Free Ritual by Mo Hayder

back. The IDENT1 computer wasn't as bad as the old NAFIS system but it could be slow and overnight it had only pulled up one of the five prints needed for comparison. But the path report was complete and made disturbing reading. The pathologist had recovered some fibres from the hand, purply-blue ones that she'd sent to the lab at HQ, and she'd agreed that the marks on the bones had been made by a saw. She also said that the hand had probably been removed when the victim had still been alive.

All of which had brought the superintendent down a bit on his fury with Caffery. He'd assigned a level to the case and the Major Crime Investigation Unit had sent a staffing quota of a three-man HOLMES team for the incident room at Kingswood, two more DCs, a DS and a civvy investigator – a retired officer – plus a crime-scene manager and a scene liaison officer. It lit Caffery up to have decent manpower – there were another four men due at the quayside by eight a.m., ready to start interviewing anyone who worked in or frequented the area. Today the harbour would be running with police.

He crumpled the coffee cup and was about to head back to the road to meet his team when the sound of the utility craft made him stop. It was heading back towards the pontoon fast, Flea in the bows wearing her dive hood, no mask, staring at the same part of the harbour wall she'd been pulled by five minutes ago. As the boat came nearer and Dundas killed the engine, the stern came round so it lay alongside the wall. She leaned forward and, grabbing the buddleia trunks that grew out of the mossy quayside wall, dragged the boat sideways, stopping every few inches to press her hands against the stone, inspecting it with a frown.

'What's up?' Caffery peered at her head – shiny and dark like that of a small seal. 'Found something?'

'Nope. I've worked something out.'

'What?'

'The witness statement,' she said, breathing hard now. 'Did you read it?'

'Only in outline. They took it at New Bridewell. Why?'

'I got most of it from your super in the briefing. Right from the beginning it bothered me.' She squinted down at the harbour wall. She brushed aside some algae, squinted again and shook her head, dismissing whatever had caught her attention. 'It bothered me that he could see the hand at all. Bothered all of us.'

She stepped her hands further along the wall, digging her nails in. Caffery took a few steps along to keep up with her. 'And it still bothers you?'

'It was nil vis in the water yesterday. I just couldn't square it – how he could have seen the bloody thing.'

Something caught her eye and she stopped again. She swung her legs round so she was sitting on the stern of the boat, fingers digging into one of the mossed old stones of the quayside, her feet wedged against the pontoon so she could push the craft into the wall and get her face close to it. Dundas had found a mooring pin and was holding on to it, steadying the boat. She made a small, satisfied noise and pushed her right hand at the wall. Caffery leaned over as far as he could but all he could see was her head, her shoulders, her face, turned sideways and screwed up in concentration, and her arm disappearing deep into the wall.

'I said, is it bothering you now?'

She nodded. Her eyes had the shortened focus of someone who is working by feel alone. 'Yes. And he said there wasn't . . .' She pushed her arm a little further in. 'He said there wasn't anyone else on the quayside. Didn't he?'

'Far as I know. Maybe it was floating.'

She glanced up at him. Blue eyes that gave him a jolt because he hadn't noticed before that there was something a bit wild about them. Then she dropped them again and all he could see was the top of her dive hood, and her arm burrowing into the wall.

'A hand on its own doesn't float,' she said. 'It just wouldn't. Even if it had started to decompose . . .'

She broke off. She pulled her arm out of the hole and looked at what she held in her fist. A lump of