Ritual

49

He'd been in the job long enough to know when to follow his training and when not to. He knew this was a time when he should follow everything he'd been taught and put in a call to Control, but the red light on the radio was blinking, telling him it was out of range too. He wasn't going to drive back down into signal range so he did the exact opposite of what he should have done. He kept going.

About four feet away from him, resting against one of the piles of glass, was a wooden handle. It had belonged to a pickaxe or a shovel and it was exactly the right size and weight. He snatched it up and backed into the lee of the house, standing with the handle out, his arms trembling. The screaming stopped and he edged forward to the nearest window, straining to hear what was happening. Then he squatted and crab-walked his way under the ledge, straightened and went to the corner of the house, put his back to the wall as if he was in a western shoot-out, and peered round it.

A cloud had gone across the sun and the front of the house was in shadow, the greying pebbledash pocked in places as if it had taken shrapnel. The cat was still sitting there, washing its face, as if nothing was happening. About ten feet past it, what must have been the front porch was shrouded in plastic sheeting. Bricks had been piled on top to hold it in place. Caffery edged towards it, breathing hard, the wooden handle held out in front of him.

He got to the porch and lifted the edge of the sheeting tentatively. From here he could see there was no front door. Instead the gap had been clumsily covered with blue membrane, the manufacturer's logo printed on it in white. Carefully, trying not to make any noise, he ducked under the plastic sheet and stepped inside, pressing a finger to the plastic membrane. It gave a little. He wiped away the cobwebs from his face and hair, and stood close to it, holding his breath. The screaming had stopped: he couldn't hear a thing, not a sound or a movement. A voice in the back of his head told him to back off, back off, idiot… but instead he got out his car keys and used the little Swiss Army knife on the fob to make a hole in the blue plastic.

As the knife went in he stopped, thinking what it might look like from inside — a bulge and then the little nose of the knife poking through, glinting maybe. His heart was thudding and he could feel sweat run from his armpits, making his sides and back itch. He counted to ten, then, when no one came running out at him, he slid the knife cleanly down the membrane making a long, straight slit. He stepped back, shocked by the noise, breathing hard.

After a minute or so when there was still nothing from inside, he crouched next to the slit and pushed one finger in, pulling it aside so he could see a few yards into the dim interior and listen. There was a smell of neglect and decay, a smell of raw concrete and stagnant water, and a lazy flapping, like slow wings beating somewhere in the darkness. Nothing else except the eerie silence.

He used the wooden handle to push into the gap and moved aside the sheeting, feeling the cooler air inside shift across his skin. Carefully he put one foot through, and then, with a quick sideways twist, followed it inside, dropping into a crouch. He held his breath and listened again. It was a moment or two before his eyes were used to the dark, but when they were he saw what had caused the flapping noise: every doorway leading away from this area was covered with white plastic sheeting, taped at the top with slits at the sides, lifting and rippling on unseen currents. With the deathly hush and stale air he couldn't help thinking of mortuaries.

Slowly he went to the first piece of sheeting and looked through into what had once been a utility area. The washing-machine was still in the corner, but it hadn't been used recently. Boxes of books were piled up in front of it, and the ironing-board was draped with filthy tea-towels. He moved to the next sheet and found he was looking into a kitchen — left-over food on the table, magazines piled everywhere, a guinea pig staring beadily at him from a cage on the work surface. He was about to go through the next sheet when, from the other side, the screaming started again.