Mo Hayder - Ritual

'Different?'

'Yes. We never actually said it but we always knew something was slightly wrong. Poor little sod. But he's OK, you know. As long as he's got instructions, he knows how to follow them. The only thing wrong with him is he's not flexible — he can't think in an emergency.' She pressed her fingers harder into her temples, speaking slowly and clearly: 'He should never — never have been with them. Not on his own that deep. I let him go because…' She shook her head, trying to shake away the guilt, wishing it would lift off her like a skin. 'I was scared, Kaiser. So scared. You don't know what Dad was like. He was… We couldn't be weak around him. If we showed fear or weakness it just — just finished him. I didn't want to go into that hole so I trod on the glass.'

It was the first time she'd ever put it into words — the mistake she'd made, the corner she'd turned that meant she would forever be paying the price, forever pulling other people's bodies out of deep water because she couldn't pull up the bodies of the two people she'd allowed to drown. It felt odd to have the words out in the air now. It was as if she was waiting for judgement.

She bent over at the middle, resting her chin on her knees, her hands on her stomach. There was a long silence. It was Kaiser who broke it, speaking in a low voice: 'You know, you are so very much like your father.'

She looked sideways at him. 'Am I?'

'Yes.' He gave a sad smile. 'Oh, yes. So very much like him.'

'Why?'

He laughed and put his arm round her shoulders. 'Oh, I can't answer that. The answer to that question is a long, long road.' His big goat's face creased in a regretful smile. 'That's a road only you can travel.'

'When did you last speak to Kwanele Dlamini?'

'Dlamini?'

'Yes. Kwanele Dlamini. Your friend. Remember him?'

Mabuza and Caffery sat opposite each other, another officer in the corner, his arms folded. There was a plate of biscuits on the table and a cup of coffee in front of each man. Polystyrene cups, not china, because this was the custody suite: even though Mabuza wasn't under arrest and even though he was being co-operative, taking a day away from the restaurant and arriving punctually, neatly dressed in a suit and his rimless glasses, the PACE-designated custody suite was a good place to be if things got heated and they needed to make an arrest. It was the polystyrene cup that was giving Mabuza away now. Just the mention of Dlamini had made him lower his eyes and pick nervous half-moons out of it with his nails.

'Mr Mabuza? I asked you when you last saw Kwanele Dlamini?'

'Dlamini?' Mabuza licked his lips quickly. His head was down and his eyes began a restless flicking back and forth across the table. 'Dlamini was — a long time — a long time ago.'

'A long time? Sorry, help me here. Is that a week? A month? A year?'

'Half a year. Six months.'

'And why haven't you seen him in that time?'

'He's gone home — back to the homeland.'

'South Africa?'

'That's right. We lost touch.'

'I had the impression your friendship with him was closer than that.'

'No. Not close. He was an acquaintance.'

'No forwarding address?'

'No.'

'Only that I want to direct our investigation in the way that'll pay dividends, you know?' Caffery bent his head, trying to look up into the man's eyes, see what was happening there. 'Want to be chasing the right rabbit and not putting pressure on you. A forwarding address would help.'

Mabuza shook his head.

'Or the names of family members. He was from Johannesburg?'

'Yes,' he muttered. 'But that's all I know about him. I met him here. We didn't talk about home.'

Caffery hooked his arm over the back of the chair and looked at the top of Mabuza's head. It was more than the friendship between the two men making him pursue this: earlier that morning Mabuza had signed the forms to allow the police to search his house and in the first two hours the team had come up with a few things he wanted to ask Mabuza about. He looked down at the sheets of paper under his fingers. There was something from the lab there, too: something even more interesting than the team had found at the house.

'You were kind enough to allow us to search your home,' he said, when they'd been sitting in silence for almost a minute. 'We found a few things we liked.'

'I've got nothing to hide,' Mabuza muttered.

'For example, we brought back some carpet fibres. From the front room.' Caffery went slowly, giving each word time to sink in. He'd wanted to be seen taking the fibres legally: the results of the match with the handful Flea had taken would be with him by close of business, so he'd told the search guys to get a sample of the living-room carpet. 'And work it so the missus sees you doing it, if you know what I'm saying.' 'Do you know about fibres?' he asked Mabuza. 'About how they're used in forensics? Say, for example, a person sat on a carpet, or even walked on it, for the shortest time, some of the fibres from that carpet would be transferred on to the person. Did you know that?'

Mabuza was frowning. 'What are you saying? Are you asking me a question?'

Caffery pretended to be considering what he'd said. 'You're right. It's a bit off message, isn't it? Especially with the length of time the labs these days can take to process things. You know, I had to put an express order on those fibres and even then they won't get the results back to me until close of business this afternoon.' He glanced at his watch and shook his head regretfully, as if he was weary of the dumb way the force worked. 'Then again, lucky for me they've been a bit quicker on something else.'

'I beg your pardon.'

He used his forefinger to move the papers around, half frowning as if this was all a great puzzle to him. 'There was a pot at Dlamini's. An earthenware pot. Do you know about it?'

'A pot? What sort of pot?'

'It's about — so big? With a lid? Well, the pot's nothing special, not on its own, but what made me sit up was what the lab found in it.'

Mabuza had opened his mouth to say something. Then he closed it. He looked up at Caffery, then down at the papers on the desk. It lasted only a second or two but something had happened in that instant. Something that made Caffery want to smile.

'Yes,' he said slowly, holding Mabuza's eyes. 'We found blood. Human blood. And this morning they confirmed whose blood it was. Do you want me to tell you whose blood it was — or do you know already?'

Mabuza swallowed. A fine sweat had started on his forehead. 'No,' he said, in a small voice. 'I don't know.'

'It was Ian Mallows's blood.' He tapped the paper with his forefinger. 'You know that name, of course, because he was the poor fucker whose hands ended up under your restaurant. It's here in black and white. Ian Mallows.' He paused for a moment, still smiling. 'And I call that too much of a coincidence.'

Mabuza took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow, shooting glances at the door. Caffery recognized this, the signs of a witness on the point of withdrawing cooperation. The PACE adviser had said this would be a good time to go into rapid-fire formation — if they were going to have to arrest him they'd throw at him all the questions they knew would hit hot spots.

'Mr Mabuza,' Caffery said, 'do you have any feelings about the use of illegal drugs? If one of your staff came to you and admitted they had a heroin problem, what would you say?'

Mabuza blinked. He hadn't expected the swerve. 'Excuse me? If one of my staff had a drugs problem?'

'Yes. How would you react?'

'It's a devil, sir. Drugs are the devil.'

'Is that why you give twenty thousand pounds a year to drugs charities? Or is that just a tax break?' He held up another piece of paper. 'Your bank statements,' he explained. 'The search team found them at the house.'