Mo Hayder: Ritual

She had two or three seconds of surreal silence, just long enough to study the back of his neck, to look at Tig with blood over his chest, curled up, his hands clamped to his face. Then there were shouts, and flashlights, and radios. The Support Unit guys were swarming over the place, and the whole thing, the whole bloody thing, was over.

Caffery was peeing when it happened. He was standing in the trees, steam coming off his urine because it had got cold now the sun was going down, when the noise came from his left, slightly down the slope, making him stop. At first he thought it was the Walking Man, picking up sticks for the fire, but when he glanced behind him through the branches he could see that the Walking Man was where he'd been earlier, silhouetted against the twilight sky.

He shook himself, zipped up and, hand in his coat pocket to check that his penknife was still there, limped a short way into the trees. He stood for a moment, trying to disentangle the shadows, make sense of them. On the distant road the traffic droned, low and steady, but in the trees there was no noise. After a while he went back to the camp.

The Walking Man was standing next to the unlit fire, eyes bright in the new moonlight, staring in the direction of the noise. 'Jack Caffery, Policeman,' he said, not taking his eyes off the trees. 'What have you brought with you to my fireside?'

Caffery didn't answer. There had been no cars on the track that led into the wood, no noises. Whoever it was must have come on foot. The Walking Man clicked on his lighter. He bent and put a flame to the fire, which flared and sprang instantly to life, bathing the area with red light, throwing the branches and brambles into stark relief. Then he pocketed the lighter and went to the edge of the trees. There was a long, long silence while he seemed to be listening to the night. Then, as if he was satisfied, he grunted and shook his head.

'It's gone now.'

Caffery was still studying the edge of the firelight, the edge of the night.

'Don't worry,' the Walking Man said. 'It's just curious. At the moment, just curious. It's still scared of you.'

' «It»? And what the fuck is "it"?'

'Who knows?' The Walking Man smiled. 'A devil? A witch?'

'Fuck off.'

The Walking Man gave a nasty laugh. 'Yeah — of course, you're right. It's none of those things. It's a figment of your imagination.'

Caffery looked past the Walking Man at the trees. He couldn't say why but suddenly all he could think about was the little black guy at Tig's. It had turned out he was an illegal immigrant, one of the many who hadn't been sharp enough to claim asylum. Like a lot of illegals in the Hopewell area, he'd fallen in with Tig, whose head had started ticking when he'd heard the Tanzanian police were after the skinny little African for trafficking human skins. It didn't take Tig long to see the mileage there: selling muti to other Africans in the city, selling the ritual, selling the goods. There was money, big money, in a scam like that.

Earlier in the afternoon, while Tig raged and bellowed like a caged minotaur from a custody-suite cell, Caffery had stood quietly at the skinny guy's door, watching him through the observation hatch, trying to picture him standing naked at a lakeside. It had been him at the harbour, he'd sworn it had been him, wearing the ridiculous dildo thing to scare the women. He'd told them about the grease he'd rubbed over his body, about the way he poured water over himself to make it seem he'd come out of the river. It all tied up, in its way. And yet Caffery couldn't shake the lingering feeling that something was wrong — that he'd missed something. It wasn't the Tig side of things — they fitted perfectly, he'd be in the can for the rest of his life — no, it was something about the skinny guy, the notion of him creeping around the streets when it got dark. Still, Caffery knew he should drop it. The guy was in custody and he should stop thinking about it.

'That's right,' said the Walking Man calmly, reading his mind. 'Stop thinking about it. No one comes near our fire without me knowing.' Caffery watched him walk slowly back to the camp, bending to pull two cans from under his bedroll. He used his Swiss Army knife to puncture the lids, then pushed them into the heart of the fire, jostling them with a stick until they were upright.

Caffery came and sat on one of the squares of foam and tried not to look at the trees. But it wasn't easy. While the food heated, while the Walking Man drank cider and counted the crocus bulbs in the paper bag over and over again, he kept thinking about it. He'd come here with a sleeping-bag, planning to spend the night under the stars, but it was colder than he'd thought and the inhospitable little cottage near the Neolithic circles suddenly seemed like a pleasant place to be. It was only after they'd eaten and he'd drunk half of the jar of scrumpy that his pulse returned to normal. The fire flickered on in the night, and eventually the sounds became more familiar, the shadows staying where they were meant to stay.

When they'd cleared up they went to their sleeping-bags. Caffery pulled his round his shoulders and settled down with his back to the old watering trough, his injured ankle straight out in front of him. The Walking Man pulled his round his knees and sat at the base of a tree.

'Well, now,' he said, opening his jar of scrumpy. The cork made a sharp popping noise that echoed round the camp. 'Mr Policeman has seen a lot today. I know that from his face. Please tell me your stories. I love to hear about death and destruction.'

Caffery grunted. 'There are no stories.' He thought about Tig, never changing since he'd half killed that old lady, never letting the violence go. He thought of himself, of how convinced he'd been that he'd never lose control as he had years ago. He thought of what would have happened if Flea hadn't been in that bathroom today. And then he thought about Penderecki, the person he was really hitting, over and over again. 'Except I've worked out you're right.'

'That I'm right?' He raised his eyebrows. 'I can hardly believe it.'

'You said once you'd never believe in redemption and now I see you're right. There is no such thing.'

The Walking Man laughed. He settled back against the tree-trunk, hands behind his head, and watched him, waiting for him to go on. Caffery knew he was enjoying seeing him discover truths that he, the Walking Man, had known for years. He reached inside his pocket and began to roll a cigarette.

'So if there's no redemption what's left to us? Revenge? Revenge and then death?' He put the cigarette into his mouth and lit it. He met the Walking Man's eyes. His face, he thought, wasn't very lined. So why did he always seem so old? 'I asked you before and you didn't answer. What did you mean when you said I was looking for death?'

The Walking Man snapped a pick from his Swiss Army knife and began to clean his teeth carefully. 'You have two children in your life, Jack Caffery, the one that is dead and the one that doesn't yet exist. The child that could be.'

'Yeah,' Caffery laughed. 'What crap.'

'You had a woman in London, you told me, who wanted a child but you walked away. So you have to ask yourself, is that the last chance you had?'

Caffery sighed. He rubbed his sore ankle, bruised by Flea and her ASP, and looked out at the valley, to a line of poplars on the horizon. He had a sudden picture in his head of a woman. She had fair hair and was wearing jeans, but he couldn't see her face. She had her back to him and was gazing into a pool of water, hardly moving. He wanted to make her turn round. He wanted to know if she was Flea. But whatever he did she wouldn't move.

'No,' he said. 'There won't be any children.' He took a long drag on his cigarette. 'You?'