline down, his work mobile began to ring in his pocket. He flipped it open. 'DI Caffery, MCIU. How can I help?'

  There was a moment's silence, then a stiffly polite voice, slightly accented, said, 'My name is Gift Mabuza.'

  Caffery was quite still, his pulse coming back at him in the earpiece. 'I know who you are,' he said quietly. 'What can I do for you?'

  'Your men spoke to me on my holiday. I have come home because I have heard about the trouble at my restaurant.'

  Caffery hesitated. Then he said, 'Yes. There's been some trouble.'

  'I would like it if I could come and talk to you.'

  'You'd like to come and talk to…?' He let the sentence trail off, still hearing his heart thumping. 'OK. Good. That's no problem. How does…' He tried to think what to do. He'd like to know what the lab had to say about the fibres before he interviewed Mabuza. 'How does… tomorrow morning sound?'

  'Yes — good. I would like to get to the bottom of this business.' There was another pause. Then, in that over-educated way, Mabuza said, 'Thank you, sir. Thank you and goodbye.'

  The line went dead. After a while he put the phone into his pocket and used his index finger to push the little bag of carpet fibres around on his desk, thinking about Mabuza. Had he sounded like someone with something to hide? Then he thought about Flea in the office, the way she kept fiddling with the zip on her fleece as she talked, the way her fingernails were clean and white, her limbs straight and slim under the force regulation overalls. If she'd looked like a regular Support Unit sergeant he might have laughed her out of the office. Muti? Was he being walked into a theory he wouldn't have come to himself?

  Technically he should record Flea's visit to Mabuza's house in his policy book, his decision log and his pocket book. He should state quite clearly that he'd advised
her of the ways she'd breached the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. He should have done all of that — but he didn't. Instead he put away all his logs, cradled the phone receiver against his shoulder and tapped in a number. Marilyn Kryotos, the woman who'd managed the HOLMES computerized investigation system in his old Metropolitan Police unit. She was up at the Yard now, detailed to a specialist team advising on ritual abuse and witchcraft. It'd been set up as a reaction to the cases of Victoria Climbie and Adam. Adam, the pathologist reckoned, had been between four and seven when he'd been ritually dismembered. All the intelligence indicated he'd been alive while it was happening. No one had been done for it yet.

  The line hummed and clicked on the third ring. 'PC Kryotos.'

  He hesitated. The familiar calm voice. It took him back to the way things used to be in the Area Major Investigation Team in London; to the daily whirlwind of a chaotic investigation. The only thing to ground it, stop it spinning out of control, had been Marilyn Kryotos. No ego, no grandstanding from her. In spite of himself he smiled. 'Hey, Marilyn. Guess who. Blast from the past.'

  There was a silence. Then a small, sarcastic laugh. 'Not so distant past, Jack. It's only been a couple of months.'

  His smile faded. 'Not happy to hear me, then? What? Am I on your shit list or something?'

  She didn't answer. She let the line hum a little.

  He sighed. 'I know what you're thinking.'

  'Do you?'

  'Yeah — like everyone else. You're thinking I'm a tosser.'

  'Are you?'

  'Marilyn, haven't you ever left anyone?'

  'Course I have. Years ago. Before the kids.'

  'Well, then.'

  'It's not that you left her. I mean, she was nuts, Jack. Pretty, but nuts. Last week she was in the paper — looks like she's got her medications, used make-up and blister packs and stuff, and stuck it in an acrylic block and called it art. Me, I never had time for her, you know that. So it's not that you left exactly — it's the reason you left. I mean, what sort of reason was that? Jack, I never said this to you before because of the situation, but you're not my line manager now and-'