Ritual

33

'When did you last speak to Kwanele Dlamini?'

'Dlamini?'

'Yes. Kwanele Dlamini. Your friend. Remember him?'

Mabuza and Caffery sat opposite each other, another officer in the corner, his arms folded. There was a plate of biscuits on the table and a cup of coffee in front of each man. Polystyrene cups, not china, because this was the custody suite: even though Mabuza wasn't under arrest and even though he was being co-operative, taking a day away from the restaurant and arriving punctually, neatly dressed in a suit and his rimless glasses, the PACE-designated custody suite was a good place to be if things got heated and they needed to make an arrest. It was the polystyrene cup that was giving Mabuza away now. Just the mention of Dlamini had made him lower his eyes and pick nervous half-moons out of it with his nails.

'Mr Mabuza? I asked you when you last saw Kwanele Dlamini?'

'Dlamini?' Mabuza licked his lips quickly. His head was down and his eyes began a restless flicking back and forth across the table. 'Dlamini was — a long time — a long time ago.'

'A long time? Sorry, help me here. Is that a week? A month? A year?'

'Half a year. Six months.'

'And why haven't you seen him in that time?'

'He's gone home — back to the homeland.'

'South Africa?'

'That's right. We lost touch.'

'I had the impression your friendship with him was closer than that.'

'No. Not close. He was an acquaintance.'

'No forwarding address?'

'No.'

'Only that I want to direct our investigation in the way that'll pay dividends, you know?' Caffery bent his head, trying to look up into the man's eyes, see what was happening there. 'Want to be chasing the right rabbit and not putting pressure on you. A forwarding address would help.'

Mabuza shook his head.

'Or the names of family members. He was from Johannesburg?'

'Yes,' he muttered. 'But that's all I know about him. I met him here. We didn't talk about home.'

Caffery hooked his arm over the back of the chair and looked at the top of Mabuza's head. It was more than the friendship between the two men making him pursue this: earlier that morning Mabuza had signed the forms to allow the police to search his house and in the first two hours the team had come up with a few things he wanted to ask Mabuza about. He looked down at the sheets of paper under his fingers. There was something from the lab there, too: something even more interesting than the team had found at the house.

'You were kind enough to allow us to search your home,' he said, when they'd been sitting in silence for almost a minute. 'We found a few things we liked.'

'I've got nothing to hide,' Mabuza muttered.

'For example, we brought back some carpet fibres. From the front room.' Caffery went slowly, giving each word time to sink in. He'd wanted to be seen taking the fibres legally: the results of the match with the handful Flea had taken would be with him by close of business, so he'd told the search guys to get a sample of the living-room carpet. 'And work it so the missus sees you doing it, if you know what I'm saying.' 'Do you know about fibres?' he asked Mabuza. 'About how they're used in forensics? Say, for example, a person sat on a carpet, or even walked on it, for the shortest time, some of the fibres from that carpet would be transferred on to the person. Did you know that?'

Mabuza was frowning. 'What are you saying? Are you asking me a question?'

Caffery pretended to be considering what he'd said. 'You're right. It's a bit off message, isn't it? Especially with the length of time the labs these days can take to process things. You know, I had to put an express order on those fibres and even then they won't get the results back to me until close of business this afternoon.' He glanced at his watch and shook his head regretfully, as if he was weary of the dumb way the force worked. 'Then again, lucky for me they've been a bit quicker on something else.'

'I beg your pardon.'

He used his forefinger to move the papers around, half frowning as if this was all a great puzzle to him. 'There was a pot at Dlamini's. An earthenware pot. Do you know about it?'

'A pot? What sort of pot?'

'It's about — so big? With a lid? Well, the pot's nothing special, not on its own, but what made me sit up was what the lab found in it.'

Mabuza had opened his mouth to say something. Then he closed it. He looked up at Caffery, then down at the papers on the desk. It lasted only a second or two but something had happened in that instant. Something that made Caffery want to smile.

'Yes,' he said slowly, holding Mabuza's eyes. 'We found blood. Human blood. And this morning they confirmed whose blood it was. Do you want me to tell you whose blood it was — or do you know already?'

Mabuza swallowed. A fine sweat had started on his forehead. 'No,' he said, in a small voice. 'I don't know.'

'It was Ian Mallows's blood.' He tapped the paper with his forefinger. 'You know that name, of course, because he was the poor fucker whose hands ended up under your restaurant. It's here in black and white. Ian Mallows.' He paused for a moment, still smiling. 'And I call that too much of a coincidence.'

Mabuza took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow, shooting glances at the door. Caffery recognized this, the signs of a witness on the point of withdrawing cooperation. The PACE adviser had said this would be a good time to go into rapid-fire formation — if they were going to have to arrest him they'd throw at him all the questions they knew would hit hot spots.

'Mr Mabuza,' Caffery said, 'do you have any feelings about the use of illegal drugs? If one of your staff came to you and admitted they had a heroin problem, what would you say?'

Mabuza blinked. He hadn't expected the swerve. 'Excuse me? If one of my staff had a drugs problem?'

'Yes. How would you react?'

'It's a devil, sir. Drugs are the devil.'

'Is that why you give twenty thousand pounds a year to drugs charities? Or is that just a tax break?' He held up another piece of paper. 'Your bank statements,' he explained. 'The search team found them at the house.'

Mabuza lowered the handkerchief. 'You've been into my financial details?'

'You gave us permission to search the house.'

'I didn't give you permission to do that.'

'You sponsor at least fifty voluntary drugs-counselling groups.' Caffery sat forward. 'It's not negligible what you spend on them. Ian Mallows attended drugs charities. Heroin was his problem. Did you know that?'

'What issue is it to you who I give my money to?'

'You don't maintain your contact with the charities because they're a good source of victims, then? Vulnerable people? People who won't be missed?'

Mabuza pocketed the handkerchief and stood. He was thin and small but there was a fierceness in his face that made him seem momentarily bigger. 'I didn't touch that boy. I don't know how his hands came to be where they were, and I didn't touch him.' He jerked his jacket off the chair and began to pull it on. 'It's time for me to go.'

'Please, please. Sit down. I don't want this going up another level — not while we're all ramped up like this.'

But Mabuza was buttoning his jacket, pulling the sleeves straight with furious movements. 'You've insulted me. It's time for me to go.'

Caffery placed his hands palm down on the table and said very quietly: 'If you try to go, I'll have to arrest you.'

Mabuza stopped, the jacket half buttoned. In the corner the officer was on his feet, ready to make a move. 'I beg your pardon, sir?' Mabuza said. 'What did you say?'

'I said I'll have no choice but to arrest you. Local businessman — sits on the school governors' board I heard? The local hacks would eat that up.' Mabuza stared. His lips began to look dark blue, as if his blood had stopped circulating.

'Or you can stay — we'll go on doing this nice and quietly, just you cooperating with us. No one need ever know.'

There was a long silence while Mabuza thought about this. Behind him the officer waited, his head on one side. Then Mabuza sank into his chair, his eyes fixed on the table as if he couldn't bear to raise them. When he spoke his voice was subdued. 'You know about my son?'

'No,' Caffery said honestly, opening his hands. 'No, we don't.' He surveyed the top of Mabuza's greying head. 'Why? Has he got a problem, your son? Is he an addict?'

'Was,' Mabuza said. 'He was an addict. He is recovered now, thank you.' He gave a deep sigh, as if his life was sometimes too much to bear. 'When we came to this country it was difficult for him. So difficult. The racism here isn't what we expected. Not from what we were told living in South Africa. It comes from places you never expect — the Caribbeans, Jamaicans, children from St Lucia, Trinidad, the ones my boy is with at school, the ones who look exactly the same as he does. My son, he is a good boy, very quiet. These boys he comes into contact with, they think it means they can bend him. And for a while they did.' Mabuza seemed to drift off for a bit, his head on one side, his face contracting at the memory. 'But someone helped him,' he went on. 'A drugs counsellor. If he hadn't my son would be dead today.'

Caffery didn't speak. His mood was slowly sinking. Yes, something about the son's story sounded a bit overlaid, a bit of a performance, but still the look in the guy's face, in his demeanour, told Caffery that the drugs-charities connection was a blind alley. The bank statements were a coincidence.

He got up, went to the window, and lifted the blind. It was mid-afternoon and schoolchildren were thronging the streets, pushing each other, jostling and laughing. When the search team had come up with the bank statements he'd immediately got two men together. They were out there now, revisiting some of the twenty or so charities on the statement. But now that felt like a bum steer, a waste of manpower, and the carpet fibres might be a better bet. One of the office staff had promised to come straight to the custody suite when they got any results from the lab on them. Maybe that was the thing to do: wait and hit Mabuza with the fibres. Sometimes there was a fax through at four in the afternoon. Another half an hour.

Just as he was about to turn back, the Walking Man's face came into Caffery's head. You're looking for death, Jack Caffery. You're looking for death. Caffery dropped the blind and rubbed his eyes, trying to get rid of the image. He turned and looked at Mabuza, who was hunched at the table, picking compulsively at the coffee cup again, little balls of polystyrene clinging electrostatically to his jacket sleeves. He's so nervous, Caffery thought, but what he doesn't realize is that none of this matters. Not really. It doesn't matter what happens or what we do with our lives because we're all dying. I'm dying and you're dying, Mabuza. You'll die and whatever you've done will die with you.