Ritual (35 page)

'Sure you don't.'

'Don't tell him I was the one who told you. I think he's got – friends. Family.' He wiped his nose, gulping down tears. 'Please don't tell him I told you.'

Caffery raised his head. Outside the supermarket three kids in board clothes were staring at him. When he met their eyes they turned away, pulling up their hoodies. 'So,' he said, 'when's he coming? Today?'

'Maybe.' He sniffled. 'Sometimes he comes at lunchtime, but if not him there'll be others.' He wiped the tears out of his eyes. 'Please don't say I told you. I don't want to upset anyone.'

'If you don't want to upset anyone, then stop fucking little boys,' Caffery said. He put his hands in the small of his back and flexed his shoulders, letting them click so his tense muscles would release.

'All right,' he said, helping the man to his feet. He opened the car door and shoved him towards it. 'Wait there. Don't move. Any of your other boyfriends come along you send them on their way, even if you and your sad little hard-on have to sit there all day. When
he
comes, act like nothing's happened. Get him in the car – I'll do the rest.'

'What about my keys? What am I going to do without my car keys?'

'Jesus Christ. I'm telling you to help me because you're a piece of shit and you owe something to society. Not because I've turned into the archangel fucking Gabriel. Now. Get. In. The. Sodding. Car.'

Caffery was sweating when he came back. 'It's a waiting game now,' he said, grabbing the tobacco pouch and beginning to roll up. 'The clue we're looking for will walk right up to that car in about ten minutes.' He licked the paper and lit the cigarette.

Flea watched him smoke. She could feel the last two days tugging her down and she had an overwhelming urge to cry or sleep, she couldn't tell which. Next to her Caffery smoked the whole of the cigarette, watching the blue Nissan in silence. Then he crushed the butt in the ashtray, rolled up the pouch, put it on the dashboard and said, in a level voice, 'When I was eight my brother disappeared.'

'I'm sorry?' she said numbly.

'My brother went missing,' he said calmly, as if he was telling her what he'd had for breakfast. 'I was with him when it happened. We had . . . There was a fight, and he left, walked out the bottom of our garden into a railway cutting. It wasn't dangerous because we'd been there a million times. Except this time . . .' For a moment it was as if he'd forgotten he was speaking. 'Except this time he didn't come back. There was a convicted paedophile lived on the other side of the railway. We didn't call them that then – called them child-molesters, kiddy-diddlers. Everyone knew it was him, but no one could prove it. That was thirty years ago and I still don't know where my brother is.'

She stared at him, her heart thudding. He'd heard. He knew what had happened to Mum and Dad – someone in the force must have told him how her life had been changed by the accident, that she'd never get her life back. She took a breath. 'Why are you telling me this?' she said, her voice small. 'Why?'

'Because you want to know why I half killed that guy just then. See, I walk around with this fucking great weight of guilt on me about what happened to my brother because when something like that happens – to the wrong son, that's how my parents saw it – when it happens you never get past the guilt. And it comes out in ways I'm (a) not proud of and (b) could get me shafted big-time.' He jerked his head at the blue Nissan – the driver had pulled down the rear-view mirror and was inspecting the damage to his face. 'He's a nonce.' He gave a pained smile. 'My nonce radar, if you want to call it that, is tighter engineered than most people's.'

She couldn't answer. She went on looking at him for a few more moments, and then, when she couldn't bear it any longer, turned away and stared out of the passenger window, her mouth open a little because she was breathing fast.

'It's OK,' he said behind her. 'I'm not asking you to forgive me. You can go ahead and report me. I don't much care any more.'

Behind her Flea heard the creak of leather as he moved in his seat, the rattle of his keys, and then she felt his hand on her shoulder.

'I'm sorry,' he said quietly. 'I didn't mean to put you in that position. I really didn't mean to.'

She couldn't move. All she could think about was his hand on her back. Then, just when it seemed they'd be there for ever, in that car on the dusty urban street, listening to one another's breathing, something inside her unlocked. Her mouth opened and words came out.

'If you cut your own arm off it wouldn't be enough. That's what it's like, isn't it? The only way you could make amends would be to die yourself – to die more horribly and in more pain and fear. It's the only way.' She turned to him, her face hot. 'You wish over and over again that it could have been you – you would die their death a million times over rather than feel one more second of that guilt.'

Caffery pulled his hand away, his skin suddenly grey, as if all the late nights and worry had caught up with him in one hit.

'My parents,' she said. 'A few people in the force know, but they'd never talk about it. Two years ago, and I still haven't got their bodies back. Not like with you – I know
where
they are, exactly where. Everyone knows. It's just that no one can get them back.'

She stopped speaking as suddenly as she'd started, shocked by the amount she'd said. His eyes were focused on her, his pupils narrowed to pinpoints. For a long time he didn't say anything. Then he half lifted his hand and, for a split second, she almost thought he was going to hit her. But he didn't. He lowered his hand, dropped it on to the steering-wheel and turned wearily to look out of the window. There was a long silence while she tried to find the right thing to say. Then, as she was about to speak, something happened that made it all too late. A small figure dressed in a strangely oversized brown jacket and rolled-up jeans walked straight in front of the car, going in the direction of the supermarket.

And that, of course, was when it kicked off.

Caffery swivelled in his seat to stare at the guy. 'Fuck,' he murmured. 'I think that's him.'

'What?'

'The one on my phone.'

The figure was heading towards the blue Nissan. He stopped at the bin, dipping his head briefly, then carrying on his way, stopping at the Nissan and using a thin hand to knock on the window. A thought came to Flea: I know him. Where do I know him from? But then Caffery was out of his seat, rolling up his sleeves, and everything started happening so fast she forgot it.

From the Nissan came a bellow, primeval-sounding: '
Police!
' It was the driver yelling, waving his hand out of the window. '
Get out of
here! The police!
' Then two things happened at once: the small figure in the oversized jacket ran clumsily back in the direction he'd come while Caffery hit the roof of the car – like a declaration of intent – and sprinted after him.

Flea was trained for all of this, but everything drained out of her head instantly. Caffery was rounding the corner out of sight and she didn't know these streets. She fumbled for her phone, dropped it, picked it up and realized the back had cracked – the SIM card and the battery were hanging out. She threw herself on to the driver's seat, groping under the steering-wheel, saw the keys weren't there and wrenched herself back the opposite way, clutching the phone and battery in one hand, fumbling her keys with the other.

She rolled out of the car, raced back to the Focus and jumped in. The car leaped forward, almost into the path of a delivery truck. She braked, clutching the wheel and swearing while the truck drove leisurely past, then raced the car across the road to the opposite side, taking the left-hand turning.

The street stretched ahead of her, one of those Victorian terraces that made her think of the north, red-brick and featureless. She let the car idle, not knowing which way to go. Caffery and the little guy might have been anywhere. And then she saw them, about a hundred yards down, bursting out from the line of parked cars, first the figure in the ridiculous jacket, then Caffery, his white shirt like a flag. She pushed the car forward, drawing level with them as they skidded sideways into an alley.

She reached over and pulled out her
A–Z
of Bristol, fumbled furiously to the index, then ran her finger down to Hopewell. Behind her a car was hooting, wanting to get by, but she ignored it. Jamming the book between her knees, flicking through to the page, she spread it on her lap. She saw where they were, and that the alleyway ended on the Hopewell estate. The driver behind her wound down his window and was screaming something about why was it always women who fucked with the rules of the road, and what was she doing? Putting in a Tampax? She gave him the finger and flung the car into gear.

The back-streets were narrow, only room for one car in one direction at any time, but she wove and spun the Ford through the warren in less than a minute, and came out braking hard on a wide street with grass verges at either side and wire-enclosed saplings planted at intervals. She was at the entrance to the Hopewell estate, and from her calculations the road to her right led down to the alley. She opened the window and sat forward, heart racing.

At first she thought she'd missed them. But then she heard footsteps racing towards her. The little man in the jacket burst out of the street, straight past her – she glimpsed thin limbs and a drawn face – then he was out on to the scrappy square of grass, racing across it, the shadows of the tower blocks flick-flacking across the crown of his head. She unsnapped her seat-belt and started to get out of the car, because there was no Caffery behind him and she'd been sure he'd be on the guy's heels. But then, just as she was about to take off, he appeared, walking now, his finger to his mouth when he saw her, waving her back into the car. She sank into her seat, keeping her feet on the pavement but pulling the door half closed against her calves as he walked past.

She watched him, mind twitching, eyes darting around, taking it all in. She didn't know the roads to the east, where the supermarket was, but she knew this estate. It was arranged around six behemoth tower blocks interconnected with figure-of-eight cast-concrete walkways, surrounded by triangles of grass. She could picture it from above, like a town-planner's model. And from the way the little guy was running, she guessed he was heading to the North West Tower, the notorious drug-trading tower. She waited a moment, her heart thudding against her ribcage. Then, the moment Caffery disappeared in the lee of the South West Tower, she swung back into the car and fired it up, steering round the little car parks and rubbish depots.

She was taking a risk – they could have gone in any direction – and when she shot out almost at the foot of the North West Tower she thought her gamble had backfired. The place was deserted, just the empty entrance to the estate covered with flypostings and graffiti, a row of recycling bins with filthy carrier-bags bulging from their mouths. Not a soul.

And then, like a burst of light on her retina – how come she hadn't seen him before? Caffery was standing about ten yards away, staring at her.

She threw open the door and jumped out. 'Jesus Christ! What is—'

He held up one hand to her, warning her to be silent. But the other arm was extended in the opposite direction, the fingers arranged in a neat point, telling her to look that way. And when she saw what he was pointing at, it was like having something dark and nasty go through her, because now she knew where she'd seen the guy in the jacket before. She'd seen him here. In exactly the place Caffery was standing now. It had been brief, only a moment's glimpse, but she remembered it clearly because it had been only a couple of days ago that he'd briefly walked past her. She looked again at the door Caffery was pointing to.

And suddenly nothing,
nothing
, was as it should be.

The door was blue, pale blue, the number eleven on it in mirrored stick-on letters and the guy in the jacket had disappeared through it. Caffery stood looking at it, his jacket pushed back, catching his breath from the run. An ordinary enough door – sad-looking net curtains in the window the dingy colour of used teabags from years of grease and neglect – and intuition told him this was the place where Mossy had been cut into pieces. God only knew what it was going to be like inside.

He went round the base of the tower to make sure there wasn't a back way out, but it was built as a square, with the lift shaft tacked on at the side. On the other side of the tower there were more front doors – no rear ones. He waited, looking at them, at the boarded-up windows, getting his breath back, and suddenly knew where he was – back on the Hopewell estate, just come at it from a different angle. Jonah's tower was the one in the far distance. He couldn't see them but there'd be about twenty coppers crawling up and down its stairwells right now. On this tower most of the bottom-floor windows were boarded. He watched those windows carefully, so silent in the midday heat. A little trickle of sweat broke from between his shoulder-blades and ran down his spine. He went back to the other side. And now, for the first time, he saw there was something wrong with Flea.

'Number eleven,' she murmured. 'It's number eleven.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'What about it?'

She tilted her head, then walked back a few yards, beckoning him. He followed, going nearer the cars until they couldn't be seen from the flat. He had to bend slightly to hear what she was saying.

'I know who lives here,' she whispered. 'I mean, he's a friend of mine.'

'Oh, great. Fucking great.'

'Yeah – and you. You – you know him too. Tommy Baines. Tig. The guy at the drug centre in Mangotsfield. The one with the eye.'

Caffery was trying to work this out in his head. 'The one with the—' He broke off. 'How the hell do you know him?'

She closed her eyes briefly, her face pale as if she couldn't believe this was happening. 'I've – oh, Christ, I've known him for ages, OK? But I've seen him recently too. He told me you'd questioned him.'

'Fucking magnificent. It really helps matters when people around you can't keep their mouths buttoned and when—'

'Wait a second,' she muttered, her face clouding. 'Just because someone's gone into his flat doesn't mean he's got anything to hide so don't get arsey with me. I mean, it could be nothing – it could just be that . . .' A thought stopped her in her tracks. She closed her mouth abruptly, and her eyes went up a bit, as if she was focusing on a place in the sky. 'Oh, shit,' she said. She rapped her knuckles on her forehead. 'Shit and double shit.'

'What?'

'That's me royally fucked.'

'What?'

She sighed, dropped her hand and walked across the sun-baked tarmac to her car. He watched her throw open the door and haul out her holdall, then rummage through it. She straightened up, then slid something that looked like a holstered knife, a dive knife, maybe, into the back of her trousers. Then she shut the door and was coming back, holding two Kevlar body-armour vests, one kitted out, the other with empty pockets. She stopped in front of him. 'The day we found the hand in the harbour?'

'Yes?'

'I got a text on my phone from him. From Tig.' She pushed the kitted-out vest towards Caffery. 'He wanted to see me. Hadn't spoken to him for ages, then suddenly he's in touch again. And when I came over he dug a bit, tried to get me to tell him what was happening with the case.' She made a face. 'There,' she said. 'I'm an idiot. Probably lose my job now, won't I?'

There was a short silence. Caffery was remembering the physical sensation he'd got around Tig, the one that had made him itch to thump him. It was coming back to him now.

'OK,' he said, ignoring the kitted vest and reaching for the empty one. 'Let's not jump to conclusions. Like you said, just because someone's run into his flat doesn't mean anything. Let's check it out before we jump. OK?'

When they both had their vests on Flea pushed her hair off her face, stood up straight and stiff and knocked loudly on the door.

There was silence. She stood on tiptoe and tried to peer through the little glazed section. 'Tig?' she yelled, banging hard on the wood with the flat of her hand. 'Tig! Are you in there? It's me.'

From the other side of the door came the sound of whispers, of people moving around quickly. A door slammed.

'Tig? Just a quick word.'

More noise. A long silence. Then another door opening and suddenly, on the other side a hand pulled back the curtain. There was a shuffling noise, then a face appeared at the grimy glass.

'Mrs Baines.' Flea put her hand on the glass. 'It's me. Are you all right? Can I come in?'

The woman stared as if she didn't recognize her.

'It's me. Can I come in?'

There was a sound of latches being unfastened, then a frail woman in a tattered housecoat opened the door. 'I don't know where he is, lovey. He's off somewhere with the blacks again.'

Caffery peered into the dingy hallway. Inside, the flat was a mess – piles of newspapers everywhere, all sorted out and organized into separate carrier-bags. Written in felt-tip above each pile were dates: 1999–2006. There was a smell of tomato soup and something else – something he couldn't put his finger on. All the doors leading from the hallway were closed.

Tightening the side fastening on the body armour, he stepped inside. 'You on your own, my love?'

'Yes, yes. Always left on me own.'

Caffery opened a door. A kitchen, small and cluttered with washing-up in the sink. No one in it. 'It's just we know there are some people living here.'

'Do you, dear?' She seemed unconcerned as Flea went into the living room, checking behind the sofa, the curtains. 'Well, you'll have to ask my son about that.'

Caffery opened another door and then another. 'Is he here?'

'Oh, no. Not properly here. Not in the way you'd think.'

'What does that mean?'

She gave a toothless grin. 'Lord knows. I'm a bit doo-lally. That's what they keep telling me – that I'm not all there.' She tapped her head. 'Not what I used to be.'

'Look, Mrs Baines, is your son here or not?'

'Oh, no. Of course he ain't.'

Caffery looked at the darting eyes, at the soiled quilted housecoat and the thinning hair. He had a mother somewhere; as far as he knew she was still alive. She'd given up on him when Ewan had gone missing, and thirty years later he'd even stopped wondering where she was.

'Got your scanner on, have you?' Flea asked.

'Me scanner? Oh, no, gone orf it – watching the telly now.'

'All right if I have a look at it?' Caffery said.

She waved her hand, as if she was dismissing them. 'Oh, do what you want. See if I care.'

He went into her bedroom, with its unmade bed, its closed curtains, four or five mugs crammed on the bedside table. It was small and it didn't take him long to work out there was no one in it. He looked at the scanner. Like she said, it was switched off. There was a cold feeling in the room, as if stale air was being pumped in from somewhere. He went back into the hallway and found her scowling at him, holding up a finger as if she was warning him. 'You'll have to get the police in anyway,' she said. 'To stop what he's up to.' She smiled. 'That's all I'm saying.'

Caffery glanced at Flea. She was standing just inside the living-room door, frowning at Mrs Baines. 'What does that mean, Mrs Baines? Stop what he's up to?'

'What I said. That the police'll need to come to sort it out, I shouldn't wonder. With him letting the blacks run over the place all the time and what they get up to together. But don't worry about me. Don't you worry about me.' She tapped the side of her head and limped back inside her bedroom, closing the door firmly. There was a pause, then the sound of the television. Flea turned to the door, as if to follow her, then seemed to change her mind. Instead she turned to the one door they hadn't tried.

'His room,' she muttered. 'I've never been in there.'

'Still got that knife in your knickers?' Caffery asked.

'You saw it?'

He didn't answer. He pressed his back against the wall and lifted his foot, putting just enough pressure on the latch to open it. It swung wide and they found themselves looking into a darkened box room, a tatty blue bedspread hung over the window. There was a wardrobe against the far wall, a computer desk in the corner, and a teenager's metal bunk bed taking up most of the space. Keeping his back to the wall Caffery reached inside and clicked on a light.

'Empty?'

She darted her head in, then out again, nodding. 'Empty.'

He swivelled through the doorway and into the room, went to the wardrobe and opened it. There was a line of clothes hanging up; no one was inside it. Caffery glanced under the bed and pulled back the duvet. The window was closed. No one had come through here. It was as if the skinny guy in the jacket had vanished into thin air.

He was trying to work out what he'd missed in the flat when he realized Flea wasn't moving. She was still standing in the doorway, staring at the walls. He followed her eyeline and saw why she was being so quiet.

The walls were papered in hardcore gay S&M. One bore posters from Deviant, the S&M club in Old Market, boasting its equipment of '2 slings, 2 crosses, 2 doggy tables . . .' Another wall showed a series of pictures of a man in a see-through plastic tunic, his penis in a leather ring, blood pouring from the wounds on his body and congealing under the plastic like packed meat. In the first two pictures he was being forced to lick the feet of a fully dressed businessman. In the last he was being held face down in a toilet.

'Whoa.' Caffery whistled. 'Heavy-duty shit.'

He went to the last wall, which was covered with a single blown-up photo, real or mocked-up, it was difficult to tell. It showed a shaven-headed man in a leather apron biting off the nipple of a man wearing only black Dr Martens and a white studded dog collar. Stapled to it at waist height were ten photographic A4s. Caffery bent down to them and saw something that would convict Baines in a second. The photographs showed everything that had happened in the North West Tower on the Hopewell estate. They showed a small black guy in a tribal outfit, a red tabard, his hair beaded and white paint smeared on his cheeks. It was the guy in the jacket, pictured in different poses: one showed him performing a ritual dance wearing the robes of a witch doctor, baring his teeth at the camera lens, but the others showed him standing next to a half-naked man on a sofa – Caffery guessed it was Ian Mallows – and inserting a cannula into his arm, letting the blood drain off into a large plastic jug. And the next one – Caffery had to pinch his nose to stop stomach acid coming into the back of his throat – showed the witch doctor crouched next to a body, holding a knife to the raw, bloodied stumps where hands had once been.

He swallowed hard and steeled himself to look closely at this picture. There were things to avoid: Mallows's pale body – he was assuming it was Mallows – the blood that had fountained up the whitened arms, the eyes rolled back. He had to concentrate to block these things because something else was more wrong than all of the obvious wrong. There was only one unreal thing in the photograph, and that was the face of the witch doctor.

He squinted at those eyes and saw something he recognized: a blankness, a lie. There was something about the posture – the knife held up for the camera, the face too posed – that made him think of holiday snaps. It came to him quite fast:
It's not
you who did the cutting, is it? You're just the act
. He didn't have to form the question,
So if not you
then who?,
because he knew the answer. He knew the person who had done the cutting.

Shit, he thought. There's no giving you the benefit of the doubt, Tig, mate. You're never going to be redeemed. You steered me wrong, sending me to TIDARA. And then, in a flash, he understood why.

'Baines,' he said. Flea was standing behind him, her face white. 'Did he know Kaiser? Through you?'

'I'm sorry?'

'I said, did Baines know Kaiser.'

'No,' she said faintly. 'No – I mean—' She glanced at him. 'Yes – he knew
of
him.'

'About him and ibogaine?'

Her tongue darted out and she licked her lips. 'Probably. Why?'

He sighed. 'Nothing. Ever get the feeling you've been led by the bollocks?'

Flea came up beside him, still staring at the photos. She held up her hand towards them, her hand hovering, not quite touching them, copper's instinct not to touch, but he knew she wanted to. 'Christ,' she breathed. 'Who is he?'

'I don't know, but probably our friend in the jacket. And if I had to lay bets on it I'd say that's Mallows on the sofa.'