Ritual

'I'm cold. Look, I came to talk to you. You asked me. Remember?'

He pointed down to her feet. 'You stay there. Right there. I'll be back when I've checked we're all decent.'

He disappeared into the dimly lit corridor with its peeling wallpaper and stained paintwork, leaving her on the doorstep. She waited, stepping from foot to foot, pulling her coat close. There was a cold, stale draught coming from the corridor and the sound of a badly tuned radio scanner from one of the rooms. That would be Tig's mum. Ever since Flea could remember his mother had been addicted to listening to the police. Always said she wanted to steal a march on them if they decided to come and get her, because that was how it was for her now, imaginary armies and men from the institution coming through the streets. Now that the police signals were encrypted she listened to the static instead. That was how out of the box she was.

After a few minutes Tig reappeared in the hallway, switching on the light and unlocking the chain.

'Mum's not sleeping. It's always worse when she doesn't sleep.' He stood back to let her in, waving his hand a little sorrowfully into the depths of the hallway. The narrow corridor of carpet was filthy, stains trodden in over years. 'It's always about now I want to use. When she can't sleep.'

They went into the kitchen with its piles of laundry, its cheap laminate table, salt and pepper and ketchup bottle on a stained plastic mat in the middle. Tig put the kettle on, turned the gas burners on the stove up high to warm the place up, and moved a pile of clothing off one of the chairs, gesturing for her to take a seat. She sat in silence at the table, the smells of neglect, decay and gas filling her head, the little bag of mushrooms still in her fleece pocket, hard and lumpy against her breast, reminding her of Mum and the dog violets. Tig made her a cup of milky tea, then found a packet of peanuts and opened it with his teeth, poured them into a bowl and pushed it in front of her.

'What is it? Work? Something horrible happen? It's funny — when you come here you don't smell of dead bodies.'

'I don't spend my whole life moving bodies around, you know.'

'Just most of it.'

Well, Tig, she wanted to say, these days the main thing I need my protective gear for is sitting in this flat. But she didn't. She pulled the coat tighter round herself. It really was cold in here, draughty. 'But you're right. I've had a couple of body days. Except not a yuck one — well, it was sort of yuck, sort of not.'

He picked up a handful of nuts and began idly to sort them in his palm. 'How can something be sort of yuck?'

'It was a pair of hands.'

He looked up. 'A pair of hands?'

'Under a restaurant in the floating harbour.'

'Without a body?'

'Without a body.'

'In Bristol harbour?'

'That's what I said.'

'Well, how in fuck's name did they get there?'

'Wish we knew.'

'Do they know whose hands they were?'

'Nope.'

'So which restaurant?'

'Down opposite Redcliffe Quay.' She poked at the peanuts, wondering if it was safe to eat anything in this place. 'The Moat.'

'The Moat?' He gave a low whistle. 'I know the fucking Moat. I know the guy who runs it. African guy — gave me a huge chunk of my startup capital.'

'Well,' she said, popping a couple of peanuts into her mouth. 'That's a good enough reason for me not to talk to you about it, isn't it?'

He sighed. 'Just showing interest, that's all.'

She took another peanut from the bowl and split it in half. Tig's hand was resting on the table, short nails, fading blue prison tattoos on the knuckles: Love and Hate. Not Mum and Dad. 'Tig?' she said, after small silence. 'You know when you used to take drugs?'

'I ain't about to forget it, am I?'

'Did you ever feel…' She ran her hands down her face, trying to find the words. 'Did you feel like a whole — a whole universe was opening up… in here, in your head?'

He gave a short laugh. 'A whole universe? Oh, yeah. That's how it feels to start with, like there are whole new worlds in there you'd never've got to any other way. But then later, when it turns itself round — because it always does turn itself round — suddenly the universe is what opens up when you're not using. But this time it's a universe of pain. And the only escape is more gear.'

'But at first, when you're in that universe, did you ever think you could… I don't know, that you could connect, maybe? Connect with people who've died?'

'Oh please, Flea. I see dead people, is that what this is? Give me a break, there isn't a moonchild, white witch or guru who doesn't tit around with gear and convince themselves they're getting some sort of super vision — some sort of clairvoyance or whatever the fuck they want to call it. I've heard it chapter, verse and fucking book. Think they're going to speak to the dead because they inject some shit into their arm.'

Speak to the dead, Flea thought, picturing her mother, crouched among the trees. Speak to the dead.

'Now, if you're asking me can you uncover things you've witnessed,' Tig went on, 'things you've forgotten, things you don't even know you know, then to that the answer's yes. Of course. But it can't tell you things you haven't already learned.'

She rubbed her arms and avoided his eyes. 'I found mushrooms in my dad's stuff. And I took them.'

Tig looked at her intently. 'You of all people,' he muttered. 'You of all people.' He drummed his tattooed fingers on the table. Love. Hate. Love. Hate. 'Stupid effing cow. Stupid cow.'

She gazed at him steadily now, at his weird, fucked-up face, with the eye that went the wrong way and his nose that looked as if it had been punched. The problem with this situation, here with Tig, was clear: she wanted to use drugs to go deeper into her memory, to find the answers she knew were just out of her reach. She was going to use drugs to find the voices. With him it was the other way round. He'd used drugs to shut the voices up. He'd used them to quell the anger. And that was the hitch. He might understand better than others, but he'd never fully see what she wanted.

After a while he shrugged. 'Oh, well. You've done it now. It's happened.' He sat back, slumping a little. 'So what's worrying you?'

'I saw my mum. And she was trying to tell me something.' Flea leaned back in the chair, pulling her hair off her face, holding it in a knot and concentrating on the ceiling. 'But I can't quite get at it so I want…'

'You want to do it again?'

'Not the mushrooms.'

'Oh, don't tell me you want to be a smackhead like me?'

She dropped the chair down and met his eyes. 'Do you remember my friend Kaiser?'

'Yeah. Weird old shit. Friend of your old man's.'

'He says I won't get there with the mushrooms.'

Tig nodded, his bad eye droopy now, as if this was too tiring. 'And?'

'He's come up with something else — told me about it last night. Ibogaine.'

'Yeah, yeah, I know it. Organic, legal, from Africa. Some places are using it to get people off the gear.'

'Kaiser says I could spend months using the mushrooms and get nowhere but this'll get me where I want to be. It gets inside and…' she made a flicking motion next to her temple, '… maybe I'll be able to speak to Mum again. Find out what she was trying to say.'

'And you believe him?'

She put her hands between her knees and studied the untouched cup of tea. The sound of the scanner in the bedroom next door hissed through the walls. No, she thought. No, I don't really believe him but it's better than nothing.