Like Clockwork

by Margie Orford

  ‘Ja?’

  ‘Piet? Clare here. Can you check a detail for me?’

  ‘Those girls?’ aksed Piet. ‘I hear you’ve got another one.’

  ‘Not yet, Piet. You keep yourself busy in your lab so long.’

  ‘So what do you want me to check?’

  ‘Did you note down if those girls had nail polish on?’ She waited as Mouton shuffled through the organised chaos that was his desk.

  ‘Okay, here they are. Charnay, yes. Amore, yes. India, yes.’ Clare imagined him running his fat sausage of a finger down his pages of minutely detailed notes. ‘Ja, they all were. India was wearing nail polish, but it was scratched. Like she had tried to get it off with something sharp. There were a few small cuts on the side of the nail bed. There were fragments under her nail, too. Why?’

  ‘Just checking, Piet. This Theresa Angelo who disappeared last night was wearing blue nail polish. The last person to see her commented on it because it didn’t fit with her.’

  ‘Theresa Angelo. A dead angel. Tabloid heaven.’

  ‘Thanks, Piet,’ she said wryly. Any of the other tests in yet?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Okay. bye, Piet.’ Clare watched the inky-black water lapping at the sheer stone sides of the marina. She remembered a bottle of blue nail polish in India’s immaculate bathroom that looked as if it had been used only once. She watched a seal waddle along a wooden jetty and dive in, gracefully transformed as soon as it hit the water. The phone’s shrill ring startled her out of her reverie. She was surprised to see the number.

  ‘Piet,’ said Clare.

  ‘I’ve just got one result in from the tests on the fibres we found on India. They were rope fibres. What is interesting is that there are traces of bird shit on it. I got my friend at the ornithology institute to run some tests. He said it’s from a seagull – one that scavenges on human waste. An urban seagull.’

  ‘Thanks, Piet.’

  ‘Another thing, Clare. You remember the marks we found on Charnay’s toes and fingers? Those were definitely gnaw marks. From rats. Your man keeps their bodies inside somewhere. We often find bodies that have been scavenged. But if those girls had been outside it would have been dogs, maybe cats. If it’s rats, then it must be inside somewhere, somewhere quiet.’

  Clare was silent. She was trying not to see the malignant gleam of rat eyes in the dark, moving closer, closer. Then biting, gnawing.

  ‘You there?’ asked Piet.

  ‘Ja, I’m here.’

  ‘I thought maybe somewhere at the docks. Maybe a warehouse or something?’

  ‘Piet, are we looking for one man or two?’ asked Clare.

  ‘There were the two different blood groups on Charnay – one in the semen, one in the blood. But that’s not conclusive. Eighty per cent of people express their blood group in other body fluids. So you can have mucosa, semen that has a different DNA structure to the rest. It throws you. You can’t conclusively say you’re not looking for two men.’

  ‘But I’m so sure it is one man. It’s so obsessive. Those keys he puts in their hands. What are they for?’

  ‘A diversion?’ asked Piet.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Clare. She watched the raucous seagulls wheeling, diving, scavenging. Clare snapped her phone shut. Find her, find her, the gulls taunted. She watched one snatch food from the beak of another, smaller gull and then land on the mast of one of the yachts rocking in the tamed water.

  She phoned Riedwaan and left him a message that she would be walking home, so not to worry to fetch her. Clare walked through the Waterfront and on to the newly built sea walls. Dwarfed by the massive chunks of granite that held the sea back, she let her thoughts go, willing them to find their way to where Theresa was. She was convinced Theresa had been taken by the same person, but that he had acted in a rush this time. Her thoughts wandered to Natalie, to Whitney, to their aching shame at being filmed. Were these girls being abducted to feed the growing snuff-movie market? It was rumoured that South African products were popular internationally. The only prosecution so far – in Johannesburg – had failed. All three accused had been acquitted.

  Clare walked past the littered lawn in front of Sushi-Zen. There was a small white cross where India King’s body had lain. Clare read the inscription. It said, very simply, ‘With Love, Grade 12’.

  The inscription made her think of India’s debauched stepfather. Clare leaned against the sea wall, thinking that a bit more detail about him would be useful. She also thought it was time to discuss the nasty King and nasty Landman’s nasty little home movie with its pathetic star, Cathy King. She tried the Kings’ home number. No reply. And Cathy King was not answering her cellphone, either. But Clare did manage to get Portia Qaba on her cellphone; she promised to tell Mrs King to call when she got back from her weekend off. Not ideal, but it would have to do for now. She and Riedwaan would then arrange to see Cathy King together.

  Clare’s thoughts circled back to Landman. He was a killer, she felt sure, and absolutely ruthless. He was the type who would procure even child for a regular paying client. Clare did not doubt that he would torture and kill anyone for a fee, without compunction. Especially if there was a way of extending the profit. It should be him, but Landman, for all his absence of conscience, was now a businessman. He would kill only for a reason – for profit or expediency – and not simply for the pleasure of it. No, there was a different kind of zealot behind these murders. For now, though, there was nothing to be done except wait. Think and worry and wait.

  Clare went to join Riedwaan later that afternoon. He was working alone in the caravan, grey with stress.

  ‘I spoke to Piet,’ she said, giving him the coffee she had picked up on the way.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing new.’

  ‘Why is it not falling into place?’ Riedwaan slammed his fist onto the rickety desk, spilling coffee over his files. Clare handed him a grimy towel. He dabbed at the puddle of coffee. ‘Shit!’

  ‘Predatory criminals are the hardest to catch. Strangers with nothing to connect them with the victim. This one doesn’t want to be caught. He shows off, but he’s very careful. I think the body fluids on the first body were a mistake. He’d have seen the report in the press, so he’s rectified that little error. We’ve had no witnesses – or none who have come forward. Nothing to link anyone to the crime.’

  ‘We have to work it out. You have to work it out, Clare.’ He looked at her. ‘The chief is on my back. Phiri released that chef – his DNA doesn’t match, and he was in the holding cells when Theresa disappeared. The press are on Phiri’s back and the poor child’s mother is demented with worry.’

  Clare went to her desk and picked up the files. ‘I think we should pull Brian King in for questioning.’

  ‘Do you want me to arrest him?’ snapped Riedwaan. ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Just a feeling.’

  Riedwaan didn’t respond.

  ‘I’m doing what I can. We’re doing what we can,’ said Clare. ‘I’m going home now. Call me.’

  ‘I’ll call you. And I’ll check up on King again. I did when we heard Theresa was missing. Good alibi – he was playing golf. With four other people.’

  ‘Okay, but let’s try him again. I’ll see you.’

  Clare laid the files out on her kitchen table when she got home. She had been over them so often that the details, the specifics of each case, were blurring into the others. She poured herself a glass of wine and then searched for a cigarette. She found a stale pack on top of the fridge and smoked one, even though it made her feel sick. She drank one large glass of wine, and then another, falling asleep with her clothes on.

  47

  Cathy King went upstairs to her daughter’s bedroom. She had been sleeping in India’s bed ever since they’d found her body. She had given Portia the weekend off. Brian would not be back for a long time. She was alone. She put the tape she had brought with her into her dead daughter’s video m
achine and took the remote to the bed with her. If she pushed her face deep enough into the pillow there still was the faintest trace of the smell of India. Underneath the scented cleanliness traces of India lingered, a once-grubby, sunshine-warm child.

  Cathy wrapped one thin, scarred arm around the pillow, pulling it against her breast. She looked at the bolt on the inside of her daughter’s door, suffused with shame at her own weakness. Cathy opened the bottle of pills. This she could do. She tapped the pills into her open right hand. They looked like sweets. She dropped them into her mouth, washing the bitterness away with lemonade.

  The phone rang deep inside the house. She ignored it as the pills started to dissolve, making her feel ill. She swallowed her nausea. It would take an hour, at most, to free her of the terror and guilt she had endured since marrying Brian King. Cathy lay quietly, remembering her phone call to the pathologist who had done India’s postmortem. Dr Mouton had gently reassured her that all suspicious deaths – car accidents, suicide, murder – came to him, and that the bodies were kept together in one place. He had answered her questions patiently, as if he sensed her need to find out, to know all she could as a way of coping with her bereavement. What Piet Mouton told her that day had made Cathy eager for the end. And she felt especially eager now, even as her body rebelled against the pills she had swallowed. At least she knew that her own body would be taken in a van to the mortuary where India lay. India would no longer be alone among the alphabetically ordered rows of corpses, their naked feet flopped outwards, as if napping. Cathy would be there to watch over her. This time, she would not fail her daughter.

  The house phone stopped and her cellphone started bleating. Cathy King waited until it stopped, too, before she pressed ‘play’. She did not hear either of Clare’s desperate messages. She settled herself back into her daughter’s bed and watched the film in which she starred, with her husband directing her gang rape. Here in her home. She recognised Kelvin Landman as she watched him twist and rip her clothes. He had been for dinner here earlier. She had served a perfect rack of lamb that night, she remembered. She watched as he used his beautiful knife to carve his initials delicately into her back, her hand reaching instinctively to touch the scar. It was when the credits rolled that she saw the other name. She pressed ‘pause’, understanding quite clearly now who had killed her daughter. Cathy reached for her phone, but the barbiturates tightened their lethal grip on her body. She slid bitterly towards death, the phone falling uselessly to the floor.

  48

  Clare woke up feeling cold. The wine had left her with a headache and her duvet had slipped off. She got up, the taste of a nightmare bitter in her mouth. She stripped off the shirt and slacks she’d gone to bed in and showered. Then she pulled on her thick winter gown and wrapped a towel around her wet hair. Fritz badgered her until she fed her – the smell of the fish making Clare gag. She sat down at the kitchen table again, staring at what was left of three young girls – photographs, DNA tests, ballistics reports, interview transcripts. The fourth file was the slimmest, just a missing-person’s report at this stage. Clare prayed it would stay that way.

  She stretched, her body stiff from too little sleep. Gathering the papers into her arms – Charnay, Amore, India – she carried them tenderly into her study. The walls there were blank. She pulled out a roll of masking tape from her top drawer and picked up the envelope of Tarot cards.

  ‘I’ll try it your way, Constance,’ she muttered to herself. She stuck the first card, the Female Pope, on the eastern wall. That was the direction that Charnay Swanepoel’s head had pointed when they’d found her. She placed Charnay’s smiling school photo next to the Tarot card. Clare arranged the photographs and Piet Mouton’s reports in a halo around the picture.

  On the western wall, she placed the photo of Amore Hendricks next to the grinning orange devil. Clare gave pride of place to the expensive DNA tests paid for by Amore’s bereft father. The card of self-imposed shackles, the bonds around this girl’s body, were not of her choosing.

  South was India King, her laughing, sunlit photograph next to the most catastrophic of cards – the Tower, showing a man and woman hurtling towards the ground. This card indicated the sudden bolt of understanding. Clare stuck what she had around the photo of India King. Her stepfather should be able to help with more information, thought Clare. She looked back at Charnay’s chart – King could have met her through Landman. Or through the Isis Club. She could see no link with Amore Hendricks, but that did not mean there wasn’t one.

  Clare turned north. On this side of the room there was nothing but glass. She picked up the last card, the Hanged Man, and taped it to the glass. She looked past the taunting smile of the inverted figure. The sea was calm, with the first light beginning to dance on the breaking waves. Clare turned her back to the dawn and looked at the chilling images of death stuck to her walls. The answer was just beyond her – like a movement glimpsed in the corner of the eye, vanishing the moment she looked at it head on. Tears of impotent rage welled up hot and slid down her cheeks. ‘What am I not seeing?’ Clare fretted. ‘What can’t I see that these girls were blinded for seeing?’

  Patience was what she needed. And time. The two things she did not have.

  The thunk of the morning newspaper being delivered broke Clare’s reverie. The paper was splashed with pictures of the missing girl and a re-run of all the ghoulish details of the dead ones.

  Clare felt a strong urge to go for a run. She pulled on her tracksuit, glad that she could leave off her rain jacket today. The air was crisp as she stretched against the sea wall. It lifted her spirits. She ran fast in the direction of the Waterfront. The morning sea was flat, the massive swell that had battered the shore for days exhausted. She turned back after three kilometres, enjoying the trickle of sweat between her breasts and down her back. The sun had swung up above the mountains, pearling the water. A single fishing boat broke the surface, leaving a trail of shattered colour in its wake. Clare absorbed the stillness of the moment. She would need it in the tumult of the day ahead of her.

  Her heart contracted as she rounded Three Anchor Bay. A small group of people clustered around the railings. ‘Please not.’ Her words hung with the mist of her breath on the cold morning air. Clare slowed down as she neared the group.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Somebody thought they saw a whale,’ an old woman explained.

  ‘I don’t think it was a whale,’ said her wiry companion. ‘I’m sure it was that elephant seal. Remember, he was here last year.’ The huge animal had wintered here the year before, wallowing on the beach and bellowing mournfully for his lost females. After three lonely weeks he had slipped back into the water and headed back to Marion Island, thousands of miles south-east of Cape Town.

  ‘It would be something if he came back again,’ said Clare. The elephant seal had become quite an attraction, and nature conservation had posted a guard to protect him. Clare looked at the smooth surface of the sea, but saw nothing. Just some rubbish bobbing in the little breakers around the rocks.

  She went home and downloaded her email. There was a deluge of increasingly frantic messages from her London producer. Clare opened the last one. ‘Where is my next batch of footage?’ it berated her. ‘When will it be here? I have two slots with international broadcasters so where the fuck is it, darling?’

  Clare clicked ‘reply’. ‘It’s coming, don’t panic, don’t panic. Am pursuing a home-grown pornography link, so hang in there. C.’ She packed up her interview tapes – with Natalie, with the barmaid from the Isis, as well as two spontaneous ones she’d done later with some of the dancers. And the formal interview with Kelvin Landman. She looked at the tape of her interview with Whitney’s mother, Florrie Ruiters, explaining the metastasising hold of the gangs; how easily they picked up young women and worked them. She hesitated for a second and then threw that in too. Not quite as straightforward as Natalie’s story, but more common in its murkiness because Whitney and he
r family were helpless in the face of the expanding predations of the gangs.

  Clare was rummaging through her cupboard, deciding what to wear, when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Hello.’ Clare pressed the intercom, expecting Riedwaan’s voice to reply.

  ‘Hi. It’s Tyrone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The barman. From The Blue Room at the Waterfront.’ Hope flickered as Clare pressed the intercom.

  ‘Come up.’ She phoned Riedwaan. ‘The barman from the Waterfront is here. Come over.’ She snapped her phone shut as he knocked on her front door. Clare held the door open for him. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

  Tyrone followed her into the kitchen. ‘Some coffee would be nice.’ He was holding a pink rucksack. He put it down on the table, pulling his hand away as if it was dangerous. ‘I found this,’ he said. He looked down at his hands. The nails were bitten, the nail beds raw, bleeding in places.

  ‘When?’ Clare asked.

  When I was going home. It’s her bag. Theresa’s.’

  Clare was holding the kettle, about to pour water over the coffee. She repressed an overwhelming urge to hurl the boiling water into his face.

  ‘So you lied to me – you were on duty that Friday night, Tyrone. And why are you only bringing it in now? This is crucial evidence that you’ve had since Friday night. The night she disappeared. It’s now Sunday morning.’ Clare stepped very close to him. The smell of too many cigarettes was rank on his breath. ‘Do you know how long that has been for Theresa? Can you imagine what has been happening to her? While you worried about whether to hand it over or not, you useless little fuck!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was afraid. But I’ve brought it now. Maybe it can help her still?’

  Clare turned away, ashamed of her outburst. She poured him coffee, handed him sugar and milk. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Tell me how you found it.’

  ‘It wasn’t that busy that night,’ he said. ‘I closed earlier than usual, about eleven-thirty, when the last customers left. I went up to have a smoke and wait for my lift. I was sitting up on that bench near the drawbridge. There were no cars around. It was so quiet, I could think a little bit.’