Ritual

57

It was dark when she got home, and the clouds moving across the moon were sending predatory shadows to patrol up and down the hill, slipping across it like wraiths. Exhausted and hungry, Flea parked her car with its back to the valley so she didn't have to look at them. Her PPE body armour and the jeans she'd been wearing had been taken by the CSI team: they'd loaned her a police sweatshirt and combats and there wasn't much left in her car except a set of overalls. She shoved them into the holdall and was getting out of the car when she noticed a wavering square of artificial light on the gravel.

She stopped what she was doing and turned to look at the towering face of the Oscars' house just in time to see a light go out, leaving the windows blank, reflecting the gathering night. Dark now, but she thought she saw the movement of a curtain at one. Just a faint shifting of form and colour. Earlier, when the team had been bringing Tig out of the flat, strapped into emergency restraint belts — in spite of Caffery he was alive — she'd noticed one member of the unit standing on the scrappy little piece of grass outside the flat, staring up at the windows in the tower blocks. When she'd asked what he was looking at he'd shrugged, given a little shudder and said something like, 'I dunno. I feel like I'm being watched. It's the windows.'

At the time, her first thought had been of the boarded-up window outside the bathroom — the way the corrugated iron had been torn up just enough to allow someone small to crawl through. Stupid to think it, because everyone who'd been in the flat was in custody now, but it came back to her, that window, and the words: I feel like I'm being watched.

Another movement of light from the Oscars' — someone stepping back from the window, maybe. She had an impulse to walk round to their front door and hammer on it — demand to see Katherine, demand to know when she was going to stop spying. But she didn't. Instead she took a few calming breaths and, with all the control she could muster, raised her hand, acknowledging them, letting them know she knew and that it wasn't going to get to her. Then, she calmly pulled the holdall out and closed the door.

The electronic key fob must have broken; it wouldn't open the boot, so instead of slinging her kit in there overnight, she let herself into the house and dropped it inside the front door. As she straightened she saw a light on in the kitchen at the end of the corridor. There was a smell too, of cooking, of ginger and citrus and molasses. She knew who it was — there was only one person who knew where the spare key was kept, wedged in the branches of the wisteria. Kaiser.

She should ignore him, go upstairs, get warm, get washed. Instead, pulling the police sweatshirt down over her cold hands, she came down to the kitchen. Kaiser was standing at the table, using his fingers to lever muffins in paper cases into a tin.

'Hello,' he said, not looking up at her. 'I've left the molasses tin out on the side to remind you to get some more.'

'Why are you here?'

'Oh,' he said lightly. 'Because you want to talk to me. There are things you still haven't talked about.'

She sighed and sat down at the table, next to the window, her hands tucked in her armpits. She watched him work. He was so familiar to her, so familiar and yet so unfamiliar. He was still wearing the stained white shirt from earlier, and although he kept his enormous African goat face turned from her, she could tell he'd been crying. She noticed Dad's safe from the study was on the table next to the tin. Kaiser must have taken it off the shelf and put it there. She reached over and touched it.

'Kaiser?' she said. 'It's got something to do with Nigeria, hasn't it? Whatever's in here is something to do with the experiments.'

Kaiser stopped what he was doing and looked across at her. 'It was my project, Phoebe. David was simply an observer. Don't blame him too much. He saw nothing in what we did to be ashamed of, but when I was thrown out of the university he knew he had to hide his involvement. I am sorry we didn't tell you, but it was long before you were born and we never thought you needed to know.' He put the last of the muffins away and leaned on the lid to close the tin. 'The safe contains his notes. I don't know the combination, but now he can't speak for himself I think he deserves his privacy, don't you?'

He turned, took the baking tray to the sink and ran the tap. She took her hands out from her armpits and rubbed her tired eyes, looking out of the window to where the moon hung low in the sky beyond Bath, the clouds cruising past it lit grey and yellow like bruises. The nightmare that had started with the hand in the harbour was over. She could put it to bed, everything that had happened: Jack Caffery on the bathroom floor with a light in his eyes that shouldn't be in any police officer's eyes, and Jonah, his neck leaking, his dead eyes on hers as she tried in vain to start his blood-parched heart. Tig was in custody and it was over, the whole thing was over. She should feel a weight lifting. But she didn't. Instead she felt heavier.

'Kaiser,' she murmured, not taking her eyes off the valley. 'When you say ibogaine can let you talk to the dead, do you really believe that?'

He scrubbed at the tray. 'What about you, Phoebe? Do you really believe it?'

'I saw Mum. I didn't tell you but I saw her that night. She told me two things: she said she and Dad were going to be found — soon. She said when they were found I shouldn't try to bring their bodies up. And Kaiser…' She hesitated, her voice smaller, almost inaudible. 'This is the part I can't understand, the part I haven't told you about. It's happened. Just like Mum said it would. Someone's found them, Kaiser. Someone's found them in Boesmansgat.'

There was a beat of silence while she wondered if he'd heard her, then he laid the tray down in the sink, wiped his hands on his trousers and took a handkerchief from his pocket. He blew his nose. 'Yes,' he said, his voice muffled. He shovelled the handkerchief back in his pocket and raised his head to look out of the window. 'Oh yes. I know.'

'You know?'

'I know. David was my only friend, Phoebe. I've waited two years for them to be found. I check every day.'

'But I don't. Not any longer. So how did I know, Kaiser? I'm sure I didn't really speak to the dead.' She paused, thinking about it, then added, more faintly, 'Or did I?'

He turned to look at her. 'Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. But you knew the bodies had been found because you went on the computer during the ibogaine trip.'

'I'm sorry?'

'You looked at the site. I came in from the kitchen and found you at the computer.'

'I got on to divenet?'

'You were crying.'

'But I…' She put her fingers on her forehead, frowning, trying to understand how she had forgotten, trying to understand how neatly the ibogaine had excavated her memory.

'I know what you're thinking — that it's impossible. But you don't give the ibogaine enough credit. And you don't give your instincts enough credit either.'

'My instincts?'

'Your need to see your parents again.'

Your need to see your parents again. The words made her bite her lip. Suddenly, unexpectedly, her throat was tight and there were tears in her eyes. 'Kaiser,' she murmured. 'Oh, Kaiser. I keep thinking we should try to bring them up. Do you think we should try?'

'Only you can answer that. You and Thom. And maybe…'

'Maybe…?'

'Maybe your parents. What did your mother say to you in the hallucination?'

'She said to not bring them up. She said whatever happened to leave them there.'

He shook his head, pulled back a chair and sat with his elbows on the table, looking at her steadily. She saw the way the skin crinkled around his eyes and was reminded that he was old. As old and as mysterious as the continent he came from. 'Then don't you think you should listen to her? Let them rest? Let David's past rest, let their bodies rest?' He paused. 'And, Phoebe, more importantly…'

'Yes?'

He smiled. He reached over to cover her hand with his. 'Don't you think you should let yourself rest too?'

She pulled her hand away and wiped the tears from her eyes. Let yourself rest. Let yourself rest. The words rolled through her head. She turned her eyes to the window. Yes, there was pain — things from her past she didn't want to face. Yes, there were things in the future that would make her cry, probably.

In the distance some lonely wayfarer on the other side of the valley, where the Warminster road ran, must have lit a fire because she saw a small light flare red inside a canopy of knotted trees. It was too far away to see exactly, but she focused on it, and slowly, slowly, something about the light, something about Kaiser's words, began to settle inside her. She closed her eyes and sat back in her chair.

'What are you thinking?' Kaiser asked. 'What's that smile for?'

She didn't answer. She shook her head and just held on to it: the image of the small flame in the distance, the sound of his words repeated over and over, the beginning of something like peace. She was smiling because she now knew he was right. She could allow it. She could allow herself to rest.