Ritual

Caffery was staring at her. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. 'Well?'

'Oh, Christ,' she whispered, rubbing her arms because goosebumps had come up on them. 'I don't know. He's my father's friend, and I always knew he did something wrong years ago, I just never knew how really, really fucking wrong it was. I haven't worked it all out yet, but he was…' She trailed off, not liking the words. 'I've seen eight of the videos — they're all the same. Electrodes. That's what he was using. It was an experiment.'

'An experiment?'

'I know. All done in the name of science.' She pushed her fingers into her temples, as if that would get rid of the pressure. 'Things must have been different then, and it wasn't here, it was in Nigeria, in Ibadon — and, you know, maybe the ethics were different because nobody stopped him. Not until the very end. The, uh, the people you saw-'

'I only saw one.'

'There are more, lots more, but they consented. I've seen the consent forms — that's what I was going through when you came in. They were mostly research students. The others came off the streets, did it for money.' She paused because something had just hit her. Thom's night terrors. He'd always been convinced Kaiser used to hunt people in the streets at night. She felt cold. Maybe Thom had always known the truth. Or suspected it. What she'd said to Caffery was true. The videos could be explained away — sinister, but not as sinister as he was thinking. But on a deep level, in a low part of her stomach, she knew they were sinister because they said something about Dad she didn't want to think about.

She wiped her forehead, trying to keep her face composed. 'So — you see what I mean? Nothing to do with Mallows.'

Caffery took a weary breath. He looked as if he hadn't slept in years. 'I should at least lodge a report at Weston and get a section eight warrant raised.'

'Technically,' she muttered. 'Yes, you should.'

'Except I can't nick him here in the UK. Unless he was a public official in Nigeria at the time. Which I take it he wasn't?'

'No.'

'In that case it's over to-'

'Interpol,' she said. 'I know — I've already thought about it.'

He held her eyes a little longer. Then he let go of the door and pulled at his tie until it was loose enough to lift over his head. 'Come on,' he said, as he thrust it into his breast pocket. 'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now I've got something else I want to talk to the old bastard about.'

'Secondary attention. The "path of the heart". A place, a crevice in our consciousness we sometimes stumble into — the place of enlightenment.'

Kaiser talked quietly as he allowed Caffery to lead him back down the corridor, his oversized trousers hanging half off his skinny frame. Flea followed a few paces behind, wishing she could stop him talking. She didn't want to hear what he might have to say about Dad and the videos.

'The Christian Church,' he went on, 'tries to pretend it doesn't exist. But other religions aren't so coy — the ancient religions, I mean, the ones born out of passion and intelligence, an understanding of the earth and the way the seasons move, not the ones spread and imposed through politics and imperialism.'

'What were you doing at that clinic?' Caffery said, propelling him into the living room.

Kaiser settled down on the sofa and, as if he hadn't heard the question, continued, 'The ancient religions understand that there is a place we rarely have access to that is the place of true enlightenment. It is a difficult, very difficult, place to access. To study.'

'Kaiser…' Flea said. She was facing him with her back to the open cupboard: the cupboard she'd believed all her life had contained drugs, her fists held clenched behind her back. 'Answer the question, Kaiser.'

'It exists in all of us. Every one of us can find it, but only a few ever do. Except, of course, when we die. For the few seconds before we die our neural pathways are programmed to close down in such a way that they allow us the briefest entry to that place — the place I am drawn to.'

Caffery picked up the pair of gardening shears from the floor and set them at the back of the room. Then he crossed his arms and leaned against the window. In one hand he was holding a bundle of papers: the consent forms Flea had dropped on to the floor. 'I asked you what you were doing at the clinic. Can you answer that question?'

'Ah, yes, but I am trying to explain why I was forced to use pain as the nearest approximation to death. Some believe another route exists through certain hallucinogens. For example, Phoebe's father-'

'Kaiser! ' she said abruptly, startling him. 'Answer the question.'

Kaiser looked at her, shocked. 'What question?'

'My question.' Caffery moved away from the window and pulled out a chair from the dusty dining-table. He set it in front of the sofa and sat, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, scowling at Kaiser. 'My question was, what's your involvement with TIDARA?'

'TIDARA?'

'In Glastonbury. It's the last place Ian Mallows was seen alive.'

'Ian Mallows?'

'Don't pretend you don't know who I'm talking about.'

Kaiser blinked. He looked at Flea for interpretation. She held his eyes. Kaiser: one of the only friends she'd thought she had. And now it was all upside-down. She had to struggle to keep her voice in control.

'I'd know if he was lying,' she muttered. 'He doesn't know anything.'

Caffery sighed. He cast the consent forms on to the table and sat back, putting his hands behind his head and stretching a little, as if he'd come in from a hard day and was relaxing. But it was an act. She could see that he was shaking, as if the adrenalin from earlier was still in his system. 'They told me you'd been observing their work.'

'Ah, yes.' Kaiser took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. 'It was part of a body of research I was doing. The results will be published in the British Journal of Psychology this September. The use of ibogaine in withdrawal from the opiates.'

'So tell me about it. Tell me about ibogaine.'

Standing behind Caffery, Flea gave Kaiser a fierce look. The last thing she needed was Caffery knowing she'd taken it. Kaiser gestured to the books on the shelves. 'If I may?' he said. 'I have some literature.'

'Go on, then.'

Kaiser got up stiffly and went to the shelves, hauling books down and piling them in front of Caffery. He propped broken glasses on the end of his nose and sat down, leafing through the books, holding out photos of tribal dances, fetishes and masks for Caffery to look at. 'Ibogaine is from the Bwiti tribe. It is used to dislodge memories from the mind.'

Flea came to the sofa and sat on the arm. She wanted to be ready to stop Kaiser if he went too far. But Caffery spoke: 'Is it used in black magic? In African witchcraft?'

'African witchcraft?' Kaiser peered over his glasses as if Caffery was a mystery. 'I'm not sure which of those two words is the most ignorant and patronizing. To describe a deep-seated cultural belief as «witchcraft» or to apply the universal label «African» instead of using the name of a tribe or, at the very least, a country. Even if the concept of a country is a colonialist construct, it's better than giving them all one title — «African». Tell me, do you recall the case of that poor child's torso in the Thames?'

'I know what you're talking about, yes.'

'The way it was handled by the police — another astonishing Western misconception of how the African continent works. The child's genitals weren't removed, if I remember correctly?'

'That's right.'

'So even before your people conducted the tests I could have told them that South Africa muti was the wrong place to look for his killers. In South African muti he would have had his genitals removed — it would have been the first thing. And yet how strange it was that although the child came from Nigeria your police gravitated to South Africa. That they talked to Nelson Mandela. One asks oneself what Nelson Mandela has to do with a small Nigerian child. So when you say "African witchcraft" you're conveniently forgetting you're not only talking about a deeply rooted faith but about the beliefs of forty-seven different countries and countless different tribes. Medicine and mystic belief vary enormously from region to region.'