Blood Rose

by Margie Orford

  ‘There were no injuries. No defensive injuries. You think he wanted to die? Just gave up?’

  ‘It’s possible he felt certain he was going to die and decided just to go with it, without the ritual of begging and pleading and trying to run away,’ Riedwaan suggested. ‘Or he knew his killer and he’d reached the end of a road that only the two of them knew about. The war in Namibia was a dirty one, and most of the dirt was brushed under the carpet.’

  ‘That’s not much help, is it?’ Clare played with the new puzzle pieces Mrs Hofmeyr had given her. ‘I guess we should talk to Darlene Ruyters again. Find out about her ex-husband.’ There were links, but no perfect fits. ‘She’s not very forthcoming, though. If she knows something, I doubt she’ll talk.’

  ‘Let’s go and talk to the investigating officer, if he’s sober enough.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Eberard Februarie. Old connection,’ said Riedwaan, taking the Stellenbosch turn-off. ‘I probably owe him a drink anyway.’

  thirty-four

  The Stellenbosch police station was quiet when Clare and Riedwaan arrived. Clare waited in the car while Riedwaan went inside to extricate the officer who had worked on the Hofmeyr case.

  ‘Where’s Captain Februarie?’ he asked a bored-looking constable in the tea room. Talking to Eberard Februarie always cheered him up. No one had hit rock bottom at quite the same speed as the former narcotics unit captain.

  ‘Out.’ The woman ate another biscuit.

  ‘Out where, Constable?’ said Riedwaan, patiently.

  ‘Are you a cop?’ She looked him up and down.

  ‘I suppose you think I dress this badly for fun?’ said Riedwaan. The constable looked at him blankly. ‘Of course I’m a cop. Captain Faizal.’

  ‘Captain Februarie’s investigating a case.’

  ‘Which case?’

  ‘He didn’t write it on the board.’ It was true. Everybody else had a neatly printed note next to their names on the whiteboard. Everybody except Februarie, that is.

  ‘Can I have his cell number?’

  ‘Sure.’ The constable flipped through a grimy file. It was the wrong file. She found the right file. Found the right page. Found the number. Found a pencil. Found a piece of paper. Wrote it down. When she looked up to give it to Riedwaan, he was gone. She shrugged and went back to her tea.

  Riedwaan and Clare were already three blocks away. The chances of Februarie not being at the Royal Hotel on a Saturday morning were minimal. Riedwaan pushed open the saloon doors, letting Clare precede him. It was dim inside the bar. The smell of last night’s drinking hung on the air. There was only one cigarette going: Februarie’s. He was sitting in the corner, a Castle lager in front of him.

  Riedwaan sat down on the stool next to him. ‘Breakfast?’ he asked.

  ‘Faizal, you fucker. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Come to see you. You’re looking good.’ It was not quite true. But Riedwaan had seen him look much worse at this time of day.

  ‘I’m cutting back, man. This is my first.’

  ‘Why don’t you just stop?’ asked Riedwaan.

  ‘Not good to rush things,’ said Februarie. ‘You can shock your system. That’s not healthy.’

  ‘This is Clare Hart,’ said Riedwaan, his hand on Clare’s elbow.

  ‘Hello,’ said Clare.

  Februarie looked her over, taking in her slim figure, the determined set to her jaw. ‘The head-case doctor. I’ve heard about you,’ he grunted. ‘I didn’t know they only let you out under guard these days, Faizal.’

  ‘As charming as ever,’ Riedwaan retorted. He ordered a Coke for himself and a soda for Clare and waited for the barman to leave. ‘The constable said you were working on a case.’

  ‘Of course I’m working on a case. I’m always working on a case. Someone’s bicycle will be stolen any minute, then I’ll have another case. You?’

  ‘No, I’m working too.’

  ‘You’re lucky they left you in town, man. This exile story is terrible. It’ll kill you quicker than cigarettes.’

  Riedwaan took the hint and offered him one. Februarie took two.

  ‘You want something, Faizal? Or is this just a social call?’

  ‘We wanted to ask you about a case.’

  ‘So, ask.’ Februarie inhaled deeply, then coughed.

  ‘You sound like you’re going to die, Februarie.’

  ‘I told you, it’s being out here in the countryside. It’s unhealthy.’

  ‘Tell us about that shooting in McGregor,’ said Clare.

  ‘The army major? Hofmeyr?’ Februarie asked. He shifted his eyes from Riedwaan to Clare. Sharp. Calculating. In spite of the drink. ‘Why you asking?’

  ‘I’m on a case in Namibia. Looks like a serial killer,’ said Clare. ‘But the bullet found in the head of one of the boys threw up a match with Hofmeyr.’

  ‘Shorty de Lange tell you that?’ Februarie guessed.

  ‘He did,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘All I know is they pulled that case from me quicker than a virgin crosses her legs.’ Februarie drained his glass.

  ‘You think it was a gang hit?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Nah,’ said Februarie. ‘Andrew,’ he called the barman over. ‘Pour me another beer; you’re not pretty enough to be useful just standing around.’ He turned to Riedwaan again. ‘I thought it was something else. They tortured him first. It looked professional to me, not the usual mess a tik-head leaves. Whoever did it wanted something specific.’

  ‘Have you got any idea what?’ asked Riedwaan.

  Februarie shrugged. ‘He was in the army. Old regime. Special ops. He probably knew stuff. They all did, those fuckers. The list of people who want them dead is longer than the list that wants them alive.’

  ‘What did he know?’

  ‘I’m speculating. The case was pulled, I told you. Some desk jockey said they were shifting it higher. Giving it priority.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, Faizal. You know what happens when that happens. The case dies.’

  Februarie drank his beer. Riedwaan drank his Coke. Clare watched them.

  ‘There was one thing,’ Februarie said at last.

  ‘I thought there might be,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You follow it up?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ Februarie was affronted. ‘That’s when the case was kicked upstairs and I got stolen-bicycle duty.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Riedwaan put down enough money to cover the drinks. ‘What was it?’

  ‘They were army,’ Februarie continued. ‘The killers.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Clare.

  ‘The way he was tortured. They used to do that in Namibia. To insurgents, if they caught them. To civilians, if they were bored.’

  Riedwaan was quiet.

  ‘So watch your back in Walvis Bay,’ muttered Februarie.

  ‘That’s touching,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You find out anything else?’

  ‘After I got taken off the case?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘Sommer for the cause of justice?’ said Februarie.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Do I look like I have a death wish? My life might look like a fuck-up, but it’s the only one I’ve got.’

  Riedwaan waited. He and Februarie went back a long way and he had learnt to read the man’s silences. The barman went to the other end of the counter to serve a new customer.

  ‘I’ve got an old friend,’ said Februarie. ‘She did a search for me. Nothing on Hofmeyr. Fuck-all in any army record, old or new.’ He looked up at Riedwaan. ‘Funny that, for a decorated major, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Hilarious,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘His unit’s there on the record,’ said Februarie. ‘But no Major Hofmeyr. No fellow officers either, those ones you’ll find in the picture in his study. Erased, all of them.’

  ‘So you gave up?’

  ‘Nearly,’ said Februarie, finishing his beer.

 
‘Then I found a footnote in one of those truth and reconciliation cases that went nowhere. Some secret weapons-testing site up north.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘There was a reference to this covert unit in Walvis Bay. There was a Hofmeyr there. A major. He and a couple of friends were implicated. The whole thing folded, so nothing more was heard about Major Hofmeyr.’

  ‘Until he was shot.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Februarie. ‘Until he was shot.’

  ‘I owe you,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘You want me to check out his friends?’ asked Februarie.

  ‘Depends how many bicycles get stolen.’

  ‘Fuck you too, Faizal.’ Februarie counted the money Riedwaan had left on the bar and ordered another beer.

  The gathering clouds had thickened when Clare and Riedwaan got outside. It was starting to drizzle.

  ‘I’ll be in Walvis Bay in a day or two,’ Riedwaan said. ‘I’ll see what I can find out by then.’

  Clare checked her watch. ‘I hope I’m going to make it to the airport,’ she said.

  ‘You are going to make it,’ said Riedwaan. There had been an accident on the highway. Rubbernecking drivers had slowed the traffic to a crawl. He pulled in to the emergency lane and speeded past, siren blaring.

  ‘I always wondered why you kept that thing,’ said Clare, with a smile.

  ‘You’re going to make it,’ said Riedwaan, taking the plunge, ‘without asking me a single question.’

  ‘I need to think,’ said Clare. ‘It’s not making sense. It could be that the gun used to kill Hofmeyr was sold or stolen. Male victims, there’s a match, I suppose, but Hofmeyr was cut up before he was shot.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about Hofmeyr.’

  ‘I know,’ said Clare, ‘it’s those boys that get me.’

  The rain started to come down in earnest, making it difficult to see through the windscreen.

  ‘I was thinking about us,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘Don’t start again,’ said Clare, holding her hands up. ‘This is your thing, your wife here, all that. Why must I take the responsibility for talking about it?’

  Riedwaan took the airport turn-off, parking outside the international departure drop-in. He turned to face Clare. ‘She never came.’

  Clare glanced at her watch again. She had five minutes before check-in closed. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘I tried to talk to you,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I’ve e-mailed you, but you disappear behind work and theories and business.’ He stopped, startled at this uncharacteristic burst of articulateness. It was a mistake. Clare opened the car door, slipping her bag over shoulder and the thin Hofmeyr file underarm.

  ‘You know this whole debacle could’ve been avoided if you’d just said something in the beginning?’

  ‘I know.’ Riedwaan’s dark eyes flashed with the temper he had been keeping in check. ‘And you wouldn’t give me an inch. I’m trying to fix things, with Shazia, with my daughter.’ Riedwaan got out of the car too. He leant on the roof, his eyes on Clare until she looked away. ‘With you too,’ he said softly.

  ‘Riedwaan, it’s not going to fix, especially not in the five minutes I have before the flight is closed. Just forget it. Let’s just get this case done.’ Clare was through the automatic doors before Riedwaan could say another word. They closed behind her, leaving him with nothing but his own reflection and a couple of porters shaking their heads in sympathy.

  ‘Women,’ said one of them mournfully.

  ‘Women,’ agreed Riedwaan.

  Five o’clock the next morning and Riedwaan was throwing a couple of pairs of jeans, four clean shirts and underwear into the bike’s pannier. He wheeled his bike into the cobbled street. The foghorn wailed as the sea mist stole through the sleeping suburbs fringing the Atlantic. In the distance, the whine of a car or two. Clubbers heading home, Riedwaan’s favourite time of day. He fired the bike’s engine. Two minutes and he was on the elevated freeway above the harbour, where construction cranes, still as herons at the water’s edge, waited for the day’s activity to return.

  Riedwaan accelerated north where the road ribboned into the clear morning. He had hairpinned up the first mountain pass by the time the sun was up, the roar of the bike lifting his mood.

  It was getting hot when he refuelled. Riedwaan checked his map. A hundred or so kilometres to the Namibian border.

  An hour later, he was through the border and driving through the emptiness of southern Namibia. Marooned in the desert, a thousand kilometres northwest, was Walvis Bay.

  thirty-five

  In the cool sanctuary of his laboratory, thirty kilometres north of Walvis Bay, Tertius Myburgh picked up a cloth and wiped down his microscope, though his equipment was immaculate. His prepared solutions waited for him, labelled, ordered. His heart beat faster. It always did before he plunged into the secret world of plants. He set to work on the pathetic bundles Clare Hart had brought. The dead boys’ shoes were covered in pollen. Invisible hieroglyphs that mapped the journeys they had made.

  He prepared his first slide and placed it on the stage, leaning in to the eyepiece and adjusting the lens to bring the grains of pollen into focus. He exhaled. They floated before him, the cellulose grains that carried the fragile male plants to a waiting female, if there was one. More often, they were stranded on un-receptive surfaces. Like a murdered boy’s shoes. Myburgh prepared another slide, then another, and another. He matched the pollen grains against what he already had, checking off the species that flowered in response to the desert’s waterless spring.

  No Sarcocornia. The humble, stubby-fingered plant grew in profusion in the shallow, saline water around the lagoon and in the river mouths along the coast. It occurred for about two kilometres inland. If there was none on the boy’s shoes, then it meant that their Calvary was further inland.

  Plenty of Tamarix pollen. Not surprising, as tamarisks grew in profusion in the Kuiseb. They also grew from Cape Town to Jerusalem. He would need more.

  There were traces of Acanthosicyos horridus, the seasonal !nara plant that crept from the Orange River in the south over the dunes to the Kuiseb. The spiny melons provided food for the Topnaars, the desert people, and their animals, and the inherited stands were as valuable as the secret sources of water in the desert. Myburgh paused to admire their distinctive pollen walls covered with exquisite striations, which, under his microscope, looked as if someone had drawn meditative fingers through sand.

  He found Trianthema hereroensis pollen, a tough plant that occurred from the Kuiseb River for about a hundred and fifty kilometres to the north. The overlap of the plant distribution was bang on the Kuiseb Delta.

  Myburgh was beginning to see the outline of a map for Clare Hart, but he needed more coordinates. One distinctive, triangular pollen pattern eluded him. There were traces of it on all four pairs of shoes. He checked back through Clare’s samples.

  Nothing.

  He picked up Mannheimer and Dreyer’s classic Plants and Pollens of the World and flicked through, finding the matching pattern that would help him place the pollen. Fear dry-tonguing his neck, Myburgh propped a ladder against the bookcase so that he could reach the top shelf, which held the stained, cloth-bound book that he had hidden months earlier and tried to forget. He opened Virginia Meyer’s blue journal. It was still filled with her detailed drawings, her cramped notes on ethno-botany, gleaned from Spyt, the wary old Topnaar man who had shared what he knew about the plants of the Namib, the desert’s secret treasure trove. Myburgh paged through it until he came to the last page of entries. Times, abbreviations, Latin names. He ignored those. Instead, he cracked the book open and swabbed the margin. He wiped what he had collected onto a glass slide. A thin yellow smear appeared down the centre of the pane. He placed this on the microscope’s stage, the eyepiece cold against his skin once more. His hands shook as he adjusted the lens. They appeared with magical precision, the distinctive triangular pollen grains, perfect equilateral tr
iangles.

  Myrtaceae: Eucalyptus. The ghost gum.

  The scientist lifted his head and stared at the surf. He heard again Virginia Meyer’s soft voice, telling him of secrets too dirty, conspiracies too complex, which she had unearthed in the heat-raddled desert. He closed his eyes and pressed his palms against his lids, but he failed to block the memory of a car upturned, its wheels spinning against the blue sky.

  In the back, the boy Oscar sits in wordless terror. In the front, his mother’s life trickles down her face, into her hair, the same colour as the boy’s halo of curls. It runs into her unblinking eyes, over her hands and pools on the floor. Eventually, it seeps into the orange sand at the base of a tall alien tree.

  Myburgh shook off the memory with an effort and returned to his desk to type up his findings, the routine of recording method, results and conclusions soothing him. He printed the document and put it into a large envelope with the journal. He thought for a long time about what his discovery might mean for pretty Dr Hart; then he locked his laboratory and slipped away, taking care not to be seen.

  thirty-six

  Clare parked next to Tamar’s car when she got to the Walvis Bay police station on Monday morning. She was impatient to be busy after the town’s Sunday torpor. The constable at reception greeted her as though she had been gone for weeks. Clare could see a strip of light coming from Tamar Damases’s office. She knocked and went inside.

  ‘How was your Cape Town trip?’ Tamar asked, after offering Clare a cup of tea.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Clare.

  ‘Chinese interesting?’ Tamar gave her a sidelong glance.

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Clare, with a rueful smile. ‘Ballistics tracked that bullet we found in Lazarus Beukes.’

  ‘To the murder in McGregor. Peculiar,’ said Tamar. ‘I spoke to Captain Faizal.’

  ‘Same gun,’ said Clare, ‘doesn’t make it the same killer. Guns change hands so fast and for so little. How were the interviews about Lazarus?’

  ‘No family, so no one to break the news to,’ said Tamar. ‘Should have been a relief that, but it made me feel worse. The other kids told me he was in town on Wednesday, doing his usual trick, selling out-of-date newspapers. The little kids who were with him went back to the dump. They don’t get a meal if they’re late. Lazarus said he’d be along later. He wasn’t, but nobody thought much of that. He’s older, did his own thing anyway.’