Mo Hayder - Ritual

Something caught her eye and she stopped again. She swung her legs round so she was sitting on the stern of the boat, fingers digging into one of the mossed old stones of the quayside, her feet wedged against the pontoon so she could push the craft into the wall and get her face close to it. Dundas had found a mooring pin and was holding on to it, steadying the boat. She made a small, satisfied noise and pushed her right hand at the wall. Caffery leaned over as far as he could but all he could see was her head, her shoulders, her face, turned sideways and screwed up in concentration, and her arm disappearing deep into the wall.

'I said, is it bothering you now?'

She nodded. Her eyes had the shortened focus of someone who is working by feel alone. 'Yes. And he said there wasn't…' She pushed her arm a little further in. 'He said there wasn't anyone else on the quayside. Didn't he?'

'Far as I know. Maybe it was floating.'

She glanced up at him. Blue eyes that gave him a jolt because he hadn't noticed before that there was something a bit wild about them. Then she dropped them again and all he could see was the top of her dive hood, and her arm burrowing into the wall.

'A hand on its own doesn't float,' she said. 'It just wouldn't. Even if it had started to decompose…'

She broke off. She pulled her arm out of the hole and looked at what she held in her fist. A lump of congealed black slime with pieces of leaf and stick in it. She rolled backwards a little and dropped the mess on to the pontoon, giving it a cursory examination with a finger, her face tight with the strain of holding herself up.

Then she glanced back at Caffery — that flash of blue light in her eyes again. 'Even if it's decomposed, which this one wasn't, a hand still wouldn't float .'

'Why not?'

'Because it's too heavy, so much bone, not much soft tissue. And even if there was enough gas the skin's broken, so the gases would've escaped. No gases, no floating.' She inserted her hand back into whatever hole she'd found. He could smell it — the foul odour of drains and dark places. This time her arm went in all the way up to the shoulder. Her face was pressed against the wall, squashing her cheek forward. 'Which means he's either lying. Or…'

'Yes?'

'Or it got washed into the water by a current and he happened to see it going down. It was raining yesterday morning. So, for example, it could have come out of a storm drain.' She grimaced as she tried to get a grip on something. With a little grunt she wedged her free hand against the wall and levered herself backwards, pulling her right hand out and delivering the second wet handful of slime on to the pontoon. Then she pulled back, both hands either side of the hole and peered into it. The sleeves of her dry suit were covered with green moss and slime. 'A storm drain. Like this one.'

25 November

It takes some time — and some getting desperate on Mossy's part — but in the end he decides they're not asking much of him.

The deal goes like this: they'll take some blood, bleed him a little. It's not the same as 'red' — they won't fuck him until he bleeds — they're going to use a needle instead. Skinny's got the equipment ready, a syringe and a tube leading to something that looks like a catheter bag. They're going to take it from one of the veins that isn't burned out, fill the bag, it'll take twenty minutes maybe, then he can have a lie-down, another hit, a cup of tea or a Tennants Extra if he wants. Anyway, he's free to go. There'll be two hundred nicker in it and the whole bag of gear Skinny's been flashing around. He's got to go back out of the building in the blindfold and they'll drop him anywhere in Bristol he wants to go. And what keeps going through his head is why wouldn't he trust them? People give their blood for free, don't they? And what's the deal? Selling a little piece of himself that he doesn't need and, fuck's sake, it's not like he hasn't been selling his hole for long enough. Think of this as a variation on a theme, even if it is a bit off its head. Anyway, it's so warm in here, and there's a smell somewhere of food cooking and suddenly he remembers he hasn't eaten since last night.

He lies on the couch and smokes a thin little J while Skinny gets the needle in. It takes two tries and when he checks the blood's coming up he botches it, pulls too quick making Mossy swear.

'You're an expert,' goes Mossy, watching him stick it down with Sellotape and attach a tube to it. 'Ain't you?'

There's a little plastic tap on the tube and Skinny's about to turn it when it's as if something occurs to him. He pauses and looks over his shoulder into the darkness, just long enough for Mossy to wonder if someone's watching them. He lifts his head off the sofa a little and tries to peer into the gloom where Skinny's looking. There's another of those gates there, locked, and beyond it a room in darkness.

Skinny makes a little sound in the back of his throat. He lets go of the tube and, moving daintily, like a girl dancer, he lies on the sofa next to Mossy, his hand draped over Mossy's bony ribcage. Surprised, Mossy lifts his chin and squints down at the top of Skinny's head, at the curls and snags and bits of fluff tangled there, and feels an unexpected tenderness. It's like this guy is trying to comfort him, or warm him. It feels like the way a kid curls up with a parent.

'What?' he says, and his voice comes out a little hoarse because all of a sudden he wants to touch Skinny's hair. 'What do you want?'

'I'm sorry. Plenty sorry.'

'What you talking about?'

He feels Skinny swallow. He can actually feel the cartilage in the man's throat move up and down against his arm.

'Them's wanting you to scream.'

Mossy can feel the thick beat of the hash going through his veins and, for a moment, he thinks he's going to laugh. 'Scream?' he goes, half smiling. 'You fucking joking? Why've I got to scream?'

'It's all I ask you. When I pull out your blood you scream. OK?'

Mossy cranes his neck, trying to see into the adjoining room, looking for a pair of eyes in the dark, trying to catch out whoever's watching. He can't see anything, only the glint of the metal gate, which he's one hundred per cent is locked. He laughs, deep and knowing. Now he gets it.

'Hey, sweetheart,' he calls, his voice echoing into the dark spaces. 'I know you're out there. Can't see you, like, but I know you're there. And let me just tell you — I like perverts. I do. I love you all. I'll do the best show you've ever seen. Got your video running, have you?'

As if in answer, from out of the darkness comes a click and a whirr and a red light blinks on and off. Mossy puts his head back and laughs. He's on home ground now. He's been videoed by them all — the ones who want to watch themselves and the ones who are so ashamed, either because of what they're doing or because they know their dick size will humiliate them, that they have to video him and get off later when he's gone and can't laugh. Now he gets why the price is so good, and it's something he doesn't care about. He can relax.

Skinny shifts. He sits up and turns on the tap. His face is close, and Mossy wonders if they could be friends. 'Scream,' whispers Skinny. 'Now. Scream.'

And Mossy does. He drops his head back on the scratchy sofa and screams.

14 May

'Don't need to ask what this is about.' The council sub-contractors, three men in bright red jackets marked SITA, were manoeuvring their inflatable raft against the edge of the pontoon, one of them assembling a jetting machine, snapping on the jet head to the orange flexipipe. One was holding his finger under the drain, watching the steady dribble of water on to it while his colleague was testing the jet. 'Only question is, how far up.'