Mo Hayder: Ritual

She put the date loaf on the coffee-table. He stared ahead, his long yellow nails positioned just under the tip of his wide nose as if it was too heavy for his face and he was trying to stop it falling. Next to his chair, on top of a small cabinet, the computer was open at divenet, the international sport divers' forum, and next to that a photo of his African ex-fiancee, Maya. He'd lost Maya thirty years ago but said he still loved her. Maya's mouth, Flea noticed, was exactly level with Kaiser's right ear.

'Kaiser?' she said eventually. 'Kaiser, the door was open.'

He nodded.

'Kaiser? Can you hear me?'

He shook himself, glancing at the computer screen. 'Yes, Phoebe,' he said wearily. 'I can hear you. But I am so sad. So sad about your parents. Still. After all this time.'

Ordinarily she might have sat down then, perhaps at his feet, or maybe she'd have hugged him. But she had to speak to him seriously. She sat in the chair opposite and tipped forward, elbows on her knees.

'Kaiser,' she said. 'Remember whenever you cooked us anything Dad always used to nudge you? Remember? Nudge you and say, "Kaiser, old man, you sure there's nothing in this cake we should know about?" '

Kaiser smiled. He dipped his chin, half laughing at the memory.

'Except,' she said seriously, 'this time it's not a joke.'

His smile faded. 'I beg your pardon?'

'This time, Kaiser, it's not anywhere near as funny as I used to think it was.' She gave him a long, level look. His eyes were pus-coloured, a bit bloodshot. Something about his big-boned face had always made her think of a hairless goat. 'See, now I realize it wasn't ever really a joke. Not to the people who mattered.'

'What on earth do you mean?'

She turned to the cupboards in the recesses on either side of the fireplace. They were locked and, now she thought about it, there had always been things in Kaiser's house that were locked away, places she and Thom weren't allowed. People were always contacting Kaiser to ask about his shamanic skills and it made him laugh: 'I'm hardly a shaman. Just a dusty old lecturer.' But there was something hidden about Kaiser, something in the sinewy body, quite strong in spite of his age, something in the way he would stare fixedly at a person. Dad said Kaiser knew 'whereof he spoke' and that the cupboards were where he kept the ritual drugs. Flea'd always thought it was one of Dad's jokes. She wasn't sure she'd ever believed it or given it much thought. Until now.

'Phoebe? I asked you a question.'

She sighed. Picking up a piece of date loaf she sank back into the chair, sticking her feet out in front of her, her hands on her stomach, looking morosely at the cake between her fingers. 'I went into Dad's study, Kaiser. The place he keeps all his books. Some of your things are in there.'

'Yes?'

'Yes, and there's a safe too — I couldn't open it.

The code's not in the study.' She fiddled with the cake, not giving in to the temptation to look at him. 'I searched everywhere but I couldn't find it so I wondered if you'd know what it is. Or if you know where he might keep it.'

'Is that what you came here to talk to me about?'

'Do you know where he'd keep it?'

Kaiser took in a deep impatient breath, and let the air out slowly through his nose. 'I don't know anything about a safe or a code. And I repeat, is that what you came here to ask?'

Flea put the cake back on the plate, and rotated her head, as if she had a crick in her neck. 'Kaiser,' she said, after a while. 'Kaiser, do you know why Dad used to lock himself in the study for days on end?'

Kaiser levered the footrest down with a clunk so he was sitting forward. There were a few moments' silence. 'Let me ask you, Phoebe. Do you know why? Do you know why your father did it?'

'I think so. Yes. I think I probably do.'

'Your father's drive to understand was greater than anyone's I've known. He must have talked to you about Secondary Attention.'

'The places in our heads — places we can't always get to except if we're dreaming or fainting. Or maybe hypnotized. That's what he used to talk about. A place that holds keys to things we've buried. And his way of getting there…' She lifted her eyes and met his. 'Was with drugs?'

'Your father had many different routes. Sometimes it was meditation, but, yes, often it was drugs.'

'I knew it.'

'Don't judge him too quickly. David always had the need to uncover, to strip down his head — pull things out.'

Flea let a moment pass. Then she took the bag of mushrooms out of her fleece pocket and dropped it on the floor between their feet. 'Psilocybin,' she said. 'I looked it up. It means «baldhead». The Aztecs called them teonancatls — flesh of the gods.' She was silent for a while, looking down at them. 'They could lose me my job.'

Kaiser made a clicking sound in his throat. It was a sound she remembered him making years ago and had always thought you might hear it on the plateaus of Nigeria, a herdsman calling the shorthorn cattle to his side. But now she understood it was his way of marking the moment an idea came together. 'And you've taken them. I know you, Phoebe, I can hear it in your voice. You've taken them. Without consulting me.'

'Yes,' she said slowly. 'And I want to take them again.'

He snorted. 'Don't be an idiot.'

'You said Dad used them to pull things out of his head?'

'Yes.'

'Don't laugh at this, Kaiser, but in all your research have you ever-' She let her voice drop to a whisper. 'Have you ever heard anyone say drugs can let them communicate with people who've died?'

Kaiser sighed. 'Your parents, you mean?'

'Mum.'

He shook his head and got up, standing facing the locked cupboards. He put one hand in the small of his back. That fragility — it was a lie, she thought, not for the first time that night. There was something strong in his long muscles and his claw-like hands. 'Phoebe,' he said, in a low voice, 'there are some things you have to let rest — you can't keep going back and raking it over.'

'Would Dad have let it rest?'

'No.'

'Then you know I'm never going to.' She sat forward a little. 'It could lose me my job, but that doesn't change anything. I want to go back where I went last night.' She paused. Her voice had been getting quieter and quieter. 'I saw her, Kaiser, I saw her. She was trying to say something about the accident.' Flea shook her head and screwed her hand into a fist. 'But I couldn't quite… couldn't quite understand what she meant.'

Kaiser's face was grave. 'What did you say?'

'I said, something about the accident — something in the way we're thinking about it — is all wrong. We've been looking in the wrong place.' She held his eyes. 'Kaiser, I'm going to do it — I'm going to take them again. Find out what she meant.'

A long, long silence rolled out between them. Something was happening behind his eyes — she could almost see the computations he was making. Then, when it seemed they'd be locked there for ever, Kaiser broke away, and went back to his chair. He sat for a moment, hands on the armrests, head turned sideways, looking at his ex-fiancee's face. 'If you want to communicate with people who've gone,' he said quietly, 'there is something. A hallucinogen you can control, a drug that is legal. Your father introduced me to it.'

'But you don't believe it, do you? You don't really believe it's all true?'

'There'll be some literature about it in your father's study.' Kaiser pretended not to have heard the question. 'Please, read it, then come back to me. Throw away the baldheads — they won't take you any further. But this will.'

'"This"?' She sat forward, creeped and excited all at once, as if her skin had been brushed the wrong way. 'What's «this», Kaiser?'