Mo Hayder - Ritual

'You can't do this to me — you can't.'

Caffery put a hand on the back of the man's head and pushed him down so his face was jammed between the postbox and the car's back wheel. He couldn't get Penderecki's face out of his head. There was a dried piece of dog shit on the kerb next to the guy's mouth and, still thinking of Penderecki, Caffery forced his face a little nearer, half wanting to make him eat it.

'Please stop.'

Caffery leaned his shoulder against the car and knelt on the guy's back. A voice in the back of his head was reminding him, This is how suspects die. This is how they die in detention. Suffocated. The coroner will find cracked ribs, bruises consistent with the victim being knelt on. They die from not having the strength to lift their ribs and let air into their lungs. And then the voice said: It's what you should have done to Penderecki.

'This can kill you,' he hissed into the man's ear. 'What I'm doing will kill you — fat though you are. If I stay here long enough you'll die. OK?'

'Please, please don't. Please …' He was crying now. He couldn't sob because Caffery was too heavy, but tears were rolling out of his eyes and mingling with the sweat. 'Please.'

'Tell me, you fucker, or we'll be here until you die .'

The man screwed up his eyes. He put his hands on to the ground and tried to lift his weight off the pavement to suck in a breath. 'OK,' he sputtered. 'Get off me and I'll tell you.'

Caffery slapped one hand against the car and got to his feet. The driver struggled on to his back, breathing hard, his face pressed against the grimy postbox.

'There are a few… people,' he panted, 'a few people who come here.'

'All on the game or do you like to be the one who converts them?'

'No.' He swallowed. 'No. They're all professionals.'

'And black? You like them black? Is that what your record will show? Young and black?'

He nodded miserably, a line of spittle hanging from his mouth.

'What?' Caffery put both hands on the car so he was stretched over the driver. He could sense one or two people watching him from outside the supermarket, but he didn't look up. 'What did you say?'

'I said yes .'

Caffery felt in his pocket for his mobile, pulled up the picture the multimedia unit had sent him and thrust it into the guy's face. 'This one. Fucked him too, have you?'

He glanced at the picture and away. 'Yeah,' he muttered. 'He's one of them.'

'Name?'

'Changes. Jim, Paul, John, whatever he feels. There's something wrong with him. He's not really twelve, he just looks it… Really he's eighteen — I swear. He's got a condition that makes him smaller…'

Caffery remembered a boy in London, a twelve-year- old, who used to advertise saying, 'I am an eighteen-year-old who had an accident that has left me looking just eleven years old.' Designed for all the old nonces who wanted to get away with their dirty child-rape habits. 'I've heard that story before, you piece of shit.'

'It's true.' The man stared at him. ' It's true. Ask anyone. Any of the ones who hang out here, they all know him. He dressed for me like a schoolkid, but he isn't, really. I swear he isn't. I don't do that any more — you know, with the kids.'

'Sure you don't.'

'Don't tell him I was the one who told you. I think he's got — friends. Family.' He wiped his nose, gulping down tears. 'Please don't tell him I told you.'

Caffery raised his head. Outside the supermarket three kids in board clothes were staring at him. When he met their eyes they turned away, pulling up their hoodies. 'So,' he said, 'when's he coming? Today?'

'Maybe.' He sniffled. 'Sometimes he comes at lunchtime, but if not him there'll be others.' He wiped the tears out of his eyes. 'Please don't say I told you. I don't want to upset anyone.'

'If you don't want to upset anyone, then stop fucking little boys,' Caffery said. He put his hands in the small of his back and flexed his shoulders, letting them click so his tense muscles would release.

'All right,' he said, helping the man to his feet. He opened the car door and shoved him towards it. 'Wait there. Don't move. Any of your other boyfriends come along you send them on their way, even if you and your sad little hard-on have to sit there all day. When he comes, act like nothing's happened. Get him in the car — I'll do the rest.'

'What about my keys? What am I going to do without my car keys?'

'Jesus Christ. I'm telling you to help me because you're a piece of shit and you owe something to society. Not because I've turned into the archangel fucking Gabriel. Now. Get. In. The. Sodding. Car.'

Caffery was sweating when he came back. 'It's a waiting game now,' he said, grabbing the tobacco pouch and beginning to roll up. 'The clue we're looking for will walk right up to that car in about ten minutes.' He licked the paper and lit the cigarette.

Flea watched him smoke. She could feel the last two days tugging her down and she had an overwhelming urge to cry or sleep, she couldn't tell which. Next to her Caffery smoked the whole of the cigarette, watching the blue Nissan in silence. Then he crushed the butt in the ashtray, rolled up the pouch, put it on the dashboard and said, in a level voice, 'When I was eight my brother disappeared.'

'I'm sorry?' she said numbly.

'My brother went missing,' he said calmly, as if he was telling her what he'd had for breakfast. 'I was with him when it happened. We had… There was a fight, and he left, walked out the bottom of our garden into a railway cutting. It wasn't dangerous because we'd been there a million times. Except this time…' For a moment it was as if he'd forgotten he was speaking. 'Except this time he didn't come back. There was a convicted paedophile lived on the other side of the railway. We didn't call them that then — called them child-molesters, kiddy-diddlers. Everyone knew it was him, but no one could prove it. That was thirty years ago and I still don't know where my brother is.'

She stared at him, her heart thudding. He'd heard. He knew what had happened to Mum and Dad — someone in the force must have told him how her life had been changed by the accident, that she'd never get her life back. She took a breath. 'Why are you telling me this?' she said, her voice small. 'Why?'

'Because you want to know why I half killed that guy just then. See, I walk around with this fucking great weight of guilt on me about what happened to my brother because when something like that happens — to the wrong son, that's how my parents saw it — when it happens you never get past the guilt. And it comes out in ways I'm (a) not proud of and (b) could get me shafted big-time.' He jerked his head at the blue Nissan — the driver had pulled down the rear-view mirror and was inspecting the damage to his face. 'He's a nonce.' He gave a pained smile. 'My nonce radar, if you want to call it that, is tighter engineered than most people's.'

She couldn't answer. She went on looking at him for a few more moments, and then, when she couldn't bear it any longer, turned away and stared out of the passenger window, her mouth open a little because she was breathing fast.

'It's OK,' he said behind her. 'I'm not asking you to forgive me. You can go ahead and report me. I don't much care any more.'

Behind her Flea heard the creak of leather as he moved in his seat, the rattle of his keys, and then she felt his hand on her shoulder.

'I'm sorry,' he said quietly. 'I didn't mean to put you in that position. I really didn't mean to.'

She couldn't move. All she could think about was his hand on her back. Then, just when it seemed they'd be there for ever, in that car on the dusty urban street, listening to one another's breathing, something inside her unlocked. Her mouth opened and words came out.