Ritual

'Yes,' Caffery said. 'In the hall.' He went back to the doorway, flipped back the sheeting and peered into the darkness. 'What's down there?'

Nduka dropped his hand. 'My house. It's not very beautiful, I grant you, but it's my house.'

'Show me, then.' Caffery beckoned to him. 'Come on, shithole, show me.'

As if his back was paining him, Nduka got up and came forward slowly, placing one foot carefully in front of the other, as if this was a dance he was performing. At the door he threw Caffery a sideways glance with arched eyebrows.

'You first,' Caffery said, keeping his back to the wall, clutching the wooden handle in both hands. 'I'm not letting you walk behind me.'

With a mournful expression Nduka moved past him and began to walk into the gloom on his long, stiff legs. Caffery dropped the plastic sheeting and followed a few steps back, still holding the wooden handle, ready to use it. It was difficult to see but the hallway was carpeted in something old and threadbare, something paint-splattered. DIY warehouse architraves had been clumsily glued into the gaps between wall and ceiling, and the wallpaper had been half removed, then abandoned. There was a cold stale draught coming through here that made the hairs on the back of Caffery's neck stand up.

'The videos were done when I was at university,' Nduka said, from the gloom ahead.

'Shut the fuck up about the videos.'

'They volunteered. All the young people volunteered.'

'I said shut up. Tell me what you've done with her.'

Nduka stopped. He pointed to the end of the corridor where another door was covered with plastic, something on the other side giving it a blue, ethereal light, almost like in a hospital. For a moment neither man moved. Caffery's heart was beating faster, but he approached, holding the handle in front of him. He took a deep breath, pushed aside the sheeting and found himself in a large conservatory, sunshine slanting through dusty windows. It was unpainted and smelled of turps and solvent. It was empty.

He turned to Nduka. 'She's not fucking here.' 'Oh, she is,' he said unconcernedly. On their right, painted pale blue, a door led back into the house. He nodded to it. 'I put her in there.'

From his mental map of the house Caffery knew it would lead into the side of the kitchen. He took an automatic step towards it, then stopped, his chest constricting. Suddenly he was back seven years at a small bungalow in the backwaters of Kent. He was back to a psychopath who had told him where a woman could be found, a psycho who'd enjoyed letting Caffery go and find her and discover all that had been done to her. It wasn't anything to do with the door, it was Nduka's calm that made him think of it. That, and maybe the location — a deserted house with only trees and sky for company.

He clenched his fists, held them, then released them. Did it once again. Then he looked sideways at Nduka. 'You open it,' he said, feeling something under his sternum squirm. 'Go on. You open it.'

Nduka pressed a finger against his temple. 'Well,' he said, 'if I must.'

He stepped forward and pushed the door inwards. Beyond it there was a small well-lit room, books stacked floor to ceiling, a reading light hung low. There wasn't much space in there with the desks and the huge box files crammed with paper, but in the centre Flea sat, in a black sweatshirt, her hair in a ponytail. On her lap was a pile of papers. As the door opened she turned her eyes, seeming surprised.

'You?' she said, blinking at him. 'What are you doing here?'

Caffery didn't answer. He didn't care, he told himself. He didn't give a shit about her. He said it to himself slowly in his brain, his eyes closed, the sun filtering through his eyelids: You don't care if she lives or if she dies.

51

He was the last person she'd expected to see: Caffery standing in Kaiser's conservatory in his shirt, dust on his sleeves, clutching something that might have been a pitchfork handle. One moment she'd been sitting there, going through the thirty-year- old paperwork Kaiser had given her, a slow feeling of dread as she read, knowing that this was connected somehow to her father, and the next moment the room was flooded with air and light.

'Kaiser?' she asked, but his face was blank, as if something awful had happened between the two of them. There was no expression on Caffery's face either, just his watery eyes on hers, emotions working their way through him. For a moment she thought he looked sad. Then she got the impression that it wasn't sadness but anger, that he was about to hit her. Lastly came something cold creeping into his face, as if the only thing he felt for her was contempt. He took his hand off the door and turned away into the conservatory.

'What are you doing here?' she repeated, putting down the stack of papers and getting to her feet. 'How did you get here?'

'Fucking hell,' he muttered. 'I'll never get used to this, the way people lie to each other.'

'What?' she said. She followed him into the bright daylight. 'What does that mean?'

But he wasn't listening. He threw the pitchfork handle on to the floor — it spun away, hitting the wall — then grabbed Kaiser's arm. Before she knew what was happening he'd pushed him roughly back into the little room. Kaiser didn't resist, just allowed himself to be manhandled, not objecting when Caffery closed the door and turned the key.

'Hey,' she said, reaching out to grab his hands. 'What do you think you're doing?'

He snatched away his hand and pocketed the key. 'Shut up. Or you can go in there with him.' He headed back to the corridor.

She paused — not believing this was happening — then caught up with him. 'You're supposed to be looking for Jonah. You promised. What're you doing here?'

He didn't answer. Instead he went into the kitchen and began to open the cupboards, pulling things out, crouching to look inside. 'What?' She stopped in the doorway and watched him. 'What're you looking for?'

He ignored her, straightened and opened the utility-room door, roughly pulling aside boxes and bin-liners. 'I said, what are you looking for?'

'For Mallows's body.' He pushed past her, going back into the hall. 'Remember? The one who got his hands cut off.'

She stared at him as he mounted the stairs two at a time. At first the name Mallows didn't make any sense. Then the daze broke. 'Mallows?' she said, following him. She caught up with him on the landing where he was opening doors, pulling aside curtains, delving into wardrobes.

'What the hell makes you think he's here?'

He went into the bathroom, kicking at the bath panelling, looking into the airing cupboard. 'Your mate downstairs is a little too close to the last place Mallows was seen alive. And you know about the videos he's got, apparently. Strange that, a serving police officer knowing about videos of people being tortured.'

'The videos?' She licked her dry lips. 'Yes, yes, I do. But they're…'

'Torture. They're videos of someone being tortured.'

'But not Mallows.'

'Are you sure?' He went into the next bedroom, picking his way through the piles of clothes and books. He checked under the bed, then threw open the wardrobe door. 'You're telling me one of those in that bookcase of his doesn't show Mallows having his hands taken off, having his blood taken? Is that what you're saying?'

'They're old films. They happened in the eighties.'

'That's what he says.'

Flea came into the room and closed the door behind her. She didn't like it being open, with the echoey rooms downstairs, the row after row of videos beneath and Kaiser locked in the study. She went to the bed, sat heavily on it and massaged her temples, thinking about Mum saying, 'If you want my opinion what he did really was immoral. It was outrageous.'

Caffery was staring at her. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. 'Well?'

'Oh, Christ,' she whispered, rubbing her arms because goosebumps had come up on them. 'I don't know. He's my father's friend, and I always knew he did something wrong years ago, I just never knew how really, really fucking wrong it was. I haven't worked it all out yet, but he was…' She trailed off, not liking the words. 'I've seen eight of the videos — they're all the same. Electrodes. That's what he was using. It was an experiment.'

'An experiment?'

'I know. All done in the name of science.' She pushed her fingers into her temples, as if that would get rid of the pressure. 'Things must have been different then, and it wasn't here, it was in Nigeria, in Ibadon — and, you know, maybe the ethics were different because nobody stopped him. Not until the very end. The, uh, the people you saw-'

'I only saw one.'

'There are more, lots more, but they consented. I've seen the consent forms — that's what I was going through when you came in. They were mostly research students. The others came off the streets, did it for money.' She paused because something had just hit her. Thom's night terrors. He'd always been convinced Kaiser used to hunt people in the streets at night. She felt cold. Maybe Thom had always known the truth. Or suspected it. What she'd said to Caffery was true. The videos could be explained away — sinister, but not as sinister as he was thinking. But on a deep level, in a low part of her stomach, she knew they were sinister because they said something about Dad she didn't want to think about.

She wiped her forehead, trying to keep her face composed. 'So — you see what I mean? Nothing to do with Mallows.'

Caffery took a weary breath. He looked as if he hadn't slept in years. 'I should at least lodge a report at Weston and get a section eight warrant raised.'

'Technically,' she muttered. 'Yes, you should.'

'Except I can't nick him here in the UK. Unless he was a public official in Nigeria at the time. Which I take it he wasn't?'

'No.'

'In that case it's over to-'

'Interpol,' she said. 'I know — I've already thought about it.'

He held her eyes a little longer. Then he let go of the door and pulled at his tie until it was loose enough to lift over his head. 'Come on,' he said, as he thrust it into his breast pocket. 'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now I've got something else I want to talk to the old bastard about.'