Blood Rose

by Margie Orford

  ‘You fucked up in the wrong direction, Februarie. You went after the guys with money to buy enough politicians to make their own parliament.’

  ‘That’s my problem with altruism,’ said Februarie.

  ‘It’s terminal,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You’re born with it. This therapy session is costing me five bucks a minute. I’m sure you can get it cheaper down there. Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Extra-judicial killings,’ Februarie mused. ‘A good concept that – always makes me wonder what a judicial killing is.’

  ‘No philosophy either, Februarie. What else? How is this connected to Hofmeyr’s murder?’ Riedwaan tried not to sound impatient; withholding information was Februarie’s favourite game.

  ‘Ja, well, Hofmeyr had a change of heart. He approached someone to make a full disclosure about what they’d been doing up there in Walvis Bay. Him and his friends.’

  ‘He must’ve stood out like a parade ground corporal in a ballet tutu,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘Funny, you mention Tutu. The only person who looked like he might be happy about it was the Arch. Hofmeyr wanted forgiveness, I suppose. The major was dying of cancer, so I guess he was afraid of that final court date. His offer was shoved from one desk to another, and then he was murdered. So it all went away overnight.’

  ‘Until you started looking,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘I was shafted,’ said Februarie. ‘Apparently my paperwork was bad.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Of course it was. My paperwork’s fucking terrible. But it always was before I got into any of this.’

  ‘Why then?’ asked Riedwaan.

  ‘I found out that he had visitors before he died,’ said Februarie, after a pause.

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘The maid. Who else?’

  ‘She see them?’

  ‘No. Hofmeyr told her not to come for a couple of days. But the woman who worked next door told her anyway. Two men. They argued on the second night. Then they left, and two days later, he was dead. Too many coincidences. The visitors while the wife was away. The convenient gangsters.’

  ‘You think it was the wife?’

  ‘You know what I think of wives,’ said Februarie. Riedwaan knew. The whole force knew. Februarie’s wife left him for her boss. Februarie had refused to take the fact that the boss was solvent, always sober and never violent as mitigating circumstances.

  ‘But no. Not her. It’s the visitors. I’ve been looking for them since I last saw you.’

  ‘And did you find them?’ Riedwaan felt his fingertips tingle in anticipation.

  ‘No. But I did get the names of the two friends Hofmeyr was going to implicate in his disclosure.’

  ‘Where did you get this from?’

  ‘It might be hard for you to swallow, Faizal, but I still have a few chips to call in.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Riedwaan asked. ‘Hofmeyr’s friends?’

  ‘Malan.’

  ‘Malan?’

  ‘Malan.’ Februarie was enjoying Riedwaan’s discomfort.

  ‘Now there’s a helpful name. There must be thousands of them.’

  ‘This one runs a security consulting business out of Good-wood in Cape Town.’

  Riedwaan knew the area well, poor and working class, clinging to respectability despite the backyards filled with cars on bricks. ‘You got a number for him?’

  ‘Jesus, Faizal. You ever heard of a phone book? Phoenix Engineering. Look it up.’

  ‘Give it to me, Februarie. I know you’ve got it.’

  ‘Okay, I’m standing in front of the place right now,’ Februarie laughed.

  ‘I thought you were at the Royal,’ said Riedwaan. ‘That shit music I heard in the background.’

  ‘Don’t insult the Man in Black,’ said Februarie. ‘That was Johnny Cash on my new tape deck.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Tell me what you see.’

  Februarie was parked at the end of a littered cul-de-sac. ‘Spanish burglar bars on the front,’ he said. ‘A pile of mail at the front door. Nothing inside. Empty. Everyone gone.’

  ‘When would you say?’ asked Riedwaan.

  ‘The neighbours round here aren’t that chatty, but one old lady told me no one’s been here for a month.’

  ‘She know the people?’

  ‘No. Keeps her curtains shut. This isn’t the type of neighbour-hood where you pay too much attention to what your neighbours do. All she would say was that a man came here, used it for storage. Then he left and … nothing. I’ve done a company search. Not much, except some import/export permits to Pakistan.’

  ‘And the other one?’ asked Riedwaan.

  ‘The other who?’

  ‘Hofmeyr’s other friend?’

  ‘Oh him … Janus Renko.’

  ‘Russian. That must’ve caused him trouble in the army.’

  ‘From what I heard, he didn’t take any shit. Parents were immigrants.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘No sign of him for ten years. No parents, no siblings. No ex-wives like Malan. No children like Hofmeyr. Could be he changed his name. Maybe he bought another passport, moved elsewhere,’ said Februarie. ‘Could be dead, in which case you’ll be hunting a ghost.’

  ‘Where did your witness in McGregor see them?’ asked Riedwaan, lighting a cigarette and going over to look at Clare’s display.

  ‘She didn’t. All she saw was two extra sets of dirty sheets a couple of days before the major was shot. Made me wonder who Hofmeyr had had to stay.’

  ‘Thanks, Februarie. I’ll buy you a case of beer when I’m back.’

  Riedwaan put down the phone and looked again at the places the boys had been found. A triangulation between Rooibank, the Kuiseb Delta and the ugly cinder-brick town. Pretty much the area where South Africa had camped thousands of miserable, sand-blasted conscripts in their decades-long war in Namibia. Why would any of these men come back? Walvis Bay had been about the worst army posting anyone could get.

  Riedwaan looked closely at the pictures of Kaiser Apollis, Fritz Woestyn, Nicanor Jones and Lazarus Beukes. Why would anyone bother to shoot them? Scrawny little rejects, unlikely to live past their teens anyway.

  He sat down at Clare’s desk and opened her neat folders, looking for her interview transcripts. Details. The devil gave himself away in the detail. Riedwaan opened the first interview and started to read again.

  forty-four

  The plump blonde put down her coffee when Clare pushed open the door of the only travel agency in Walvis Bay.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, almost cracking her heavy makeup with the first smile of the day.

  ‘Morning, Sabina,’ Clare said as she sat down opposite her.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ The girl looked disconcerted.

  Clare pointed to the girl’s name tag.

  ‘Of course,’ said Sabina. ‘How can I help you?’ She pecked at her keyboard with crimson-tipped nails, bringing the computer to life.

  ‘I was wondering if you knew Mara Thomson.’

  ‘Yes.’ The girl’s pretty mouth closed on the single syllable. ‘I booked her ticket home for her. So if you’re looking for her, she’s gone. She would’ve left yesterday.’

  ‘Will you check her booking for me?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Sabina. The printer muttered and whirred. ‘Here you go. Yesterday. Lufthansa. Nine-thirty a.m.’

  ‘Did you issue the ticket?’

  ‘Oh yes. A week ago.’

  ‘How did she pay?’

  ‘Credit card,’ said Sabina. ‘But it wasn’t hers. Someone from England paid. Look here. Mrs Lily Thomson, it says. Battersea. Where’s that?’

  ‘It’s in London,’ said Clare. ‘Can I keep this?’

  ‘Sure. Is there something wrong?’

  ‘She never arrived. Her mother phoned this morning, frantic.’

  ‘Shame!’ Sabina’s hand went straight to her mouth, though her eyes glittered at the prospect
of gossip. ‘Poor lady. I told Mara she was leaving it late.’

  ‘Leaving what late?’

  ‘Telling Juan Carlos she was going home. It’s hard for them when they stay long, these foreigners. I warned her that Juan Carlos would be angry if she didn’t give him enough warning. Her boyfriend. He’s Spanish and a sailor. You know how they like to be the ones who leave, not the other way round.’

  Clare did not know that, but she let it slide.

  ‘You ask my boyfriend.’ Sabina wrote down an address on a slip of paper and handed it to Clare. ‘They had a terrible fight, Mara and Juan Carlos, outside the club where Nicolai works.’

  ‘Which club is that?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Der Blaue Engel. You must’ve been there. Everyone goes.’ Sabina paused. ‘Check at the airport first, but if she didn’t leave, go around and wake Nicolai up. He’ll know what’s what.’

  As Clare left, she heard the girl sharing the news with a friend over the telephone. Mara’s disappearance and Clare’s interest would not stay secret for long.

  The morning plane to Walvis Bay had landed, loaded and taken off again by the time Clare had parked her car and entered the bleak airport terminal.

  ‘Flight’s left,’ the check-in clerk told Clare as she approached the counter. He settled his shades on his nose and zipped up his bag.

  ‘I’m not flying,’ said Clare. ‘I wanted to see if somebody flew yesterday.’

  ‘Can’t help you. The flight lists are confidential.’

  ‘It’s important. I’m investigating a missing person.’ Official idiocy provoked in Clare an overwhelming desire to inflict grievous bodily harm. ‘A girl who was meant to arrive in London and didn’t.’

  ‘Then you must get a warrant and come back.’

  The man stood up, slipped on his jacket and went through the door behind his chair, closing it in Clare’s face.

  Clare suppressed an urge to swear. A customs official drinking tea at the café table gestured to her.

  ‘Dr Hart,’ the official said. ‘Did you miss your flight?’ It was the large woman who had stamped Clare’s passport when she arrived.

  ‘I’m not leaving,’ Clare explained. ‘I was trying to find out if somebody left on the Lufthansa flight yesterday.’

  ‘That plane,’ said the customs official, ‘it was two hours late. It left at eleven-thirty eventually. Everyone was crazy here. Who were you looking for?’

  ‘An English girl. I can’t find her here, and she never arrived in London. The check-in clerk refused to help.’

  ‘I can help you.’ The official looked around. There was nobody in the terminal. ‘Follow me.’

  The woman led Clare through the restricted area to a heavy metal door. She twisted the combination lock, and the safe swung open, revealing an untidy Aladdin’s cave of boxes, full of small square emigration forms.

  ‘There must be thousands of them here,’ said Clare.

  ‘Ja, there are,’ beamed the customs official. ‘If your lady’s here, we’ll find her.’ She picked up a box and cut open the seal. Lying on top was a muddle of forms from the previous day. She gave half of them to Clare. ‘What’s her name?’ she asked.

  ‘Mara Thomson,’ said Clare. ‘Thin, brown skin, lots of wild hair.’

  ‘I didn’t see her,’ said the woman, ferreting through the forms.

  ‘But she could’ve been processed by one of my colleagues.’

  They sat down on the floor and rifled through the forms, deciphering the cramped handwriting of yesterday’s passengers. Most of them had ticked ‘holiday’ under ‘reason for visit’, a few ‘business’.

  Clare read through the last form for the second time, fear returning, as cold as ice, in the pit of her stomach. ‘It’s not here,’ she said. ‘Could she have got on without handing in a form?’

  ‘Not at all,’ the woman bristled. ‘We’re very professional. Maybe she just changed her plans, didn’t tell anyone. Young people are like that.’

  Clare thanked the woman and went back to her car. She stood without getting in for some time, looking at the horizon. A fiery haze was erasing the thin line separating the sand and sky. A gust of east wind blew sand into her eyes. For the first time since she had arrived in Walvis Bay, she felt the implacable heat of the desert.

  forty-five

  ‘What?’ A man’s bleary eye appeared through a crack in the door. The heavy chain did not let the door three inches from the steel frame.

  ‘Police,’ chanced Clare. ‘I have a question for you.’

  A sharp-featured man unchained the lock. Nicolai, with a dirty sarong wrapped around him, was as unattractive a sight as his dingy flat above Der Blaue Engel.

  ‘Come into the kitchen. I need some coffee.’ Clare followed him into a gloomy room. A week’s worth of dishes stood in the sink.

  ‘I know you,’ he said, sitting down at the table. ‘You came in the bar the other night. Gretchen was dancing.’ He smiled, revealing uneven and slightly yellow teeth.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Clare, sitting down.

  ‘So, Miss …’

  ‘Dr Hart,’ said Clare.

  ‘So, Doctor,’ Nicolai drawled, ‘to what do I owe the honour of your presence?’

  ‘I’m looking for Mara Thomson.’

  ‘Why are you asking me?’ The man’s voice rose defensively.

  ‘I wanted to speak to her. I heard she was at Der Blaue Engel the night before last.’

  The sound of running water came from the direction where Clare guessed the bathroom was. It stopped, thickening the silence in the rancid kitchen. ‘Where is she?’ she asked.

  ‘How the fuck would I know?’

  ‘Did you see her last night?’ Clare persisted.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The night before?’

  ‘Yes. What’s the deal? She’s a big girl.’

  ‘Who was she there with?’

  ‘Juan Carlos, her boyfriend. Works on the Alhantra. Spanish. Pretty boy. I thought he went the other way, but then he arrived there with Mara. Not my type, English virgins,’ said Nicolai, ‘so you won’t find her anywhere here.’

  Nicolai leant back, his eyes sliding away from Clare to the doorway. ‘This is more my type,’ he added.

  A Rubenesque woman strolled into the kitchen. She looked Clare over dismissively, poured herself a cup of coffee and strolled out again. Clare wondered if the woman had met Sabina.

  ‘The maid,’ said Nicolai, with a smirk. ‘We were doing the bed.’

  ‘When did Mara leave Der Blaue Engel?’

  ‘Sometime after Gretchen’s show.’ Nicolai sipped his coffee. ‘Must’ve been about two. She and Juan Carlos had a fight. Why don’t you ask him where she is?’

  Clare ignored his question. ‘What did they argue about?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Nicolai said glibly. ‘I went outside and saw them in the parking lot. They’d both been drinking. She was crying. He looked angry. Same old, same old.’

  ‘Did they come back inside?’

  ‘Juan Carlos came back later. I didn’t see her again. He was upset and said that she’d walked home. Later he left with Ragnar Johansson. You know him, I think?’ Clare nodded. ‘Ask him. But the last time I checked there wasn’t a law that the barman has to know what his customers do in their spare time.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ said Clare, standing up. ‘But there’ll be consequences if you’re withholding information.’

  Nicolai stood too. ‘If what I’ve heard is correct, Dr Hart, you’ve been paid by me and my fellow taxpayers to catch the motherfucker who’s been cleaning up Walvis Bay.’ Again, the suggestive smirk. It made his ratty features even less attractive. ‘She looked very like those boys of hers, Mara did. Let’s hope for her sake there hasn’t been a mix-up.’ Nicolai moved even closer to Clare. The implication of what he said, his breath rank in her face, made her shiver. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some housework to finish.’

  Clare needed no further encouragement. She brea
thed a sigh of relief as she went down the stairs from Nicolai’s apartment. When she got to her car, she pulled out her phone and dialled Tamar’s number; she was going to need help getting to Juan Carlos.

  ‘Tamar.’ Clare was very happy to hear her voice. ‘Mara never arrived home.’

  ‘I got your message,’ said Tamar, concerned.

  ‘I’ve checked at the airport. She didn’t take her flight, but all her stuff’s gone from George Meyer’s house.’

  ‘You need to go out to the Alhantra to talk to Juan Carlos?’ Tamar guessed.

  ‘As soon as possible,’ said Clare.

  ‘I’ll organise you a motorboat. Give me a few minutes.’

  ‘Thanks. Any news about Spyt?’

  ‘I’m not holding my breath,’ said Tamar. ‘Spyt knows this desert too well. If he is found it’ll be because he wants to be caught. Van Wyk disappeared out that way early. The evidence that the boys could’ve been there is all Goagab needs to get his lynch mob going. At least it gives me a bit of breathing space.’

  ‘Did you look at that website I sent you?’ Clare had almost forgotten to ask.

  ‘I did. I’m working out what to do. I’m not sure if he’s done anything illegal. The site claims all the girls are over eighteen. If they are, my hands are tied.’ There was a beat of silence. ‘I’m also putting out fires here,’ Tamar added.

  ‘What?’ asked Clare. ‘Riedwaan?’

  ‘He and Goagab haven’t exactly hit it off,’ said Tamar. ‘I had Goagab in my office, raging that the reason we invited you here was to look for a killer, not for young Englishwomen who stir up trouble.’

  ‘I need to know if she was more than just their soccer coach,’ said Clare. ‘We need to find her.’

  The skipper and speedboat were ready, the engine idling, when Clare got to the harbour. Five minutes later, the nose of the boat was chopping through the swell, to where the Alhantra and other ships were anchored, beyond the bay, where they could avoid harbour fees.

  Clare plunged her hands into the front pocket of her jacket, her fingers wrapping around the envelope of Mara’s photographs. More precious than a passport, which could be replaced by enduring the supercilious smile of a British embassy official. She opened the envelope, sheltering it from the wind with her body, to look at Mara’s well-thumbed photos, the dainty drawings Oscar had done for her. The surreal whimsy of the drawing of a tree, ghostly against the endless dunes, hinted at the child’s strange inner world. It was a haunting image. Why had Mara left them?