Ritual

43

18 May

'It's for the insurance,' Tay said, as she crouched behind the reception desk and ran her manicured nails across the DVD cases neatly lined up and labelled. 'I get a big break on my premiums by having the place covered. I mean, some of the people we get in here are in very distressed states and you never know.'

'Yeah,' Chloe echoed. 'You never know.'

Caffery watched from a few paces away, wanting to avoid the withering look he was sure he'd get if Tay smelled the tobacco on him. 'You mentioned something earlier, Tay,' he said, as she examined each label, pulling one or two out and piling them on the counter. 'You said ibogaine was used in a ritual.'

'The Bwiti tribe.' She pushed her glasses up her nose and crouched again to check the remaining disks. 'They use it to get in touch with their ancestors.'

'A sort of shamanic ritual?'

She glanced up at him.

'A shaman,' he explained. 'Like a witch doctor.'

'I don't really understand that side of it. My interest is the biochemical aspect, not the anthropological.'

'Do you know if it's used any other way, in other types of African magic? Maybe as a remedy?'

She shook her head and straightened up, putting three more disks on top of the pile. She fished a brown-paper bag out from under the desk and put it down next to them. 'It's not really my thing, Mr Caffery. We've had an academic here who was interested in our work. He'd be able to tell you. I cooperated with him — for the publicity's sake — but I didn't get involved because it was in the early days when I was doing the preliminary treatments.'

'He came and observed,' Chloe said importantly. 'You know, for his research.'

'And what did he do with it all?'

'Told us he was trying to get it published. I mean, that's what they do, isn't it? These academics?' Tay leaned across Chloe and clicked her way into a database. The printer under the counter whirred into life. 'We use his home address because he hardly ever goes into the university.' Paper shot into her hand and she passed it to him with a smile. 'He's very accommodating, will talk about ibogaine and ritual use ad infinitum.'

Caffery took the paper and looked at the name. 'Kaiser Nduka,' he murmured. A German-sounding first name and an African-sounding surname. He'd seen it before — it had been on Marilyn's list of consultants. She'd highlighted it because he was so local. 'Right,' he said, sliding the DVDs off the counter and into the paper bag. 'I'm taking these up to the multimedia unit at HQ to get them analysed — and then I might stop by and speak to Mr Nduka.'

'Say hi to him from us.' Chloe waved with her fingertips.

'Yes,' said Tay, holding the door for him. She gave Caffery that cool, slightly contemptuous smile again. For a moment he thought she was going to sniff, wrinkle her nose at the smell of cigarettes, but she didn't. She inclined her head as he left. 'Please do. Please send him our regards.'

Misty Kitson might have been a drug addict, like Jonah, but she was pretty and a famous one. And this made the difference. Flea and Dundas both knew that although he was a police officer's son Jonah was still a whore, and his disappearance would be swept under the carpet. They called the duty inspector at Trinity Road, the nearest police station to Faith's flat, and got him to start a missing- persons report. But there was something unconvincing about the way he promised to prioritize, and Flea decided she needed to speak to someone she knew personally.

Caffery. She had the strangest feeling he was the sort who'd stick his neck out for someone like Jonah. She didn't know why, but she thought he was the only person who wouldn't stop until he'd found him. But he wasn't at Kingswood — the staff gave her his mobile number but it was switched off — and it took some digging to find someone who said they'd heard Caffery was heading to HQ to go through some CCTV footage with the multimedia unit and she might catch him there. Portishead was en route to Kaiser's anyway, so once she'd got the team sorted and a new supervisor on duty, once Dundas had left to drive to Faith's, Flea went back to her car parked on the road.

She'd got the door closed and the key was in the ignition when a short man with stocky legs and an intense look in his eyes appeared at the window, tapping on the glass. She turned on the ignition and opened the window. 'Are you Sergeant Marley?'

'What can I do for you?'

'I'm the POLSA.'

The police search adviser — the person who'd have set the parameters and put her team in the water in the first place. She'd never seen him before. His stripes told her he was a constable. 'Yeah, well,' she said flatly, pulling on her seatbelt. 'I'm on annual, so speak to someone else in the team.'

'I would, but something's going on with your team today. For a minute there I thought they were going to stop searching altogether.'

'We had a staffing problem,' she said, 'but we've put another officer in as supervisor and he's got everything in hand. We've lost an hour tops. OK?'

She pressed the button to close the window, but the POLSA put his hand on the top of the glass, stopping her.

'I'd like an extra person in there now,' he said. 'I'd be happier with that — if you could get someone in there. It might even cross your mind to cancel your day off for a case this important.'

A tic was starting in her eye. 'No,' she said. 'It won't cross my mind. The team you've got there is perfectly capable of doing the job.' She raised her eyes to his face, to the bulbous nose, to the first sprinkle of burst capillaries on his cheeks, and then something in her slipped a little. It was to do with his face, with the way he had his hand on her window, and it was to do with a million other things. Something inside her just slipped off a hook. 'Tell you what, let's speak the truth here, save both of us some time, shall we?'

'The truth?'

'Yes,' she said, knowing she should stop, but enjoying the way the words were coming clear and clean. 'We both know you're not going to find her in there.'

'Do we?'

'Yes,' she said. 'We do.'

His eyes were a washed-out blue, the rims red. 'It's funny, because if your unit hasn't even finished searching the lake yet, I don't see how you can be sure where she is. What makes you an expert on knowing where a body's going to end up?'

Years of training? she thought. Years of knowing what water does? Oh, and a bit of premonition too — a little skill I didn't know I had until yesterday.

'You're not trained on search parameters,' he said. 'I mean, let's face it, you're just a-'

'A diver? Just a diver. Is that what you were going to say?'

'There are established profiles for people in Kitson's condition. Nine times out of ten someone who wanders off from a clinic, like she has, will be found trying to score in the nearest town or climbing on the next bus out. But if they've topped themselves the body'll be within a two mile radius of the clinic.'

For a moment or two Flea was silent. Then she looked down at the hand still resting on the window. 'New, are you?' she said. 'I've not seen you before.'

'I've just completed my training. Yes.'

'And what part of learning to find a bomb taught you how to find a body?'

'Our training is more than just for improvised explosive devices, you know.'

'I know. After the IEDs you sit up in North Wales for a couple of days, learning how to read a few profiles. You know how to use an electronic map, but you don't know how to-' She pictured Prody on her doorstep last night, the light on his face. 'You don't know how to think outside the box.'

The POLSA straightened up. She could see up his nostrils, the little hairs and the red folds of skin up there — as if he had a cold and had been blowing his nose over and over. 'Well,' he said, with a sarcastic sniff, 'how about you teach me how to "think outside the box"? Tell me how you know there's no body in that lake.'

Flea sighed, turning on the ignition and taking off the handbrake. 'Because,' she said patiently, 'she's a beautiful girl. A famous girl. And when famous beautiful girls kill themselves they make sure they leave a good-looking corpse. And that means not drowning themselves. And especially not drowning themselves in a shitty old lake like this one. Get it?'

And without waiting for a reply, knowing the constable was going to run straight back to the DCI and tell tales, knowing that she should have stopped her mouth and her head slipping away from her like that, she put the car into gear and drove away, leaving the POLSA standing in a cloud of dust, fury on his face.