[Jack Caffery 03] • Rituel

Just after lunch on a Tuesday in April, nine feet underwater, police diver

Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand.

The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing enough. Yet more

disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand. Both have been

recently amputated, and the indications are that the victim was still alive

when they were removed.

DI Jack Caffery has been newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit

in Bristol. He and Flea soon establish that the hands belong to a boy who has

recently disappeared.

Their search for him - and for his abductor - leads them into the darkest

recesses of Bristol's underworld, where drug addiction is rife, where street-

kids sell themselves for a hit, and where an ancient evil lurks; an evil that

feeds off the blood - and flesh - of others.