Blood Rose

by Margie Orford

  George Meyer and Oscar were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, Oscar staring down at the rheumy eye of a fried egg. He looked up at Clare, his face lighting up. George Meyer paled.

  ‘Dr Hart, please come in,’ he said. ‘How can we help?’

  ‘I’m looking for Mara,’ Clare said as she walked inside.

  ‘She left.’ Gretchen tossed her cigarette into the remains of her coffee.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday, must’ve been,’ said Meyer. ‘The Lufthansa flight.’

  ‘You didn’t see her?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I saw her on Sunday evening. She had supper with me and Oscar and then she went out with her Spanish friend.’

  ‘How was she going to go to the airport?’

  ‘I offered her a lift, but she said she was sorted,’ said Gretchen. ‘Go and look; her room’s empty. She took all her stuff.’

  ‘What time did she leave?’ Clare asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Gretchen’s mouth twisted, thin as wire, around a fresh cigarette. ‘I work late. I must’ve been asleep.’

  Oscar coughed, his delicate ribcage heaving under his shirt. ‘Do you want to show me Mara’s room?’ Clare asked. ‘Do you mind?’ She turned to George Meyer.

  He shook his head.

  Oscar slipped his hand into hers and led her down the passage to Mara’s room.

  Stripped bare of Mara’s belongings, the room was smaller than Clare remembered. The overhead light had been left burning, the bulb feeble in the daylight. A pile of soiled bed linen was bundled on the floor. On the bedside table were a couple of abandoned paperbacks and an old People magazine. Clare sat down on the bed. The little boy sat next to her. The mattress sagged, leaning the child’s warm body against her.

  ‘Where is she, Oscar?’

  Oscar’s hand in hers was clammy, as he tugged her off the bed and led her to the other side of the room. There he lifted up a loose square of carpet to reveal a shallow depression in the concrete.

  ‘What is this?’

  Oscar lifted out a cheerful yellow and red Kodak envelope, taking out some folded drawings, childish representations of Walvis Bay, the desert, and trees against orange sand.

  ‘Did you do these?’

  Oscar nodded again, pointing to where he had written his name. An O bisected with an M inside a heart.

  ‘They’re good.’

  Clare took out the photographs. They were mostly of Mara. With her mother in London, looking triumphant and nervous at Heathrow. Standing against a Tropic of Capricorn road sign, her arms spread, bisecting the featureless plain behind her. Surrounded by grinning children at a school. Camping in the Namib. Her soccer team holding a cup, looking like the cats that had the cream.

  Oscar was growing agitated, tugging at Clare’s arm. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  He pointed at the pictures again.

  ‘Are you upset that she left the drawing you gave her?’

  Oscar inclined his head. His expression was unreadable.

  ‘Was she in a hurry to—?’

  Oscar was shaking his head before she was halfway through her sentence.

  ‘You don’t think she would’ve left a present behind?’

  Oscar nodded, this time certain. He turned to face the window that overlooked the concrete yard of the house and lifted his index finger, seeming to point to the sky. Clare frowned, struggling to see through the grime and dew misting up the glass. Oscar touched the pane. He wasn’t pointing; he was drawing, tracing a familiar shape in the condensation on the window: the scored-through heart on Clare’s bedroom window which had so startled her.

  ‘That was you,’ she said, ‘watching me.’

  Oscar’s nod was almost imperceptible.

  ‘You were checking on me. Did you watch Mara, too?’

  The child nodded, tears welling in his eyes. Clare’s heart went out to the fragile boy. The little Clare knew of Mara convinced her that she would not have rejected the child’s shy gesture of love.

  ‘And Mara wouldn’t leave a present behind, because she loved you,’ she guessed.

  Oscar nodded again.

  ‘What happened to her, Oscar?’

  He shook his head violently and then stopped, his eyes fixed behind Clare’s shoulder. She turned to see Gretchen leaning against the door frame. Clare wondered how long she’d been there.

  ‘Silly boy,’ Gretchen laughed, low in her throat. ‘Why would she keep your stupid pictures?’

  ‘When did you see her last?’ Clare asked Gretchen.

  ‘Sunday night,’ said Gretchen, giving it some thought. ‘She was at the bar of Der Blaue Engel. I was working.’

  ‘Who was she with?’

  ‘Juan Carlos.’ Gretchen was quick to answer. ‘Her boyfriend. She loved him, Oscar, not you.’

  ‘Do you know what time she left?’ asked Clare. She felt Oscar shake.

  ‘I did my show,’ said Gretchen. ‘I left straight after. Maybe two?

  When I got home, everything was dark. I watched TV for a while, then I went to bed. She would’ve left while I was still asleep. Her flight was nine-thirty. So check-in time seven-thirty for international.’

  ‘You didn’t hear a taxi come? A car?’ Clare put her hand on Oscar’s shoulder.

  ‘No,’ Gretchen said blandly. ‘I sleep deeply. Is there anything else we can help you with, Dr Hart?’

  ‘No,’ said Clare. ‘Not now.’

  Gretchen lingered in the doorway until Clare stood up to leave, then she turned and ascended the stairs, her blue gown sweeping over the steps. Oscar tucked the envelope into Clare’s jacket pocket as they walked back to the kitchen. He fiddled with his fishing bag, humming to himself to fill the space around him, and then he took his rod from behind the kitchen door, averting his eyes from Mara’s empty room. The sound of running water came from the bathroom upstairs.

  ‘You’ll excuse us, Dr Hart?’ said Meyer. ‘I have to get to work.’

  George Meyer picked up his keys and walked Clare to the front gate. ‘Be a good boy, Oscar,’ he said, as the boy wheeled his bike around to the front.

  ‘Call me if you hear anything about Mara.’ Clare said it to George, but her hand was resting on Oscar’s cheek. She felt him nod.

  forty-two

  Clare cut back alongside the rubbish-snagged razor wire that sequestered the harbour from the town. She called Tamar, but her phone went straight to voicemail, so she left a message with the news about Mara. She turned in at the police station. At seven in the morning, the parking lot was empty except for Van Wyk’s white 4x4.

  She pushed open the office door, her running shoe protesting against the linoleum floor. Van Wyk was engrossed in whatever was on his computer screen, his hand on the mouse. One click and the image shut down. So did his expression.

  ‘I’m surprised to see you here, Dr Hart.’ The hurried crackle told Clare that he had hit sleep mode. ‘After yesterday. But if you’re looking for Captain Damases, you’re a bit early.’

  ‘I’m always early,’ said Clare, wondering what had piqued Van Wyk’s interest in office work. ‘But this morning I also had a call. So I thought I’d come and see you about it.’

  ‘The media?’ Van Wyk said ‘For another interview with our … expert from South Africa? I’d say your case is dead in the water. It’s just a matter of time before we find that old desert beggar.’ He leant back in his chair, arms behind his head, legs splayed, the denim tight across his thighs. The door clicked shut behind Clare, making her jump.

  ‘It was Mara’s mother,’ she said. ‘Mrs Thomson.’

  A pause, a heartbeat long. ‘What must I say to the mother? That her daughter got an itch for a sailor?’

  ‘Has it crossed your mind that something might have happened to her?’ said Clare.

  Van Wyk spread out his hands and examined his fingernails. ‘If she’s dead, her body’ll pitch up sometime, and we’ll send her home in a box. If she’s alive, she’ll run out of
money and go home anyway. All the same in the end.’

  ‘To you maybe. Not to the desperate woman I had on the phone.’

  Van Wyk uncoiled himself from his chair, his pupils pin-pricks. ‘Mara was nothing but trouble. She lodged a complaint against me after we picked up one of those street kids of hers stealing in the harbour. She got me shunted into this pointless fucking unit. And now it’s my job to look after a stupid little foreign slut who can’t keep her knees together?’

  ‘She’s missing, Sergeant,’ said Clare.

  Van Wyk was close to her now. Clare kept her eyes on his.

  ‘You don’t belong here, Dr Hart.’ His fingers closed around her wrists. The bones shifted when he twisted. ‘Just like Mara didn’t, so you stay away from things that don’t belong to you.’

  ‘Don’t you ever threaten me,’ said Clare, bringing her right knee up, fast and accurate.

  Van Wyk let her go, his eyes glazing with pain as the office door flung open.

  ‘Morning, Clare.’ It was Karamata, cheerful and crisply dressed for the new day. ‘Morning, Van Wyk. You’re here—’ He looked from Clare to Van Wyk. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Van Wyk managed to say. ‘I was working most of the night. Dr Hart and I were just talking about solving cases, weren’t we?’ He didn’t give Clare a chance to reply and walked down the passage, his tall, thin body cutting through a sudden flood of early-morning arrivals.

  Clare flexed her wrists. She made herself breathe deeply, slowing her heart rate and ordering her jumbled thoughts. ‘He’s like a hand grenade without a pin,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t worry about him too much,’ said Karamata. ‘He’s always touchy first thing in the morning.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Clare, with feeling. ‘I was worrying about Mara Thomson. Her mother called to say she never arrived home.’

  Karamata stirred sugar into his tea and shook his head. ‘If we followed up every report like this, we’d never do anything else. She’ll call her mother when her money runs out.’ His cellphone rang. He nodded at Clare and went into the corridor, firing a rapid volley of Herero into the receiver.

  Clare sat down at Van Wyk’s desk to get Mara’s number from the case dockets on the shared server. She found it quickly and dialled. Mara wasn’t answering. Unease, long since upgraded to anxiety, turned into fear.

  Clare massaged her wrists, working out what to do, watching the screensaver on Van Wyk’s computer. Her curiosity was piqued at his unprecedented diligence. She didn’t imagine he’d been working on an expense report on the hunt for Spyt. She reached for the mouse. There were a couple of cases in the documents folder, but when Clare opened them, they were empty. She called up the mail programme minimised on the bar at the bottom of the screen. Viagra spam, a couple of e-mail memos from police headquarters in Windhoek. Routine stuff from Tamar. The sent box was sparse too. Nothing in the delete box either. She checked the file history. Nothing there. Clare sat back in the chair for a second. There was one last thing for her to try. She went to the recent items in the menu. Google. She clicked on the search history. One website only. Van Wyk had spent some time on it.

  The site was dark, almost black. Explicit content warnings competed with the pop-ups of beckoning girls inviting viewers to ‘cum see my first time’. So this is what he does in his spare time, Clare thought. Her mouth dry, she clicked on the entrance portal. The names and images of twenty half-naked women appeared. Amateur shots in suburban homes, classrooms, offices. Clare scrolled down the web page. The photos had been posted from all over the world, but they had two things in common: the youthfulness of the girls and the subtle brutality of their submission. In offices, classrooms and toy shops, around family dinner tables and in everyday places, were images of girls doing everyday things. One click transformed the image, and the girl was stripped, splayed and penetrated.

  Clare scrolled through the images, but there was nothing to identify the anonymous postings. She was about to log out when the name of a video link caught her eye: Namib Nature Girls. Clare opened the first video. It was grainy, downloaded from a handheld camera, but it made her stomach turn. It was Van Wyk all right. He was standing in his uniform, his cap jaunty, his belt unbuckled, poised behind a naked, spread-eagled body. It was impossible to identify the recipient of Van Wyk’s attentions. Then the film cut to a wide shot.

  Clare froze. The ghost-smell of a putrefying cat caught at her throat. The altar, the ring of stones, the amphitheatre, the encircling trees. She looked closer at the body on the altar. It was a girl, her eyes glazed, limbs limp, a blank smile on her face. Her clothes in a pile on the floor. She looked drugged. LaToyah or Minki. The names scrawled on the cave. And Chesney, the other name. It must have been him holding the camera. There were other videos too. She flicked through the site, looking for Mara, but there was no sign of her. There were no boys either. The videos were strictly heterosexual. There were a couple of Angolan girls who Clare had noticed hanging around the entrance of the docks, so young that the breasts had barely budded on their skinny chests. She wondered how much these girls, paying in kind in the revolting little films, paid him in cash as well. Fury surged through her as she e-mailed the link to Tamar and hurried out of the office.

  Riedwaan was pacing in front of the cottage when Clare got back. ‘Where were you?’ He flicked his cigarette away and followed her in. ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Unfamiliar territory.’ Riedwaan’s desire for an argument had ebbed as soon as he had Clare safe in front of him again. ‘It puts me on edge.’

  ‘I went past the station,’ said Clare, making coffee.

  ‘So early?’

  ‘I got a call from Mara Thomson’s mother,’ Clare said. ‘From London. Mara was meant to arrive there yesterday, but she never got off the plane.’ Riedwaan looked blank. ‘Mara volunteered at the school, teaching the homeless kids soccer,’ she explained.

  ‘So what’s bothering you?’ he asked.

  ‘She knew those boys better than most people in this town,’ said Clare, the kernel of anxiety unfurling from the pit of her stomach. She pushed the coffee away. The caffeine would only make her feel worse. ‘She looked like them, too.’

  ‘Did you go past her place?’

  ‘Yes, and all her stuff’s gone.’

  ‘Boyfriend?’ Riedwaan knew more about missing girls than he cared to.

  ‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘A sailor. Nice looking. I’ve met him.’

  ‘If she’s young and she has a boyfriend, that can mean two things,’ said Riedwaan. ‘She’s safe and fucking him silly and her mother will be furious. Or she’s dead. Either way, the boyfriend’s your first port of call.’

  ‘I’m going to see if she missed her flight first,’ said Clare.

  ‘Fine. I’ll catch you later.’ Riedwaan stopped in the doorway, silhouetted by the sun. ‘Clare,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ She turned from the sink where she had been rinsing her cup.

  ‘You’ll call me if you need me?’

  ‘Of course, I’ll call you.’

  Clare locked the door behind Riedwaan, walked to the bathroom and turned on the shower tap. Her wrists hurt. They would look like Darlene’s by tomorrow. It was only when was in the shower, hot water needling down her back, that she realised that she hadn’t told Riedwaan about Van Wyk. She pulled on her clothes, wishing that she had.

  forty-three

  Riedwaan’s cellphone beeped as he parked his bike outside the police station. Call me, read the text. He dialled, smiling.

  ‘Februarie, you cheap bastard.’ Riedwaan could hear maudlin country music playing in the background.

  ‘You still interested in that murder in McGregor?’ Februarie grunted.

  ‘You had an outbreak of altruism or what?’ Riedwaan closed the door to the office. Neither Karamata nor Van Wyk was in. Tamar’s door was closed.

  ‘You wouldn’t kno
w altruism if it gave you a blow job,’ said Februarie.

  ‘What then?’ said Riedwaan. ‘You think I’m phoning you back because I like the sound of your voice? Just like I came to see you because of your pretty face.’

  ‘As charming as ever, Faizal. No wonder you’re such a onehit wonder with women.’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Some more background on your Major Hofmeyr. Seems he started in Pretoria with some obscure unit doing research. He was from the wrong side of the tracks with no links in the Afrikaner establishment. But he was a bright boy and he did well. Soon he had a beautiful wife from one of the oldest Cape families, nice house, fancy car, and trips overseas. Then he was transferred to another unit and sent to some hellhole in the Kalahari where–’

  ‘Vastrap,’ Riedwaan interrupted. ‘His wife’s already told us. She was less clear about what he did there.’

  ‘That’s the odd thing,’ said Februarie. ‘It looks like it was a promotion. More trips overseas. More money. He didn’t do the party circuit like some of the others, but he had what he wanted in terms of research and travel. I can’t find much, but it looks like it was weapons development and testing.’

  ‘What kind of weapons?’

  ‘Possibly nuclear. It looks like it was part of Operation Total Onslaught, PW Botha’s baby. Born in 1972, baptised with the Soweto riots in 1976. The best minds; the best facilities; unlimited funding. It makes sense that it would be nuclear.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He was sent to Namibia in the eighties, where you could do what you liked, pretty much. Play God, and no one would ever know. And if they found out, what would they do about it?’

  ‘Why was he shunted sideways?’

  ‘Can’t say if he was really. It was all classified. And shredded in the early nineties before Mandela could say amandla. De Klerk sold them down the river by decommissioning unilaterally in 1990.’

  ‘What else have you got?’

  ‘Well, I had another look at that TRC stuff. Like I said, Hofmeyr’s name came up in a few of the hearings. The usual things: torture, a few extra-judicial killings, assaults. Him and two others, all from the same unit in Namibia, but it didn’t look like he was going to apply for amnesty. And because nobody said anything, it just went away.’ Februarie paused. ‘Never happened for me,’ he added.