Mo Hayder: Ritual

He got a snapshot of her — of the way she didn't really understand what was happening. She was kneeling frozen and shocked, blood on her arms and on her T-shirt, her hands planted on the ground, eyes swivelled to him, waiting for him to tell her what to do. She couldn't see what lay on the table above her. A body, on its back: bare-chested, jeans, a leather belt securing it at the waist.

Caffery knew who it was. Even without stepping forward, he knew it was Jonah. And that he hadn't been dead long. The blood pooling under the table hadn't begun to congeal. It was still dribbling slightly out of the hacked-out hole in his neck, dripping into a plastic measuring jug under the table and spilling over the top on to the floor. Once Tig had made the first cut into Jonah's neck there was only one way it was going to end. He'd tried to cut Jonah's head off and would have succeeded if he hadn't been interrupted. He'd wadded towels round the boy's chest to soak up the overflow and put more under his buttocks, maybe in case his bowels opened.

'It's him.' Under the table in her peculiar freeze-frame, Flea had seen the jug, the blood pooling round it. 'It's him,' she muttered. Slowly she raised her eyes to the underside of the table. 'Isn't it? It's Jonah.'

Caffery looked over to where a video-camera on a tripod was tilted down at the body, its record light flashing on and off. He's dead, he told himself, trying to force himself to scan the rest of the room, to see beyond the horror on the table. There's fuck all you can do. You don't know him. Get your priorities right. Forget Jonah and find the bastard who did it.

Flea grunted and scrambled out, like a dog, from under the table. ' Christ Christ Christ ,' she said, when she saw the body. ' Fucking Christ .' Slipping in the blood she got to her feet, her hands out tense at her sides, staring at the body.

'Sssh,' Caffery said, trying to work out where the noise had come from. ' Be quiet .'

He went to the sofa, put one hand on the back, leaned over and saw instantly what he was looking for. From waist height down, another hole had been dug into the wall. He dragged the sofa back and tried to listen, but behind him Flea was talking to herself, breathing hard.

'Ssh,' he whispered. 'I need you to be quiet, for fuck's sake.' It had been cut out with an angle-grinder, maybe, or a hacksaw. A dim blue light, daylight perhaps, was filtering on to the floor. 'Be quiet. This is it.'

When she didn't answer he turned. She was still at the table. She'd planted her feet solid and wide, had pulled Jonah's head back and had her hands locked together on his chest, squeezing down on him, each compression pushing a half-hearted dribble of blood out of his neck.

' Christ! Stop that.'

But she went on pumping.

'Hey.' He came back from the sofa and grabbed her arm. 'He's dead. Now stop the fuck what you're doing.'

She froze, her hands on Jonah's chest. Her face was grey, her pupils dilated.

'Remember what we're doing,' he growled. 'Remember.'

'What?' she murmured, her mouth moving slowly.

'Fuck's sake. Keep with me, Sergeant Marley.' He dug his fingers into her arm. 'Keep with me. We've got to get going.'

She turned her eyes to the sofa, the gap behind it. Then she looked back at the corpse. He was about to shake her, when something in her face changed. Her forehead creased, and she seemed to snap back into herself.

'Yes,' she said, wiping her bloodied hands on her vest. She bent down, put both hands on her thighs and breathed fast through her mouth. 'Yeah, I'm OK. Let's do it.'

Caffery held up the CS canister in front of his face, the knife in his other hand, and ducked into the gap. It opened into a small passage with a similar gap cut at the other end. This one had a gate welded into it, like the one they'd seen before, but it stood open.

He scrambled towards it, squat-walking, the hand with the knife hitting the floor at every other step. For a moment Flea wasn't with him — she was still in the room getting a grip on herself — but before he reached the end of the passage she'd caught up and he could feel her breathing behind him. For some reason he remembered something in the files from the Met — that the Tokoloshe could become invisible if it put a pebble in its mouth — and had to check over his shoulder that it really was her behind him. And it was. Her eyes were shining, her small face set and determined.

At the far wall they stopped in crouches by the gap, and listened again. On the other side of this wall someone was breathing, hot, panicky breaths.

'Three-sixty sweep,' she mouthed.

'What?'

'We do a three-sixty sweep. Check the room.'

He copied her, turning slightly to the side in the crouch, pressing his left hand on the inside of the wall and mirroring her by pushing his right foot ahead of him into the opening. 'Now,' she whispered. ' Now .'

Holding the CS gas and the ASP in front of them, they craned their necks and scanned the room fast. It was small — there were two other doorways in it and a boarded-up window — and filthy, full of flies and used food containers. On a sofa pushed up against the opposite wall sat two men, one skeletal and white, one short and black.

'Police!' Caffery yelled, pointing the CS gas into the room. 'Police!' The two men shrank into each other. One was the guy they'd chased, the little witch doctor in the jacket; the other — Caffery didn't have to see the stumps of his arms to know that it was Mallows. Alive. They'd cut off his hands. They'd taken his blood. And he was still alive. The fucking Crime Scene Manager. He'd been right, the bastard.

'Hey — you,' Caffery said. 'Mallows? Ian Mallows?'

Mossy tried to raise his filthy, bandaged arms, but the effort seemed to half kill him. He sat there, gazing at Caffery with heavy eyes. 'How d'you know my name?'

'How do you think I know your fucking name? You all right?'

'No, I'm fucking not.'

'Well stay there. I mean it. Don't move.'

'Do I look like I'm going anywhere?' He wiped his nose on his shoulder. 'Jesus,' he muttered. 'Jesus fucking Christ.'

'You,' Caffery shouted at the black guy. 'You. Why did you run? Eh?'

'I'm sorry, sir.' He put his hands up, cringing. 'I'm sorry.'

Caffery waved the canister at him. 'Get up — off the sofa. Against the wall. Move it .' He did as he was told, dropping down off the sofa like a child, making Caffery think of what the waitress in the restaurant had said: He was so tiny… He'd of only come up to here . 'Against that wall. That's it — stay there. Hands where I can see them. Spread them against the wall.'

Caffery stepped into the room and straightened. Flea came after him and they stood, both instinctively with their backs against the wall, holding out their weapons, eyes darting around.

'Where is he?' Flea said. 'Baines? Where's he gone?'

'Eh?'

'Where's Baines? Where is he?'

Mossy half raised his head, his eyes rolling. 'In the bathroom,' he said, as if he couldn't give a shit any more. As if the police being here to rescue him was an inconvenience that might go away if he was patient. He gave a vague wave in the direction of the window.

Caffery turned and realized they must have come all the way through to the back of the building. The boarded window was in an unlit corridor that led towards the side of the tower block. Outside he heard distant, wavery sirens. The other support-unit serials arriving. Flea's eyes were watery. He knew what she was thinking. Did they have to go into the bathroom or could they just stay there and wait for the other units?

'Is there a way out of the bathroom?' Caffery snapped at the witch-doctor guy. 'A window — another door?'

'I don't know. Maybe a window.'