Mo Hayder - Ritual

'Shit,' Caffery muttered. He shoved the phone into his breast pocket and drove on, losing all sense of direction until suddenly the overhanging plants and trees cleared, he passed a little area of overgrown grass, and the drive opened out. He was about a hundred yards from a ramshackle nineteen-fifties house, perched on the edge of a sweeping valley and surrounded by tumbledown outhouses. There were weeds in the asphalt, panes of glass — maybe dismantled greenhouses — piled up on the verge, and boards over some of the lower windows. It was deserted and forgotten-looking, but it wasn't the house that was making his heart thud. It was what was parked with its nose facing the front door.

A silver Ford Focus.

The number plate started 'Y9'. Flea's plate began with 'Y9'- he'd noticed that this morning in the car park at HQ. It wasn't much of a coincidence — there'd be hundreds of Y-reg silver Ford Focuses in the area. It was other things he'd noticed in the car park that bothered him more about this car: the tiny piece of material poking out of the closed boot as if she'd carelessly shut it on something, and the navy force holdall on the backshelf. Those couldn't be coincidence too.

Turning to the house, Caffery couldn't say why, but he had an image of things happening out here that couldn't be explained — of people doing brutal dances in the dark. Kaiser was one of the country's leading experts on witchcraft. He had a connection with TIDARA. Something cold trickled through his veins. What had Mabuza said? That the intellectuals were trying to set him up?

He slowed the car, letting it creep forward. Going quietly, taking care not to do anything quickly that might alert anyone inside the house, he turned off the drive into the grass, making a U-turn so the car was facing towards the road. He killed the engine and got out, closing the door with a quiet click. He didn't like places like this, desolate and uncared-for: they reminded him of a place he had been to once in Norfolk, a place where he'd once thought he might find clues about Ewan.

He stepped into the grass and approached slowly. There were no sounds, only the click-click-click of his car engine cooling behind him. A cat lying in the shade of a water butt opened its eyes and regarded him contemplatively. He got to the side of the house and stood in the shadow, the heat in the brick radiating against his back, feeling idiotic, creeping about like the SAS. He took off his jacket and draped it over the handle of a rusting garden roller, wiped his forehead with his sleeve and began to count. When he got to ten he'd walk to the front door and ring the bell, be official, say he wanted to talk about work. He'd laugh about it, stop tilting at windmills.

And that's exactly what he would have done if, by the time he'd counted to five, someone inside the house, someone only on the other side of the wall, hadn't begun to scream.

He'd been in the job long enough to know when to follow his training and when not to. He knew this was a time when he should follow everything he'd been taught and put in a call to Control, but the red light on the radio was blinking, telling him it was out of range too. He wasn't going to drive back down into signal range so he did the exact opposite of what he should have done. He kept going.

About four feet away from him, resting against one of the piles of glass, was a wooden handle. It had belonged to a pickaxe or a shovel and it was exactly the right size and weight. He snatched it up and backed into the lee of the house, standing with the handle out, his arms trembling. The screaming stopped and he edged forward to the nearest window, straining to hear what was happening. Then he squatted and crab-walked his way under the ledge, straightened and went to the corner of the house, put his back to the wall as if he was in a western shoot-out, and peered round it.

A cloud had gone across the sun and the front of the house was in shadow, the greying pebbledash pocked in places as if it had taken shrapnel. The cat was still sitting there, washing its face, as if nothing was happening. About ten feet past it, what must have been the front porch was shrouded in plastic sheeting. Bricks had been piled on top to hold it in place. Caffery edged towards it, breathing hard, the wooden handle held out in front of him.

He got to the porch and lifted the edge of the sheeting tentatively. From here he could see there was no front door. Instead the gap had been clumsily covered with blue membrane, the manufacturer's logo printed on it in white. Carefully, trying not to make any noise, he ducked under the plastic sheet and stepped inside, pressing a finger to the plastic membrane. It gave a little. He wiped away the cobwebs from his face and hair, and stood close to it, holding his breath. The screaming had stopped: he couldn't hear a thing, not a sound or a movement. A voice in the back of his head told him to back off, back off, idiot … but instead he got out his car keys and used the little Swiss Army knife on the fob to make a hole in the blue plastic.

As the knife went in he stopped, thinking what it might look like from inside — a bulge and then the little nose of the knife poking through, glinting maybe. His heart was thudding and he could feel sweat run from his armpits, making his sides and back itch. He counted to ten, then, when no one came running out at him, he slid the knife cleanly down the membrane making a long, straight slit. He stepped back, shocked by the noise, breathing hard.

After a minute or so when there was still nothing from inside, he crouched next to the slit and pushed one finger in, pulling it aside so he could see a few yards into the dim interior and listen. There was a smell of neglect and decay, a smell of raw concrete and stagnant water, and a lazy flapping, like slow wings beating somewhere in the darkness. Nothing else except the eerie silence.

He used the wooden handle to push into the gap and moved aside the sheeting, feeling the cooler air inside shift across his skin. Carefully he put one foot through, and then, with a quick sideways twist, followed it inside, dropping into a crouch. He held his breath and listened again. It was a moment or two before his eyes were used to the dark, but when they were he saw what had caused the flapping noise: every doorway leading away from this area was covered with white plastic sheeting, taped at the top with slits at the sides, lifting and rippling on unseen currents. With the deathly hush and stale air he couldn't help thinking of mortuaries.

Slowly he went to the first piece of sheeting and looked through into what had once been a utility area. The washing-machine was still in the corner, but it hadn't been used recently. Boxes of books were piled up in front of it, and the ironing-board was draped with filthy tea-towels. He moved to the next sheet and found he was looking into a kitchen — left-over food on the table, magazines piled everywhere, a guinea pig staring beadily at him from a cage on the work surface. He was about to go through the next sheet when, from the other side, the screaming started again.

Run until the world ends… Run until the world ends…

As he lies on the sofa, his eyes moving under the lids, Skinny's words make patterns in Mossy's head, repeating themselves in long, feverish strings. Run until the world ends. ..

He's too submerged in his thoughts to notice the shadow return in the corridor. It hovers there, yellowing eyes watching him thoughtfully, and it might have stayed there if it hadn't been for a door opening. The shadow scuttles away just as light floods into the corridor. There's the sound of another door closing and, in the background, low, vicious voices.

Mossy opens his heavy eyes. His head is thick but he can see people out there — not just one or two but more. He can see shadows on the wall, can hear the muttered threats. Someone raises a hand and there's a scuffle. There's a noise too. It starts as a hoarse sob, then stretches into a long drawn-out cry, so high and thin it might be a girl screaming.