Mo Hayder - Ritual

'Did Dlamini ever mention any interest in muti ?' Caffery said. 'Witchcraft? Did he talk about using charms to ward off bad spirits?'

Mabuza didn't move his eyes. But that didn't matter because Caffery had seen him swallow. His hard grey Adam's apple went up and down painfully, and Caffery didn't have to look down to know that his grip on the polystyrene cup was tightening. He knew they were getting close to something.

'No,' Mabuza said quickly. 'No more than anyone else from our country.'

'Do you know where he might have got hold of a vulture's head? Because it's quite a serious thing to have something like that. Vultures are on an endangered-species list.'

'No idea, sir.' His eyes flicked up to the door, then back to Caffery's face. 'Really, no idea.'

'I'm sorry. Did that question make you nervous?' Mabuza bit his bottom lip. 'You don't know what you're dealing with, sir. It's something you don't understand.'

'Don't I?'

'You're talking about something that is African. Something that belongs to Africa.' He pushed up the sleeve of his shirt and pinched up a chunk of his arm. 'It's in here. In our flesh. And not — ' he jerked his chin at Caffery and the officer in the corner. '- not in yours. Now, you don't meddle in these things. Don't meddle.'

'That grease on your arms?'

Mabuza blinked. He looked at them as if he was surprised to find them there. Then he tucked them away under the table.

'Don't wipe it off — I know what it is. It's because of the Tokoloshe, isn't it? It's to ward him off.'

At this Mabuza became very still. His eyes seemed to bulge and Caffery thought he was going to jump to his feet again. But he dropped his face, muttering in a low whisper a string of words in a language Caffery didn't recognize. Sweat appeared on his forehead.

Caffery watched in silence, knowing this was something, a species of fear and anxiety, he'd never understand. When he'd asked the CSM if Mabuza's wife had seen him take the fibres, the CSM had said: 'She saw me do it as much as she could see anything. She was acting like she feared for her life if you want the honest truth.' And Mabuza's reaction now was fear. Real fear. Whatever he'd seen on the pontoon outside the restaurant, he'd believed it was real.

'OK,' Caffery said slowly. 'I'll tell you what I think. I think you've seen something you can't explain. Because of that you've paid money — a lot of money — to someone to ward it off. You think you've seen a devil, a Tokoloshe , don't you? You think he's threatening your business — and now you'll do anything.'

'Please do not meddle.' Mabuza raised a hand and tugged at his collar. Sweat was coming through his shirt, leaving circular marks on his chest. 'I asked you, do not meddle.'

Caffery tapped his pen down once on the table, giving space in the room for his question to be heard. 'Did you know the superstition that if hands are buried under the entrance to a property they bring in business? Might undo the harm done by the Tokoloshe?'

Mabuza looked up despairingly. There were faint stains round his eyes: tears of fear. 'You should stop this now.'

' I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you know exactly how those hands got under your restaurant.' He smiled. 'Now I don't know how I'm going to get you but, trust me, I will get you on something. Because you know what you've done is wrong. It couldn't be more wrong for another human being to die for the sake of your business. So I'd say the best thing you can do now is tell me who you paid.'

'I haven't paid anyone for anything. I don't know how those hands got under my restaurant.' 'It must be someone who knows a lot about African traditions, or is getting the information from someone who does. Maybe it's an illegal who's trading his powers for protection and money. Is it someone at work? One of your employees?'

'No. Forgive me, you've asked me this so many times. The answer's no. If you want to know how those hands got under my restaurant you are asking the wrong man.'

Caffery tapped his pen again, thinking about the fear in the guy's face. Half of him almost wanted to believe the bastard. 'Am I? Then who should I be asking?'

He wiped his eyes and swallowed. 'The intellectuals.'

'The intellectuals? What does that mean?'

'The university men. There's a plan against me. I've got enemies. This is a plot to slur my name.'

'Would you like to give me some names? Just something to be going along with.'

'You know, sir…' He brought out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. He was still trembling. '… I have never had a strong stomach. And what you've found under my restaurant… This is not a good day for me. Not a good day at all.' He looked up at him with runny eyes. 'How did a hand come to be under my restaurant, sir? Does it mean my business will be finished?'

There was a knock at the door. Caffery got to his feet and opened it. The office manager stood in the doorway, clutching a piece of fax paper he recognized immediately. It was from the lab. He took it and came back to sit down, placing it folded on the table where they could both look at it. He let a few seconds elapse before he spoke.

'Sorry.' He held up the paper. 'This is from the lab. The report on the carpet fibres.' He sat back and opened it, unfolding it slowly, scanning it for the precise line he wanted, knowing he was closing in. 'As I was saying earlier, this morning we…'

'What is it?' said Mabuza.

But Caffery had just reached the relevant box. Matches zero. The carpet fibres on Mallows's hands hadn't come from the carpet in Mabuza's house. Caffery lowered the paper and gave the officer in the corner a wry smile. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

'What?' Mabuza repeated, tears gone now, face tense.

Caffery ran his fingers through his hair, letting his nails graze the skin. Suddenly he felt tireder than he had all week. 'Nothing,' he said, standing and kicking the chair under the table. Outside it was getting dark. The officers wouldn't have got round all the drugs charities tonight: they'd have to start again in the morning. Which was a bastard because now the fibres weren't matching he knew the charities was one of the only avenues left to them. 'It's nothing at all.'

Don't let them bring us up…

It was late in the day and the shadow of the overhead light was long, reaching almost to the wall when Flea got up and dragged the old leather chair to the computer. Pulling a cardigan round her shoulders she switched on the computer and typed in 'Bushman's Hole'.

At first, after the accident, she had monitored the web all the time. When the inquest and the investigation were over, she became addicted to the chatter in the diving community, the theories about what had gone wrong with that dive. It interested all divers, sport and commercial alike: they were afraid and excited by what it might mean. People from Tasmania to Bermuda to the Hebrides, with sig-lines like 'You never have to ask a good diver to go down' from every different time zone, they all hopped in and out of the discussion, adding their experience to the mix. Sometimes Flea would stay up at night silently watching the forums, watching them talk, hoping for a mention of Mum and Dad, hoping it would be more than just technical theories, liking it when they called Mum 'Jill' and Dad 'David', instead of 'the Marleys', winnowing through the chaff for a mention of what they'd been before they were the world's most notorious victims of a cave-diving accident.

Getting into divenet, one of the biggest of the international dive websites, she scrolled down to the Trimix forums — Mum and Dad had been using Trimix to get down to one hundred and fifty metres; a controversial method that always got people talking. Sometimes people talked about Bushman's Hole here, too. Maybe there'd be someone who knew its shape, someone who knew the slope she'd hallucinated.