Mo Hayder: Ritual

'I'm sorry?'

'You looked at the site. I came in from the kitchen and found you at the computer.'

'I got on to divenet?'

'You were crying.'

'But I…' She put her fingers on her forehead, frowning, trying to understand how she had forgotten, trying to understand how neatly the ibogaine had excavated her memory.

'I know what you're thinking — that it's impossible. But you don't give the ibogaine enough credit. And you don't give your instincts enough credit either.'

'My instincts?'

'Your need to see your parents again.'

Your need to see your parents again. The words made her bite her lip. Suddenly, unexpectedly, her throat was tight and there were tears in her eyes. 'Kaiser,' she murmured. 'Oh, Kaiser. I keep thinking we should try to bring them up. Do you think we should try?'

'Only you can answer that. You and Thom. And maybe…'

'Maybe…?'

'Maybe your parents. What did your mother say to you in the hallucination?'

'She said to not bring them up. She said whatever happened to leave them there.'

He shook his head, pulled back a chair and sat with his elbows on the table, looking at her steadily. She saw the way the skin crinkled around his eyes and was reminded that he was old. As old and as mysterious as the continent he came from. 'Then don't you think you should listen to her? Let them rest? Let David's past rest, let their bodies rest?' He paused. 'And, Phoebe, more importantly…'

'Yes?'

He smiled. He reached over to cover her hand with his. 'Don't you think you should let yourself rest too?'

She pulled her hand away and wiped the tears from her eyes. Let yourself rest. Let yourself rest . The words rolled through her head. She turned her eyes to the window. Yes, there was pain — things from her past she didn't want to face. Yes, there were things in the future that would make her cry, probably.

In the distance some lonely wayfarer on the other side of the valley, where the Warminster road ran, must have lit a fire because she saw a small light flare red inside a canopy of knotted trees. It was too far away to see exactly, but she focused on it, and slowly, slowly, something about the light, something about Kaiser's words, began to settle inside her. She closed her eyes and sat back in her chair.

'What are you thinking?' Kaiser asked. 'What's that smile for?'

She didn't answer. She shook her head and just held on to it: the image of the small flame in the distance, the sound of his words repeated over and over, the beginning of something like peace. She was smiling because she now knew he was right. She could allow it. She could allow herself to rest.

Thank you to all those at Avon and Somerset Constabulary who helped me get the procedural details to approximate reality; everyone at the Underwater Search Unit, especially Sergeant Bob Randall, whose contribution to this series cannot be underestimated. Also to DI Steven Lawrence, CID training unit; DSupt Steve Tonks; PC Kevin Pope, Road Policing Unit; Alan Andrews and the Major Crime Review Team. And to Cliff Davies of the Homicide Review Team, Metropolitan Police.

To all my friends at Transworld including, but by no means limited to: Alison Barrow, Larry Finlay, Ed Christie, Nick Robinson, Simon Taylor, Claire Ward, Danielle Weekes, Katrina Whone, and especially Selina Walker, my awe-inspiring editor.

To Jane Gregory and her team: Jemma McDonagh, Claire Morris, Terry Bland and Emma Dunford.

For their help, their friendship and their inspiration: Christian Allis, John and Aida Bastin; Linda and Laura Downing; the Fiddlers; Tracey and Eddie Gore; the Heads; Mairi Hitomi; Sue and Don Hollins; Patrick and ALF Janson- Smith; the Larkhall girls (Kate, Karen, Rebecca and Ness); Lee the woodsman; Mel and Chris Macer; Margaret OWO Murphy and E. A. Murphy; Misty Marshall Welling for lending me her name; Selina Perry; Helen Piper for being outrageously brainy; Keith Quinn; Karin Slaughter for tirelessly devoting herself to weirding me out; Sophie and Vincent Thiebault; all the Vaulkhards, but particularly Gilly for her grace and friendship; Mark Watson; and to Tracey and Jo Waite for giving me a glimpse of what true courage means.

Most of all, thank you to Lotte Genevieve Quinn, my daughter, who is beautiful and keeps my world turning even when nothing else is right.

Pygmalion, the Cypriot sculptor, famously fell deeply, sumptuously in love with the ivory statue he'd created, while P. D. James is said to have created in Adam Dalgliesh a man with the qualities she'd like to find in any man she loved. This link between creator and created chimes with me. I am in no denial about it: Detective Inspector Jack Caffery is my poster-boy. My beau, my BF, my petit copain . In him I was writing myself a fantasy lover.

James cites sensitivity, courage and intelligence as the qualities she admires in Dalgliesh, so it may say something about me that Jack Caffery is a woman-beating alcoholic who carries his anger around like a short-fuse Semtex and is congenitally incapable of sustaining a meaningful friendship, let alone a relationship. In fairness, it isn't these qualities I was most drawn to in Jack. Instead I was intrigued by a man who illustrated the dichotomy in a world where law and order increasingly tread a hazy line, where the protector can be the aggressor, the public servant the criminal. Jack Caffery is constantly challenged to define himself as good or bad.

And yet, according to my readers, these elements in Jack's psyche pale into insignificance when compared to his, apparently, most endearing trait. There is something far more memorable, far more remarkable about him. Because Jack, apparently, is sexy .

Yes! Sexy. Hugely, wantonly, red-bloodedly sexy. I have lost count of the number of women, and gay men, who have sidled up to me with a familiar and very private glimmer in their eyes, to whisper, 'I've never dared tell anyone, but I really, really fancy Jack.' And admittedly, yes, while I like to imagine him as a little more complex than just sex on legs, I confess I have had more than the occasional reverie of what the DI might be like between the sheets.

And yet the most studly Lotharios have their limitations. Familiarity breeds contempt. You can have too much of a good thing. By the time I had finished writing The Treatment , I was bored with Jack. The romance had gone. His flaws, which I had initially found endearing, I now found irritating. It was the toothpaste-cap syndrome. At the end of 2001 Jack, with all his masculine energy, had been leaving off the toothpaste cap for too many months and I wanted him out of my life. I fired him, dumped him, excommunicated him. He was never again going to set his cloven hoof across my threshold. I had pleading letters from readers who wanted more of him, but I was adamant. No more Jack. He could slink away, flies buttoned, to fictional limbo for the rest of his life.

I was moving on: there was the more historical book Tokyo and the gothicky Pig Island , to write. And, in thinking about what was drawing me next, I started to concentrate on water. Deep, dark water. A friend scuba-diving in the Red Sea witnessed a fellow diver disappear to her death. One minute she was swimming with the group, the next, maybe affected by deep-water blackout, she'd turned face down and was heading into the depths. The diving instructor tried to catch her, following as far as he safely could but, obeying the dark and demoralizing law of diving that states that one should never tackle a diver at depths, was eventually forced to abandon her to an inevitable death. Stories like the Red Sea girl abound in the sport diving world: diving is a peculiarly seductive and dangerous pastime. Each year several divers perish — from toxic gaseous overloads, burst lungs or, most excruciatingly, from simply running out of air. This, I was sure, was something I wanted to write about. When I discovered that the police underwater search unit that covers much of the West Country was stationed only ten miles down the road from my new house in Bath I knew I was on the right path.