Ritual

28

Kwanele Dlamini's last known address was in Nailsea: a brick-built Georgian-style detached three-bedroom house on a nineteen-nineties gated development. The houses were almost identical in their textured sandstone, each had a portion of lawn, a garage and a US-style mailbox at the front. Dlamini's house was at the end of the road, with a view of the airport control tower at Backwell Hill, but when Caffery rang the bell the door was answered not by Dlamini but by a blonde woman in belted low-rider jeans and a pink T-shirt that said 'PORN STAR' in glittering letters.

'Long gone,' she said, when he asked for Dlamini, 'back where he come from, and I won't be hearing from him again. Don't ask me to contact him — I've tried, believe me.'

But she invited Caffery in anyway. She seemed to want the company, and he knew from the look she gave him, checking out his body through his open jacket to see if he was in shape — from that and from the way she walked in front of him, moving herself carefully, conscious of her hips — he knew right then that he could if he wanted.

They went to the back of the house into the living room where two little girls in identical pink trackies, their blonde hair scrunched on their heads in pink silk flowers, lay on the floor watching Bratz on a plasma-screen TV. The tracksuits had 'Barbie' spelled out across the bottoms. Caffery thought the girls couldn't have been more than ten or eleven.

'Hey,' the woman aimed a tanned foot in a pink tennis sock at one child's feet, 'keep the volume down. I'm going to be in here and I don't want no interrupting.'

They didn't answer, but one held up a remote control and turned the volume down a few notches. The woman took him through etched-glass double doors into a palm-filled conservatory looking out over a fenced garden with a pink and lavender swing seat in the centre of the patio.

'Nice kids,' he said.

'Yeah.'

She pushed a Dobermann from where it sat on a wicker sofa. It loped away into the living room, its claws ticker-tickering on the tiles, and she bent over to plump up the cushions, blowing off dog hairs.

'He was importing stuff, gave the business his best shot, and when that didn't work out it was like everything fell apart.' She pressed the cushion on to the sofa and stood back to allow Caffery to sit. 'I can't tell you where he is. I tried to get in touch with him, but he's disappeared. Back home.'

'This his house, then?'

She snorted. 'Oh, please. Do me a favour. It was my ex's, before Kwanele, but now it's mine and the girls'. And long may it last.'

'The girls aren't his?'

She gave him a look, as if she thought he was joking. 'You winding me up? Do they look like his?'

'I don't know — I've never seen a photo.'

'Well, he's black,' she said condescendingly. 'Very black. South African.' She sat at a small glass table, crossing her legs prettily. The long blonde ponytail hung down over her shoulder. She looked as if she spent a lot of money in tanning salons. 'What do you want to know about him? See, me, I don't care how much trouble I get him in. I'll tell you anything you want.'

Caffery took his jacket off, draped it over the arm of the chair and sat down, rolling up his sleeves. It was hot in here. Still only May, but the conservatory soaked up the sun. 'Who are you?'

'Rochelle,' she said, offering him a well-manicured hand. 'Rochelle Adams.'

He shook it. 'Rochelle,' he said. 'What I'm thinking about here is about religion. Mostly that's the question I have about Kwanele. I'm wondering about his beliefs.'

'He didn't have none. No church, if that's what you're asking.'

'What about other beliefs? Beliefs from his old country.'

'Oh, that.' She put a long nail into her flossy hair and itched, her eyes half closed. 'Yeah — that was part of our problem. I mean, he loved me and he loved the girls, but he never really gave up all the shit from back home.' She dropped her hand and looked at him as if a lightbulb had just come on. 'It's that vulture, isn't it? That's why you're here. I hated that thing — it stank like someone'd died in that car. I wouldn't let the girls in there, not with that thing dangling like it was watching you.'

'So why the vulture? Do you know what it meant to him?'

'The lottery, weren't it? The vulture, you know, sees into the distance. So the idea goes, according to Kwanele, you get the vulture's vision. You can see into the future, see the numbers or something. And the worst thing is, two weeks after he got the bloody thing, he only turns round and wins. Just like he said, nearly a grand, so I'm, like, not a leg to stand on. And he's like, "This is great — I'm going to make it into soup — drink it, get even more power out of it." And I'm "No way, Kwanele, no way." So he doesn't make it into soup, but he won't take it out of the car either. Except then you lot have it off him and turns out it's not a vulture after all, and there's me, laughing my knickers off. You can imagine, can't you?'

'Is that the only superstition he brought from his country?'

'God, no. It was everything with him. There was this bit of dolphin tail on a gold chain round his neck. Only little.' She held out her fingers, showing him how big, a gap of about an inch between the thick-polished nails. Her bracelets jingled and collided with each other down her tanned arm. 'He was like, "It's for sociability", and when I asked him why a dolphin, because I love dolphins, me, he goes on about how dolphins swim in a pack and how this bit of bling is somehow going to make sure he's always swimming in a pack, and I'm just livid, me, because I love dolphins, and I'm like that.' She held up her hand so her palm was facing the imaginary Dlamini, and cocked her head, suddenly all sass. ' "It's me or the charm, Kwanele." ' She sighed and dropped her hand, half smiling, half exasperated. 'And you hear all these stories, don't you? About how the blacks are repressed in South Africa or whatever, but you meet someone like Kwanele and, honestly, you can't help thinking, Yeah, I'd bleeding repress you, mate, with that crap coming out of your mouth. I mean, dolphins, for Christ's sake. What did they ever do to hurt him?'

She stood, went to the long low sill that ran round the conservatory and picked up an earthenware jar painted with geometric designs. It was about as big as a large grapefruit and it had a little lid that she took off delicately. 'This was what he picked up last November after he got it into his head there was a devil following him.' She brought it over to show Caffery, holding it out on her flat palm. He looked inside. It was dark and stained. 'Meant to be a charm. Defence. He said it was all right for a woman, she only had to sleep with the Tokoloshe to stop it, but a man, well, it was harder for him to get rid of it.'

'Get rid of the what?'

'The Tok-o-loshe. Don't ask me how they spell it — some African word, innit?'

'What's the Tokoloshe?'

'Name of the devil he reckoned was after him. Always crapping himself about the Tokoloshe — said he'd do anything to stop it.' She put the lid back on the pot. 'I kept it 'cause I like the pot.' She held it up and admired it. 'Pretty, isn't it? I like all these ethnic things, me.'

'Can I see it?'

She handed it to him. He weighed it in both hands. It was heavy, and weirdly warm, as if it had trapped the heat of the spring sunshine on the windowsill. He lifted the lid again.

'What're the stains?'

'Blood. That's what a man has to offer the Tokoloshe. A bowl of blood.'

Caffery looked up. 'Blood?'

'Only chicken blood or something,' she said. 'Smelled effing awful after a day, so I made him put it in the garden, and the next morning the pot was on its side and the blood was gone, and all we could think was an animal came in the night. That, or the dog.' She gave the Dobermann a dubious look where it lay in a patch of sun, blinking. 'Course Kwanele told me it was human blood, trying to scare me, but I'm like, yeah, where'd you get human blood? The same place you got your so-called vulture?'

'He said it was human blood?'

She snorted. 'Yeah, as if. But Kwanele? One hundred per cent convinced. Pays a shitload for it, says he knows it's true because he's seen the video of the blood being taken.'

'There's a video?'

'Nah. He was just saying it, weren't he? I mean, if it existed it'd be like a snuff movie, wouldn't it? And there's no way I believe snuff movies exist.' She scratched the tip of her nose thoughtfully. 'What about you? You're police. You ever seen a snuff movie?'

'No,' Caffery said quietly. 'At least, not the type you're talking about.'

She smiled. As her lips parted the frosted lipstick held them together a fraction longer than they would naturally, then popped to reveal perfect teeth. 'Yeah, I bet you've seen some things in your time. I bet you have.'

When Caffery had arranged for someone from Portishead to come and pick up the earthenware jar, he stayed with Rochelle for another thirty minutes, asking her questions. She was polite, cooperative, but he wasn't stupid. He knew what was happening in her head — he could tell from the way she pulled her feet up under her on the sofa, the way her fingernails made little circles on her collarbone while she was talking. He left open in his head the idea of whether he'd try to take her to bed. He was easy about it. Either he did or he didn't. As it worked out, by the time they'd finished talking he decided he liked her a little more now than he had when he'd walked in and that she didn't deserve the shit he'd bring to her doorstep so he dropped the idea. After half an hour he got up and thanked her. They were almost at the front door and he could see she was irritated he hadn't made a move. When he hesitated, he knew she thought this was the moment when he would ask her.

'Yeah?' She rested her hand on the hall radiator and cocked one knee a little in front of the other, pushing her hip out to the side. 'You forgot something?'

He looked at her neck, at the bangles on her tanned arms, then back at her face. 'In case you're wondering, I think you're very pretty.'

She blushed. He hadn't thought it was in her to blush. 'Yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'Well, lot of good it does me.' She pushed her hair behind an ear, lowered her eyes and waited for him to answer. When he didn't she smiled. 'Do you — uh — want to stay for coffee?' She twisted her knee round a little towards the radiator, opening her leg outwards from the hip. 'Or beer. I've got some in the fridge.'

He looked at her thigh in the jeans. Then he looked at her manicured hand on the radiator. Earlier she'd told him she was a manicurist and did lots of acrylics. She'd said she thought a good set of acrylics was the sexiest thing a woman could get to please a man.

'Thanks, but I'll have to pass.' He got out his keys. 'Don't think of it as a missed opportunity.'

'No?'

'Not at all. Think of it as a lucky escape.'