Ritual (25 page)

Night had come. Flea sat in the study staring at the screen, not stirring to switch on the light or close the window. Hours went by as the electronic discussion played itself out, the computer bleeping each time a new message sprang up. Andy Pearl was trying to explain how it felt to get to the first air stop on his line, to scribble a frantic message to the support diver, who didn't have through-water coms, that Crabbick was dead, and to get instead a shake of the head, a gloved hand pointing in the direction of the surface. No, Crabbick wasn't lying at the bottom of the sinkhole. He was alive and clinging to the line several metres above them in the dark.

He had conquered the narcosis. Somehow – and no one was sure what alchemy had choreographed it – he'd hit the bottom, spent seconds there, then started back to the surface. Yes, he was in a poor way, and when at last they got to the top, ten hours later, he had to be pulled out of the water by support divers. He was pale, with broken veins in his eyes and round his nostrils, said Andy Pearl, and his breathing was as if he was trying to blow up an old airbed, laboured and slow, but he was conscious. He was alive. Able to talk for a few seconds before he was taken by the medics to hospital. And what he said to Pearl was what had made Flea's hand crab round the mouse. On the stretcher Crabbick had turned to his dive buddy, reached out a hand and said, in a blood-thickened voice, 'The Marleys. I saw the Marleys stuck on a ledge near the bottom.'

She put her hand to her head, massaging the roots of her hair, trying to picture what Crabbick had seen. She imagined the sound of breathing through cylinders, the solitary torchbeam: imagined a skeletonized hand appearing in the swirling silt below. Mum and Dad, on the slopes of Bushman's Hole. Somewhere, she realized now, she'd been keeping a little light of hope alive: an illogical dream that they might have escaped the accident, that Thom and the support divers and the ibogaine had all been mistaken, that they'd found a way out of Bushman's Hole and had somehow got to safety.

She wanted to type – she wanted to ask questions:
Is Crabbick sure it's the Marleys? Did
he take a photograph? Have you any idea of their
coordinates? And, most importantly, how near is
the ledge to the bottom? Five metres? Ten metres?

But Pearl wouldn't be able to answer. She could see that from the way he was responding to the questions. Crabbick was still in hospital, unable to talk.
Shall we give the guy a break?
he kept writing on the forum when anyone asked him for more information.
Give him some space to
recover – at least let him get his butt out of
hospital – then ask him?

She looked through the posts, trying to work out how long ago it had happened. The first garbled report that they'd been spotted had been two days ago. Two days, this had been sitting in the public domain, and she hadn't known. She hadn't known, yet somehow she'd dreamed Mum warning her about it.
This time they'll find us.

She rubbed her arms, suddenly feeling cold. It wasn't possible, was it? Uncovering memories – ideas she'd never quite vocalized – yes. But actually speaking to the dead? Wasn't it more likely she'd gone into this site in the last two days and forgotten because of the ibogaine? She forced her mind back through the memory: Kaiser had been using the computer, she remembered him tapping away on it. Had there been a moment when he'd left the house and had she, working from instinct, got up from the sofa, gone to the computer and got into divenet? Kaiser, she thought, as the moon crested the line of cypress trees, Kaiser, what would you say? If I said I'd been talking to the dead, what would you say?

She pulled out the mobile phone and dialled him. He was usually awake at this time of night, pottering around the outbuildings, hammering in nails, and often didn't hear the phone. So she gave him time to make his way back to the house, letting the phone ring thirty times, counting it off in her head, but still he didn't answer. She hung up and went to get Thom's car keys. She'd have to take his car and drive over there. She was putting on her coat when a sentence came back to her.

Thinking they're going to speak to the dead
because they inject some shit into their arm . . .

Tig, she thought. How about you? What would you think? As she was pulling on her coat she dialled his number. He answered after six rings. He sounded out of breath, and she pictured him with his mother, slouching in her bedroom, doing her lonely thing with her dreams and the police scanner and Freeview TV.

'Yeah,' he said, swallowing to get his breathing down. 'Yeah, what?'

'Tig.' She zipped up her coat. 'Something weird's happened.'

There was a moment's silence, then he sniffed. 'I'm glad you called,' he said tersely. 'I'm glad because it's what you said you'd do. Always nice to see you doing what you say you're going to do.'

She hesitated, taken aback. Had she promised to call? And then she remembered: the last thing he'd said after Mabuza's was 'Please call', and she'd said, 'Yes, I promise.'

'I've been waiting.' She could hear Tig moving around at the other end of the line, clanking things, as if he was in the kitchen. 'And now you're calling me. It's good, that's what I'm saying, it's respectful of you.'

She finished doing up the zip, feeling beaten. 'I'm sorry.'

'How's your filth boyfriend? Suited and booted and out for a little action?'

'What?'

Tig laughed. 'He likes his laydees very compliant, if you know what I'm talking about.'

'No, I don't know.'

'Ask him how he's settling into the area. Ask him if he needs a tourist guide – take him down City Road and show him around a bit.'

'Tig, please. I called you because I needed you – really needed you. I'm sorry I didn't call earlier but, please, talk to me like a human being. Not in code. Or let's stop talking and do it another day. I'm going out now.'

There was a beat of silence. Then he snorted. 'OK, then,' he said lightly. 'We'll do it another day.' And before she could stop him he'd put the phone down.

She stared at the mobile display, not quite believing he'd hung up on her. Fuck fuck fuck. She flipped up his number and standing in the hallway in her coat composed a text in her laborious text language. It was half complete when the landline on the table leaped to life, making her jump. She dropped her keys into her pocket and picked it up.

'Kaiser?'

'No. It's Mandy. What's going on?'

'Mandy.'

'Yes – Mandy. Look, Flea, I've been trying his phone all night and he's either got it switched off or he's rejecting my calls. I need to talk to him.'

Flea scratched her scalp hard, trying to think. 'Wait a moment.' She put the phone on the desk and went into the hallway. It was pitch black – she hadn't realized it had got so late. 'Thom?' she called into the darkness. 'Thom? Where are you?' She waited, counting to fifty in her head, then went back to the phone. 'Mandy, he's not answering. He must be in the shed or something. I'll get him to—'

'In the shed? It's nearly eleven o'clock – pitch dark out there. What's he doing?'

'I don't know. I'll tell him to call you when he—'

'But you said you'd ask him to call hours ago. Why is he lying to me?'

'He's not lying.'

'Are you sure? Because if he's lying to me I'll kill him.' Flea took a breath to answer but Mandy spoke again. 'I mean it,' she said. 'I'll kill him if he's lying to me.'

Flea stood up straight, looking out into the darkness, at the garden she and Thom had played in as children. Something had snapped in her head. 'You know what, Mandy?' she said, her voice cold. 'You can fuck off and leave him alone. He'll call you when he's ready.'

And she hung up, hands shaking, head racing. She fished the keys out of her pocket and was heading to the door when a car's headlights filled the living room from the front. She went to the side room and pulled back the curtain: the Focus was turning into the driveway, going to the back of the house. Thom. At last.

Feeling weak now, she went to the back door and unlocked it. There were so many things to say to him she didn't know where she would start.

At first she didn't realize anything was wrong, even when she saw how fast the car was sweeping down the driveway. Even as she watched him bring it to a halt in a spray of gravel, throw it into gear and reverse it quickly under a spreading juniper, she wasn't thinking about something being wrong with him. She was thinking about what she'd seen on the Web. It was only when he pushed past her, tearing off his coat, going straight into the house and into the toilet, that she understood he was crying.

She stood in the doorway and watched him run the tap, putting his face under it, gulping air, his whole body trembling. From behind her came the sound of another car outside, another pair of headlights sweeping round the side of the house.

'It's the police.' He straightened, took a towel from the shelf and rubbed his eyes with it. 'Police.' He sniffed. 'B-been following me since the A36.'

Flea saw from its headlights that the car had stopped outside the back door. 'The
police
?' she murmured, as if it was a word she'd never heard before. This was so unreal. 'What do they want?'

'Oh, shit,' Thom said. He bundled the towel to his eyes, held it there tight.

'Thom?' Slowly her thoughts were coming back. 'Thom – what's been . . . ?' A horrible thought crossed her mind. She snatched at the towel, got him to lower it. His face was thick and red, his eyes bloodshot, his breath sour. 'Jesus, Thom.' He tried to turn away, ashamed, but she held his wrist so he had to look at her. 'Thom? How many have you had? You
stink
of it. Are you
stupid
?'

'I'm sorry. I'm sorry.' He moved his head around miserably. 'It's just all gone wrong – all gone so bloody wrong—'

Behind them in the hall the doorbell rang. A dark shape was there, smudged and distorted by the coloured glass. Flea stared blankly at it.

'Please talk to him,' Thom said agitatedly. 'Please, please, Flea, get him to go away. I'll never ask you another favour, I promise.' He grabbed her arm. '
Please
,' he hissed, a note of fear in his voice. 'Make him leave us alone. Quickly.'

In the study the phone was ringing again. Mandy, probably. Outside, the policeman knocked again, then rang. Flea closed her eyes, counted to twenty – trying to bring something calm into her head. She took a breath and pushed her hair behind her ears.

'It's OK,' she said. 'Just go upstairs.'

'I'm so sorry.' He was crying again. 'I really am sorry.'

She turned him towards the stairs, moving him easily because she'd always been so much stronger than he was. 'Go into the back room. Pretend to be asleep.'

The doorbell rang again and the police officer put his hand on to the glass, trying to peer inside. She waited for Thom to climb the stairs, his head hanging, the soles of his cheap shoes muddy and worn as he got higher and higher. Then, heart thudding, she went to the door and opened it.

It was one of the lads from the traffic unit based in her building at Almondsbury. She knew him instantly, sometimes spoke to him at the chocolate machine buying Mars bars. He was square, with a receding hairline that had left a dark V-shape on the top of his head, like a widow's peak. Prody, his name was, or something like it, but they all called him the Motorway Monkey, because he spent his time squaring off to boy-racers on the M5.

'Look,' he said, and she could see he was trying to calm himself by the way he was breathing. Had to keep stopping between words. 'I wouldn't do this, but by the time I'd done a PNC and I knew it was yours, I'd got myself so wound up I had to keep on your tail and—' He broke off, staring at her incredulously. 'You didn't stop. Why didn't you stop?'

Flea stood quite still, struggling to grab the sense of this. Beyond him she could see the silver Ford Focus, parked hurriedly with its back in the bushes, the light in the cottage porch reflected in its windscreen. The police cruiser stood with its nose a few feet away from the window of the living room, its door open wide. She wondered how much he'd seen of her and Thom.

'I was . . . I was in a hurry.'

'A hurry?'

'Yes – I mean, you know, the old excuse . . .' She put out her hand to indicate the toilet door open, the light on. 'Really needed – you know. It's no excuse, but . . .'

'You were driving, then? It
was
you?' He was wiping his forehead. 'I couldn't see from behind – I had an idea it was someone else in there, the way you were throwing it round those bends. Didn't you see me? We could've killed ourselves.'

There were a few moments' silence while he studied her face. There was something twitchy about him and she knew he was angry. She tried to close off her expression, to imagine a veil coming down behind her eyes, hiding the liar in there. She concentrated on the V on his forehead, imagining herself boring a hole into it with her eyes.