Blood Rose

by Margie Orford

  ‘Mara knew how ill he is?’ Clare asked.

  ‘She phoned a couple of days ago and I had to tell her he was much worse,’ said Sister Rosa. ‘It happens like that, with his condition, but she was distraught. Kept on saying it was her fault.’

  ‘Has Mara brought other boys to you?’

  ‘No,’ said Sister Rosa. ‘Only him, although she used to raise money for us. Ronaldo played in her soccer team and she said something about him being pushed too hard. It must’ve broken his immune system, because he collapsed after a camping trip that Mara had organised for the team. She brought him here afterwards, asking us to keep quiet. Ronaldo was afraid other people would find out. There’s a terrible stigma about this illness.’

  ‘What’s killing him?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Technically, a single-digit CD4 count. He has no immune system and a host of secondary infections. That’s what will stop his heart from beating in the end.’ Sister Rosa stroked the boy’s forehead. ‘But his heart was broken a long time before.’

  ‘Abuse?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Abuse, poverty, Aids. It’s not hard for a child to support himself in a place like Walvis Bay, but the way he had to make a living is a death sentence. It was too late for treatment when we got him, so I suppose you could say he came here to die.’ Sister Rosa turned to Clare. ‘What was it that you wanted to ask him?’

  ‘I wanted to ask him about that camping trip in the desert.’ Clare looked down at the boy, the sheets barely raised over his emaciated body. ‘About where they went and what happened. Seems to me it was the start of something that played out to a very bloody finish.’

  ‘At least these have healed,’ said Sister Rosa, picking up the child’s right hand and smoothing open the palm.

  ‘What was there?’

  ‘Blisters, deep ones. It’s only the scars now. They were infected and then healed so slowly. Poor child, he was in agony.’ She drew Ronaldo’s thin sheet up to his chin and smoothed his pillows.

  ‘Do you know what they were from?’ asked Clare, her pulse quickening.

  ‘I asked him; he said it was from the digging they did, but I couldn’t work out where. Somewhere in the desert. Maybe they had casual work on the water pipeline. He had some money when Mara brought him.’ The nun opened the Bible lying next to the boy’s bed. There was forty Namibian dollars in notes tucked into Revelations. Clare thought about Kaiser Apollis and the diary with one hundred dollars in it. She tried to remember the boy’s hands, but all she could picture was the tipless Apollo finger.

  ‘He was terrified of the desert,’ Sister Rosa continued. ‘It must’ve been torture for him to camp there with Mara. I sat up with him one night. The moon was full, and he couldn’t sleep with the curtains open. He kept saying they would see him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Sister Rosa. ‘Whoever it is that you see when your temperature hits forty.’

  There was no point in asking the boy any questions. Each shallow breath marked a loosening of Ronaldo’s tenuous hold on life. Clare stood up and followed Sister Rosa to the entrance lobby. The old nun they had passed on the way in nodded politely to her.

  ‘Did anybody come to see the boy apart from Mara?’ Clare asked on impulse.

  ‘Nobody,’ said Sister Rosa. ‘Except you.’

  ‘You,’ the old nun interrupted, ‘and one of the missionaries.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Clare swung around to face the woman.

  ‘The Christian Ladies’ Mission. A group of worthy wives. Protestants,’ Sister Rosa said with a wry smile. ‘They work with prostitutes. They rarely come out here. I suppose they’ve given up on us Catholics.’

  ‘When was that, Sister?’ Clare asked the old nun.

  ‘Three days ago,’ she replied. ‘Just before Ronaldo started slipping away from us.’

  ‘What was she doing here?’ Sister Rosa asked. ‘Why was I not informed?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sister,’ said the older nun. ‘I forgot my sewing in the convent and when I came back the woman was here. The child was very upset, but I got her to leave and he settled down again.’

  ‘Did you know her?’ Clare asked.

  ‘She was young. Fair. I don’t know her name. She said she wanted to save him, but I think that even she could see that it was too late.’ The nun hesitated. ‘They can be … agitating, reformed sinners. Zealous.’

  ‘You’ll find them easily, Dr Hart,’ Sister Rosa said. ‘They have their haven, as they call it, down near the docks.’ The woman’s hand on Clare’s elbow propelled Clare back into the heat.

  Clare’s car was a furnace when she got back to it. She opened the window, letting the hot air escape before she got in. The heat swam on the surface of rocks, the road and the car as she drove back to Walvis Bay, mirroring her thoughts. What did Mara know? Why had she hidden the boy Ronaldo out here? And why had she not said anything? Why had Lazarus said nothing? This circuit of questions was interrupted only when Clare found the Christian Ladies’ Mission. It was situated opposite Der Blaue Engel, where the ladies could keep an eye on their husbands while saving the town from moral turpitude. Housed on the ground floor of an ugly facebrick building, the entrance to the Mission was decorated with watercolour landscapes and crocheted doilies, no doubt donated by its members.

  The woman who got up to greet Clare was slender, her hair set in even, rigid waves. ‘Dr Hart?’

  Clare was getting used to strangers knowing her name. She nodded.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I need to know about one of your members who visited a boy out at the Catholic hospice in the desert.’

  ‘Why, may I ask, should I give you this information?’ The woman’s mouth was a red-lipsticked slot in her face.

  ‘I’m working on the investigation into the recent murders of—’

  ‘The boys?’ the woman interrupted.

  ‘Them,’ said Clare.

  ‘Well,’ said the woman, pursing her lips, ‘we’ve tried to reach out to street children before, especially the Aids orphans. But it’s difficult to get children who have strayed from the authority of adults to conform.’

  ‘Which of your members would’ve visited him there?’ asked Clare.

  ‘I’ll check in the record book. But I can’t imagine anybody did. When was it?’

  Clare gave her the date, and the woman opened the book and paged through to the relevant entry. ‘Nothing then.’ She shook her head. ‘Not to the convent at any rate.’

  ‘The woman who visited him was blonde apparently. Young,’ Clare said.

  The woman frowned. ‘I can’t think of anybody who fits that particular description.’ She pushed the ledger over to Clare. ‘And see for yourself. Nobody went out that day. Everything’s logged, because our volunteers can claim for petrol.’

  ‘Would one of your members have gone without filling in the forms?’ asked Clare.

  The woman drew herself up, offended. ‘All our volunteers are working here towards salvation and rehabilitation. Part of that process means that they must follow procedures in all situations. The leadership, and I include myself in that, are unwavering about such details.’

  ‘Who could it have been, then?’

  ‘Dr Hart, I’m a lay preacher, not a detective.’

  forty-seven

  Riedwaan was in the special ops room, a takeaway coffee in hand and Clare’s notes and several official-looking printouts spread out in front of him. The sheets spiralled on a gust of wind when she opened the door.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Riedwaan got up to retrieve the pages.

  ‘Out in the desert,’ said Clare. ‘At sea.’

  ‘That’s how I feel, going through all of this.’ He gestured to Clare’s notes.

  ‘Did I miss anything?’

  ‘Nothing that I can see.’ Riedwaan sat down again and picked up a heap of papers. ‘I was just checking through these car rentals. See who’s been passing through.’

  ‘Any patterns?’ Cla
re asked.

  ‘Not yet. German tourists mainly. A few businessmen coming up for meetings. I’m working through them. You haven’t come across the name Phoenix Engineering while you’ve been here?’

  ‘Doesn’t ring a bell,’ said Clare. ‘Why? Are they on your list?’

  ‘Februarie mentioned the name to me,’ he said. ‘He phoned earlier about Hofmeyr’s murder. It’s the name of a company that one of Hofmeyr’s connections set up after he left the army. A guy called Malan.’

  ‘Haven’t heard of him either,’ said Clare. She picked up the car hire lists, scanning the names. ‘No Phoenixes here,’ she said. ‘Although there’re a couple of other Greek names sprinkled in. Here’s one: Siren Swimwear. That sounds promising. How about this one: Centaur Consulting?’

  ‘The advantages of a classical education revealed,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘Funny ha-ha,’ said Clare. She scanned the list again. ‘There’s also Arizona Iced Tea and New York Trading and Washington Pan-African Ministries. What’re you looking for?’

  ‘I’m just casting about for an easy answer, I guess. A psycho ex-soldier running amok would be easy to explain. It’d certainly make the Namibians happy.’

  ‘You’ve had Goagab on your back then?’ Clare sat down on the edge of the desk.

  ‘I had the pleasure. He was in here demanding a resolution before his tourism press junket or whatever it is that makes him sweat in his Hugo Boss shirts.’ Riedwaan crumpled his coffee cup and pitched it into the bin on the other side of the room. ‘Tell me about Mara’s sailor boy. You think he did something to her?’

  ‘I don’t know what he’s hiding, but he implied that she was.’

  ‘You could hide an army out here and no one would find it,’ said Riedwaan, pointing to the waves of sand on the map.

  A movement at the door caught their eye, and they both looked up to find Tamar standing in the doorway. ‘You see nothing,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘Everything’s hidden by the heat and the distance, then these dunes pick up their skirts and move and everything’s exposed. What did you find out about Mara?’ she asked Clare.

  Clare gave her the rundown: that Mara and Juan Carlos had fought about a camping trip; that Mara had wanted to tell the police that she’d left the boys alone in the desert while she was servicing Juan Carlos’s needs for the night; that the boys were being targeted now; and that Juan Carlos had shut her up.

  ‘They fought about it again the night before Mara was supposed to leave,’ Clare said. ‘Mara went home and he says he went back to the club. Says he never saw her again, though she apparently sent him a text message from the airport.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Tamar asked Clare.

  ‘About him?’

  ‘About her, her and the boys?’

  ‘Hard to say. If someone is targeting homeless pretty boys, then it could be a coincidence, I suppose. She was working with them, spending more time with them than anyone else does, so a “wrong place, wrong time” is possible.’

  ‘Funny things, coincidences,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘Never happens in movies, because no one will ever believe them,’ said Tamar. ‘In real life they happen all the time. Wrong place, wrong time. There’s you: dead.’

  ‘She left all her photographs behind.’ Clare put the envelope of snapshots on the table.

  ‘Memories go sour sometimes.’ Riedwaan flicked through them. ‘You move on, leave the past behind. Could be that.’

  Clare was sceptical, but said nothing. ‘Tamar, do you know the Sisters of Mercy?’ she asked. ‘Out in the desert, in an old castle?’

  ‘Yes, towards Rooibank. There’s an oasis there. Some German count built a castle for the love of his life and she never came. So he donated it to the Catholic Church, specifying that it be run as a convent. Now it’s a hospice.’

  ‘There’s a lesson in that,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I’m not quite sure what.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ said Tamar.

  Clare picked up the photograph of Mara and the five-a-side team and pointed to Ronaldo. ‘A boy who played in Mara’s team was out there. George Meyer told me about him. I went to talk to him.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Tamar.

  ‘Nothing. He’s on his way out,’ said Clare. ‘Full-blown Aids. Too far gone for treatment.’

  ‘He’s the last boy alive,’ Riedwaan said. ‘Her whole team, redcarded.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Clare. ‘The Mother Superior told me a woman had visited him. She thought it was one of the Christian Mission ladies, but I went past there and they have no record of anyone visiting.’

  A sudden gust of the east wind sprayed sand against the office window. Clare jumped, then continued: ‘His hands were infected when he came in, blisters all over the palms. His illness was triggered by exhausting himself doing some kind of digging.’

  ‘Digging where?’ asked Tamar. ‘None of those kids would be picked up to work. First, nobody would trust them, and, second, if anyone did hire them, they’d be bust under the child labour law – one of the many unintended consequences of a progressive constitution.’

  ‘Catch 22,’ said Clare.

  ‘I wonder what they were digging for,’ Riedwaan said. He opened the files of autopsy photographs and sorted out the close-ups. ‘Look at this.’ Kaiser Apollis and Lazarus Beukes both had thin, livid marks across their palms.

  ‘Could be blisters,’ said Clare, looking at the photographs. ‘Easy to pass over in a homeless child whose hands and feet would be rough and cracked.’

  ‘You get anything else from your interview with Juan Carlos?’ asked Tamar.

  ‘His phone.’ Clare held it up. ‘I want to check out his story about the night Mara went missing. I’ve asked Ragnar Johansson to keep him on board until you’ve decided if you want to keep him here. In the meantime, I want to check some phone records.’

  ‘There’s a place out in the industrial area that’ll figure it out for you in no time.’ Tamar wrote down the address. ‘Cell City. They’ll help you out.’

  ‘Did you talk to Van Wyk?’ Clare asked Tamar, folding the piece of paper.

  Tamar shook her head. ‘He’s still out of cellphone range. He’s scouring the desert with Goagab, but I did find Chesney, the name we saw painted on the cave. Turns out he’s Van Wyk’s nephew.’

  The mention of Chesney’s name made Clare shiver: Chesney, Minki, LaToyah, the heat and the stench of the dead cat. ‘What did he say?’ she asked.

  ‘Not much at first,’ said Tamar. ‘But Elias can be persuasive when he needs to be. He convinced Chesney that it’d be simpler if he just showed him a couple of files, his web cam, and some other incriminating evidence. The girl you saw, LaToyah, is fifteen, so as far as Van Wyk goes, it’ll be a fairly straightforward case of statutory rape.’

  ‘All we need to do is find him then,’ said Clare.

  ‘What’s this?’ Riedwaan asked. ‘Van Wyk been cradle-snatching?’

  ‘A cop getting freebies off the girls he protects. Oldest trick in the policeman’s book,’ said Tamar. ‘How about you find this killer now.’ She was standing in the doorway, keys in hand. ‘My water broke half an hour ago and I’m off to have this baby in peace.’

  Riedwaan went pale. ‘We’ll take the bike.’ He tossed Clare the spare helmet.

  Outside, the sun sparkled off the razor wire, the snagged plastic flapping, its colour bleaching in the heat. Even the black slagheap across the road managed to give off an ebony gleam.

  Clare slipped her arms around Riedwaan and her hands under his jacket.

  ‘It is better with you here,’ she said as they drove through town.

  ‘I was waiting for you to say that,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘Only because I like having a driver,’ she teased him. ‘There it is. Cell City.’

  The two chinless wonders who ran the cellphone shop looked as if they could hack into the Pentagon. Darren was blond, his hair hanging in greasy rats’ tails over the faded picture on
his T-shirt – some heavy metal group doomed to permanent obscurity, Clare hoped. She explained that they wanted to know where Mara’s last SMS had come from.

  ‘No problem,’ he said.

  ‘You want a list of all the numbers called? Texts?’ asked Carl. He had dark hair, and was as soft and blubbery as his friend was bony. ‘I can download the pictures too.’

  ‘That’d be great,’ said Clare, writing down Mara’s number. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘I can do that for you straight away,’ he said. ‘Darren’ll take a bit of time, but this is a small town, so there’s just a couple of thousand cell users. Do you want to come back?’

  ‘We’ll wait.’

  Darren beamed up at them from behind his laptop. ‘Go get some coffee there.’ He pointed to a Portuguese café across the road. ‘A watched hacker never cracks.’

  Carl found this hilarious. He emitted a series of stricken hoots that passed for a laugh.

  ‘Come on,’ Riedwaan said to Clare. ‘We’ll get some coffee.’ The café served unexpectedly good coffee. They took their cups and some rolls to the only table outside.

  ‘So, tell me about Van Wyk,’ said Riedwaan.

  Clare smiled grimly as she told him of Van Wyk’s sidelines in extortion and amateur porn. Nothing pleased her more than ridding the world of another corrupt bully.

  They had just finished eating when Carl undulated across the road. He grabbed a Coke and a Peppermint Crisp on his way to their table.

  ‘Darren,’ he said admiringly. ‘He’s a fucking wizard.’ He placed a single sheet of paper on the greasy tablecloth. A list of numbers in one column, coordinates in the other. Carl bit off half of his chocolate bar before pointing to the last number. ‘There you go. The SMS you were looking for. That’s it.’

  ‘Where was it sent from?’ asked Riedwaan.

  ‘The airport tower is where it’s first logged.’

  ‘So she was there?’

  ‘Who was there?’ Carl shovelled the second half of the bar into his mouth and washed it down with Coke.

  ‘Mara Thomson. The girl who sent the message.’

  ‘This one?’ Carl scrolled through the photos in Juan Carlos’s cellphone, stopping when he got to one of Mara, naked on a sand dune, smiling at the phone camera.