Blood Rose

by Margie Orford

  ‘Where were you thinking?’ Clare was tired, but she wasn’t quite ready to go back to her lonely bed.

  ‘Der Blaue Engel.’

  ‘Where is it?’ The name was familiar. Clare tried to place it.

  ‘It’s a club down near the harbour.’ He saw Clare hesitate. ‘Think of it as anthropology.’

  Ragnar put his arm around Clare’s shoulders and they walked back towards the harbour. Clare remembered where she’d heard the name. From the story about the lap dancer who’d come off worse for wear after a visit to one of the rusting trawlers anchored outside the harbour.

  ‘Gretchen von Trotha,’ said Clare, ‘doesn’t she dance there?’

  ‘How do you know her?’ Ragnar asked with obvious surprise.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Clare. ‘Elias Karamata, one of the cops who’s working on this case, told me that she’d been beaten and thrown off a Russian ship. The name stuck.’

  ‘Someone fished her out, a South African,’ said Ragnar. ‘Ironically, he had a Russian name. Gretchen owes her life to that man.’

  Clare could feel the dull thump of the bass long before she could hear any music. The club’s logo was a naked pole-dancing angel, complete with wings and a halo.

  ‘That must drive the fundamentalists nuts.’

  ‘It does,’ said Ragnar. ‘Sundays, there are always pickets by the Christian Mission ladies, lying in wait for their husbands, I suppose.’

  Inside, the air was thick with smoke. Around the pool table, girls were leaning along their cues to the advantage of their cleavages. A few couples were dancing, and waiting women nursed Coca-Colas at the bar. A group of drunken Russians working their way through a bottle of vodka at the bar looked Clare over then returned to their drink. Only two tables were occupied.

  ‘That’s him.’ Ragnar pointed to one table where a man sat alone. ‘The guy who pulled Gretchen out of the water.’ The man’s shirt was moulded over his lean belly, long legs stretched out, the steel caps glinting at the end of his dusty suede boots. A cigarette dangled from one tanned hand. He had tilted his chair back and his face was hidden in the shadows.

  ‘Is he trying to play Clint Eastwood?’ asked Clare.

  ‘I don’t suggest you ask him,’ said Ragnar. ‘He’s not much of a joker.’

  Clare recognised some of the occupants at the other table, groaning with champagne bottles, near the stage. D’Almeida had his secretary, the beautiful Anna, on his arm. He raised a glass to Clare. Opposite him sat Goagab, in conspicuous Armani. Two heavy-set men in their forties were with them. One of the men held a delicate girl on his knee, a smile plastered over her discomfiture. The other one ran lazy eyes over Clare, his tongue flicking across his moist, parted lips.

  ‘Politicians?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Businessmen. Politicians. One and the same in this part of the world. My new bosses,’ said Ragnar. ‘They own the Alhantra. They’re celebrating the licence too.’

  ‘You want to join them?’

  ‘Not now that I have you to myself.’ His hand brushed hers. It was disconcerting, the intimate roughness of his skin.

  ‘What will you have?’ he smiled.

  ‘A brandy, please.’

  The bar was filling up as men drifted in singly and in compact, eager groups. Chinese, Spanish, Senegalese, South African, freshly showered, hair slicked, eyes darting towards the women unpeeling themselves from bar stools, the pool table.

  ‘When’s the show?’ Ragnar asked the barman pouring their drinks.

  ‘Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.’ The barman pushed across a brochure that showed a young woman – maybe twenty-five – coiled around a pole.

  Five minutes later, the lights flickered, then stayed off. A prerecorded drum roll drowned out Clare’s objections. The velvet curtains opened, and a nubile blonde stepped into the spectral light, her body voluptuous beneath the transparent layers of blue chiffon, the scar beneath her left eye a slender crescent bleached white by the spotlight. Her eyes, shadowed by dark, arched brows, revealed nothing.

  ‘Der Blaue Engel?’ asked Clare.

  ‘That’s her. Gretchen von Trotha. Not yet in all her glory. Then she’s quite something,’ said Ragnar. ‘Another?’

  ‘One more,’ said Clare. ‘Then home?’ Her interest was piqued.

  ‘Nicolai,’ called Ragnar. The barman filled Clare’s glass, his eyes on her face. ‘Enjoying the show?’ he asked.

  ‘It works for the audience,’ she said.

  Gretchen moved effortlessly, disdain infusing her movements with an erotic menace. The rowdy groups of men sat transfixed. She peeled off first one garment then another, until she stood naked except for her tattooed wings, a tinsel halo and the wisp of silk between her thighs.

  A movement to Clare’s right drew her attention to D’Almeida’s table. A fat politician was snapping his fingers at the barman. Nicolai bent low for the man’s order. He looked up at Gretchen and nodded. A whispered word from Nicolai and she left the safety of the stage. The fat man leant back in his seat and beckoned her into the space between his splayed knees. She stepped closer, nipples glinting in the dim light as he tucked money into the thigh-high boot gripping her soft flesh. Her skin was milky; her limbs were smooth and firm. The shaved pubis lasciviously childlike as she twirled out of his grip and made her way to the lean man sitting alone at the table in the corner.

  The man took a note and slipped it into her halo before standing up and sauntering out. Gretchen removed the rolled-up note and looked at it as she walked back to the stage, ignoring the beseeching, empty hands that reached after her.

  ‘I think I’ve had enough lap dancing for tonight,’ said Clare. ‘Let’s go.’

  It was cold out. Clare pulled her collar up and her beanie down as they walked towards the unlit cottages.

  ‘If I didn’t know better, you could pass for a boy,’ said Ragnar.

  ‘Maybe I should be careful then,’ she said, unlocking the door. ‘Walvis Bay is not the safest town to be a boy in.’

  ‘You should be careful anyway, Clare.’

  ‘You’re the second person to tell me that.’ She turned to face him, remembering Lazarus’s clumsy attempt. ‘Is that a warning or a threat?’

  ‘A warning.’ Ragnar’s hand was cold on her cheek. He slid a finger down her neck, finding the warm skin under her collar. ‘From a friend.’

  ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’

  Clare stepped away from his caress and into the cottage, ignoring his wry look as she said a swift goodnight and locked the front door. But as Ragnar’s footsteps died away and the stifling silence draped the night again, she did wonder if she’d made the right call.

  nineteen

  Clare woke the next morning, her limbs leaden and her head aching, but she pushed back the covers and pulled on her running clothes. She washed down two aspirin with a glass of water. The wind had come up in the night, and the unfamiliar sounds meant that her sleep had been fitful.

  The bracing air and the morning light cleared her mind and she found her stride, running faster until the paved boulevard petered out into sand. There had been a high tide; straggles of seaweed lay across the path. A flock of startled flamingos took off ahead of her. Clare scanned the path to see what had disturbed them. It was Goagab in a black velvet tracksuit, complete with gold chain, approaching her.

  ‘Dr Hart,’ he called. Clare came to a reluctant halt. ‘You’re up early. I trust Johansson let you get to sleep at a reasonable hour.’

  ‘He did.’ To her annoyance, Clare found herself blushing at his innuendo.

  ‘I’ve got a PR nightmare on my hands with this case.’ Goagab turned around and walked alongside her. ‘I trust you’re making progress.’

  ‘Some,’ said Clare. ‘The groundwork: talking to people who knew Kaiser Apollis and the other two boys. The autopsy’s done, but we’ll need to wait for the forensic reports from Cape Town.’

  ‘Any suspects yet?’ asked Goagab, stopping beside his silver Mercedes sports ca
r. ‘We need an arrest soon to justify the expense of foreign expertise.’

  ‘It’s only been a couple of days,’ said Clare. ‘And the first two victims were buried without proper autopsies, on your orders. That makes for sparse evidence.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Goagab, without missing a beat. ‘But there’s pressure, I’m sure you can see that. I’d appreciate it if you let me know as soon as possible what shape our killer is taking.’ He opened the car door, reached into the cubbyhole and gave her a card. ‘If you need anything, here’s my private number.’

  ‘What do you imagine I’d need?’ Clare turned the white square over in her hand.

  ‘It helps to have as many friends as possible in a strange town,’ said Goagab, sliding into his car. He pressed a button, and the window closed. For a second, Clare stared at her own pale reflection, then she slipped the card into her jacket pocket and ran back, but the unexpected meeting had put her off her stride.

  By seven-thirty Clare was showered, dressed and breakfasted, her scattered thoughts in order again. She had time to see Mara Thomson before she met Tamar at the police station. She locked up, taking her small bag of rubbish out with her and dropping it into the bin standing in the narrow strip of sand between her cottage and the next one. She froze, ignoring the gulls scrapping over a stolen fish head, riveted by tracks in the sand.

  A single set of human footprints stopped at her bedroom window. Clare followed them to the entrance to the service alley, but the night wind had erased any marks except her own. She followed the prints back, stepping carefully so as not to disturb anything. Whoever it had been had stood there for a while. The sand was compressed, as the watcher had scuffed about to keep warm. Or get a better view. She had opened her curtains the night before, hoping that the moon would break through the fog for a while. How long had he stood there?

  What had he wanted? She searched through the disturbed dreams she had had the previous night to see if one of them had been triggered by the proximity of a stranger. There were bars on the windows, but her bed was close. He could have put his hand through an opening and held it over her face, feeling her breath soft and trusting with sleep on his skin. Her throat closed at the thought of it.

  Clare squatted down next to the footprints. Whoever had stood there had been wearing some kind of trainer, but, even in this sheltered spot, the dawn wind had blown a cover of sand over any detail. Clare could not even tell what size they were. There were a few old cigarette butts lying against the fence, but that would have woken her, surely, if he had smoked. She stood up and looked in at her own window, as a stranger had, at her dishevelled bed, at the book on the bedside table, at yesterday’s lace underwear abandoned on the floor.

  Her breath came in a gasp, misting the glass and bringing to life the crude outline of a heart. He had stood here, breathing open-mouthed against the glass, looking in at her as she had slept, tracing with a lingering fingertip. She breathed out again, harder this time, to see if he had finished his drawing. He had. A sailor’s tattoo, it was scored through with a jagged arrow, and blood was pooled below the heart.

  twenty

  Mara Thomson picked up the photographs propped against her clock. Her team of homeless boys in their brand-new football kit, holding up a silver cup in triumph. The other picture was worn at the edges: Mara and her mum in the park next to the London council estate that she had survived by learning to be invisible. She pressed the photographs between her hands, bookending her journey to the point where she sat now – with Kaiser Apollis’s dead body bobbing on the periphery of her thoughts. It drove her to the kitchen in search of tea and company.

  Oscar was at the kitchen table alone, uneaten cornflakes congealing in his plastic bowl.

  ‘You’re up early.’ Mara smiled at him.

  A door slammed upstairs and the boy’s delicate throat constricted around the food. Oscar looked up. Mara did too, imagining George Meyer stepping from his other lodger’s bedroom into the chill passageway upstairs, closing the door on the woman inside: Gretchen, who always paid what she owed, exuding contempt for her landlord, for his lonely dribble of pleasure.

  ‘Go on,’ said Mara, breaking the spell, ‘eat your breakfast.’

  Oscar, conditioned to obedience, picked up the spoon. The mournful wail of a ship’s siren came from the harbour.

  ‘The Alhantra,’ said Mara, putting on the kettle.

  Mara had taken Oscar on board once and he had seen Juan Carlos kiss her when they thought he wasn’t watching. But the boy was always watching, so he had seen Juan Carlos, Mara’s boyfriend, slip into her room in the middle of the night, and away again just before dawn.

  George Meyer came into the kitchen, buttoning up his jacket. He greeted Mara and poured coffee, drinking in silence.

  ‘Come, Oscar,’ he said, putting down his mug and looking at his watch. Oscar reached out a tentative hand, but George thought he was reaching for his lunch and handed the boy two slices of cling-filmed white bread. The two of them stepped into the trails of fog hanging low over the desolate yard, the washing limp on the line, just as Clare Hart opened the gate.

  ‘Good morning, Dr Hart,’ said Meyer. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m here to see Mara Thomson,’ said Clare. ‘Is she in?’

  ‘In the kitchen,’ said Meyer, opening the door to his truck. ‘Get in, Oscar. You’re coming with me today. You can draw some more plant specimens for me. Your mother would’ve liked that.’

  Oscar climbed in and placed his bag at his feet. He let his forehead rest against the cold glass. It could have been a nod.

  The doorbell chimed, interrupting the tangled drift of Mara Thomson’s thoughts. She had been half-expecting Dr Hart, but seeing her on the doorstep gave her heart a little jolt.

  ‘Please, come in.’ She opened the door for Clare and led her down a dingy passage off the kitchen to her bedroom.

  ‘Sit here,’ said Mara, offering Clare the only chair and sitting on the unmade bed. A splash of sunlight framed her face, setting her apart from her anonymous bedroom. The only place that revealed any personality was the crowded table next to her bed.

  ‘Lazarus told me you were at the dump,’ said Mara.

  Clare nodded, picking up a photograph. ‘You?’ she asked.

  Mara nodded. ‘That was taken just before I came to Namibia. Me and my mum.’

  You had to have a charitable eye to see the blood that linked them. Where Mara was all tawny shades and wild hair, her mother was pale, her lips as prim and pressed as her blue suit. But it was there, in both their narrow faces, the wide-set eyes.

  ‘My father was Jamaican,’ Mara explained. ‘But I never knew him. He was killed in a fight before I was born. So it was just me and my mum. It was hard for her when I left.’

  ‘And for you?’ Clare asked.

  Mara sighed. ‘I expected a village of light and heat and throbbing cicadas. Instead, I got Walvis Bay. Somebody had to,’ she said, with a wry smile.

  ‘That bad?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Oh, it’s been okay. Till all this. I threw myself into my work, answered the kids’ questions, read to them and organised a soccer team. My mum clipped out the sports pages from the Sunday papers and taped soccer games and films. Bend It like Beckham was a real hit. It all worked,’ said Mara. ‘I worked and that was a first.’

  There was a framed photograph of Mara with her arms entwined around a dark-haired man. ‘Your boyfriend?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Juan Carlos.’ Mara leant back against the wall. ‘You want me to tell you about Kaiser?’ she asked. ‘The others?’

  ‘Let’s start with Kaiser,’ Clare suggested.

  ‘What don’t you know?’ asked Mara.

  Clare thought of his body on the mortuary table. No secrets there. She knew how much he weighed; that he still had a couple of milk teeth; that he had been violently sodomised, but that he had healed; that his back was covered in scars; that someone had stood so close to him that their breath had mingled. Some
one had looked the bound child in the eye, cocked his gun, pulled a trigger and shot him in the face.

  ‘Tell me what he was like,’ said Clare. ‘What he did, where he went, who he hung out with, where he slept, what he ate.’

  ‘What he ate?’ repeated Mara, fiddling with the frayed hem of her hoodie. ‘He ate what he could scavenge. Meat, if he could find it.’

  Clare thought of Lazarus throwing away the roll Mara had bought him, her hurt and disappointment clear in the set of her narrow shoulders. ‘Who were his friends?’ she prompted.

  ‘Lazarus, I suppose,’ said Mara. ‘Fritz Woestyn, too. They played soccer together, slept in a heap at the dump like stray dogs.’

  ‘What did he talk about?’

  ‘To me?’ asked Mara, looking Clare straight in the eye. ‘Not much. I know he loved his sister Sylvia and that he liked to draw.’ She was quiet. Around them, the silence of the house was overwhelming.

  ‘Tell me, Mara,’ said Clare softly, ‘what he dreamed.’

  Mara slitted her eyes. ‘How will his dreams get you to the truth of who did this to him, to the others?’

  ‘Dreams take us to places we don’t anticipate sometimes,’ said Clare.

  ‘He wanted to live. That can be quite an ambitious dream in a place like this.’ The silence was taut, a tightrope between them.

  ‘He wanted to go to school.’ One tentative foot on the rope of her story. ‘He wanted to draw.’ Another. Mara looked at Clare as if she were searching for something. ‘He wanted a mother. That’s about it, as far as Kaiser’s dreams went,’ she said. ‘Since I’ve been here so many kids I know have been sick, have died. It’s Aids. That’s why most of them are on the street in the first place. And if they didn’t get the virus from their parents, then they soon catch it from their clients.’ Mara’s shoulders slumped.

  ‘When did you see him last?’

  ‘Friday afternoon,’ Mara said with certainty. ‘We always have practice and he never missed. I didn’t see him at the Sunday practice. Weekends are different. The boys are less’ – she pulled the cord of her sweatshirt – ‘steady. Let me put it like that.’