Blood Rose (25 page)

The lone redhead caught Clare’s eye. Oscar. He had given himself wild hair out of orange twine. When she turned to look for the original, his green eyes were riveted to her. She smiled at him. He looked down at once, a startling blush creeping up from under his collar.

Clare looked at his portrait again. The images were skeletal, arresting, executed in the colours and form of the rock paintings found in the desert. Oscar’s drawings told a story that the other children, who could speak and shout and laugh, did not need to. Clare looked at his picture of a woman with a mass of hair twisted out of fraying yellow wool. The next picture had the same feeling of bell-jarred silence. A man and boy sat side by side; in a second chair, a woman, taut as a wire, watching television. Another drawing with the woman absent, and Oscar plastered to the man’s side, his limbs uncurled as if they had been released from invisible ropes. Ordinary scenes made
extraordinary because of the sense of menace that pervaded them.

Clare felt Oscar’s presence next to her, as she had on the couple of occasions when he had fallen in step beside her on the boulevard. She looked down, startled to see the contusion on the cheekbone, just below his left eye, and a small, livid tear in the tender skin. Clare put her hand on Oscar’s thin shoulder; feeling across his back where there would be more bruises. The child winced.

‘What happened?’ asked Clare, concerned. Oscar avoided her gaze as he tumbled his hands over each other.

‘You fell?’ she asked. ‘Off your bike?’

He nodded and pointed to the single photograph on the wall. It was fuzzy, printed on cheap paper.

‘Mara?’ asked Clare, bending closer. The boy nodded.

‘You’ll miss her now she’s gone.’ In the photograph Mara Thomson stood exultant on top of a dune, arms and face lifted towards the sun, eyes closed in delight. The shadow of the photographer had splashed against her feet, giving the picture an odd perspective.

Oscar was seated next to her shadowed feet, swathed in a hat and long sleeves.

‘You know the desert though, don’t you? That’s the place you went with your mother, isn’t it?’

Oscar nodded, shoulders bowed like an old man.

‘Clare?’ Tamar and Darlene Ruyters were looking at her. So were the children.

‘Sorry,’ said Clare. ‘I was lost there for a minute.’

Oscar looked down, the thick fringe of auburn eyelashes hiding any expression.

‘Mrs Ruyters says the children will want to ask you some questions too,’ said Tamar. ‘They’re always curious about foreigners.’

‘Being South African is hardly foreign,’ said Clare.

Darlene raised an eyebrow. ‘They think Swakopmund is a foreign country and it’s only thirty kilometres away.’

‘Let them ask, then,’ said Clare, smiling.

‘Thank you, it’ll help them be less …’

‘Afraid?’ offered Clare.

‘I was going to say fascinated.’

Tamar explained that the dead boy had been taken to the morgue. And that they were safe. The half-moon of children sitting at her feet stared at her with wide, solemn eyes. Only the bravest had questions: where would he be buried? Could they go to his funeral? Tamar fielded them with practised empathy. Soon the children had sidled closer and she got them talking about other things.

‘This has been a big help,’ Darlene said when she had winkled Tamar away from the children and ushered them out of the classroom. ‘Thank you.’

‘That little redhead,’ Clare said.

‘Oscar?’ said Darlene.

‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘His face is bruised.’

‘Oh, Tamar can tell you, we have such bad cases …’ Darlene’s voice trailed off. She looked at Tamar for support.

‘What do you think?’ Clare was thinking that somebody’s ring held a trace of the child’s blood in its setting.

‘I don’t know what to think,’ said Darlene. ‘The children come to school with bruises, but you want to see some of the mothers on a Monday. They bear the brunt of it.’ She closed the classroom door behind them. The corridor was cold and quiet after the buzz of the children.

‘I met an old friend of yours,’ said Clare. ‘In McGregor.’ Her voice was loud in the empty corridor.

‘Oh?’ Wary.

‘Mrs Hofmeyr,’ said Clare, watching Darlene closely. ‘She told me why you stopped dancing.’

‘I’ve got to get back to my class.’ Darlene cut her short.

‘It was an army boot on your ankle.’

‘So what if it was?’ hissed Darlene. ‘Since when is it a crime to be beaten?’ She put out her hand to open the door. The amethyst bracelet of bruises Clare had seen a few days earlier gleamed citron.

‘You’ve got my number.’ Clare placed her index finger on Darlene’s wrist.

‘I don’t need it.’ Darlene had her mask-like smile back in place when she stepped back into the classroom. Her voice calling her giggling charges back to order followed Tamar and Clare down the passage.

It took forever for the lights of Walvis Bay to roll up towards Riedwaan. He had slept over in Solitaire, a half-abandoned hamlet in the southern Namib Desert. The miles are longer on roads where there is nothing to measure distance. The last stretch through the Namib had been bone-shattering. No other vehicles except a donkey cart. Not even telephone poles. He tried phoning Clare, but all he got was an automated voice telling him she was out of range and that he should try later.

‘This whole country is out of range.’ He said it aloud, just to hear a human voice. Then he dialled Tamar Damases’s number.

‘Yes?’

‘Sorry to call so late,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d be in before sunset.’

Tamar laughed. ‘Did you believe the map? They make things look much closer than they are. You must be finished.’

‘I am,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I need a shower and some sleep before I do anything.’

‘You’re booked into a guesthouse on the lagoon. It’s called Burning Shore Lodge. Don’t be deceived by the fancy name, but it’s close to the station and to where Clare’s staying.’

Riedwaan jotted down the address. The town was quiet, only the pizza place open. He was hungry but too tired to stop. He hoped there would be something for him to eat where he was headed.

The guesthouse was a facebrick nightmare on the lagoon. It seemed to have been designed to avoid the view. Riedwaan rang
three times before someone buzzed him in. He pushed his bike into the courtyard.

The only light on was at the bar. Inside, the walls were covered with signed snaps of Hollywood celebrities who had washed up on this barren stretch of coast to make B-grade movies, a couple to give birth to A-list children.

An overweight man took down Riedwaan’s details and gave him a key.

‘Show him to his room, Rusty,’ he said to a morose youth hunched over a beer at the counter.

The boy heaved himself off his stool. He was a replica of his father, down to the tatty white vest and the plain cigarette curling smoke between his fingers.

‘This way.’ The boy eyed Riedwaan and thought better of offering to take his bags.

The room was clean and, if one ignored the red and black colour scheme, comfortable.

‘Thanks.’ Riedwaan dumped his bags on the floor. ‘Can I get something to eat?’

‘Nah,’ said the boy. ‘We only do breakfast.’

‘Jesus, man. I’ve ridden from Solitaire with nothing to eat. Can’t you do me a toasted sandwich or something?’

‘Ham?’ said Rusty.

‘With a name like Faizal? You must be joking,’ said Riedwaan.

The boy looked blank.

‘Get me cheese or something.’

‘Come through to the bar. I’ll get it for you. But you explain to my dad.’

‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

Riedwaan opened the curtains. The fog had closed in. He couldn’t make out if he was looking at a parking lot or the lagoon. He closed them again and went to shower. The hot water
dissolved two days of grime and stiff muscles. He pulled on his jeans and a clean shirt and went through to the bar.

His supper was waiting: toasted white bread and cheese, swimming in butter, no sign of salad. Lots of tomato sauce. Just how he liked it.

‘You want a drink to go with that?’ said the old man.

‘Whisky. No ice,’ said Riedwaan.

The man poured him a double. ‘Name’s Boss,’ he said. ‘What you doing up here? A holiday?’

‘Kind of,’ said Riedwaan, his mouth full. ‘This is a good sandwich.’ He washed it down with the whisky. ‘Boss. Is that a nickname?’

‘Short for Basson. My surname.’ He poured himself a shot and shook a cigarette out of the pack lying on the bar. ‘You want one?’

Riedwaan took one and leant forward so his host could light it for him.

‘So where you headed?’ asked Boss.

‘I’m going to be here for a bit. Not sure how long.’

‘Where you from?’

‘Cape Town.’ Food, whisky and a cigarette. Riedwaan felt human again.

‘Oh,’ said Boss. ‘The States.’

It was Riedwaan’s turn to look blank. ‘The States?’

Rusty rolled his eyes back. ‘It’s what they used to call South Africa pre-94, when there were all those little fake countries. Transkei, Ciskei. All those independent states. You remember, the whole apartheid thing.’

‘Oh that,’ Riedwaan said dryly. ‘I remember.’

‘What line of work are you in?’ asked Boss.

‘Investigations,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Insurance?’

‘No.’ Riedwaan pushed his glass forward for another shot.

‘You must be in the police,’ said Rusty, a rare flash of understanding in his eyes. ‘Remember, Pop, Captain Damases made the booking?’

They both eyed Riedwaan. Riedwaan stubbed out his cigarette.

‘You working up here then?’ asked Boss.

‘A bit.’ Riedwaan did not care to elaborate.

‘Those fishing scams?’

‘Not really,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Thanks for supper. I need to sleep.’

‘It’s those kids they keep finding in the desert, I bet,’ said Rusty. Another light-bulb flash. He was going to wear himself out at this rate. ‘I think it’s a sailor. One of those Russians. They’re all faggots. Drinking vodka, living on those ships for so long. What do you say, Pop?’

Boss ignored his son, turning to rinse the glasses in the sink.

‘You must know that lady policeman staying at the cottages down the road,’ Rusty said excitedly.

‘I think I do,’ said Riedwaan, getting up.

‘She’s hot,’ said Rusty. ‘I’ve seen her run past here in the mornings. Nice little tits. I bet I could get her to work up a sweat for me.’

Rusty’s fingers were in Riedwaan’s muscular hand, bent further back than their original specifications should have allowed. Riedwaan’s voice was low, intimate in Rusty’s ear. ‘You go near her and you’ll be combing the desert for your balls.’

The boy rubbed his hand. He decided it was best to say nothing.

Riedwaan finished his whisky. ‘What time is breakfast?’

‘Six-thirty on. You want bacon and eggs?’

‘No bacon. Just the eggs. Thanks.’

Riedwaan went back to his room and checked his cellphone. A missed call. Yasmin, his daughter. Damn, he’d forgotten his biweekly call. He pulled off his boots and lay on the bed, meaning to phone Clare. Instead, he fell at once into that deep, untroubled sleep that is the gift of innocence or physical exhaustion.

Four o’clock and Clare was wide awake, her duvet on the floor, a sheet tangled around her bare legs. Her dreams had been horrible: the dead boys winking at her with their bloody third eyes. The laugh of the hyena echoed through her subconscious, mocking her in a language she could not understand. She got up, opened her stoep doors and stepped onto the balcony. The silence pressed in with the fog. Not a sound, not a car. Roosting seabirds rustled their wings, calling softly, occasionally, as if to reassure themselves that they weren’t alone in the vast salt marshes. The cold, and the pulse of an idea, drove Clare back inside; if she couldn’t sleep, she might as well work.

She dressed quickly, flattening two cups of coffee in quick succession. The sound of her car starting was so loud she was convinced that she had woken the whole town, but nothing stirred. No lights came on.

A sleepy night sergeant waved her through the police station gates. In the special ops room, dim light filtered in from the street, making Clare’s pinned-up victims look like a macabre boy band. She flooded the room with neon and sat down at her desk. Opening her notebook, she drew up columns, one for each boy. The first victim with nothing on his chest. Then 2, 3. The missing number 4, and 5, the last one. Five columns, four bodies. Clare wrote down what she knew about them, what she knew about their deaths. Then she wrote down what she didn’t know.

She made another column for the killer. Nothing to put
there, but a bullet matched to a shooting two thousand kilometres away, and a white vehicle glimpsed in the dark. A predator that slipped through the night, unheard. Utmost secrecy and yet the bodies displayed where it would be impossible to miss them. She looked again at the map of the place where Lazarus had been found. One road in. One road out. Beyond it, tracks of sand unmarked by vehicles; the only tracks left were those of animals. Kaiser Apollis, too. Moved unseen and in silence. How? When she reached for the answer glimmering on the horizon of thought, it slipped away like a mirage on a desert road.

Debit and credit. No matter which way she juggled it, she could not get the books to balance. The truth was hidden below the surface, like the rivers that coursed deep underground. Clare put her head on her arms and closed her eyes to think and promptly fell asleep. Fully clothed, under a flickering neon light, Clare did not dream at all.

It was the smell of fresh coffee that woke her. ‘Not like you to sleep on the job.’ A voice that should have been in her dreams but wasn’t, a gentle hand smoothing the hair from her forehead.

‘Riedwaan.’ Delight in her voice. She looked a mess; she could feel it. Hair all over the place, her cheek red from where it had rested on her sleeve. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I made you coffee. Here.’ Riedwaan pushed a steaming cup across the desk. ‘And I got you a Florentine from the Venus Bakery. Your favourite.’

The honeyed almonds glistened in their nest of chocolate and dried fruit. Clare picked it up. It was too early in the morning to resist. She bit into the tiny biscuit. It was delicious. Useful too, because she couldn’t eat and grin. Which was what she felt like doing, seeing Riedwaan sitting on the edge of her desk.