Ritual by Mo Hayder Read Free Book Online

next to a row of garages and they get into a beat-up old Peugeot where Skinny gives him a hit of gear so good it makes him want to cry.

'Let me put this on?' Skinny asks, after a while, when he can see the H is working on Mossy. He holds up an eye mask, the sort you see them wearing in ads for long-haul airlines. 'I'm going to take you somewhere – take you to meet someone who can help you. But him want you to wear this thing. Him not want you see where him live. What do you want? Do you want to wear it or not?'

Mossy takes it from Skinny and dangles it from his finger, smiling at it. One thing everyone always says about Mossy is that he's not afraid to take a chance. 'Someone's going to "help" me?'

'Yes. What you want? Money? Or more H? Plenty good H, eh?'

Mossy has this picture suddenly, of being driven off to a wasteland and having a bullet in the back of his head. Then he thinks about money, and the suicidal part of him thinks, What the fuck? He snaps the mask round his head and lies back in the seat. 'Go on, then,' he says, still smiling. 'Start the show.'

There's a few moments' silence, and he wonders whether to take the mask off, then the car shifts and the door opens and slams and the other door opens and he realizes Skinny has got out of the front and into the back with him. 'Hey? What're you doing?' But he feels Skinny's hands on his face, he can feel the calloused fingertips like they're made out of hemp rope, and the fingers smoothing the mask down, holding it tight. He doesn't reach up to stop Skinny. He just waits in the silence, and there they sit until he hears footsteps and someone else gets into the car. The chassis shifts and groans and someone's adjusting the front seat, but no one speaks. Then the car engine fires and Mossy licks his lips. The adventure is about to start.

'Bring it on,' he goes, laughing. 'Bring it on.'

 

It's like being in one of those gangsterland New York movies, the sort Ray Liotta'd be in, and Mossy wonders seriously once or twice if his number's up. Even with the smack his head is keen enough to feel out the little details. The scent of aftershave – that comes from the driver, not the little black guy who sits next to him holding the mask in place, and smells of something different, something bitter, like roots or soil.

They bump along and he can hear other cars, buses, motorbikes passing them in both directions. He can hear the indicator clicking, but still no one speaks. He's lost track of where they're going and when they pull up and pitch him gently out on to cold ground his heart speeds up. This is it? The end?

But it isn't. There's a bit of walking and a voice from somewhere: a bloke, but he can't really hear what he says because it's not a local accent. Then Mossy hears a key in a door and he's led into a building – he can feel the change of temperature. It's warm in here with carpet underfoot and it smells worse than the car. It smells like the old crackhouse that started up last year on the estate, a bastard of a place it was, with people in there half dead – once someone completely dead and in a weird shape, bent over a table with his drawers down and everyone whispered how he was being fucked when his heart suddenly decided to stop, and everyone bet there was some frightened old John somewhere out in the city waiting for the filth to knock on the door. Somewhere a TV's playing. Mossy's guided round furniture, and then there's a long corridor, and Skinny's still guiding him, with the driver walking in front. There's the sound of a door being opened, a curtain being pulled back and keys, heavy and metal like a gaoler's keys, and a rusty squeak of a gate opening. But this time Mossy balks.

He pulls back, suddenly unsure. 'Nah. Don't like this.'

'It's OK, son,' goes a voice he hasn't heard before. The driver? 'D'you want us to take you back?'

Already Mossy can feel that the hit's got to its best. There's that faint sinking of something in the back of his