Ritual

30

'The one thing Jack Caffery still hasn't told me is why it's me he wants to see. I'm not a clairvoyant or a mind-reader. I have no magical powers — no eyes like a god's. But I don't think it's police business brought you here.'

'It's not police business. It's my business.'

'And what business is that?'

Caffery rubbed his nose. The day had been weird. That some people would pay to have human blood in their house was beyond him. But with the earthenware bowl being tested at HQ and surveillance on Mabuza, he'd come to the end of what he could do at work. He'd tried going home to sleep, but he couldn't get rid of the feeling that something was watching him, that the shadows around the house were all wrong, so he'd got into the car and come looking for the Walking Man. He hadn't expected to find him so quickly. And he hadn't expected the Walking Man to start so quickly at pulling out the truth.

'Jack Caffery?' The Walking Man was wearing his sheepskin slippers. He had stuffed each of his boots with a piece of cloth and now he tied them inside a plastic carrier-bag and wedged them into a small ditch that ran along the hedgerow. He wiped his hands. 'I'm asking you a question, Jack Caffery. What is your business?'

Caffery looked at the fire, at the way some of the logs at the bottom had white and red crusts of heat like scabs. 'Someone went,' he said eventually. 'Someone was taken. Out of my life.'

'Your daughter?'

'No, no. Not my daughter. I've got no kids. Never will have.'

'Your woman?'

'No, I left her. Two months ago. Walked out on her.'

'Then who?'

'My brother. This was back in the…' He trailed off. 'It was a long time ago.'

'When you were children?'

'Yeah — it was. It was back in London. We… Well, you know how it is.' He held his fingers in the cavity behind his lower jawbone, pressing lightly because he'd learned it was one way to stop himself crying. 'We, uh, we never found him. Everyone knew who'd taken him, but the police, they couldn't get anything to stick.' He swallowed and took his hand from his throat, holding up his thumb to the firelight, turning it round and round. 'On the day he went missing I got a bruise on my thumbnail that wouldn't budge. It should have grown out but it didn't. No one could explain it, not the doctors, no one.' He gave a sad smile. 'I used to look at it, all those years, and think that the day I found my brother my nail would start growing again. But look at it.'

He held it out. The Walking Man straightened and came back, on his slippered feet, to peer at the nail.

'Nothing to see.'

'Nearly four years ago. After all that time it suddenly started growing again. The bruise grew out. And with it the feeling went. The feeling for the place it had happened went — just like that. It vanished, as if I'd been told the answer wasn't where I was — in south-east London — but somewhere else.'

'Here?'

'I don't know. The countryside — maybe here, maybe somewhere else.' He dropped his hand and stared at the lights of Bristol, thinking about the east, about Norfolk.

'Something else happened,' the Walking Man said. 'Four years ago something else happened.'

'Maybe.' Caffery shrugged. 'I think I came close to finding him — that's all.'

'Someone died. I think that happened too.' The Walking Man took two or three breaths. 'At the time you lost the connection, I think someone died.'

Caffery nodded. 'Yes,' he said quietly. 'Someone died too.'

'Yes?'

'The one who did it. Penderecki. Ivan Penderecki. He died. Suicide. If you're wondering.'

'I wasn't.' The Walking Man prodded at the fire.

Several minutes went by while Caffery tried to shift this new idea round his head, that maybe Penderecki's death had severed his connection. He'd never asked himself that before. Then the Walking Man spoke again, his voice completely different. 'What,' he said quietly, 'was his name?'

Caffery was caught off balance. No one had asked him that in years. They just referred to him as 'your brother', or 'he', as if they thought his name would be too awful to say. 'It was… Ewan.'

'Ewan,' said the Walking Man. 'Ewan.'

The way he said the name, gently, as if he was speaking it to a child made Caffery's throat close. He had to press his finger under his jaw again until the feeling passed and he could breathe. He opened a jar of cider, drank a little and pulled his coat collar up round his ears. He gazed at the stars and let himself think, not about Ewan but about Flea at the dockside, cupping someone else's hand in hers and looking up at him, as if she was saying: 'Don't worry, I can take care of this. You go and sit — go and be with yourself for a bit.' For a reason he couldn't explain he wanted to rest on that look in her eyes.

He reached into his pocket for the small brown bag. The crocus bulbs inside were little grainy balls with papery brown skin that slipped off as he touched it. As the Walking Man pulled on his socks, Caffery held out his hand, the bag sitting on his flat palm, the firelight making the dark shapes inside the brown paper glow like coals.

The Walking Man stopped. He stared at the bag for a while. Then, without a word he stood and took it. He pulled out a bulb and held it up to the light, turning it in his blackened fingers.

'The Remembrance.' He examined it reverently, as if it had a message written across its sides. 'When it comes out, the Remembrance, it's a perfect Delft blue. Just a little orange down in the centre, like an egg yolk. Or a star.'

He put the bulb back into the bag and poked his finger around a bit, like a kid counting sweets on a Saturday-morning street corner. Then he folded the top carefully and tucked the bag into the breast pocket of the filthy coat he wore and, as if nothing had happened, went on stoking the fire.

They didn't speak for a few minutes. Caffery drank cider and watched the Walking Man begin his nightly ritual, taking off his clothes and wrapping them, putting them under the sleeping-bag where they wouldn't attract any moisture. At night he wore specially designed sleepwear. It was filthy, but you could tell it was expensive, hi-tech, from one of those extreme-sports suppliers. There was an O³ logo that Caffery recognized from Flea's dry suit. When he'd finished, the Walking Man pulled on his coat and began to potter around again, feeding the fire for the night.

Caffery knew his time there was almost over. 'Look,' he said, clearing his throat, 'I've given you what you wanted. Now you — it's your turn. You have to tell me what it was like, what you did to Craig Evans.'

'In my time. In my time.'

'You said you'd tell me.'

The Walking Man snorted. 'I said, in my time. I need to think about you first.' He threw another log on to the fire, then brushed off his hands. 'Tell me, what do you see when you look into the faces of those girls? Those prostitutes you don't sleep with enough.'

Caffery frowned. He had to pick up his tobacco pouch and roll a cigarette before he answered. 'I don't look,' he said, lighting it. 'I try not to see. I mean, whatever happens, I don't want to see my own reflection.'

'Yes — because if you see it do you know what you're really seeing?'

'No.'

'You're seeing death.'

'Death?'

'Yes. Death. Oh, you've still got a choice. But at the moment the choice you're making is the same as mine.'

'The same choice? I'm not making any of the same choices as you.'

The Walking Man smiled and tossed the last log on to the fire. 'Yes, you are. And for now you've chosen death. Yes. That's what you're looking for. You're looking for death.'

Caffery opened his mouth to say something, but the Walking Man's words stopped him. He sat there, his mouth still half open.

The Walking Man laughed at his face. 'I know. A shock, isn't it, when you first turn round and see the bridge you're crossing? A shock to realize you're giving up on life. That what you're really hoping for is death.'

Caffery closed his mouth. 'No. That's wrong. I'm not the same as you.'

'Yes, you are Jack Caffery, Policeman. You're exactly the same as I am. The only difference is that my eyes are open.' He used his filthy thumb and forefinger to open the lids, revealing the reddish tops and bottoms of the eyeballs. He was suddenly monstrous in the firelight, every night monster, every chimera. 'See? I'm not looking the other way. I know I'm trying to die. And you?' He laughed. 'You don't even suspect it yet.'