Blood Rose

by Margie Orford

  ‘What did you do, Juan Carlos?’ asked Clare. ‘Four boys are dead and a girl who loved you is missing.’

  ‘The ship is full. I’ve made my money. I don’t want delays,’ Juan Carlos shrugged. ‘Why would I do something?’

  ‘Where is Captain Johansson?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Go and check on the bridge.’ Juan Carlos turned his back on her. ‘I say nothing more.’

  The passage was a relief after the closeness of the cabin. Clare went up to the bridge before the boxes were stowed. A halfsmoked pack of Marlboros was wedged on the barometer. It was Ragnar Johansson’s brand, but there was no other sign of him. Clare looked below. The centre of the ship was open as the winch lowered packed fish into the refrigerated hold. She guessed that Ragnar would be directing things from below.

  There was a metal staircase near the bridge. Clare closed the door behind her and swung down. The metal banister was slick and cold and her feet tingled as she spiralled down into the dark hold.

  Ragnar wasn’t on the first level. She asked one of the packers if he had seen him, but he shook his head. Clare went lower into the ship’s belly. It was eerie, just the roar of the engines and the thud of the winch as it lowered its precious load. Something gleamed on the floor next to the packed and padlocked cold room. A Zippo. Clare picked the lighter up and rubbed away the dark fluid staining the engraving of a mermaid. Not Ragnar’s, but familiar. She slipped it into her pocket.

  ‘Are you looking for something?’ Clare swung around. She didn’t recognise the voice. Light and chill, as dry as ice.

  The man was blocking the light in the narrow corridor. He had his cellphone up, directed at Clare, and he snapped her as she turned.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ she asked, furious. ‘Who the hell are you?’ But she remembered the leanness. She had seen him at Der Blaue Engel. It was the man who had pulled Gretchen out of the sea.

  ‘I like a record of the people who come onto my ship without permission.’ The man was blade-thin, his face sculpted, handsome. He pressed a button on his phone, a smile creasing his tanned cheeks. Then he slipped his phone into his pocket and looked directly at Clare for the first time. ‘Janus Renko. The new owner.’

  ‘I’ve seen you,’ said Clare. ‘With Gretchen von Trotha.’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I’m looking for the captain,’ said Clare. ‘Where is he?’

  Renko lit a cigarette. ‘Ragnar Johansson?’ He flicked the name away with the match. When he took off his dark glasses, he exposed pale, blank eyes. ‘Ragnar went kite-boarding.’

  ‘When will he be back?’ Clare asked. Renko had not moved from the doorway. Clare glanced towards the light behind him, the smell of diesel oil, cold and fish heavy in the air. Renko smiled at her discomfort.

  ‘He was made an offer he couldn’t refuse,’ he said.

  The churn of the engines crescendoed. The ship was ready to sail.

  ‘We’re on our way, Dr Hart.’ He rolled her name in his mouth, the intimacy of it was chilling. ‘If I speak to him, I’ll tell him you were here.’

  Then Renko’s hand was on her elbow, his grip a vice, propelling her back down the icy corridor, walking her faster than was comfortable. Clare’s heart hammered against her ribs when she saw the refrigerated room ahead of her, the door into its icy maw now ajar.

  She tried to pull free, but Renko had her arm twisted up her back. He was very close, his arm, sinewy and hard, was round her throat, cutting her breath. He laughed when she kicked backwards at him.

  ‘This can be slow, Clare.’ His voice sibilant, his breath intimate on her neck. ‘Or it can be qui—’

  ‘Janus!’ A voice from above. ‘Goagab’s here with your authorisation. He wants us out of here.’

  Renko’s grip loosened an involuntary fraction, enough for Clare to twist herself free of him. In three strides, she was clear of him and past the startled harbour master holding out a sheaf of papers. Back on the deck, she dashed towards the gangplank; the shouts of the men she pushed out of her way were snatched away by the wind. Clare sprinted past the packers, through the ice shed and out of the factory gates.

  fifty-two

  Clare yanked her car into gear and cut in front of a hooting taxi, her heart thudding against her chest. She drove towards the lagoon, the tears coming without her noticing.

  There was no truck and no dog at Ragnar’s flat. She looked across at the harbour to see that the Alhantra was halfway down the narrow shipping channel, heading for the open sea. She drove back along the lagoon, but there was no sign of Ragnar there either. One place left to look. In five minutes, Clare was bumping along the track that led into the salt marshes where the Kuiseb Delta blurred into the sea. A dangerous place to kiteboard, but one that Ragnar loved.

  The first thing she saw as she approached the beach was the Labrador circling the vehicle, yelping in distress. The kite-board was still tied to the roof racks, ready. Clare did not like the feeling in her chest. It felt like something hard and cold was expanding, squashing the air from her lungs. She drove towards Ragnar’s truck.

  ‘Come boy,’ Clare called to the dog.

  The dog whined, but refused to move away from the vehicle. Clare approached slowly, expecting the worst, but Ragnar was sitting inside, staring straight ahead at the sea. Clare opened the door and to her horror he toppled towards her. She caught him in her arms. He beamed up at her, his eyes ice blue, the wound in his forehead blooming. He was warm against her breast, his blood on her shirt a cheerful red. Clare bit back a scream. She manoeuvred him back into the seat and placed a finger against his neck. A pulse.

  ‘I’m getting you help,’ she said.

  Ragnar started to slide towards her again. She propped her hip against his weight and pulled out her phone. Her hands were shaking, but she managed to key in Tamar’s number. It was ten rings before anyone answered. Clare counted every one of them. It felt like a lifetime.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Tamar?’ asked Clare. The voice didn’t sound right.

  ‘She’s asleep right now.’

  ‘Helena?’ said Clare.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Kotze. ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘It’s Clare Hart. Send an ambulance.’ Clare could not get the words out fast enough. ‘The road past the saltworks, towards Pelican Point. Ragnar Johansson. Head shot. He’s still alive but only just.’ She disconnected without waiting for an answer.

  Ragnar slipped further. Clare dropped her phone and turned to the stricken man. She pulled his seatbelt across his chest to hold him upright.

  ‘Keep still,’ said Clare, her heart thudding. ‘The ambulance is coming.’

  ‘Angel.’ Ragnar’s breath was feather-soft against her ear. The blue eyes flared. The wound in his forehead oozed, and his eyelids started to flutter.

  ‘Don’t pass out, Ragnar. Look at me. Talk to me.’

  Ragnar obeyed and looked up at Clare, struggling to focus, his breathing coming in sharp jerks. There was nothing to do but wait. Clare looked out at the deserted beach; it was hard to believe that on other days, it would be dotted with kites and dogs, and families enjoying a weekend outing.

  Ragnar groaned and his eyes rolled.

  ‘Come on, Ragnar.’ Clare touched his face. ‘Stay with me.’ She settled him against the door and went around to the back of the truck in search of water. When she came back, the blood from his forehead had trickled over his lips. She sprinkled the water over his mouth.

  ‘Talk to me, Ragnar. Tell me who did this to you.’

  ‘Angel,’ he slurred.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Clare. ‘No angels for you.’ She cradled his bloodied head, counting the minutes.

  A chopper at last, she could hear it. Ragnar inched his hand across the seat, as if he were looking for something. There was nothing there.

  ‘Here’s help for you now. Hang on.’

  The helicopter hovered, buffeted by the rising wind blowing off the desert. An enormous flock of flamingos took o
ff, turning the sky deep pink as they circled before heading for safety. Two paramedics jumped out, neat as paratroopers.

  ‘What happened?’ the first one asked as soon as he was within earshot.

  The sound of the chopper drowned out Clare’s attempts to explain. She stepped aside so the paramedic could see Ragnar.

  The colour drained from the man’s ruddy face.

  ‘Shit,’ he said as he bent over him. ‘Pulse is here. Just.’ He signalled the other paramedic over. ‘Let’s get him out of here.’ There was an efficient flurry of drips and needles.

  ‘Where are you taking him?’ Clare asked.

  ‘To Windhoek,’ the man said. ‘There’s no ICU at the coast.’

  Clare restrained the frantic dog. ‘Will he make it?’ She was starting to shake.

  ‘If he made it this long, he has a chance. Sometimes the bullet lodges between the brain lobes. If nothing’s damaged, he might make it,’ said the paramedic.

  Clare stood back, watching as the paramedics worked to stabilise Ragnar before lifting him into the chopper. They pulled the door closed and were gone, lifting up and over the dunes. Clare closed her eyes, but it did not drive away the image of Ragnar’s punctured forehead.

  She walked around to the other side of Ragnar’s truck and opened it. A file of official-looking papers fell out. She picked them up, wondering if it was what Ragnar had been looking for. The Walvis Bay Port Authority letterhead. Records of load, of taxes paid, of inspections done, of a route filed. Spain via Luanda.

  Clare thought of the Alhantra rocking next to the stone quay. Its sudden turn of fortune. Two. Three. Five. It was adding up. Ragnar was a sore loser and she knew he’d bent the law before: illegal crayfish, some dope, a bit of recreational coke. But transporting the ingredients for a dirty bomb was not his thing. He must have found out about his ship’s secret cargo and threatened to talk. The helicopter had vanished, leaving only the wind and the calls of seabirds in its wake.

  Clare snapped the file closed as a car door slammed behind her. It was Van Wyk and a sergeant she did not recognise.

  ‘Captain Damases is off this case,’ said Van Wyk. ‘And I’m on it.’ He held out a hand and Clare reluctantly handed over Ragnar’s file. ‘It’s an offence to remove evidence from a crime scene,’ he added, tossing the file into his vehicle. ‘I’m running this case now, Dr Hart. So I suggest you run along.’

  Clare let a violent fantasy that involved her, Van Wyk and a machine gun run its course before getting back into her car, his smile a knife in her back. She calmed herself with the knowledge that Tamar’s inquiry would put him behind bars and wipe that arrogant smile off his face for a long time.

  The maternity ward was surprisingly quiet. It was not visiting time, but Clare had slipped in without anyone noticing. Tamar’s room was at the end of the passage. A single bunch of flowers – hand-picked by Tupac and Angela, Clare guessed – stood by her bedside. The aftermath of labour had smoothed the guarded toughness from her face. She looked fifteen, lying on her heap of starched white pillows. The baby curled in her arms was slack with sleep, a drop of milk pearled in the corner of its small, pink mouth.

  ‘Tamar,’ Clare whispered. ‘Tamar.’ It felt like sacrilege to wake her.

  Tamar opened her eyes, and the illusion of the Madonna vanished. ‘Hi.’ She drew her child closer to her before she smiled. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I know you’re off the case, but I really need your help.’

  ‘Any time,’ said Tamar. ‘What is it?’

  Clare closed the door and told Tamar. The horror of it seeped through Tamar’s exhausted postpartum tranquillity like a poison. The baby’s face crumpled in distress, feeling its mother slipping away from it.

  ‘Pass me my phone. It’s in my bag.’ Tamar rocked the child and it settled again, lulled. Clare handed her the phone.

  ‘We’ll do a swap,’ said Tamar. ‘You take her.’

  ‘Who is she?’ asked Clare, taking the infant. ‘This new little person.’

  The child was unbelievably light in her arms.

  ‘Rachel.’ Tamar ran a gentle finger over her baby’s plump cheek. ‘Rachel Damases.’

  Clare looked at the child. ‘She’s beautiful.’

  Clare watched Tamar’s features sharpen and her eyes focus as she made the calls Clare needed.

  ‘It’s done,’ Tamar said, snapping the phone closed. ‘Now you do what you have to.’

  She held out her arms for her baby and Clare handed Rachel over.

  ‘Look in that drawer,’ said Tamar.

  Clare walked to the bedside table and pulled open the drawer. It contained a tube of cream and a pistol.

  ‘You can leave me the hand cream,’ said Tamar.

  fifty-three

  Out in the desert, Riedwaan’s stomach had hollowed beneath his jeans, but the belt buckle stood clear of his skin. He could feel the place where the sun had bored heat through the metal to brand the tender skin. He tried to calculate how long he had been out, measuring the air in even packages of breath. In. Then out. Pacing himself.

  He remembered the road, winding through the tamarisk trees. He had passed the no-entry sign where Lazarus Beukes had been found. He had gone on, his bike churning the virgin sand in the riverbed. He had found the place Darlene had told him about, the tree a dark-green sentinel, a couple of kilometres east of Spyt’s makeshift hideout. He could see the old railway tracks sinking into the heaped sand. The ruined roof of the huts, the rafters protruding like the ribs of a carcass picked clean by scavengers. The stationmaster’s house, the red sand curved through the windows, heaped like treasure in the front rooms. The track. The end of the track, the riverbed again, the ghost gum tree towering above him, the entrance to the hut. Then nothing. Except this blinding pain.

  Riedwaan opened his eyes. The sun was dipping west. He closed his eyes against the searing light, the sand whirling in the wind. He made his mind work. Remember.

  There had been tracks everywhere. He had gone into the building. A pick, shovels too, standing against the wall. New ones. A boy’s peaked cap, tossed in a corner. The pit, recently dug. A single drum standing against the wall, the hazard sign visible beneath the crusted sand. The others had been dug up and were no doubt now on the Alhantra, moving towards their targets like deadly wraiths. The pain. That’s when it had come, from behind him when he stood inside the room.

  ‘You’re awake.’ A woman’s voice. Riedwaan could just make out her figure stacking a pile of wood into an ashy hearth. Her fire would be going in minutes. His eyes fluttered closed.

  He opened them again and looked at the woman standing above him now, her hair gleaming in the angled light. Riedwaan tried to move his arms. They were tied tight around the trunk of a tree, the slender nylon rope cutting into his wrists. The ground was hard. Riedwaan’s cellphone was in his back pocket. It bit into his back. He shifted his weight and hoped it was on silent. His gun was gone.

  ‘Who are you?’ Riedwaan’s own voice sounded unfamiliar. It hurt his cracked lips when he spoke. The woman dropped to her knees beside him, fanning her cool fingertips over his hot skin. He concentrated on her face, trying to get his vision to stabilise.

  ‘Your guardian angel.’ Her voice was husky. ‘You’re going to need one. The Namib Desert’s not safe.’ She held out her hand. ‘Oh, you can’t shake. Sorry.’ She returned to the fire and turned the metal fence dropper she had placed in it. The tip glowed an ominous red.

  ‘Water,’ Riedwaan begged.

  The woman turned to look at him, not a glimmer of compassion in her pale-blue eyes. ‘You must learn to ask nicely.’ A shadow passed over her face. Pure menace.

  She pressed the dropper into the smooth skin on Riedwaan’s chest. The acrid smell of charred skin hit him before the pain convulsed his body. He bit down on his bottom lip, the taste of his own blood sharp on his tongue.

  ‘A perfect circle,’ the woman said, admiring the mark she had made. She lifted the rod to do it a
gain.

  ‘Give me some water,’ croaked Riedwaan, watching her face, trying to judge how far she would go, how much he could take. ‘Please.’

  ‘You can do better than that,’ she laughed, the soft red dunes echoing the curves of her body, but she put the rod down.

  Riedwaan felt like he was walking a tightrope in the dark. If he was sure-footed, he might rekindle some empathy in her. If he got it wrong, he would fall, triggering a release of cruelty.

  He thought of Clare, the gentleness in her face when she thought no one was watching her. Yasmin, his daughter. She would be calling tomorrow at their usual time.

  Riedwaan knew if he drifted, he was going to pass out. And if the woman drifted any further, the slender thread of empathy would snap and he would die. He fought off the siren call of unconsciousness.

  Shift things.

  That’s what he had learnt when he had trained as a hostage negotiator. Shift things and get them to talk, to trust you. Then the hostages have a chance of survival. It seemed like a rather fragile straw to cling to now that he was the hostage. Unlike Clare, he was a betting man, but he didn’t like to think of his odds.

  ‘Talk to me,’ said Riedwaan, watching the woman, ignoring the stabbing pain in his bound arms, his seared chest. She was so at home, preparing things. The fire, the rope, the gun. Riedwaan had not picked a winner in this charnel-house hostess. He had to bring her back to him.

  ‘Give me some water.’ He said the words with an authority he did not feel. His tongue was swelling in his throat.

  The woman glided towards him and held the flask to his mouth, the liquid pouring in, hot and choking at the back of his throat. She was so close Riedwaan could feel the warmth of her body, smell the unsettling, feral mix of perfume and adrenaline. Her hair swung over her shoulder and brushed his skin. It was bleached and porous, the colour and texture of dried grass left from last year’s rain. The desert wind made it crackle with static.

  ‘Just swallow,’ she said, holding his chin expertly. Riedwaan choked, his lungs burned, but the alcohol gave him a kickstart. ‘It’s only the first time that’s really bad,’ she added.