Ritual jc-3

by Mo Hayder

  He can hear sounds coming from his own throat, strangled sounds, as he tries to suck in air, and above him the sound of Uncle breathing in the mask: hard and scratchy, like a horse. Then someone has grabbed his arm and although he tries to squirm away he can't. There's a cold, familiar feeling on his arm, a puncture. He tries to pull away but the needle is in and almost instantly, much faster than a hit of scag, his head goes silver, there's a long rush of energy up through his body, a sense of voices gathering in his head and then it's over. His head slumps back and he lies there, making weak movements with his arm as the rest of the liquid is forced into his shattered vein.

  Afterwards there is silence, while maybe Skinny and Uncle wait to see what he will do. Then, with a grunt, Uncle climbs off him. Mossy doesn't try to get up. He doesn't care any more. He lies on his back with his arm hanging limp over the side, fingers on the floor, and lets his eyes roam across the ceiling. He can see cities and mountains up there. He can see stars and clouds. He is floating, he is flying, and nothing else matters. It doesn't matter that somewhere in the corner of the room Uncle is plugging a piece of equipment into the wall. It doesn't matter when he hears the power saw start up. All that matters is staying in that flying feeling. The feeling that makes him believe he can reach the stars if he only wishes it enough.

  43

  18 May

  'It's for the insurance,' Tay said, as she crouched behind the reception desk and ran her manicured nails across the DVD cases neatly lined up and labelled. 'I get a big break on my premiums by having the place covered. I mean, some of the people we get in here are in very distressed states and you never know.'

  'Yeah,' Chloe echoed. 'You never know.'

  Caffery watched from a few paces away, wanting to avoid the withering look he was sure he'd get if Tay smelled the tobacco on him. 'You mentioned something earlier, Tay,' he said, as she examined each label, pulling one or two out and piling them on the counter. 'You said ibogaine was used in a ritual.'

  'The Bwiti tribe.' She pushed her glasses up her nose and crouched again to check the remaining disks. 'They use it to get in touch with their ancestors.'

  'A sort of shamanic ritual?'

  She glanced up at him.

  'A shaman,' he explained. 'Like a witch doctor.'

  'I don't really understand that side of it. My interest is the biochemical aspect, not the anthropological.'

  'Do you know if it's used any other way, in other types of African magic? Maybe as a remedy?'

  She shook her head and straightened up, putting three more disks on top of the pile. She fished a brown-paper bag out from under the desk and put it down next to them. 'It's not really my thing, Mr Caffery. We've had an academic here who was interested in our work. He'd be able to tell you. I cooperated with him — for the publicity's sake — but I didn't get involved because it was in the early days when I was doing the preliminary treatments.'

  'He came and observed,' Chloe said importantly. 'You know, for his research.'

  'And what did he do with it all?'

  'Told us he was trying to get it published. I mean, that's what they do, isn't it? These academics?' Tay leaned across Chloe and clicked her way into a database. The printer under the counter whirred into life. 'We use his home address because he hardly ever goes into the university.' Paper shot into her hand and she passed it to him with a smile. 'He's very accommodating, will talk about ibogaine and ritual use ad infinitum.'

  Caffery took the paper and looked at the name. 'Kaiser Nduka,' he murmured. A German-sounding first name and an African-sounding surname. He'd seen it before — it had been on Marilyn's list of consultants. She'd highlighted it because he was so local. 'Right,' he said, sliding the DVDs off the counter and into the paper bag. 'I'm taking these up to the multimedia unit at HQ to get them analysed — and then I might stop by and speak to Mr Nduka.'

  'Say hi to him from us.' Chloe waved with her fingertips.

  'Yes,' said Tay, holding the door for him. She gave Caffery that cool, slightly contemptuous smile again. For a moment he thought she was going to sniff, wrinkle her nose at the smell of cigarettes, but she didn't. She inclined her head as he left. 'Please do. Please send him our regards.'

  Misty Kitson might have been a drug addict, like Jonah, but she was pretty and a famous one. And this made the difference. Flea and Dundas both knew that although he was a police officer's son Jonah was still a whore, and his disappearance would be swept under the carpet. They called the duty inspector at Trinity Road, the nearest police station to Faith's flat, and got him to start a missing- persons report. But there was something unconvincing about the way he promised to prioritize, and Flea decided she needed to speak to someone she knew personally.

  Caffery. She had the strangest feeling he was the sort who'd stick his neck out for someone like Jonah. She didn't know why, but she thought he was the only person who wouldn't stop until he'd found him. But he wasn't at Kingswood — the staff gave her his mobile number but it was switched off — and it took some digging to find someone who said they'd heard Caffery was heading to HQ to go through some CCTV footage with the multimedia unit and she might catch him there. Portishead was en route to Kaiser's anyway, so once she'd got the team sorted and a new supervisor on duty, once Dundas had left to drive to Faith's, Flea went back to her car parked on the road.

  She'd got the door closed and the key was in the ignition when a short man with stocky legs and an intense look in his eyes appeared at the window, tapping on the glass. She turned on the ignition and opened the window. 'Are you Sergeant Marley?'

  'What can I do for you?'

  'I'm the POLSA.'

  The police search adviser — the person who'd have set the parameters and put her team in the water in the first place. She'd never seen him before. His stripes told her he was a constable. 'Yeah, well,' she said flatly, pulling on her seatbelt. 'I'm on annual, so speak to someone else in the team.'

  'I would, but something's going on with your team today. For a minute there I thought they were going to stop searching altogether.'

  'We had a staffing problem,' she said, 'but we've put another officer in as supervisor and he's got everything in hand. We've lost an hour tops. OK?'

  She pressed the button to close the window, but the POLSA put his hand on the top of the glass, stopping her.

  'I'd like an extra person in there now,' he said. 'I'd be happier with that — if you could get someone in there. It might even cross your mind to cancel your day off for a case this important.'

  A tic was starting in her eye. 'No,' she said. 'It won't cross my mind. The team you've got there is perfectly capable of doing the job.' She raised her eyes to his face, to the bulbous nose, to the first sprinkle of burst capillaries on his cheeks, and then something in her slipped a little. It was to do with his face, with the way he had his hand on her window, and it was to do with a million other things. Something inside her just slipped off a hook. 'Tell you what, let's speak the truth here, save both of us some time, shall we?'

  'The truth?'

  'Yes,' she said, knowing she should stop, but enjoying the way the words were coming clear and clean. 'We both know you're not going to find her in there.'

  'Do we?'

  'Yes,' she said. 'We do.'

  His eyes were a washed-out blue, the rims red. 'It's funny, because if your unit hasn't even finished searching the lake yet, I don't see how you can be sure where she is. What makes you an expert on knowing where a body's going to end up?'

  Years of training? she thought. Years of knowing what water does? Oh, and a bit of premonition too — a little skill I didn't know I had until yesterday.

  'You're not trained on search parameters,' he said. 'I mean, let's face it, you're just a-'

  'A diver? Just a diver. Is that what you were going to say?'

  'There are established profiles for people in Kitson's condition. Nine times out of ten someone who wanders off from a clinic, like she has, will be found trying to score in the n
earest town or climbing on the next bus out. But if they've topped themselves the body'll be within a two mile radius of the clinic.'

  For a moment or two Flea was silent. Then she looked down at the hand still resting on the window. 'New, are you?' she said. 'I've not seen you before.'

  'I've just completed my training. Yes.'

  'And what part of learning to find a bomb taught you how to find a body?'

  'Our training is more than just for improvised explosive devices, you know.'

  'I know. After the IEDs you sit up in North Wales for a couple of days, learning how to read a few profiles. You know how to use an electronic map, but you don't know how to-' She pictured Prody on her doorstep last night, the light on his face. 'You don't know how to think outside the box.'

  The POLSA straightened up. She could see up his nostrils, the little hairs and the red folds of skin up there — as if he had a cold and had been blowing his nose over and over. 'Well,' he said, with a sarcastic sniff, 'how about you teach me how to "think outside the box"? Tell me how you know there's no body in that lake.'

  Flea sighed, turning on the ignition and taking off the handbrake. 'Because,' she said patiently, 'she's a beautiful girl. A famous girl. And when famous beautiful girls kill themselves they make sure they leave a good-looking corpse. And that means not drowning themselves. And especially not drowning themselves in a shitty old lake like this one. Get it?'

  And without waiting for a reply, knowing the constable was going to run straight back to the DCI and tell tales, knowing that she should have stopped her mouth and her head slipping away from her like that, she put the car into gear and drove away, leaving the POLSA standing in a cloud of dust, fury on his face.

  44

  At HQ Flea saw Caffery's tatty car straight away. It stood at the edge of the car park, looking a little obstinate in the way it was so separate from the shiny Mondeos and BMWs.

  She pulled in next to it, switched off the engine and sat for a moment or two, looking at her hands resting on the steering-wheel, her fingernails a little pale. She had an image of a line being stretched very tight. Her body felt empty, her head light. If she didn't get to Kaiser's soon she thought something would crack open inside her.

  A familiar figure was coming out of the glass atrium. Caffery's jacket was open, his hands in his pockets, his stomach lean and hard against the white shirt. By the way he'd stopped at the head of the pathway and was looking from left to right across the neat lawns and fountains, she could tell he was preoccupied, as if he'd forgotten what he should be doing with himself, as if he'd like to get into his car but thought he might have left something behind in the building. She wondered what she was doing there. Was it really that she thought he'd take her seriously about Jonah? To start on a wild-goose chase like this, a person would have to be either crazy or know at first hand the agony of someone close going missing. Stupid to think he'd listen. And maybe, she thought, pissed off with herself now, that wasn't the real reason she'd chosen him anyway.

  But just as she was about to start the car and leave, to head down to Trinity Road to speak to the inspector there, Caffery saw her. He didn't speak or change his expression but she knew it from the way he became very still, his shoulders back, his face pointing in her direction.

  She waited for him to cross the grass, then took off her sunglasses and got out of the car.

  'Hi,' he said.

  She gave him a bleak smile. 'You were in the multimedia unit?'

  'Had some footage to run through, but turns out it isn't something that happens overnight. I'm in their way, hanging over their shoulders.' He paused. 'What are you doing today?' he said. 'I'm going out of town to the countryside.'

  'Out of town?'

  'It's work,' he said. 'Nothing else. Just thought you might like the drive.'

  'No,' she said. 'I mean I'm going to — I've got to see a fr- Someone I've got to see.'

  He was looking at her in a thoughtful way, as if something about her made him curious or amused. A tiny shard of sky was reflected in his iris that made her want to close her eyes. It made an ache start in her lower belly that she hated. 'Why are you here?' he said. 'You look like you came to tell me something.'

  'I need your help. I wouldn't ask if there was anywhere else I could go.'

  'OK,' he said cautiously.

  'Richard Dundas — you met him, he's in my team.'

  'Yes. I remember.'

  'His lad's gone missing. Jonah. Told his mother he had a job that was going to pay a lot of money. Went out and she never saw him again.'

  'A job? What sort of job?'

  She sighed, scratching her head distractedly. 'He's a hooker. That's why I came to you. If I just send this through the duty inspector at Trinity Road it'll never be taken seriously. He's on the game, he's a user. He's a mess.'

  'And it's not the first time he's disappeared?'

  'No — it is the first time. That's the problem. I know Dundas and if he says something's wrong then something's wrong. I came to you because I thought…' Her stomach clenched. 'Because you seem like someone who'd do something about it.'

  Caffery was looking at her mouth, as if he was considering the words that had just come out of it. He seemed about to say something, then apparently changed his mind. He stared up at the sky, as if he was thinking about the weather, maybe, or trying to catch a scent on the air. He was silent for such a long time she wondered if he'd forgotten she was there. When at last he turned his eyes back to her she saw instantly that everything had changed.

  'What?' she said. 'What is it?'

  'I'll do it. I'll do it now.'

  He pulled out his keys, seemed again about to say something, then nodded, almost to himself, and walked away from her, one hand raised briefly to say goodbye. He got into the car and drove out into the lane, past Security, leaving her in the sun, wondering if it had really been that simple, if he'd meant what he said or if he'd have forgotten about it by the time he reached the main road.

  45

  Mossy lies on his back, tears running down his face. The room is still now. At last it has stopped its rolling, its thumping like a giant heart, and he's grateful at least for that. He takes a few breaths. It's daytime and on the other side of the grille, very close, a car's just pulled up. Maybe it's the others coming back because the place has been empty for hours. They've left him here with the locked gate, Will Smith looking at him impassively over his rocket-launcher and Brad Pitt frowning, the sun glinting off his breastplate.

  It's the first time in what seems like a lifetime that the pain has gone down to a level where he can concentrate, to think about his situation. He's no idea how long it's been since Uncle took his hands. Lately time's been slipping all over the place, he's been in a fever, he knows that, and somewhere in the fever he's lost track of who he is and where he's located in the world. He closes his eyes and tries to think his way back, but all he can remember are the first few hours when he came round from the drug.

  It was like being hurtled into a white wall, or taken into space and set spinning with no sense of up or down. It was a pain like nothing he'd experienced, worse than the agonies, worse than the ulceration he'd had on his leg at Christmas. He lay on the sofa and howled, his arms clamped between his legs, the inside seam of his jeans pressed hard on the wounds as if that might stop the agony. He didn't dare look at what they'd done to him.

  Skinny sat with him, trying to keep him calm, giving him a hit regularly, using his hard little fingers deftly and pushing the needle gently through the skin, always taking time to find a place that wasn't already broken. It was only on the second day, when he'd screamed just about all he could, that Mossy got up the courage to look. He waited until Skinny had given him a hit and, gulping hard because he thought he'd puke, he did it. He looked at the place his hands had been. He held his arms up. His head went dead for a moment, wouldn't move, and all he could do was stare. His first thought, when it came, was ridiculous and surreal: it was how short his arms
were. Someone had wrapped the stumps in bandages, the sort you could get from a first-aid kit. They were thick and crusty with blood and fluids and had been taped secure with lots of ordinary Elastoplast, all with black gum round the peeling edges. Shaking so hard his teeth were chattering, he laid the stumps on his thighs and stared at them for a long, long time thinking how fucking short his arms were. He kept coming back to that — that his arms were tiny. He wondered how he'd never thought to notice this — or to notice how big or small his hands were.

  And then it hit him, a dead weight slamming him in the chest. He'd seen them every day of his life but he couldn't remember what his hands were like. He'd never see them again. His own fucking hands and he'd never look at them again. He dropped his head back on the sofa.

  'You fucking bastards,' he screamed. 'Give me back my hands.' Tears rolled down his cheeks. Skinny crawled across the floor and knelt next to him, stroking his forehead, but there was a howling hole of sadness at Mossy's centre that couldn't be smoothed away. 'My hands. My hands. Mine. They're my fucking hands.'

  And it is this he keeps coming back to. They are my fucking hands. Over the last few days, while the pain has lessened, while Skinny has changed the dressings in the best way he knows how, Mossy's just kept up the rage that someone's dared to take something of his own away from him, that if he could just see them he'd be able to do something about it, reverse it maybe. He is more jealous of his hands than of anything he's ever owned. There's no boyfriend, no gear, nothing he could ever have felt this way about. They are something no one could replace — something his parents gave him, and this thought makes him cry even more. That his parents gave him something precious. He hasn't given a toss about his parents for years, but now he can't stop thinking of their sadness if they find out his hands have been taken from him. His capacity to feel something about Mum and Dad makes him wonder how he ever ended up a scag-fag like this.