Ritual

'So, who did Mallows meet?'

'Dunno.' BM put his hands in his pockets and went to look out of the stairwell at the bleak estate, police everywhere, going along the alleys and balconies, from door to door. Then he came back into the stairwell, shrinking into the shadows, making sure no one was listening. When he turned to Caffery his face was drawn, none of the rosy-cheeked schoolboy left. 'He said something weird. He said people were going to get hurt. I remember him saying it now — said, "There are some sickos out there, BM, and I don't know who they'd go out and hurt if it wasn't for people like me, stupid fuckers who give it up without a fight." '

'OK,' Caffery said, taking BM's arm and lifting him to his feet. 'Your gear's not going anywhere for a minute or two. Nice and safe under that old lady's doormat. Let's have a little sit-down and get this on paper.'

The thing about Flea, Caffery thought, was get her out of the water and she always seemed a little on edge. Sort of guarded, as if she expected you to tell her some really bad news. It was the first thing he'd thought when he'd seen her in the car park at HQ that afternoon.

It had been a dry day for the investigation. In the statement BM hadn't been able to give them much more than he'd told Caffery in the first five minutes in the stairwelclass="underline" Mossy, he said, was the kind to take up with anyone he met — an idiot, really. He'd go off with anyone who looked at him, and there wasn't any more to the conversation about the sickos than he'd already told Caffery. He gave them about forty names, about twenty locations he knew Mossy sometimes hung out, and the names of seventeen drugs-counselling sessions, but no, apart from that time a long time ago he was just guessing really. He didn't have any idea if Mossy had been to any of them recently, and actually, what he wanted to know was how the fuck had those people kept Mossy still long enough to cut his hands off? Not much to go on for Caffery, but the SIO wanted 'afternoon prayers' — the afternoon round-up of the day's events at HQ, where he'd got another meeting. So it was off to Portishead.

He had just parked the staff X5 and was heading for the chrome and glass atrium, batting out the creases in his suit jacket for his meeting with the SIO, when he saw her coming purposefully across the grass towards him. Her hair was wet and slicked off her face and she was dressed in civvies, old jeans and a grey tank top, with her arms bare.

'Inspector Caffery,' she called. 'How are you?' She looked on edge, from the way she was trying to catch up with him, the way she had her hands pushed into her jeans pockets, as if she didn't trust them not to wave around. Everything in the West Country was different, he thought. He didn't remember a patch of grass like this at Scotland Yard or anyone like her in the force. She fell into step next to him, as if she'd been invited to and they were on their way to the same meeting.

'Any news,' she said, 'about the case?'

'Yeah.' He watched her sideways as they walked, a little wary of her. 'We've got an ID. We know who owned the hands.'

'An ID?'

'From the dabs. Ian Mallows, a.k.a. Mossy. A smackhead from one of the estates.'

'Anything else?'

'Fibres under the nails. You must've bagged the hand well because they were still there. Purple fibres. Like a carpet.'

'Hey,' she said casually, glancing at the glass building they were heading towards, 'you don't — you don't know why someone cut off his hands?'

He stopped. 'No,' he said. 'I don't know why.'

'Such a weird thing to do.' She halted and looked at him in a way that made him stop too. It was as if there was something she wanted to say but was keeping back. She held his eyes seriously. 'I mean, why would someone do that?' She moved a little closer. 'Did you know he's African?'

'What?'

'The owner of the Moat. He's African. Do you think that might be something to look at?'

Caffery frowned, taking in the shock of blonde hair. There was nothing about her face, he thought, that suggested she could take all the hard knocks in the job. Except maybe her nose, which had a slight wideness that didn't quite fit, as if she might have broken it years ago. To him she had the look of something too fanciful, not quite real. A bit like the way she was talking now.

'Sorry,' he said. 'Do I think what might be something to look at?'

'Only that he's African and there might be a connection. Between him being African and there being hands buried so close to the entrance.'

Caffery laughed. He wondered if he was being had. 'This is a joke, yeah? I'm supposed to try to work out what you're saying.'

There was a few moments' silence, then something in Flea's face cleared. 'It's none of my business,' she murmured, scratching her head distractedly. 'But I'm trying to work out how those hands came to be under the restaurant.'

'I don't think we're going to have to look much further than the nearest drug deal gone wrong. We're not going to be letting the location lead the investigation any more.'

'No?'

'No. The victim's where we're taking it from now. He had serious smack history, always trying to get clean, you know the story — DTTOs stacked up so high. The only witness statement we could pull out today has him being pretty bloody scared about something that happened to him at some drugs counsellor's. So that's being actioned even as we speak. About a hundred drugs charities to sift through and I think-' He broke off. Flea's expression had changed. Her eyes were suddenly hard and guarded, flashing something he wondered if he'd be stupid to mess with. 'And I think that's where we'll find the lead,' he finished thoughtfully. She was still staring at him. 'What? Why you looking at me like that?'

'Nothing,' she said. 'I should let you get on with it.' And she took a step backwards, still holding his eyes as if she expected him to jump her. Then she began to walk away, pulling her phone out of her pocket and banging out a text with her thumb.

Somewhere Caffery'd heard that teenagers were getting over-developed thumbs from all the texting they were doing — he'd've liked to say something to her about it.

'Flea?'

She stopped, pocketing the phone as if she'd been caught holding a bomb. 'Yes?'

'I'm new here. New to the area.'

'I know that.'

'I'm hoping someone could give me some pointers. To Bristol. You know.' And then, quickly, because it sounded as if he was asking for a date, he said, 'I want a nursery. Just wondering if you could tell me where to look for a good nursery.'

He wasn't sure but he thought her eyes flickered towards his hand, his ring finger. 'I could ask around,' she said. 'How old's your… son? Daughter?'

He smiled. Half at the absurdity of the mistake, and half because he felt stupid because he couldn't claim children when everyone else at his age could. 'No,' he said slowly. 'I didn't mean that. I meant plants. I want to buy some plants. Some bulbs. That's all.'

It was Tig she'd been texting. With this itch in her head about the picture in Kaiser's book, with the way that whatever she did she couldn't get away from the thought of those hands under the restaurant, she'd spent most of the day trying to talk Tig into introducing her to the owner of the Moat. Although at first he'd been appalled, had blustered for a while about professional ethics, 'Mine and yours, Flea, by the way,' in the end he said he'd see, grudgingly, what the owner said, and why didn't she come down to see him at work? Which would have been fine, until what Caffery had just told her about Mallows. Now she was worried.

If CID were looking at drugs charities, sooner or later Tig would come up on their radar — and what the hell were they going to make of his history, especially if it came out that he knew the owner of the Moat? Plus, if the suits went knocking on his door, no way was he going to believe she hadn't somehow set the ball rolling in his direction. It was going to be two-way nastiness. And if Mallows turned out to be a client of User Friendly, Tig's charity, well, then the shit was really going to hit the proverbial. Still, she thought, swinging into her car and firing off the text — Hi Tig, Be there in an hour — DI Caffery wasn't showing much sign of doing anything about what she'd said. Cryptic though she'd been, he could have shown some interest in the restaurant owner being African. Because, she was absolutely bloody certain, someone ought to be interested.