Ritual (23 page)

This is a hinterland of horror, a place of unspeakable, unnameable practices. A place where the bodies of missing male children turn up on wasteland near their villages skinned alive, their organs taken from them. A kidney fetches two hundred pounds, a heart four hundred. Your brains or your tackle can make up to four thousand.

'More for a child and more for a white man,' Skinny says. 'Him is more clever, white man. In business him is more successful than us.'

It takes Mossy a long time to accept what he's stumbled into. But slowly, slowly, he maps it out in his head. First, there is this place – it seems like the headquarters of the operation. Mossy has no idea about the exact location. All he can remember is getting out of the car and being led straight through a door, then through another and another. He's got no idea if he's still in Bristol, even. Second, he's worked out there are other people in the city who buy the things Uncle has taken from his victims – people from Africa, says Skinny, who live here and haven't forgotten their homeland beliefs. Third, there are the videos. They are taken by Uncle to record the pain. And this is what Mossy finds most difficult to get out of his head, because Skinny tells him the videos are not for Uncle alone.

Yes, it's true, part of Uncle's tastes are to enjoy seeing pain. But things don't stop there. The videos are a tool, screened as evidence for the customer, proof that the body parts were taken from a live victim because, and this part chills Mossy to the bone,
the louder the screams the
stronger the medicine
. . .

'The blood we took from you,' Skinny admits one night. 'Him sell a little at a time. Some him's kept. In the fridge.'

'It's fucking disgusting,' Mossy says thickly. 'Fucking disgusting. What do they do with human blood? You fucking vampires.'

'Only keep it. Keep it to protect from the devils.'

'Devils?'

Skinny nods. His eyes are pinkish in the half-light. 'Uncle, he send a devil to scare everyone.' He gets up from the sofa and crouches next to the grating. He pulls through it a carrier-bag that's been sitting there all afternoon – something Mossy's seen but not really registered. Squatting, he unpacks it. Out come a wig, a pair of boots, and something smooth and shiny. Mossy thinks for a moment it's a limb – an arm, or something. But then Skinny holds it up and he sees what it is. It's made of wood: a long, smooth thing with a top carved to resemble someone's knob.

'What the fuck's that for?' he says, hiking himself up on one elbow. 'You're not bringing that thing near me.'

'No, no,' murmurs Skinny, turning it so that the light falls and slants on it. 'Not for that. It is for scare people, make them think it is the devil. Make them buy the blood.'

Mossy licks his lips and looks at the boots, the wig. 'What? Does he have you go out there wearing it? You strap it on and go out and give them a little show, do you? Is that how it works?'

But Skinny's not looking at Mossy. 'No,' he says eventually. 'Not me.'

'Not you. Then who?'

Again Skinny is silent. Mossy thinks he's lost him, because he's got this distant look on his face. When at last he speaks his voice is sad, reflective. 'My brother.'

'Your brother?' Mossy sits up. 'You never said nothing about your brother. What? Is he here too?'

'Look at me.' Skinny raises a hand and waves it vaguely over his body. 'I am small. My brother, him is small, like me, smaller.' He glances at the cage in the wall, and Mossy gets a moment of creepiness, a feeling that something might suddenly put its face to the bars. 'But him,' he whispers, 'him is made bad. Bad here.' He runs his fingers down his face. 'And here.' He holds his hands to his back. 'Him just made bad. Like a baboon.'

Mossy wants to speak but there's a lump in his throat and he can't get the words out. The word 'baboon', said in such a low whisper, has sent shivers up and down his spine. He's thinking of the feeling he gets sometimes that there's someone else in the place, someone who comes and goes in the night. 'So is he here, your brother?' he manages eventually. 'Here? In this place?' He gestures at the cage. 'Is that where he sleeps?'

Skinny nods. He looks at the cage for a while, then he turns to the grille on the window, at the place that is bent up. Not big enough to let an adult through. But someone else. Someone the size of a child, maybe.

Eventually Mossy clears his throat, tries to shake himself back to reality. 'Things are different here, you know. This is England. The rules aren't the same. Not the way they are back home.'

'I know.'

'You need to realize. What you do, the things you've done, people ain't going to like it. Not a bit.'

'I know, I know,' Skinny says, and his voice is so resigned, so tired, it makes Mossy want to cry. 'And I know that after everyt'ing I do here I go'n' to have to run. Run until the world end.'

The sun crossed the valley slowly. Back at home Flea sat next to the open window under the wisteria, her mother's gardening jacket wrapped round her, and watched the shadows of the trees move across the top lawn. Even though there was still poison in her system – she could feel it in the back of her throat, the way every now and then she caught the world jerking sideways out of the corners of her eyes – her body felt clean and light, as if the drug had stripped away layers she didn't need, leaving her thoughts brightened and uncluttered.

For some reason she kept coming back to one part of the trip: what Dad and Kaiser had been saying in the hotel.

Is it strange to be back in Africa?

This is South Africa, not Nigeria. This isn't the
place it happened.

That conversation, she knew, was a memory. Not an hallucination, but a memory she had levered up with the help of the ibogaine. But it had reminded her of another memory: something strange her father had said on the day he had introduced her to Kaiser, something that made her wonder if Dad had been more involved in whatever had happened in Nigeria than he'd ever let on.

It had happened years and years ago, when she and Thom were still little and Kaiser's house on the hill was new, untouched by his interminable tinkering and building, by the way he insisted on burrowing into the hillside like a termite. So she didn't understand why now all she could think about was her parents talking that day in the nineteen eighties as they came up the driveway in the family's Cortina.

'Don't you think it's a kick in the face of science?' David Marley was at the wheel, dressed in a corduroy jacket with a gypsyish spotted scarf tied at his neck. 'What they did to him in Africa? Calling him and the team immoral. I mean, since when has morality had a seat at the dinner table of science?'

Flea could see it all in vivid colour. She remembered sitting in the back seat with Thom, both of them wearing shorts and Start-rite sandals. She remembered looking out of the window at the way the valley plunged from Kaiser's house into nothing. She remembered the house, she even remembered her mother's pink polka-dot blouse. But she couldn't remember anyone saying exactly what had happened to Kaiser in Africa. As if they hadn't dared voice the words.

'Don't you think the university should be had up by the international community for sacking him?'

'Not really,' Jill Marley said. 'If you want my opinion what he did really was immoral. It was outrageous. Inhuman.'

'Inhuman?' David Marley swung the car angrily to a halt in front of the house. He switched the engine off and turned to his wife. 'How can you say that? How can you
say
that? Sometimes I think you're as bad as the rest of them.'

'Oh, darling,' Jill had said, with a shrug. 'I'm sure you don't mean that . . .'

So very typical of Mum, that little shrug – the casual way her shoulders went up. It was always the same: Dad wanting a fight, Mum soothing him, defusing the situation, catching him on his hindlegs so he had nowhere to go, with that little back-down, that little shrug.

There was a crunch of wheels on gravel outside. Back in the present Flea sat up, blinking. A car had pulled up to the front of the house. After a moment or two she got up and went to the window, her thoughts moving slowly, woodenly. She pulled back the curtain, thinking how grainy the material felt in her fingers. Thom was getting out of his battered black car. She stood, a little dreamily, thinking how odd, she'd forgotten he was coming. He'd been right when he said she'd forget.

He got out of the car and came round to the back, stopping briefly to look down the garden, and for a moment she was inside his head, seeing it through his eyes – the trees and the lake, the Bridge of Sighs, the way the terraces wound down and out of sight, disappearing into the tangle of fields. The way it was falling apart.

She went to the back door and opened it. It was warmer outside than in. The sun shone on the black roof of the car.

'Hi.'

'Hi.'

He was dressed a little clumsily, in a worn-out suit and tie, the toes of his shoes a little scuffed. She thought about the way he'd been sitting in her hallucination of the night in the hotel room, with their gear around them: the way Kaiser and her father had turned away from him so they could talk in private. Thom. Always the excluded one.

She took down the Ford Focus keys from the back of the door, still a bit disconnected from her body, as if it wasn't really her hand reaching out to the hook, and handed them to Thom.

'There's a full tank,' she began, then had to stop because there were tears in her eyes.

'Flea?'

She shook her head and put a hand on his arm, fixing her eyes on it, studying it, until she had the tears under control. 'Be careful,' she said, in a small voice. 'Please be careful.'

He put his arms round her, and even though he was slight, not muscular, she felt momentarily enclosed by something – protected. He smelled of soap, something ridiculously floral, like geranium, because he'd never know to wear something manly. 'Don't worry about me. I'm a big boy now.'

She wanted to say,
No, you're not. You're still
my little brother
, but she didn't. She smiled and nodded, and when he'd gone she stood in the doorway for a long time, watching the evening sun moving across the terraces and thinking how different their lives could have been but for a sinkhole in a desert thousands of miles away.

During that afternoon in the custody suite there was a moment when Mabuza's anxiety crossed into something more profound. If Caffery had had to describe it he'd have said it was the only moment he truly saw Mabuza afraid. Maybe with all the things they were discussing he had a reason to be afraid, but he only went to that deeper level when the conversation turned to the subject of the Tokoloshe.

'Did Dlamini ever mention any interest in
muti
?' Caffery said. 'Witchcraft? Did he talk about using charms to ward off bad spirits?'

Mabuza didn't move his eyes. But that didn't matter because Caffery had seen him swallow. His hard grey Adam's apple went up and down painfully, and Caffery didn't have to look down to know that his grip on the polystyrene cup was tightening. He knew they were getting close to something.

'No,' Mabuza said quickly. 'No more than anyone else from our country.'

'Do you know where he might have got hold of a vulture's head? Because it's quite a serious thing to have something like that. Vultures are on an endangered-species list.'

'No idea, sir.' His eyes flicked up to the door, then back to Caffery's face. 'Really, no idea.'

'I'm sorry. Did that question make you nervous?' Mabuza bit his bottom lip. 'You don't know what you're dealing with, sir. It's something you don't understand.'

'Don't I?'

'You're talking about something that is African. Something that belongs to Africa.' He pushed up the sleeve of his shirt and pinched up a chunk of his arm. 'It's in here. In our flesh. And not –' he jerked his chin at Caffery and the officer in the corner. '– not in yours. Now, you don't meddle in these things. Don't meddle.'

'That grease on your arms?'

Mabuza blinked. He looked at them as if he was surprised to find them there. Then he tucked them away under the table.

'Don't wipe it off – I know what it is. It's because of the Tokoloshe, isn't it? It's to ward him off.'

At this Mabuza became very still. His eyes seemed to bulge and Caffery thought he was going to jump to his feet again. But he dropped his face, muttering in a low whisper a string of words in a language Caffery didn't recognize. Sweat appeared on his forehead.

Caffery watched in silence, knowing this was something, a species of fear and anxiety, he'd never understand. When he'd asked the CSM if Mabuza's wife had seen him take the fibres, the CSM had said: 'She saw me do it as much as she could see anything. She was acting like she feared for her life if you want the honest truth.' And Mabuza's reaction now was fear. Real fear. Whatever he'd seen on the pontoon outside the restaurant, he'd believed it was real.

'OK,' Caffery said slowly. 'I'll tell you what I think. I think you've seen something you can't explain. Because of that you've paid money – a lot of money – to someone to ward it off. You think you've seen a devil, a
Tokoloshe
, don't you? You think he's threatening your business – and now you'll do anything.'

'Please do not meddle.' Mabuza raised a hand and tugged at his collar. Sweat was coming through his shirt, leaving circular marks on his chest. 'I asked you, do not meddle.'

Caffery tapped his pen down once on the table, giving space in the room for his question to be heard. 'Did you know the superstition that if hands are buried under the entrance to a property they bring in business? Might undo the harm done by the Tokoloshe?'

Mabuza looked up despairingly. There were faint stains round his eyes: tears of fear. 'You should stop this now.'

'
I
know beyond any shadow of a doubt that
you
know exactly how those hands got under your restaurant.' He smiled. 'Now I don't know how I'm going to get you but, trust me, I
will
get you on something. Because you know what you've done is wrong. It couldn't be more wrong for another human being to die for the sake of your business. So I'd say the best thing you can do now is tell me who you paid.'

'I haven't paid anyone for anything. I don't know how those hands got under my restaurant.' 'It must be someone who knows a lot about African traditions, or is getting the information from someone who does. Maybe it's an illegal who's trading his powers for protection and money. Is it someone at work? One of your employees?'

'No. Forgive me, you've asked me this so many times. The answer's no. If you want to know how those hands got under my restaurant you are asking the wrong man.'

Caffery tapped his pen again, thinking about the fear in the guy's face. Half of him almost wanted to believe the bastard. 'Am I? Then who should I be asking?'

He wiped his eyes and swallowed. 'The intellectuals.'

'The intellectuals? What does that mean?'

'The university men. There's a plan against me. I've got enemies. This is a plot to slur my name.'

'Would you like to give me some names? Just something to be going along with.'

'You know, sir . . .' He brought out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. He was still trembling. '. . . I have never had a strong stomach. And what you've found under my restaurant . . . This is not a good day for me. Not a good day at all.' He looked up at him with runny eyes. 'How did a hand come to be under my restaurant, sir? Does it mean my business will be finished?'

There was a knock at the door. Caffery got to his feet and opened it. The office manager stood in the doorway, clutching a piece of fax paper he recognized immediately. It was from the lab. He took it and came back to sit down, placing it folded on the table where they could both look at it. He let a few seconds elapse before he spoke.

'Sorry.' He held up the paper. 'This is from the lab. The report on the carpet fibres.' He sat back and opened it, unfolding it slowly, scanning it for the precise line he wanted, knowing he was closing in. 'As I was saying earlier, this morning we . . .'

'What is it?' said Mabuza.

But Caffery had just reached the relevant box. Matches zero. The carpet fibres on Mallows's hands hadn't come from the carpet in Mabuza's house. Caffery lowered the paper and gave the officer in the corner a wry smile. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

'What?' Mabuza repeated, tears gone now, face tense.

Caffery ran his fingers through his hair, letting his nails graze the skin. Suddenly he felt tireder than he had all week. 'Nothing,' he said, standing and kicking the chair under the table. Outside it was getting dark. The officers wouldn't have got round all the drugs charities tonight: they'd have to start again in the morning. Which was a bastard because now the fibres weren't matching he knew the charities was one of the
only
avenues left to them. 'It's nothing at all.'