Mo Hayder - Ritual

He took the bag from her. 'What, these?'

'You said there were carpet fibres on the hands. So I thought… I thought maybe this would help.'

Caffery turned the bag over and over. Then he went to the filing cabinet, took out a paper evidence bag and put it inside. He uncapped a pen, seemed to be thinking about what to write on it. Then he changed his mind, scribbled a note to himself and stuck it on the bag.

'I didn't force my way in. I was there legitimately.'

'You know the section nineteen stuff well enough. It's an issue of consent versus true consent. You didn't tell anyone who you were and you used the relationship to get information,' he said, in a patient monotone. 'Let's hope the defence isn't awake, or can't be bothered to check, or they could say you've made yourself UC without authorization.'

Flea's jaw got tight. She'd told herself she wouldn't, but she felt like walking out. UC stood for 'undercover' and Caffery was probably right: the defence could get them for it. But she wasn't going to let him put her off. She forced herself to straighten up. It was a physical thing. Put her shoulders back — it made her feel stronger.

'What about the fibres?' she said. 'Do they look like the ones on the hands?'

At first she thought he hadn't heard. He was still looking at the paper bag, an expression on his face as if the fibres were communicating something to him. 'Are they the ones on the hand?' she repeated.

Caffery said, as if he hadn't heard her, 'You kept telling me yesterday — "He's African." What did that mean — he's African ?'

'Are you sure you want to know?'

'I'm sure.'

'OK.' She gestured at the computer. 'May I?'

'It's slow. May as well still be on dial-up — Avon and Somerset's finest, and if the traffic's bad it can take five minutes for a page to download.'

She rolled the seat forward, using her heels to pull herself across the floor, and gave the mouse a shake on the mat. When the screen came up she waited for the connection, did the search — he was right, the server took ages — and went to the page she wanted. 'There,' she said, pointing to the photo.

Caffery came to stand next to her, bending a little to peer at the screen. If he hadn't gone home last night he had at least found somewhere to shower. He was close to her and he smelled clean. 'What am I looking at?' he said slowly. 'What's this?'

She was thinking of something she knew he'd remember: the headless, limbless corpse of a small boy found floating in the Thames. 'Adam', they'd called him, because the only clues to his ID were the orange shorts his remains had been dressed in, the contents of his stomach and that the killer had deliberately removed the first vertebra. 'When you were in London,' she said carefully, 'did you have anything to do with Adam?'

'Adam?'

'The little boy in the Thames. The torso.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'Couple of my colleagues worked on it. But why…' He trailed off, his eyes on hers, his face suddenly drawn. 'Oh, Christ,' he said tightly. 'I see what you're talking about.'

She didn't answer. Eventually 'Adam's' trail had led the Metropolitan Police to Africa, where their worst suspicions were confirmed: the colour of the shorts and the missing bone, the Atlas bone, held by many African religions to be the centre of the body… everything had pointed to one thing.

' Muti ,' Caffery murmured. 'That's what you're saying. This is a muti killing?'

'Yes,' she said, and for a moment they were both silent. Muti — black magic, witchcraft. The word was enough to make the room feel cold. African magic medicine: sometimes it included the killing and dismemberment of a human for use in a religious ritual. In the last decade there'd been signs it had wound its sheltered way into Britain.

'It was in a book I saw.' She said it quietly, as if it was rude to be talking about it aloud. 'A book about African witchcraft and shamans. It had a picture of severed hands — a guy in Johannesburg got done for it. He'd cut them off a corpse and sold them to a local businessman.'

'What was he going to do with them?'

'They're supposed to entice customers into the business. That's the idea. You bury them or put them into the walls and they beckon people in. And from what I could work out from the book, the place to put them…' she paused, '… is at the entrance.'

Caffery's eyes were slightly distant as if he was concentrating on the thought processes un-ravelling in his head. Then he looked at the screen again, and said, a little more quietly, 'And this?' An object, brown, about the size of a sleeping-bag crumpled up, was displayed in a glass case.

'This? Oh, God, I don't know why I had to show you this, but it made me realize just how far people will go.'

Caffery leaned into the monitor, studying the obscene folds, the edges yellowing and frayed. 'What is it?'

'What do you think it is?'

'I don't know…' Neither of them said it but something dark had crept into the room, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. 'I think, and don't ask me how, but I think I'm looking at someone's skin.'

10 May

Mossy wakes to find Skinny squatting a few feet away from him on the floor. At first he's confused. The room is bathed in a weird blue-white light that gives the smallest things shadows, making the dust and bits of tobacco and hairs on the floor appear to crackle like electricity. Skinny is dressed in some sort of robe in chequered red, black and white with symbols on it like an African mask. On his head is a wig, long black hair beaded with white shells. For a moment he is frozen, like a lion about to spring, then suddenly he's in motion, going quickly round the floor. There's something nasty about the movement that makes Mossy sit up on the sofa, because it's fast and unnatural and a bit like a wounded spider, the way he's half using his hands and half using his feet. The beads in his hair click together.

Skinny hisses, baring his teeth like a snake, but Mossy knows this isn't for real: he's watching a performance. It takes him no time at all to work out that it's being done for the camera, which he sees has appeared in its sly way in the corridor. The gate stands open and that's where the light is coming from — from a mini spotlight stuck above the lens.

Mossy knows who's there. Uncle is behind the camera, and Mossy's not going to draw attention to himself, so he tips his forehead down like he's still asleep and rolls his eyes up to watch.

Skinny stops scurrying round the floor and takes from under the robes a small cloth bag. Mossy's seen it before. Sometimes Skinny leaves it lying on the purple carpet — he says it contains his 'divining bones' but he's never let Mossy look at them. Now he tips them out and hunkers next to them, waving his hands over them, murmuring under his breath.

Mossy can see them scattered on the filthy carpet, not just bones but other things too: shells, two playing-cards, a domino, a folded pocket knife, and a chunk of yellowish rind that Mossy thinks could be from a butcher's. He watches in silence as Skinny points at the playing-cards, muttering something in a language he's never heard before but brings with it the strong smell of Africa.

The performance goes on for a long time. When it is finished Skinny leaves the room and goes into the corridor. The gate is locked for a moment or two and he can hear muttering. The light goes out and after a while there is the sound of the far door opening and closing. Then Skinny is coming back into the room, locking the gate behind him. He comes to sit near Mossy. 'You watch me?'

'Yeah.' He puts one hand on his forehead and peers at him closely. 'I watch you. What the fuck was all that about?'

'I throw the bones.'

'You what?'