Ritual

'Mr Mabuza,' she said levelly, 'you're talking in riddles.'

'Riddles? Hardly. What I'm trying to explain is that I have never had any dealing with the police.' He said the word very deliberately, enunciating every syllable. 'The police. I don't know what they must be thinking about this black South African.' He raised his eyes and locked them on hers again. 'And you? Do you know what they're thinking?'

He knows, Flea thought. Damn and fuck, he knows who I am. 'No,' she said steadily. 'I have no idea what they might be thinking.'

There was a long silence. Next to her on the sofa Tig was fidgeting, clearing his throat. She was about to say something to him when the carriage clock chimed. Immediately he was on his feet. 'We should be going,' he said, holding out his hand to Flea. 'Come on. Let's go. Now.'

She got to her feet a little shakily, setting the cup down so hard the spoon fell off the saucer. 'I need to use the toilet, Mr Mabuza. I just want a bit of tissue to blow my nose.'

There was a moment's hesitation. She didn't imagine it — she knew she didn't. Mabuza's eyes flickered to Tig's, came back to hers, then returned to Tig's. And then he smiled, graciously, holding up his hand to show her out of the room. 'Of course,' he said calmly. 'Of course you must.'

The toilet was on the first floor directly above the hallway. She climbed slowly, the stairs curling round above the hallway where the two men waited for her. On the staircase she passed four or five niches in the wall. In each stood a crucifix, some small, some big, all clean and new in spite of the dust that lay everywhere else. The walls were panelled below waist height and she couldn't say what it was, but something about the panels made her uncomfortable — she held her hands across her chest so she didn't have to touch them. They made her think of things being shut away — of shadows snapping at her heels.

She got to the landing, with its low lighting and faintly clinical smell. The feeling was still there — that someone or something was watching her. At the top of the staircase a door faced her, just where Mabuza had said it would be. She pushed it open, pulled the cord and the little room lit up — primrose-yellow porcelain, a box of Kleenex tissues on the cistern, and her reflection staring back at her from the mirror above the sink. She held the door handle tightly, studied her face, the hair that hung in hard coils round her forehead, the circles under her eyes. After a moment or two she stretched up on tiptoe so that she could look at the reflection behind her, down at the panels behind her calves. There was nothing. Why had she thought there would be?

Just as she was debating what to do a noise to her right made her turn. A few feet across the landing a door was half open. She hadn't noticed the room because the light was off, but now she couldn't take her eyes off it. The sound was coming from inside, of someone sniffling, as if they'd been crying.

She pulled the toilet door closed, shutting it tightly so it would be heard downstairs. The two men were at the foot of the stairs, talking, in low, confidential voices, and their tone didn't change so she took an experimental step across the landing towards the open door. The floorboards were solid — no creaking or sagging — and in a few short steps she was standing just to the side of the door. The men went on talking below. From here she could crane her neck and see most of the room beyond.

It was an odd bedroom, lit only by two standard lamps in the corners. It made her think of a pioneer home with bare floorboards, gingham check and a lollipop flower-stitched quilt. There was a suitcase on the floor and a few feet away from it a white woman on her knees in the middle of the room, facing the bed. She was a little younger than Mabuza, blonde and enormously fat — her body seemed to flow out of the plain white dress she wore. Her chest heaved and shuddered with the crying: a strange sound that Flea somehow knew wasn't connected with sadness.

The woman put both hands on the floor and bent, her enormous arms dimpling, dipping her head so that she could see under the bed. Even from the doorway Flea could see the tears shivering in her eyes as she squinted into the dark, and at that moment it struck her what was odd about the crying. It was the sound of fear. The woman was crying because she was afraid of what she thought she would see under the bed.

She craned her neck to peep into the far corners, and when she seemed to have found nothing she tilted back on her heels and turned, very slowly, to look directly at Flea. The tears were standing on her cheeks, but she didn't speak, or seem surprised to find someone watching her. She just gazed at her steadily as if she'd known she was there all along.

Without a word Flea went back to the stairs, expecting any second to be shouted after. Ignoring the charade about the toilet — she'd meant to open and close the door, run a tap or something — she headed down the stairs as quickly as her legs would carry her. At the bottom the two men stopped talking.

'It was nice to meet you,' she said to Mabuza. She didn't stop walking or offer her hand to him, just went straight to the door, ignoring Tig coming up behind her. 'Very nice. I'll see myself out.'

Outside she went fast, going in a straight line, her arms folded. The air was warm, but she couldn't help shivering, glad to have the feel of the house off her. What she'd seen was enough. In the morning she would go straight to Jack Caffery.

'Hey.' She'd got halfway down the street by the time Tig caught up with her. He grabbed her arm and swung her round to face him. 'What the fuck do you think you're doing?'

'He knows who I am, Tig.' She swept her hair off her face and held his eyes angrily. 'Couldn't you tell? Didn't you see the way he was looking at me? It was weird.'

'The only thing that was weird was you forcing him to talk about the case. That was weird.'

'I didn't force him. He wanted to talk about it.

And anyway — there's something wrong in that house.'

'Flea. Flea.' He pulled her a little further down the road so they were completely hidden from Mabuza's front gates. It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening, but the sky was still blue, and the businessmen who owned the houses in this community were returning home in their Audis and Mercedes. Some eyed Tig and Flea. One parked his car, then stood in the driveway, his sunglasses in his hand, watching them. 'Listen,' Tig said. 'Don't you think you're being paranoid? You went in there worried — you didn't say anything but I could tell you weren't comfortable. You're making things up.'

'I'm not making up the way he was staring at me. When he asked what the police would be thinking.'

'Flea, look, I'm not saying I know him well, that'd be a lie, but I know enough to tell you he doesn't do things in weird ways. He's not underhand.'

'Oh, yeah?' She wasn't convinced. 'You sure?'

'Yes,' he said, and walked towards the car. 'I'm sure.'

She waited a while, watching him leave, her heart still thumping. The man in the driveway lost interest and aimed the remote control at the garage door. Eventually, when there was nothing else to do, she followed Tig to the car, getting out her keys. She opened the door for him, then got into the driver's seat, sinking down with a sigh.

'I'll tell you something else,' she said, pulling on the seatbelt. She could still feel the thin layer of grease on her hand from Mabuza's handshake. 'They're not going to church this evening — at least, not to any church you or I would go to.'

'Oh, come on. What're you talking about?'

She stared back in the direction of the house — an ordinary enough house on the face of it. She thought about the idea she'd had that shadows were running round the panelling at knee height. She thought about the woman searching under the bed, the fear on her face. She thought about the crucifixes. And then, in a second, she realized what was wrong with the house.