Ritual

55

The good thing about not having much to live for, was that you stopped caring.

It had crept up easily on Caffery, this resilience to all that was wrong in the world, until it was as natural as opening his eyes in the morning and yawning when he was tired. So it was strange that day on the Hopewell estate, scrabbling along the walls trying to find a light, tearing his hands on exposed plaster and brickwork, to feel a moment's trepidation, a brief pulse of unease just before he put on the light. It lasted only a few seconds. Then he'd found the switch, the room was illuminated, and he saw what they'd been sharing the darkness with.

The room was about as big as Baines's bedroom, but from the patterned lino on the floor and the marks round the walls where cabinets might have stood, he guessed it had once been a kitchen. The wallpaper had been pink-striped before the mould and the bad air had eaten into it and it contained only two pieces of furniture: a sofa to his left and a table, which was pushed up against the wall, with Flea under it.

He got a snapshot of her — of the way she didn't really understand what was happening. She was kneeling frozen and shocked, blood on her arms and on her T-shirt, her hands planted on the ground, eyes swivelled to him, waiting for him to tell her what to do. She couldn't see what lay on the table above her. A body, on its back: bare-chested, jeans, a leather belt securing it at the waist.

Caffery knew who it was. Even without stepping forward, he knew it was Jonah. And that he hadn't been dead long. The blood pooling under the table hadn't begun to congeal. It was still dribbling slightly out of the hacked-out hole in his neck, dripping into a plastic measuring jug under the table and spilling over the top on to the floor. Once Tig had made the first cut into Jonah's neck there was only one way it was going to end. He'd tried to cut Jonah's head off and would have succeeded if he hadn't been interrupted. He'd wadded towels round the boy's chest to soak up the overflow and put more under his buttocks, maybe in case his bowels opened.

'It's him.' Under the table in her peculiar freeze-frame, Flea had seen the jug, the blood pooling round it. 'It's him,' she muttered. Slowly she raised her eyes to the underside of the table. 'Isn't it? It's Jonah.'

Caffery looked over to where a video-camera on a tripod was tilted down at the body, its record light flashing on and off. He's dead, he told himself, trying to force himself to scan the rest of the room, to see beyond the horror on the table. There's fuck all you can do. You don't know him. Get your priorities right. Forget Jonah and find the bastard who did it.

Flea grunted and scrambled out, like a dog, from under the table. 'Christ Christ Christ,' she said, when she saw the body. 'Fucking Christ.' Slipping in the blood she got to her feet, her hands out tense at her sides, staring at the body.

'Sssh,' Caffery said, trying to work out where the noise had come from. 'Be quiet.'

He went to the sofa, put one hand on the back, leaned over and saw instantly what he was looking for. From waist height down, another hole had been dug into the wall. He dragged the sofa back and tried to listen, but behind him Flea was talking to herself, breathing hard.

'Ssh,' he whispered. 'I need you to be quiet, for fuck's sake.' It had been cut out with an angle-grinder, maybe, or a hacksaw. A dim blue light, daylight perhaps, was filtering on to the floor. 'Be quiet. This is it.'

When she didn't answer he turned. She was still at the table. She'd planted her feet solid and wide, had pulled Jonah's head back and had her hands locked together on his chest, squeezing down on him, each compression pushing a half-hearted dribble of blood out of his neck.

'Christ! Stop that.'

But she went on pumping.

'Hey.' He came back from the sofa and grabbed her arm. 'He's dead. Now stop the fuck what you're doing.'

She froze, her hands on Jonah's chest. Her face was grey, her pupils dilated.

'Remember what we're doing,' he growled. 'Remember.'

'What?' she murmured, her mouth moving slowly.

'Fuck's sake. Keep with me, Sergeant Marley.' He dug his fingers into her arm. 'Keep with me. We've got to get going.'

She turned her eyes to the sofa, the gap behind it. Then she looked back at the corpse. He was about to shake her, when something in her face changed. Her forehead creased, and she seemed to snap back into herself.

'Yes,' she said, wiping her bloodied hands on her vest. She bent down, put both hands on her thighs and breathed fast through her mouth. 'Yeah, I'm OK. Let's do it.'

Caffery held up the CS canister in front of his face, the knife in his other hand, and ducked into the gap. It opened into a small passage with a similar gap cut at the other end. This one had a gate welded into it, like the one they'd seen before, but it stood open.

He scrambled towards it, squat-walking, the hand with the knife hitting the floor at every other step. For a moment Flea wasn't with him — she was still in the room getting a grip on herself — but before he reached the end of the passage she'd caught up and he could feel her breathing behind him. For some reason he remembered something in the files from the Met — that the Tokoloshe could become invisible if it put a pebble in its mouth — and had to check over his shoulder that it really was her behind him. And it was. Her eyes were shining, her small face set and determined.

At the far wall they stopped in crouches by the gap, and listened again. On the other side of this wall someone was breathing, hot, panicky breaths.

'Three-sixty sweep,' she mouthed.

'What?'

'We do a three-sixty sweep. Check the room.'

He copied her, turning slightly to the side in the crouch, pressing his left hand on the inside of the wall and mirroring her by pushing his right foot ahead of him into the opening. 'Now,' she whispered. 'Now.'

Holding the CS gas and the ASP in front of them, they craned their necks and scanned the room fast. It was small — there were two other doorways in it and a boarded-up window — and filthy, full of flies and used food containers. On a sofa pushed up against the opposite wall sat two men, one skeletal and white, one short and black.

'Police!' Caffery yelled, pointing the CS gas into the room. 'Police!' The two men shrank into each other. One was the guy they'd chased, the little witch doctor in the jacket; the other — Caffery didn't have to see the stumps of his arms to know that it was Mallows. Alive. They'd cut off his hands. They'd taken his blood. And he was still alive. The fucking Crime Scene Manager. He'd been right, the bastard.

'Hey — you,' Caffery said. 'Mallows? Ian Mallows?'

Mossy tried to raise his filthy, bandaged arms, but the effort seemed to half kill him. He sat there, gazing at Caffery with heavy eyes. 'How d'you know my name?'

'How do you think I know your fucking name? You all right?'

'No, I'm fucking not.'

'Well stay there. I mean it. Don't move.'

'Do I look like I'm going anywhere?' He wiped his nose on his shoulder. 'Jesus,' he muttered. 'Jesus fucking Christ.'

'You,' Caffery shouted at the black guy. 'You. Why did you run? Eh?'

'I'm sorry, sir.' He put his hands up, cringing. 'I'm sorry.'

Caffery waved the canister at him. 'Get up — off the sofa. Against the wall. Move it.' He did as he was told, dropping down off the sofa like a child, making Caffery think of what the waitress in the restaurant had said: He was so tiny… He'd of only come up to here. 'Against that wall. That's it — stay there. Hands where I can see them. Spread them against the wall.'

Caffery stepped into the room and straightened. Flea came after him and they stood, both instinctively with their backs against the wall, holding out their weapons, eyes darting around.

'Where is he?' Flea said. 'Baines? Where's he gone?'

'Eh?'

'Where's Baines? Where is he?'

Mossy half raised his head, his eyes rolling. 'In the bathroom,' he said, as if he couldn't give a shit any more. As if the police being here to rescue him was an inconvenience that might go away if he was patient. He gave a vague wave in the direction of the window.

Caffery turned and realized they must have come all the way through to the back of the building. The boarded window was in an unlit corridor that led towards the side of the tower block. Outside he heard distant, wavery sirens. The other support-unit serials arriving. Flea's eyes were watery. He knew what she was thinking. Did they have to go into the bathroom or could they just stay there and wait for the other units?

'Is there a way out of the bathroom?' Caffery snapped at the witch-doctor guy. 'A window — another door?'

'I don't know. Maybe a window.'

'Shit,' he muttered. 'Shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. There would be a window, wouldn't there?'

In a previous life, before it had been boarded up by the council, this had been a bedroom — a woman's, from the ornate plastic wardrobe in the corner. The door into the bathroom, shabby now, the veneer peeling off it, still had the crystal-cut glass handle that must have once been someone's pride and joy.

Flea and Caffery stood in the corridor. Flea had her back to the wall, alongside the boarded-up window. She took her eyes off the door, bent slightly, craning her neck up under the grille, peering through the gap where the corrugated-iron covering had been ripped back, seeing the cars parked outside. She pulled her head out again and looked back at the room they'd come from: the hole wasn't big enough for Tig to get through, but the little black guy, he could make it through if he wanted. She should have handcuffed him to Mallows or shut him in a cupboard. Too late now. The sirens were louder — the first of the support-unit serials would be pulling up outside.

'Ready?' Caffery mouthed.

She nodded, remembering a protocol she'd once trained in: the 'deranged-man' tactic. It needed at least three officers with shields, not just her and Caffery sharing one person's equipment. Fuck only knew what would happen, but she racked the ASP anyway, flicking it up and bringing it to rest on her shoulder. 'OK,' she murmured. 'Give it a hoof.'

He smiled at her sideways, ironic. Then he aimed his foot at the door. It flew open and they threw themselves forward, Caffery first, then Flea, coming in too fast behind him, half tripping, righting herself by putting a hand on his arm, getting balanced and snapping into the combat position: weight low, knees unlocked, presenting her side, left hand in front of her face.

And then what happened was nothing. Silence. They blinked a bit, their faces yellow in the dim light from the grille on the window. It wasn't like any bathroom either of them had seen. A St Andrew's cross had been welded with workmanlike durability on to the cracked tiles above the bath, and where the toilet had once been there was a powder-coated, galvanized-steel cage that stood tall enough for an average man to get into but not to stand up in. Otherwise the bathroom was empty. No hidey-holes, no exits. Nothing could have got through that tiny window.

'Fuck,' Caffery said, dropping the knife wearily. 'Lying little shits.'

'Listen,' Flea said, catching his arm, looking back at the boarded-up window in the corridor. If the skinny guy tried to climb through it he'd see him, and if he'd already tried going back through the flats he'd be mopped up by the serials coming round the front. But Tig — Tig could be anywhere. 'I think he's still somewhere in here,' she said. 'There's another door out of that room, leading back into the middle of the flat. Let's go back in and, if they're still there, I target the black guy. 'K?'

He turned to her. For a split second their faces were so close she could see details of his skin. 'OK,' he said. 'Yeah — OK.'

'Right,' she said, holding up a finger. 'When I count to five, we're going to do it. Yes?'

'Yes.'

'One. Two. Three. Four…'

The words died in her throat. She went still. Very still. A drop of water had appeared on Caffery's shoulder, a perfect, clear, tear-shaped drop on his white shirt — and for a moment she couldn't do anything but stare at it, while the drop ran down and spilled on to his chest. He watched it, too, then raised his eyes to hers. Neither spoke, because they knew, even before they turned their eyes upwards, what they'd see.

He was above them. Hanging from D-rings bored into the ceiling, spreadeagled, sweating and trembling with the effort of holding himself in place. Dressed only in black combats, his body glistened with sweat and blood. His mouth was open, his teeth were bared and the blood pooling in his bad white eye made it bulge out at them. An avenging angel.

Flea felt a sound coming into her throat, a voice in her head screaming, You didn't follow your training, you effing idiot, and she had time to think, The 360-degree sweep should take in the ceiling too. And then Tig was falling from the ceiling like a hawk, nails outstretched, landing with a sickening crack on Caffery's shoulders. His knife and the CS gas spun away across the floor and the two men tumbled backwards on to the tiles, colliding with the bath panel, coming to a stop against the wall on their sides, facing each other like lovers, grappling at faces, ears and hair.

She wrenched her Quikcuffs out of the body armour's front pocket and threw herself down next to the men, trying to push the ASP between them, but she couldn't get at Tig's hands.

'Flip him,' she yelled at Caffery. 'Flip the bastard — let me get the cuffs on.'

'He's trying to fuck me first,' Tig hissed. 'Wants to give me one before you cart me away.'

Caffery gritted his teeth and used his elbows to lever Tig's hands down. Flea reached out to grab his legs but he yanked them away, drumming his feet on the floor. 'Did you hear me?' he screamed at Caffery, saliva foaming at the corners of his mouth. His bad eye was flicking from side to side. 'I said, do you want to give me a little hand-job while we're down here, you City Road whore-fucker?'

On top of him Caffery went still. Sweat ran down from his forehead into his eye, but he didn't blink or move.

'Let me get at his arms,' Flea shouted, trying to find a good place on Tig's arm to bring the ASP down. 'Let me get at him!'

'Hey, filth, answer me,' Tig roared up into his face. 'Yes, you, you fucking filth john.' He thrust up at him with his hips. 'Answer me. Come on! Say you want it.'

Time seemed to stop. Then, in an instant, it accelerated forward with a jolt. Somewhere behind her, Flea could hear voices, a radio cackling, someone in a far-away room yelling, 'POLICE', and Caffery rocked back, grabbed Tig's ears, pulling his head up. Tig screamed, trying to wrench himself free. Flea had to change sides, stepping over them, banging her legs on the bath, trying desperately to reach under and get Tig's arm, but this time it was Caffery who was stopping her. Without a sound, not a sigh or a word, he released Tig's ears, letting his head crack down on to the tiled floor.

'Jesus!' she yelled. 'Stop it! You'll-'

But Caffery wasn't listening. He hauled Tig's head back again, and slammed it down, harder this time. Something shot out across the floor — a tooth, maybe. Blood pumped from Tig's nose in a thin fountain, the width of a straw. 'I will fucking kill you.' Caffery knelt back to adjust his grip on Tig's ears. He was going to do it again.

'Stop it. Stop it!' She grappled at him, digging her fingers in, trying to get him to loosen his grip, but he shouldered her away, scuffling on the floor so his back was to her. Under him Tig's feet were kicking for purchase. She rolled back, got on to her haunches, not enough time to get the position right, just enough to choose a target — not the ribs, because of the body armour, but his ankle. That would do: his ankle. His feet in the smart Loakes shoes and grey socks, trousers snagged up enough to show a bit of dark hair on his shins. She muttered a prayer and brought the ASP down fast, just once, on the bone.

There was a split second's silence — absolute quiet. Caffery went very still, his head held back. For a moment she thought he wouldn't move, thought he'd snarl at her, but instead, with a long exhalation, he loosened his grip on Tig and rolled away in a foetal curl, clutching his ankle. She expected him to scream at her, but he didn't, just lay on his side with his back to her, holding his foot, his ribs rising and falling, rising and falling under the body armour.

She had two or three seconds of surreal silence, just long enough to study the back of his neck, to look at Tig with blood over his chest, curled up, his hands clamped to his face. Then there were shouts, and flashlights, and radios. The Support Unit guys were swarming over the place, and the whole thing, the whole bloody thing, was over.