Ritual (22 page)

'But he knew it was the Tokoloshe?'

'Oh, yeah. He reckoned he was lucky him and his friend had someone who knew what to do about it.'

Caffery sat forward. 'What did he mean by that?'

She shrugged. 'Someone who could get rid of the Tokoloshe – y'know, stop it coming too near him at his work and stuff.'

'Did he say who his friend was?'

'Nah, never said all that much.'

Caffery turned to Rochelle. 'Was this the same time he bought the bowl? The one I took yesterday?'

'Yeah,' she said. 'That's when it all kicked off.' Caffery put his elbow on the sofa arm and rested his chin on his hand, one finger under the tip of his nose, thinking hard. Someone had helped Kwanele Dlamini. The friend – it had to be Mabuza.

'Letitia,' he said, after a while, 'you're sure you really saw the Tokoloshe?'

' 'Course I am. Just told you, didn't I?'

'Teesh,' Rochelle hissed. 'Remember? The truth.'

'It
is
the truth, I've told yer.'

'It's what Kwanele told you to say.'

'No,' the little girl insisted, a slow wash of colour coming up her face as she met her mother's eyes. 'It's not what he told me to say. It's what happened. I'm telling you the truth.' She let out a long, impatient breath. 'How comes you never fucking listen to me?'

Before Rochelle could answer Letitia turned on her heels, her fists balled, and went into the sitting room. She said something to her sister, who got up, shooting her mother a pointed look. Then there was the sound of their feet on the stairs and a door banging.

After a few moments Rochelle breathed out. She looked despairingly at Caffery. 'You got kids, Mr Caffery? Any little ones?'

He shook his head. He was thinking about what Letitia had said:
He reckoned he was lucky
him and his friend had someone who knew what
to do about it
. It was making him think about things he hadn't thought about until now.

'Well,' said Rochelle, 'let me give you some advice. Don't. Don't even think about it.'

Outside Rochelle's it was a cool spring day, the acid-green ornamental trees and the tended grass in the development every now and then giving the faintest stir in the breeze. But for Caffery, sitting in the car, his hands resting on the steering-wheel, it might as well have been mid-January. He wasn't thinking about the blossom on the branches or the way the sun was so high in the sky or the slight rise in temperature. He was thinking about circles. About rings.

Criminal behaviour was like a sponge: it sucked others into it. Almost every idiot he'd ever picked up over the years had had a little coterie attached. If you thought about it, it wasn't much different from any other social group. Every ring had a different structure, a different size, a different satellite configuration, but they had one thing in common: they had a leader. Sometimes the group was so loose the MC didn't even realize he was boss. But on the whole, in most rings, the one who was in charge knew exactly what he was doing.

Somewhere, out there in Bristol, someone knew more than was good for them about the African continent. They might be British, they might be African. They certainly knew a little too much about African ritual and belief; they knew very well how deep superstition ran in people; and, more importantly, they knew how much money could be attached to fear. It wouldn't be difficult to pinpoint wealthy Africans living in the country.

Nor would it be difficult to hire someone, some poor bastard who'd never have the luxury of normality from all Caffery'd been told, to loop up some ridiculous fucking dildo, grease themselves up and appear to the right person at the right time. Nothing too obvious, a fleeting glimpse. A shadow. Just enough to convince someone superstitious enough they were being stalked by a demon. And then the brains in the operation would go in for the kill, providing the goods to ward off the Tokoloshe, keep it away from the business. Human blood. And for proof that the goods were genuine, a video, real or a clever fake.

Mabuza. Caffery hadn't met him but he remembered his voice – sort of even and measured, a little too educated for comfort. He pulled out his work phone and stabbed in a number. He was going to get Interpol to track down Dlamini and then he'd get the surveillance guys to knock on Mabuza's door. They were going to ask, respectfully, whether he'd consent to the house being searched. And then, also respectfully, they'd offer him a lift to the station. Because Caffery was going to have to do this interview a little earlier than he'd hoped.

The phone clicked through, and he let his eyes wander over to the Nailsea skyline. He was thinking about a human being with dwarf legs: a squat half animal that ran through the streets at human knee height. And he was thinking about African witchcraft, secret rituals being practised behind closed doors. Someone was engineering it, he was sure, but he still had to blink to make sure he was seeing only sky and buildings, because right now, sitting here in the sunshine, he wasn't sure he'd ever get the image of the Tokoloshe out of his mind.

On Kaiser's sofa – eighteen hours since the ibogaine trip had begun, Flea came to life again and began to remember who she was and why she was there. She felt as if she'd been to a different planet, as if half of her was still out there somewhere, struggling to find its way back into her body. She sat up gingerly, blinking in the first grey light of morning filtering through the window. After a while she pulled her feet up on to the sofa and slowly, slowly, pulled off her socks.

The problem with her feet had started a few days after the accident, and now it had got to the point that she was so ashamed she wouldn't take her shoes off if anyone was watching. Her feet seemed veined and misshapen, awkwardly crabbed like a monkey's or a lemur's – they made her think of the hand she'd brought to the surface from under the harbour, the brutal way it had been removed from the body. She squeezed the webbed skin experimentally between her thumb and forefinger and, briefly, it seemed to liquefy, to run away leaving her toes free and independent. She stopped moving, trying to keep still, waiting for the drug to stop working. After a while her vision cleared and the skin was back, tethering her toes together. Life was so unpredictable. The things that stayed longest in your mind were always the things you hadn't foreseen.

She pulled on her socks and was about to roll back on the sofa, when something made her stop. Someone was watching her. In the doorway, under the rolled-up plastic sheeting, a figure stood perfectly still.

For a moment it was as if nothing in her body moved, not her heart or her lungs, because she was looking at a creature, a dead creature that should have been lying on the ground, but instead was standing up in the doorway. Its clothing was billowing round it, just like Mum's in Boesmansgat. Its face was a bony mass.

'
Mum?
' she whispered. 'Mum?'

'There now,' the dead animal said, and its voice was not Mum's but Kaiser's. 'Flea?'

There was a pause when she didn't know what to say. Then, in a hoarse voice, she whispered, 'Kaiser?'

The creature moved, turning its face, and as it did, Kaiser materialized from inside it, smiling out from the corpse. Her vision cleared and it was just Kaiser again, dressed in an unfamiliar white shirt, looking very tired. 'Phoebe?' he said, coming into the room. 'How are we feeling?'

She shook her head, not taking her eyes off him.

'Are you all right?'

'Yes. I mean . . . it's still there. The drug – it's still there.' She licked her lips, trying not to think about the death mask. 'I mean you – just now. I thought . . .'

'Yes?' he said slowly, taking a step into the room. She'd forgotten how tall he was. How tall, and how heavy his head was.

'Nothing.' She rubbed her eyes and tucked her feet under her on the sofa. 'It was just the drug.'

He was holding a glass of water and he handed it to her now. He sat down on the sofa next to her, making it bow with his weight. She tried not to look at him. She wanted to say: 'They're not at the bottom.' But she didn't. Instead she sipped the water and kept track of him out of the corner of her eye, thinking of the animal skull.

'I was sick,' she said, after a while. 'You told me I'd be sick.'

'It gets most people like that.'

She looked at the bowl on the floor. 'You cleaned it up for me. I didn't even hear you come in.' She blinked. Everything was familiar, yet strange: the edges on all the objects were hazy and brown, crawling a little as if they were outlined with a column of ants.

'Would you like some more water?'

'I've got a headache,' she said numbly. There was something about his shirt that she thought she should mention, but her head hurt too much. 'A headache.' She wiped her face with her palms. She took some deep breaths. 'Kaiser. Do you – do you remember my feet?'

'No.'

'At Bushman's Hole, I didn't dive because . . .'

'Because you'd cut your feet on some glass. Yes. I remember that.'

'Except,' she murmured, 'except . . . I didn't. I didn't cut them.'

He laughed gently. 'Well,
I
saw blood. I helped you dress them. I pulled a piece of glass out from between your toes. I don't think that was your imagination.'

'No. It
happened
, but it wasn't an accident. Not an accident at all.' She pressed her fingers hard into her temples, wanting her head to stop seesawing. 'I went and found the glass. I got a bottle from the hotel bar and smashed it in the car park. Then I trod on it.'

Kaiser was silent. Not an animal skull. Just Kaiser. 'You know there's something – something
different
about Thom?'

'Different?'

'Yes. We never actually said it but we always knew something was slightly wrong. Poor little sod. But he's OK, you know. As long as he's got instructions, he knows how to follow them. The only thing wrong with him is he's not flexible – he can't think in an emergency.' She pressed her fingers harder into her temples, speaking slowly and clearly: 'He should never – never have been with them. Not on his own that deep. I let him go because . . .' She shook her head, trying to shake away the guilt, wishing it would lift off her like a skin. 'I was scared, Kaiser. So scared. You don't know what Dad was like. He was . . . We couldn't be weak around him. If we showed fear or weakness it just – just finished him. I didn't want to go into that hole so I trod on the glass.'

It was the first time she'd ever put it into words – the mistake she'd made, the corner she'd turned that meant she would forever be paying the price, forever pulling other people's bodies out of deep water because she couldn't pull up the bodies of the two people she'd allowed to drown. It felt odd to have the words out in the air now. It was as if she was waiting for judgement.

She bent over at the middle, resting her chin on her knees, her hands on her stomach. There was a long silence. It was Kaiser who broke it, speaking in a low voice: 'You know, you are so very much like your father.'

She looked sideways at him. 'Am I?'

'Yes.' He gave a sad smile. 'Oh, yes. So very much like him.'

'Why?'

He laughed and put his arm round her shoulders. 'Oh, I can't answer that. The answer to that question is a long, long road.' His big goat's face creased in a regretful smile. 'That's a road only you can travel.'

'When did you last speak to Kwanele Dlamini?'

'Dlamini?'

'Yes. Kwanele Dlamini. Your friend. Remember him?'

Mabuza and Caffery sat opposite each other, another officer in the corner, his arms folded. There was a plate of biscuits on the table and a cup of coffee in front of each man. Polystyrene cups, not china, because this was the custody suite: even though Mabuza wasn't under arrest and even though he was being co-operative, taking a day away from the restaurant and arriving punctually, neatly dressed in a suit and his rimless glasses, the PACE-designated custody suite was a good place to be if things got heated and they needed to make an arrest. It was the polystyrene cup that was giving Mabuza away now. Just the mention of Dlamini had made him lower his eyes and pick nervous half-moons out of it with his nails.

'Mr Mabuza? I asked you when you last saw Kwanele Dlamini?'

'Dlamini?' Mabuza licked his lips quickly. His head was down and his eyes began a restless flicking back and forth across the table. 'Dlamini was – a long time – a long time ago.'

'A long time? Sorry, help me here. Is that a week? A month? A year?'

'Half a year. Six months.'

'And why haven't you seen him in that time?'

'He's gone home – back to the homeland.'

'South Africa?'

'That's right. We lost touch.'

'I had the impression your friendship with him was closer than that.'

'No. Not close. He was an acquaintance.'

'No forwarding address?'

'No.'

'Only that I want to direct our investigation in the way that'll pay dividends, you know?' Caffery bent his head, trying to look up into the man's eyes, see what was happening there. 'Want to be chasing the right rabbit and not putting pressure on you. A forwarding address would help.'

Mabuza shook his head.

'Or the names of family members. He was from Johannesburg?'

'Yes,' he muttered. 'But that's all I know about him. I met him here. We didn't talk about home.'

Caffery hooked his arm over the back of the chair and looked at the top of Mabuza's head. It was more than the friendship between the two men making him pursue this: earlier that morning Mabuza had signed the forms to allow the police to search his house and in the first two hours the team had come up with a few things he wanted to ask Mabuza about. He looked down at the sheets of paper under his fingers. There was something from the lab there, too: something even more interesting than the team had found at the house.

'You were kind enough to allow us to search your home,' he said, when they'd been sitting in silence for almost a minute. 'We found a few things we liked.'

'I've got nothing to hide,' Mabuza muttered.

'For example, we brought back some carpet fibres. From the front room.' Caffery went slowly, giving each word time to sink in. He'd wanted to be seen taking the fibres legally: the results of the match with the handful Flea had taken would be with him by close of business, so he'd told the search guys to get a sample of the living-room carpet. 'And work it so the missus sees you doing it, if you know what I'm saying.' 'Do you know about fibres?' he asked Mabuza. 'About how they're used in forensics? Say, for example, a person sat on a carpet, or even walked on it, for the shortest time, some of the fibres from that carpet would be transferred on to the person. Did you know that?'

Mabuza was frowning. 'What are you saying? Are you asking me a question?'

Caffery pretended to be considering what he'd said. 'You're right. It's a bit off message, isn't it? Especially with the length of time the labs these days can take to process things. You know, I had to put an express order on those fibres and even then they won't get the results back to me until close of business this afternoon.' He glanced at his watch and shook his head regretfully, as if he was weary of the dumb way the force worked. 'Then again, lucky for me they've been a bit quicker on something else.'

'I beg your pardon.'

He used his forefinger to move the papers around, half frowning as if this was all a great puzzle to him. 'There was a pot at Dlamini's. An earthenware pot. Do you know about it?'

'A pot? What sort of pot?'

'It's about – so big? With a lid? Well, the pot's nothing special, not on its own, but what made me sit up was what the lab found in it.'

Mabuza had opened his mouth to say something. Then he closed it. He looked up at Caffery, then down at the papers on the desk. It lasted only a second or two but something had happened in that instant. Something that made Caffery want to smile.

'Yes,' he said slowly, holding Mabuza's eyes. 'We found blood. Human blood. And this morning they confirmed whose blood it was. Do you want me to tell you whose blood it was – or do you know already?'

Mabuza swallowed. A fine sweat had started on his forehead. 'No,' he said, in a small voice. 'I don't know.'

'It was Ian Mallows's blood.' He tapped the paper with his forefinger. 'You know that name, of course, because he was the poor fucker whose hands ended up under your restaurant. It's here in black and white. Ian Mallows.' He paused for a moment, still smiling. 'And I call that too much of a coincidence.'

Mabuza took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow, shooting glances at the door. Caffery recognized this, the signs of a witness on the point of withdrawing cooperation. The PACE adviser had said this would be a good time to go into rapid-fire formation – if they were going to have to arrest him they'd throw at him all the questions they knew would hit hot spots.

'Mr Mabuza,' Caffery said, 'do you have any feelings about the use of illegal drugs? If one of your staff came to you and admitted they had a heroin problem, what would you say?'

Mabuza blinked. He hadn't expected the swerve. 'Excuse me? If one of my staff had a drugs problem?'

'Yes. How would you react?'

'It's a devil, sir. Drugs are the devil.'

'Is that why you give twenty thousand pounds a year to drugs charities? Or is that just a tax break?' He held up another piece of paper. 'Your bank statements,' he explained. 'The search team found them at the house.'

Mabuza lowered the handkerchief. 'You've been into my financial details?'

'You gave us permission to search the house.'

'I didn't give you permission to do that.'

'You sponsor at least fifty voluntary drugs-counselling groups.' Caffery sat forward. 'It's not negligible what you spend on them. Ian Mallows attended drugs charities. Heroin was his problem. Did you know that?'

'What issue is it to you who I give my money to?'

'You don't maintain your contact with the charities because they're a good source of victims, then? Vulnerable people? People who won't be missed?'

Mabuza pocketed the handkerchief and stood. He was thin and small but there was a fierceness in his face that made him seem momentarily bigger. 'I didn't touch that boy. I don't know how his hands came to be where they were, and I didn't touch him.' He jerked his jacket off the chair and began to pull it on. 'It's time for me to go.'

'Please, please. Sit down. I don't want this going up another level – not while we're all ramped up like this.'

But Mabuza was buttoning his jacket, pulling the sleeves straight with furious movements. 'You've insulted me. It's time for me to go.'

Caffery placed his hands palm down on the table and said very quietly: 'If you try to go, I'll have to arrest you.'

Mabuza stopped, the jacket half buttoned. In the corner the officer was on his feet, ready to make a move. 'I beg your pardon, sir?' Mabuza said. 'What did you say?'

'I said I'll have no choice but to arrest you. Local businessman – sits on the school governors' board I heard? The local hacks would eat that up.' Mabuza stared. His lips began to look dark blue, as if his blood had stopped circulating.

'Or you can stay – we'll go on doing this nice and quietly, just you cooperating with us. No one need ever know.'

There was a long silence while Mabuza thought about this. Behind him the officer waited, his head on one side. Then Mabuza sank into his chair, his eyes fixed on the table as if he couldn't bear to raise them. When he spoke his voice was subdued. 'You know about my son?'

'No,' Caffery said honestly, opening his hands. 'No, we don't.' He surveyed the top of Mabuza's greying head. 'Why? Has he got a problem, your son? Is he an addict?'

'Was,' Mabuza said. 'He was an addict. He is recovered now, thank you.' He gave a deep sigh, as if his life was sometimes too much to bear. 'When we came to this country it was difficult for him. So difficult. The racism here isn't what we expected. Not from what we were told living in South Africa. It comes from places you never expect – the Caribbeans, Jamaicans, children from St Lucia, Trinidad, the ones my boy is with at school, the ones who look exactly the same as he does. My son, he is a good boy, very quiet. These boys he comes into contact with, they think it means they can bend him. And for a while they did.' Mabuza seemed to drift off for a bit, his head on one side, his face contracting at the memory. 'But someone helped him,' he went on. 'A drugs counsellor. If he hadn't my son would be dead today.'

Caffery didn't speak. His mood was slowly sinking. Yes, something about the son's story sounded a bit overlaid, a bit of a performance, but still the look in the guy's face, in his demeanour, told Caffery that the drugs-charities connection was a blind alley. The bank statements were a coincidence.

He got up, went to the window, and lifted the blind. It was mid-afternoon and schoolchildren were thronging the streets, pushing each other, jostling and laughing. When the search team had come up with the bank statements he'd immediately got two men together. They were out there now, revisiting some of the twenty or so charities on the statement. But now that felt like a bum steer, a waste of manpower, and the carpet fibres might be a better bet. One of the office staff had promised to come straight to the custody suite when they got any results from the lab on them. Maybe that was the thing to do: wait and hit Mabuza with the fibres. Sometimes there was a fax through at four in the afternoon. Another half an hour.

Just as he was about to turn back, the Walking Man's face came into Caffery's head.
You're looking
for death, Jack Caffery. You're looking for
death
. Caffery dropped the blind and rubbed his eyes, trying to get rid of the image. He turned and looked at Mabuza, who was hunched at the table, picking compulsively at the coffee cup again, little balls of polystyrene clinging electrostatically to his jacket sleeves. He's so nervous, Caffery thought, but what he doesn't realize is that none of this matters. Not really. It doesn't matter what happens or what we do with our lives because we're all dying. I'm dying and you're dying, Mabuza. You'll die and whatever you've done will die with you.