Ritual

'Got your scanner on, have you?' Flea asked.

'Me scanner? Oh, no, gone orf it — watching the telly now.'

'All right if I have a look at it?' Caffery said.

She waved her hand, as if she was dismissing them. 'Oh, do what you want. See if I care.'

He went into her bedroom, with its unmade bed, its closed curtains, four or five mugs crammed on the bedside table. It was small and it didn't take him long to work out there was no one in it. He looked at the scanner. Like she said, it was switched off. There was a cold feeling in the room, as if stale air was being pumped in from somewhere. He went back into the hallway and found her scowling at him, holding up a finger as if she was warning him. 'You'll have to get the police in anyway,' she said. 'To stop what he's up to.' She smiled. 'That's all I'm saying.'

Caffery glanced at Flea. She was standing just inside the living-room door, frowning at Mrs Baines. 'What does that mean, Mrs Baines? Stop what he's up to?'

'What I said. That the police'll need to come to sort it out, I shouldn't wonder. With him letting the blacks run over the place all the time and what they get up to together. But don't worry about me. Don't you worry about me.' She tapped the side of her head and limped back inside her bedroom, closing the door firmly. There was a pause, then the sound of the television. Flea turned to the door, as if to follow her, then seemed to change her mind. Instead she turned to the one door they hadn't tried.

'His room,' she muttered. 'I've never been in there.'

'Still got that knife in your knickers?' Caffery asked.

'You saw it?'

He didn't answer. He pressed his back against the wall and lifted his foot, putting just enough pressure on the latch to open it. It swung wide and they found themselves looking into a darkened box room, a tatty blue bedspread hung over the window. There was a wardrobe against the far wall, a computer desk in the corner, and a teenager's metal bunk bed taking up most of the space. Keeping his back to the wall Caffery reached inside and clicked on a light.

'Empty?'

She darted her head in, then out again, nodding. 'Empty.'

He swivelled through the doorway and into the room, went to the wardrobe and opened it. There was a line of clothes hanging up; no one was inside it. Caffery glanced under the bed and pulled back the duvet. The window was closed. No one had come through here. It was as if the skinny guy in the jacket had vanished into thin air.

He was trying to work out what he'd missed in the flat when he realized Flea wasn't moving. She was still standing in the doorway, staring at the walls. He followed her eyeline and saw why she was being so quiet.

The walls were papered in hardcore gay S amp;M. One bore posters from Deviant, the S amp;M club in Old Market, boasting its equipment of '2 slings, 2 crosses, 2 doggy tables…' Another wall showed a series of pictures of a man in a see-through plastic tunic, his penis in a leather ring, blood pouring from the wounds on his body and congealing under the plastic like packed meat. In the first two pictures he was being forced to lick the feet of a fully dressed businessman. In the last he was being held face down in a toilet.

'Whoa.' Caffery whistled. 'Heavy-duty shit.'

He went to the last wall, which was covered with a single blown-up photo, real or mocked-up, it was difficult to tell. It showed a shaven-headed man in a leather apron biting off the nipple of a man wearing only black Dr Martens and a white studded dog collar. Stapled to it at waist height were ten photographic A4s. Caffery bent down to them and saw something that would convict Baines in a second. The photographs showed everything that had happened in the North West Tower on the Hopewell estate. They showed a small black guy in a tribal outfit, a red tabard, his hair beaded and white paint smeared on his cheeks. It was the guy in the jacket, pictured in different poses: one showed him performing a ritual dance wearing the robes of a witch doctor, baring his teeth at the camera lens, but the others showed him standing next to a half-naked man on a sofa — Caffery guessed it was Ian Mallows — and inserting a cannula into his arm, letting the blood drain off into a large plastic jug. And the next one — Caffery had to pinch his nose to stop stomach acid coming into the back of his throat — showed the witch doctor crouched next to a body, holding a knife to the raw, bloodied stumps where hands had once been.

He swallowed hard and steeled himself to look closely at this picture. There were things to avoid: Mallows's pale body — he was assuming it was Mallows — the blood that had fountained up the whitened arms, the eyes rolled back. He had to concentrate to block these things because something else was more wrong than all of the obvious wrong. There was only one unreal thing in the photograph, and that was the face of the witch doctor.

He squinted at those eyes and saw something he recognized: a blankness, a lie. There was something about the posture — the knife held up for the camera, the face too posed — that made him think of holiday snaps. It came to him quite fast: It's not you who did the cutting, is it? You're just the act. He didn't have to form the question, So if not you then who? because he knew the answer. He knew the person who had done the cutting.

Shit, he thought. There's no giving you the benefit of the doubt, Tig, mate. You're never going to be redeemed. You steered me wrong, sending me to TIDARA. And then, in a flash, he understood why.

'Baines,' he said. Flea was standing behind him, her face white. 'Did he know Kaiser? Through you?'

'I'm sorry?'

'I said, did Baines know Kaiser.'

'No,' she said faintly. 'No — I mean-' She glanced at him. 'Yes — he knew of him.'

'About him and ibogaine?'

Her tongue darted out and she licked her lips. 'Probably. Why?'

He sighed. 'Nothing. Ever get the feeling you've been led by the bollocks?'

Flea came up beside him, still staring at the photos. She held up her hand towards them, her hand hovering, not quite touching them, copper's instinct not to touch, but he knew she wanted to. 'Christ,' she breathed. 'Who is he?'

'I don't know, but probably our friend in the jacket. And if I had to lay bets on it I'd say that's Mallows on the sofa.'

'Oh, fuck,' she muttered thickly. 'It's true, then.' She sat down at the little computer table, propping her face in her hands.

He turned away from the photographs, wanting to touch her, to rest his hand on her hair, knowing that he couldn't. 'Tell me.'

'Nothing,' she said. 'Except…'

'Yeah?'

'Except that when I went to see Mabuza I was so sure he knew I was job.'

'How come?'

Something guarded crossed her eyes. 'Nothing — just I had a feeling he'd been warned. The place was covered with crucifixes, as if he was trying to show he ran a good Christian household. And…'

'And?' Caffery said, eyes on the photographs.

'He's gay,' she said quietly. 'Tig. Very gay.'

'Gay as nails,' he said, 'by the looks of things. Didn't you know?'

'Yes, I knew,' she said, in a monotone. 'I always knew. He let me doubt it, but now I think he was trying to open me up, get me to feed him information about the case.'

'Which he'd feed back to Mabuza. I knew someone was emceeing the fucking thing, just didn't think it'd be some white gay boy.'

Flea was still staring at the walls. 'But that's Tig for you — most of his clients are black, Asian. He's street, you know. He's one of them. For a while Atrium even liked him for a snout.'

Caffery examined the small bookshelf above Flea's head. Lined up was a row of MPF diskettes. One had the word 'Magic' scrawled across it in crude writing. The next two had the name 'Mabuza' printed in Magic Marker.

Caffery had his hands on the little MPF diskette when something stopped him. It made him feel cold and still all at once. It made him turn to Flea. They didn't need to speak — both knew what the other was thinking. They were thinking that they had just heard what sounded like someone, quite nearby, pushing over a large piece of furniture.