Blood Rose

by Margie Orford

  In the shade of an acacia thicket stood two creamy white donkeys. The animals shifted, pulling their tethers tight, as Clare approached them. She made a series of quiet, soothing clicks deep in her throat, and the donkeys were still again, motionless except for the occasional twitch of a velvet ear.

  The entrance to the second cave was a dark opening in the cliff, a cool vestibule to the large cavern that opened to the right.

  Clare ran back to the entrance. ‘Riedwaan,’ she yelled, her voice echoing behind her. ‘Tamar, come back.’

  The other two returned, Riedwaan’s look of anxiety disappearing as soon as he saw Clare was unharmed.

  ‘I think this is it,’ said Clare, leading them back.

  It was cool inside the cave, as dark as a crypt. A bat, disturbed by their presence, swooped low as they entered. Clare shivered at the little rush of air it left in its wake.

  Riedwaan flicked on his torch and passed it to Clare. She shone it around the cave, bringing the beam to rest on the cart standing right at the back of the cave. It glinted in the light. The cart had been made from the back of an old bakkie. It had a bench in the front for the driver. Clare went closer and shone her torch over the back. Several empty jerry cans were secured on one side of it. On the other was a narrow space fitted with an old mattress, blotted with dark stains.

  Riedwaan let out a long, low whistle. ‘You are so lucky, Clare. What were the chances?’

  ‘This’ll teach you to be a nature lover,’ she teased.

  ‘We’re going to need luminal to see if that’s blood,’ said Tamar, businesslike.

  ‘You’ve got some here?’ Riedwaan asked, impressed.

  ‘I have. And a UV light.’

  ‘Sharp,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Field forensics.’

  ‘If you’ve got six months, then send the cart to Windhoek and file an official request to move and test a vehicle,’ said Tamar. ‘This works. If we need more we take it all in and fill in the forms.’

  ‘Where is the stuff?’ asked Riedwaan.

  ‘On the truck. There’s a trunk on the back.’

  Riedwaan slipped out of the cave entrance. Clare switched off the torch while she and Tamar waited, sheltered from the heat of the desert. Safe and cool and restful. It was not a bad place to be alone.

  ‘You’ll need a slow exposure to get the patterning … if there is any.’

  Clare jumped. She hadn’t heard Riedwaan come back. He handed Clare the camera and sprayed the luminal over the back of the cart. Tamar held up her handmade ultraviolet light. For a second, there was nothing, then it glowed purple, a small patch on one end of the mattress.

  ‘We’ll send that through to the lab,’ said Riedwaan. ‘But I know what they’ll take five pages to tell us: something or somebody was on this, something not that long dead. But they didn’t die here.’ He pointed to the contained patterning. ‘It would’ve pooled a little when it was moved for transport. Post-mortem.’ Riedwaan looked around the cool, clean cave. ‘Doesn’t look like they were killed here either.’

  ‘No,’ said Clare. She shone the torch into the recesses of the cave. On the floor were gossamer heaps. Wings, discarded exoskeletons. She arced the beam up towards the roof, the light exposing the huddled, roosting bats.

  Riedwaan ducked instinctively as a dozen or so of the tiny, disturbed creatures took off.

  ‘These must be the bats whose droppings got caught in Kaiser Apollis’s hair.’

  ‘So what was Spyt doing, bringing dead bodies here and then dropping them off in public again?’ Tamar asked the question they were all thinking as they walked back towards Karamata and the vehicle. ‘And how are we going to find him if he doesn’t want to talk to us?’

  ‘Why would Spyt have done this?’ wondered Clare. ‘Knowing that eventually someone would come out here and look for him? What was he trying to say to—?’

  The roar of a vehicle cresting the dune cut Clare off.

  ‘We’ve got company,’ said Karamata as they joined him.

  The doors opened and Van Wyk emerged, followed by Calvin Goagab, incongruous in his city suit.

  Goagab reached them first. ‘Mayor D’Almeida will be pleased to have a suspect after so much investment in this case,’ he said. ‘We should get back to the press conference.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Calvin?’ Tamar’s voice rose with fury.

  ‘Captain Damases,’ Van Wyk interrupted. ‘I tried to call you, but got no reply. So, I called Mr Goagab.’

  ‘You know there’s no cellphone reception out here, Van Wyk.’ Tamar’s voice vibrated with anger. ‘And you were supposed to be checking interviews, not making public announcements.’ She watched him as one would watch an unpredictable dog. ‘What did Van Wyk tell you, Calvin?’

  ‘That our experts have led us to a suspect,’ Goagab replied. ‘We’re very pleased. It’ll allow me to justify the expense.’ He nodded towards Clare and Riedwaan. ‘And it vindicates my policy to get the desert nomads properly settled.’

  ‘He’s not a suspect yet,’ Clare observed.

  ‘Oh, we’ll have him soon enough and then he will be.’ Van Wyk put his hand on Tamar’s shoulder. ‘The mayor is waiting for you to address the press conference, Captain Damases. We’d better head back if we’re to make the news tonight.’

  ‘We’ll discuss this, Van Wyk,’ said Tamar. ‘This insubordination.’

  ‘I did a little check,’ he replied, ‘and I don’t think we’ll be discussing anything in the near future. I see our very progressive leave policy stipulates that pregnant officers go on leave from the seventh month. I looked at your medical records and noticed that your due date is next week.’

  ‘How dare you go through my private records?’ asked Tamar.

  ‘We care, Captain Damases,’ said Goagab, with an oily smile. ‘Our administration’s concern for gender issues means that we can’t allow you to jeopardise your unborn child. We must ask you to return to town immediately.’

  Speechless with rage, Tamar looked from Van Wyk to Goagab.

  ‘Let’s go, Captain,’ Karamata said, his hand on Tamar’s elbow. He walked her back to the vehicle.

  Van Wyk turned to Riedwaan. ‘It’s going to look good, Captain Faizal. An almost-arrest the day you arrive,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’re looking forward to addressing the media. It’s all been set up.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to see what Spyt looks like after a night in the cells with him in charge,’ Clare said under her breath, watching Van Wyk and Goagab swagger back to their vehicle.

  ‘I’m not sure I want to see what we are going to look like after this press conference,’ said Riedwaan.

  They joined Tamar and Karamata at the car and were forced to follow Van Wyk and Goagab out of the Kuiseb, tagging behind in the vehicle’s dusty wake. Van Wyk angled his rear-view mirror so that he could catch Clare’s eye. He grinned. He had won his battle. She’d helped him win. Clare wished she could figure out what the war was.

  forty

  The yacht club bar was still crowded at eight-thirty when Clare arrived. The after-work crowd had gone home, but the professional drinkers had settled in for the night. A fug of smoke had settled over the bar.

  ‘Give the lady a drink,’ ordered a belligerent drunk. ‘She looks like she could do with it.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Clare raised a deflecting hand at the whisky sloshed into a shot glass. She ordered wine and went to sit in one of the booths. Calvin Goagab’s press conference had been worse than she imagined, with Goagab and Van Wyk posturing before the cameras, and Clare expressing doubt in spite of all the evidence.

  ‘I said: give the lady a fucking drink.’ The drunk’s voice rose a threatening notch.

  ‘Tell him, thank you, but no.’ Clare fixed her blue eyes on the barman.

  ‘Frigid bitch,’ muttered the heavy-set man on the other side of the bar. ‘Just a bit of hospitality.’

  ‘She’s not interested.’ A woman’s voice. ‘She’s not going to get interested ei
ther, so why don’t you leave her alone?’ Clare was surprised to see that her defender was Gretchen von Trotha, seated a few seats away from the drunken men.

  ‘Thanks,’ she mouthed, raising her glass in salute.

  ‘You stay out of this, Gretchen,’ said the man.

  Gretchen did not bother to reply, turning her attention instead to the lean man beside her. Clare recognised him from Der Blaue Engel: the man who had pulled Gretchen from the icy Atlantic. It looked as though he was still cashing in on her debt to him. Gretchen certainly looked adoring.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’ Riedwaan slid into the opposite side of the booth, distracting Clare.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘You look cleaner and calmer.’ ‘You need a drink?’ he asked. ‘I need a double after that. More like a lynching than a press conference.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She tapped her full wine glass and scanned the bar. Gretchen had vanished, so had the man she’d been with.

  Riedwaan came back with his whisky and a new pack of cigarettes. ‘I have to eat,’ he said, taking the menus from a plump waitress. ‘I’m starved. Steak and chips for me,’ he said.

  ‘Steak? At the sea? Order the fish.’ There was no arguing with that.

  ‘What do you think about Spyt?’ Clare asked when the waitress had left with their orders.

  Riedwaan buttered some bread and took a bite. ‘I don’t think it was him. But the local politicians want the Topnaars out of the way. This is all a convenient way of getting this land claim business to disappear. But Nampol have to work that out themselves. Let’s just hope they do it before someone else dies.’

  ‘I feel it’ll be my fault if anything happens to Spyt. I don’t like the thought of Van Wyk and his cronies hunting him like a dog.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll catch him that easily.’ Riedwaan said. ‘What’s happened with Tertius Myburgh, by the way?’ he asked, shaking a cigarette from his pack.

  ‘I’m still waiting for his pollen analysis,’ said Clare. ‘I’d love one of those. I need it after this afternoon.’

  ‘Have one.’ Riedwaan lit one for her and placed it between her lips.

  ‘Smoking’s like sex,’ said Clare, inhaling deeply. ‘It seems such a good idea at night. Not so brilliant when you wake up in the morning.’

  ‘You can give that back to me then,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘No, let me smoke it,’ she said. ‘Just so that I can remember what a stupid idea it is.’

  ‘The smoking or the sex?’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ said Clare, tension coiled in her belly. ‘I feel so stupid, that I set myself up. Van Wyk and Goagab had me checkmated at that press conference. All that bullshit about Cain and Abel, nomads being vagrants. Just an excuse to persecute people whose land you want.’ Clare took a deep drag of the cigarette. ‘Yes, it was my idea. Yes, I went out there. Yes, there was evidence that the bodies were in Spyt’s cave at some stage. And me like an idiot, saying he didn’t kill them.’ Clare put out her half-smoked cigarette when the waitress brought their food. ‘While Goagab and his goons are flattening the desert in their 4x4s, there’s a killer sitting eating dinner and planning Number 6.’

  ‘There’s nothing more we can do tonight,’ Riedwaan pointed out.

  ‘What’re we going to be able to do tomorrow?’ snapped Clare. ‘Van Wyk has pushed Tamar into a bureaucratic corner and me and you are supposed to be off the case.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Riedwaan. ‘But let’s leave that for tomorrow.’ He put his hand on hers. ‘Right now the moon is nearly full. I’m here, you’re here, so why don’t we talk about something else?’ ‘Okay,’ said Clare. She took her hand away and fussed with her table mat. ‘Suggest something.’

  ‘Smoking maybe,’ said Riedwaan.

  Clare didn’t laugh.

  ‘Me? You?’

  ‘Me and you?’ Clare toyed with the idea of asking him about Yasmin, or of telling him she was sorry that she hadn’t listened to him earlier, but she couldn’t find a way to start. She gave up and pushed her food around her plate. She looked at Riedwaan, looked away.

  ‘Talking about something other than work take away your appetite?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just that my stomach’s in a knot.’

  ‘Does your having dinner with me mean I’m forgiven?’

  ‘Don’t rush me.’ Clare picked up her wine glass. ‘I’m deciding.’

  ‘I’m useless on parole,’ Riedwaan warned. ‘It brings out the worst in me.’

  ‘You’re not—’

  Clare’s phone rang. She looked at the screen. ‘I’ve got to take this,’ she said. ‘It’s Constance.’

  Riedwaan shook his head at her, irritated, but Clare had already taken the call. He waited for a second, but all her attention was focused on the identical twin murmuring into her ear, drawing her away from him and into a place he could never follow.

  He picked up his cigarettes and went to the bar.

  The barman poured him a sympathetic double whisky.

  forty-one

  The dark was thinning when Clare awoke, smiling, expecting to find herself circled in Riedwaan’s arm. Then she remembered that she had gone to bed alone. She got up and opened the curtains. A sodden west wind was blowing. She pulled on her tracksuit and a waterproof jacket, zipping her phone into her pocket as she left her room. She headed north towards the harbour. Once she was past the Burning Shore Lodge, she found her stride, finally eliminating all thoughts of Riedwaan.

  Sweat bloomed under Clare’s shirt. She slowed as the path narrowed, snaking between the lagoon shore and a new hotel. Discarded building materials and other debris littered the track. She waved at the little red-haired boy sitting huddled on a bench.

  ‘Hello, Oscar,’ she called as she went past. ‘You’re up early.’

  He raised one hand in reply, his face solemn.

  She whipped her phone out of her pocket when it rang.

  ‘Riedwaan?’ He had said he’d call first thing.

  There was nothing but a hollow echo.

  ‘Hello?’

  No answer. The chill played over Clare’s skin. She ducked behind a wall when her phone rang again.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Dr Hart?’ An unfamiliar voice. Faraway. Foreign.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I know it’s early.’

  ‘Who is this?’ asked Clare.

  ‘She didn’t arrive,’ a woman said.

  ‘Who didn’t arrive?’

  ‘Mara.’ There was a break in the woman’s voice. ‘This is Lily Thomson. Mara’s mother.’

  ‘How did you get my number?’ Clare asked.

  ‘I phoned the police station. The man I spoke to, Van Wyk’ – she struggled with the unfamiliar name – ‘said it was too soon to do anything. He gave me your number when I asked for you.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at home again, aren’t I?’ Lily Thomson replied. Clare envisaged the bleak courtyard of the housing estate that Mara had escaped. ‘I went to Heathrow.’

  ‘Yes?’ prompted Clare, unease prickling the nape of her neck.

  ‘She didn’t come. She was meant to be on that flight. That’s all I know and all I can find out, because she’s not answering her phone.’

  ‘Might she have changed her mind?’

  Lily Thomson clutched at Clare’s straw. ‘That’s what I said to myself: she’s changed her mind. I tried her mobile.’ Her voice broke. ‘But she’s not picking up.’

  Clare pictured Lily Thomson in her spring-cleaned flat. The supermarket flowers on the kitchen table. Mara’s single bed made up in crisp white sheets, a chocolate under the pillow, teddies perked.

  ‘Mara told me about you coming there from South Africa,’ Lily Thomson continued. ‘About the investigation. She was so upset about those boys. That’s just how she is, our Mara: always responsible, trying to make the world right, especially after that trip that went all wro
ng.’

  ‘What trip?’ asked Clare. Anxiety tightened her spine. Mara and her soccer team. She had known the murdered boys better than anyone else had.

  ‘She took them camping or something,’ said Mrs Thomson. ‘She felt so guilty about leaving them out there in the desert like that. But I told her it was fine, if it was the only time she could see her boyfriend, that Juan Carlos, then why not? She was so head-over-heels and she knew she didn’t have long with him.’

  Clare thought of the last time she had seen Mara, entwined with Juan Carlos, sharing fish and chips, glowing with whatever he had been doing to her to make her so hungry.

  ‘Did you report her missing?’

  ‘I tried. They said they have this all the time with travellers, with volunteers. They meet a new person, go somewhere else. To Botswana. Maybe Cape Town. That the mothers panic because it’s Africa. Van Wyk said to wait twenty-four hours.’ She stifled a sob. ‘But when do I start counting, Dr Hart? When she didn’t come I thought the worst. I thought …’

  Panic hit Lily Thomson, doubling her over. It was impossible for her to say what she had thought, as if saying the words would conjure up what she feared most.

  ‘Please find her for me, Dr Hart. I’m so far from there. You speak English. You can understand me. You knew her.’

  Lily Thomson caught it. Clare did too, that slip into the past tense.

  Clare set off at a run for George Meyer’s gloomy house where Mara had rented a room. She clung to the hope that she would find her and Juan Carlos asleep in a tangle of sheets and salty limbs. When she got there, the only signs of life were in the kitchen. Clare knocked over Oscar’s fishing rod standing at the back door. She righted it, disentangling it from the roll of washing line as Gretchen, wrapped in her sky-blue robe, opened the door.

  ‘Yes?’ Gretchen jabbed her cigarette into her mouth, still stained with last night’s lipstick. Smoke curled up to the ceiling.