Ritual (9 page)

Mossy's heard about a programme over in Glastonbury that'll get you off the gear in a weekend – herbal and non-addictive, you don't remember a thing – and he supposes he should use the money Skinny gives him to get clean. But willpower's hard to come by in Mossy's world, and it's not long before the idea is a memory and his money's back out on the streets, in the Bag Man's pocket.

Day after day goes by, the winter comes and goes, Mossy gets an infected sore on his leg and spends a week in hospital going through a meth programme that does absolutely fuck-all, just leaves him thirstier for the real gear when he gets out. Spring is coming and times on the street get a bit easier because the sad divorcees and old poofter farmers from Gloucestershire get the sun on their heads and decide they can't think straight till they've driven down to Bristol and had their dicks sucked. On the days when business is slow Mossy sometimes meanders back – back to the place Skinny picked him up. He mopes around a bit, hoping to see him again because, as he told BM, they're going to need more where he came from. There's someone in that place's got an appetite for the bad stuff and it's not like they're asking for a quick tug-off. This is a bit more and a bit less. Selling his body but not selling his soul, in a way.

But it's early May by the time he sees Skinny again. It's like before – one minute Mossy's shuffling along, kicking at the butts on the pavement, wondering if there's enough here to put together a ciggy, next thing he knows Skinny's next to him, doing that oiled-walk thing, hands in his pockets. This time Mossy stops and looks at him. He's forgotten that this man is
pretty
. Really pretty, with long dark eyelashes and hair that curls down his elegant neck. And he's cleaner somehow, like the dust of Africa's been washed off him.

'Hey,' goes Mossy, taking him in slowly, from his trainers to his brown leather jacket that's too big because they don't make things to fit someone this small. The clothes are almost smart – neat straight jeans and a sweater under the jacket – but hanging off him, the sleeves and trouser cuffs rolled up. 'It's been a while.'

Skinny doesn't answer. He puts a hand on Mossy's wrist, holding it with his thumb and forefinger, and squeezes gently, reassuringly. That rush of tenderness comes back into Mossy and he gets an ache somewhere that he can't bear. He pulls his hand away.

'He wants some more, don't he? Wants to hurt me some more?'

'Him wants more.'

But this time Mossy has a plan. It's a good plan and a brave one too. He takes Skinny to the herbal clinic to find out how much the cure will cost. The clinic's upmarket, and they both feel a bit out of place – especially when they hear how much it's going to cost. But this is Mossy's plan. He says he'll go with Skinny, give them what they want, if they pay him enough to cover the treatment. Skinny goes outside and makes some phonecalls. He's secretive about them, a bit anxious, but something he says must work somewhere up the line, because eventually they head back to Bristol and end up in the car park again. It's nightfall when they get there and the filthy old Peugeot is waiting.

To start with, the routine's the same – a hit in the back of the car, then the blindfold and the bumpy drive. The doors opening and closing and the crackling, salty feel of the old sofa as he sits down, a broken spring in it now, digging into the back of his legs until he shifts a little. But when he takes off his blindfold he sees Skinny is crying.

'What?' Mossy gets a little knot of anxiety in his voice. 'What's the matter?'

Skinny averts his eyes. He runs his thumb and forefinger up the long column of his throat and Mossy remembers the way he could feel the muscle moving in that throat last time. A pulse starts in his belly.

'What?' he goes again. 'Come on, man, what is it? What do they want this time?'

Skinny turns his watering eyes to him. 'I'm sorry,' he says, in a small voice. 'I am very, very sorry.'

That afternoon, as she and the team unloaded the DUC – the durable utility craft – jetwashed the equipment and pulled in the Alpha flag boards, Flea noticed that every time she turned DI Jack Caffery seemed to be somewhere in her vision. For a few minutes she thought someone was playing a joke on her, that Caffery and Dundas had struck up some strange friendship and were messing her around. Then she wondered whether the mushrooms were still in her system, flashing images at her. The truth, when it came to her, was worse: that part of her had unexpectedly, and completely involuntarily, become hypertuned to someone she didn't know, someone who had no understanding of her, or any connection in her life, except that he happened to be the deputy SIO on one of her jobs.

The moment she realized what was happening she walked away from the harbour, opened the doors of the van, pushed all the cylinders in, headed back across the car park and clambered into her car. She slammed the door, pulled out her phone and scrolled up the day's texts: a 'hi' from Thom, a list of shift changes from the resource department, an upgrade notice from the mobile company, until she found another text from Tig. She sat with her head in her hand and read it again.

Txtd u yesterday. Need 2 talk.
Just 4 a catch up. Things shite
here as per. Got time? I'm @
home all night. Call & I'll come
out & meet u if OK? Tig x

She deleted it, then sat for a bit more, thinking about how different she felt from the days when she would fuck freely and happily. Before the accident, when she had her own flat and only went home at weekends, she'd liked the things she could do with sex – the way a man's face would change when he saw her in her underwear, the way his voice was different when he said her name. But since the accident all she'd had for company was lonely masturbation and vague fantasies about some or other film actor. She told herself it was because she would never take her shoes off in front of anyone, but there was more to it than that. She knew she'd never again speak openly about life and death, and she'd never find a way to talk about the other things that had come into her life. Now the only men she was close to were either much older, like Kaiser or Dundas, or gay. Like Tig.

She pushed the key into the ignition and dialled his number. The answerphone was on, so she started the car and drove out into the street. She shouldn't be close to Tig, it was another of those unprofessional things she did, but tonight only Tig would understand what was happening to her.

Tig, then. She was going to see Tig.

The photo was the only framed thing Caffery possessed, and he supposed that after two months in the little rented cottage it was time he made a token effort to call the place home and hang the damn thing up. The walls in the old part of the house were porous and uneven, probably made of ancient lime and horsehair or something, so he chose one in the extension where they were modern and should have easily held a little frame like this. But somehow the photo wouldn't stay on the wall. It kept pulling the tacks out even though it wasn't heavy.

After the discovery of the second hand he'd spent a long time at his desk, tying up ends, putting out feelers. The fibres on the first had been sent to Chepstow for tests the in-house lab at Portishead HQ couldn't do, and IDENT1 was still crunching those dabs. Meanwhile the team had contacted staff at the Moat who'd been on leave and they'd tracked down the owner, who'd agreed to cut his holiday short and come home the day after tomorrow. But apart from that there wasn't much he could do, so he'd worked out that the smart thing, the normal thing, would be to go home. He'd stopped at a hardware shop in Hartcliffe and bought a set of Rawlplugs and some screws.

'And that,' he said, through clenched teeth, giving the screw a final turn, 'is the end of that.'

He stood back, checking it was straight, using the ceiling and the skirting-board as a guide. It looked ridiculous on the bare wall, a tiny rectangular frame marooned there. It was a picture of his passing-out parade at Hendon back in the eighties and he had been placed at the back and at the far end. He went close and peered at the faces. He'd bumped into some of the guys over the years, watched them get promoted, get married, turn into fathers – grandfathers some of them already. He'd seen them get fat, lose their hair, develop police-diet diabetes. And there he was, the only one who hadn't changed, weighing pretty much what he had then and still with all his hair. He should think himself lucky. People were always telling him so, lucky bastard, still with his own hair. He'd nod, make a joke about it, but in his heart he hated what he saw in the mirror. He hated it because his reflection told him one thing: life, real life, had never touched him.

He put his finger on his face in the photo, seeing quite clearly in black and white the thing that had set him aside all these years. Even back then, when he was only twenty, his eyes'd had that one-track determination, the same anger even then. They weren't the eyes of a killer yet – that part was still to come – but they were the eyes of someone who could think only of revenge and violence. He'd once been given a book for Christmas by Rebecca, his ex-girlfriend. It was a collection of sayings and she'd highlighted one of them for him. He couldn't remember who'd written it, but he'd never forget what it said, though the book was long lost: 'Little, vicious minds abound with anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the pleasure of forgiving their enemies.'

'Little and vicious,' he murmured now, looking at his photograph. Little and vicious because he didn't understand the concept of forgiveness, because it was still a word that made no sense to him. He went to the window, put his hand on the pane and stared out, thinking about what he'd come to. The cottage sat on karst land, on a lonely slope leading down to a minor country road, pocked with natural sinkholes and open-cast mines where the Romans had once quarried for lead, the depressions lined with wetland plants like sedge and marsh marigold. Half a mile down the road there was a pig farm and just a few hundred yards past the cottage boundary the furthest edge of the Priddy Circles – four Neolithic circles, scarred by sinkholes, remembered by some for the mysterious rumours of ancient ritual. A strange, remote place to come to understand the violence in him, to try to let this thing stuck inside him all these years dislodge itself and work itself out of his system.

Something in the corner of his eye moved. He didn't do anything, just stood, hearing his own heartbeat thudding. Then he turned slowly towards the television. It was switched off but the room was reflected in it: the open door with the carpeted passageway going back into the house; his face, eyes a little hollow; the windows with the orange ball of the sun going down. From the reflection it was difficult to tell if the movement had been inside the room or in the garden. His nerves on alert, he waited for it to happen again. A minute or more ticked by, and just as he was about to put it down to his imagination, he heard, behind him, a small flurry of clatters, then a crash.

He turned. The photo lay on the floor. Shards of glass everywhere, the frame cracked open, its little screws exposed. After all the work he'd put in it still wouldn't stay on the wall. He went and pushed his fingers into the hole. The Rawlplug had fallen out, taking plaster with it. He looked around at the silent room, at the late sun falling on the floor, at the TV, then back at the photograph. He breathed in and out, in and out, telling himself he was being an idiot. Really an idiot, because the thought that had popped into his head was ridiculous. The thought that the house, inanimate and blank though it was, had somehow found a way to dislike him.

Tig lived in one of the tallest blocks in Bristol, a windswept crumbling tower painted in red and blue on the Hopewell estate. It had views all across the town, but half of the flats weren't occupied: boarded up and vandalized. As she got out of the car she noticed how deserted the place felt. A small black guy passed her, his hands in his pockets, his eyes averted the way they all did round here. But he was the only person she saw as she crossed the car park to the tower.

When Tig opened the door he had the chain on and seemed a bit shaken, as if maybe he'd been asleep. He was rubbing his eye with his knuckles, his compact body worked and toned in a black weightlifter's vest.

'Hi.'

'Hi.'

'I'm sorry it took so long. Had a bad couple of days at work. You OK?'

When he was in jail his cellmate had poured bleach into Tig's eyes. The left had recovered, but in the right he'd developed secondary glaucoma, swelling the eyeball and swivelling the pupil to the side. It was always this eye he rubbed when he was on edge. She waited a minute while he went on digging his knuckle into it. Then she shivered, crossing her arms tightly and looking round at the deserted estate. 'Tig? Can you let me in?'

He hesitated, glanced over his shoulder into the flat. There were piles and piles of belongings crammed into the hallway and she knew he was embarrassed. Fifteen years ago Tig had been done for the attempted murder of an eighty-year-old woman while burgling her house. He'd been a heroin addict in those days, but he was a rare one: he'd cleaned up in jail and since his release he'd founded his own charity offering advice and sanctuary to street people trying to get clean. Through his work he'd developed contacts in the ethnic and refugee groups in the area, and had even, for a while, been felt out by Operation Atrium. An intelligence-led anti-crime operation, Atrium was targeting drugs-trafficking among Jamaican gangs, and white though he was, they'd researched Tig's connections and decided they'd like him as a 'CHIS' – the new word for an informant. The interest didn't last long: they backed off when it came to them loud and clear that if there was one thing you couldn't call Tommy Baines it was a snout. They'd have lost it completely if they'd found out that one of his closest friends was a support-unit sergeant.

She'd met him through the diving. Somehow he'd got the money together to take four of his clients on a basic PADI course where she was finishing her dive master's qualification. Forced together for two days, they'd hit it off. But it wasn't the diving that held them together, it was something less definable than that: a shared sense of being damaged, maybe – and, more important, a sense they were both meeting their debts by acting responsibly. For Flea the responsibility was about work and about Thom, for Tig it was work and his mum.

His mum was a bit dotty – nothing official, but Tig's prison sentence had been the last straw for her. When he'd got out of jail a year ago he'd moved straight in here as her carer and ever since had been dealing with the junk she amassed. Everyone knew it was slowly driving him mad.

'The idea was for me to come out and meet you,' he said now.

'I tried to call – and even if there was somewhere to go in this part of the world, I haven't got any money and, anyway,
you
said you wanted to talk.' Her nose was running. She wiped it impatiently. 'Look, Tig, for God's sake, I'm cold. I don't care about your mum if that's what's on your mind.'

He studied her for a while and she knew what he was seeing. She looked a mess. He pressed his face into the gap and examined her face, his right eye lagging behind the left. 'You're shaking,' he said. 'What's wrong with you?'

'I'm cold. Look, I came to talk to you.
You
asked
me
. Remember?'

He pointed down to her feet. 'You stay there. Right there. I'll be back when I've checked we're all decent.'

He disappeared into the dimly lit corridor with its peeling wallpaper and stained paintwork, leaving her on the doorstep. She waited, stepping from foot to foot, pulling her coat close. There was a cold, stale draught coming from the corridor and the sound of a badly tuned radio scanner from one of the rooms. That would be Tig's mum. Ever since Flea could remember his mother had been addicted to listening to the police. Always said she wanted to steal a march on them if they decided to come and get her, because that was how it was for her now, imaginary armies and men from the institution coming through the streets. Now that the police signals were encrypted she listened to the static instead. That was how out of the box she was.

After a few minutes Tig reappeared in the hallway, switching on the light and unlocking the chain.

'Mum's not sleeping. It's always worse when she doesn't sleep.' He stood back to let her in, waving his hand a little sorrowfully into the depths of the hallway. The narrow corridor of carpet was filthy, stains trodden in over years. 'It's always about now I want to use. When she can't sleep.'

They went into the kitchen with its piles of laundry, its cheap laminate table, salt and pepper and ketchup bottle on a stained plastic mat in the middle. Tig put the kettle on, turned the gas burners on the stove up high to warm the place up, and moved a pile of clothing off one of the chairs, gesturing for her to take a seat. She sat in silence at the table, the smells of neglect, decay and gas filling her head, the little bag of mushrooms still in her fleece pocket, hard and lumpy against her breast, reminding her of Mum and the dog violets. Tig made her a cup of milky tea, then found a packet of peanuts and opened it with his teeth, poured them into a bowl and pushed it in front of her.

'What is it? Work? Something horrible happen? It's funny – when you come here you don't smell of dead bodies.'

'I don't spend my whole life moving bodies around, you know.'