The Lazarus Effect

by H. J Golakai

  ‘Racism,’ Portia chastised wearily. ‘Remember sensitivity training and how much you enjoyed it last time? And don’t forget, I’m half white. The person with the power to fire you.’

  Vee gritted her teeth, took a calming breath and squinted through the shutters again. ‘This case is frozen solid, Portia. It’s going to defrost really slowly, and it won’t need much heavy lifting. I can’t be dealing with a newbie’s disappointment that this isn’t racing along like some TV mystery.’

  ‘Not true. You need an extra pair of limbs running around and handling the grunt work on your opus. Let’s not forget the strings I’ve pulled here.’

  ‘Right. The strings,’ Vee deflated. Portia’s myriad pulleys. This time she’d pulled some golden ones indeed, likely through her father the media mogul, and now a substantial chunk of the official Paulsen case docket was at Vee’s disposal. There had to be payback.

  Portia waved stapled pages headed ‘Curriculum Vitae: Chlöe J. Bishop’ at Vee. ‘What doesn’t kill you … If you think about it, getting an assistant is like a promotion.’

  ‘How about a promotion with a pay raise?’ Vee grouched en route to her office. She rolled the CV into a scroll, debating whether to toss it into the nearest bin. She wasn’t wasting her time on a catalogue of white lies. CVs never told you what you needed to know – like how much abuse someone could take before they snapped and quit. If the grunt had balls, she’d be able to tell how large soon enough.

  Vee neared the tearoom, and the redhead sitting in the row of visitors’ chairs outside it rose to her feet. She didn’t spring up with annoying eagerness, nor did she unfold her legs with the languid grace of the entitled and take her time. She just got up, and smiled. A fine spray of freckles dusted her nose, and a tooth on one side of her mouth was slightly crooked. Not so perfect after all.

  She shook hands well. Vee didn’t hold any store in the idea that firm handshakes conveyed strength of character in either gender, but she was, at least, pleased that Chlöe Bishop’s fingers weren’t sweaty or cold. Her nails were neat ovals and painted a cloudy, neutral colour. A few locks fell carelessly across her forehead. They looked deliberate.

  Vee narrowed her eyes. Chlöe Bishop looked laid back, but was she really? Vee hated babysitting empty, well-dressed surprises, which new hires too often turned out to be. She waved Chlöe into her office.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  Vee winced. Jeez, she had her first period yesterday? ‘Politics and languages, ehn. I see you didn’t study journalism or any form of media, or even creative writing.’ She pushed the CV aside. ‘Seems odd you’d be so hot to take this job. Enlighten me as to why.’

  ‘Well, I’ve always been fascinated by the magazine industry. Must be every girl’s dream to be this close to the action. I love a challenge …’

  Vee dropped her forehead onto the desk and pretended to snore.

  Chlöe stifled a giggle with the back of her hand, then snapped under control. Vee felt a soul-baring ramble coming on. She wasn’t disappointed.

  ‘Umm,’ said Chlöe, ‘I don’t know what I could possibly say here that won’t sound dodgy. I can imagine if I were you, sitting on the other side of that desk, looking at my experience and all that and wondering why I’m fooling myself. To be perfectly honest, I’m … kind of desperate.’ She winced at her own words. ‘And very aware of how that makes me look but I swear I’m not a chancer. I truly am passionate about working in media. Okay, okay, sorry …’ She pumped her hands at the curdling of Vee’s expression. ‘Never say passionate, it’s old and overplayed and we all hate it. No more passion. But I do love media and social networking. It’s … not easy to get into if you don’t exactly have the qualifications.’ She blanched, bit her lips and looked down as if she’d reminded herself of something. ‘So I appreciate both you and Ms Kruger for letting me through the door.’

  Vee was certain she caught the quivering of Bishop’s bottom lip, but dismissed it as a trick of the light. ‘How early can you be here to kick-start the day? Start working on layouts, do some copy-editing, minor stuff.’

  Chlöe perked up. ‘I’m an early riser. Let me know what time you usually get here and I’ll beat it by an hour. I also make excellent coffee.’

  ‘Good for you. Time management and multitasking. Learn to be a wizard at both because you’re going to be everybody’s Girl Friday for a while.’

  ‘Middle child,’ Chlöe smiled, pointing a slender alabaster finger at her chest. ‘I’m used to abuse, believe me. I’d feel lost without it, actually. Point me to the work pile and I’ll put myself to shame.’

  ‘Can you type fast? And research – are you any good at fact-checking and digging up background? I hope you have your own car, because there’s a lot of running around involved.’

  ‘Great at the first two. And yes, I have my own transport.’ She crossed stockinged legs. ‘Why, will you be needing a driver as well?’

  Vee fought a smile. Cool and milky as marble, just fractured enough to show she was genuine but not a flake. And a smartass. Nice hybrid. Hazing over.

  She spent the next few minutes going over the general workflow and duties in Bishop’s future. Halfway through outlining the Paulsen file, Charisma strolled in, lancing Chlöe a snooty, quizzical eye.

  Vee blew out a breath. ‘Chlöe, this is Charisma Mapondera. She’s–’

  ‘We share the office. Call me Chari,’ Charisma instructed. ‘I pronounce it ‘Carrie’. Like in Sex and the City. But Africanised.’

  ‘–the other token foreigner on the team,’ Vee continued, ignoring Chlöe’s what-the-hell look. ‘Ex-editor at a political newspaper in Zimbabwe that was a huge pain in the government’s backside. When they tried to blow up their building, she ran like a coward and here she is, lighting up our lives. Chari, Chlöe Bishop. She doesn’t answer to you in any way, only to me. Take it up with Portia.’

  Charisma snarled a few choice words and left to do just that. Vee kept her eyes on Chlöe, frowning slightly as she noticed how her eyes danced over Chari’s outfit and how she wore her curves. This one was an unrepentant fashionista. Or was there more to it … ‘Are you done?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Chlöe blushed and fidgeted. ‘Those are some really great pants she’s wearing. And your jacket too, wow.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Word of advice: avoid Chari. She’s a terrible person. Meaning she’s fun, but also the absolute worst. Especially for careers. I can be an asshole too, but I’ll watch your back. As to my general style, I make a lot of this up as I go because we don’t have a budget for standard procedures. Broad strokes: be really observant and extremely tenacious. Take no for an answer but find a way to turn it into a yes. Be ever ready to piss people off. A lot.’

  ‘I’ve managed that extremely well in the past.’

  ‘I’m also obliged to warn you that things can get …’ Vee balked at saying ‘dangerous’, ‘… weird. Don’t bother asking Portia permission for anything; she’ll only shut you down. Me first, always. I’ll handle Kruger.’ Vee pushed over a stack of papers. ‘Your copies of all things Paulsen, what I know so far. I drew up a to-do list. We need to cover most of that ground by the start of next week. Feel free to add to it as time goes on.’

  Chlöe scrutinised the inventory, barely arching her eyebrows. ‘Hhhmm. This much,’ she murmured, running an index finger halfway down the page, ‘I can cover today, tomorrow afternoon at the most. How …’ she drummed two fingers over her lips, eyes narrowed. ‘How strictly do I have to colour inside the lines, legal-wise? Say I want stuff done fast but the usual route doesn’t cut it. Not all channels are created equal.’

  Vee fought the urge to hug her. ‘The more upfront you are with me, the better I’m able to lie to our fearless leader.’ She stood. ‘Any questions? And no, you don’t get a gas – smh, petrol – allowance for your car. Early days yet. We’ll talk to Portia about it.’

  ‘No, no questions.’

  ‘Perfect. Chlöe Bishop, wel
come aboard the Titanic. May you perish in interesting times. I’m headed out now and you won’t see me until much later.’ Vee shouldered into an extra cardigan before throwing her jacket over. ‘Got people to pester, starting with a bereaved mother.’ She waited, expecting Bishop to whinny like a foal, adrift without a nanny this early on. Last chance to find a flaw in the gemstone.

  Instead, Chlöe said: ‘I thought you said this girl was a missing person. Are we already assuming she’s dead? Is this a murder case?’

  ‘We assume a lot to start.’ Vee stepped through the door. ‘We add, subtract, divide as we go along, till we get it in focus. Frequent updates.’ She raised thumb and pinkie to her ear: call me.

  At last, Vee allowed herself a grin. Chlöe. Let’s see how she gets on. On her way past Portia’s open door, Vee threw on a scowl for show. Kruger could smell happiness like a bloodhound and annihilate it like a Rottweiler.

  10

  Days that started out well often didn’t stay that way for long. Upstairs in Jacqui Paulsen’s bedroom, Vee sifted through her most precious possessions, things the girl would never touch or value again. Jacqui had been a nice, normal kid, and her stuff confirmed that. Vee chided herself for thinking in past tense and gloomy absolutes like ‘she was a good girl who was never coming home again’, but she had to concur with Adele and her instinct on that point. Jacqueline Paulsen was gone for good.

  And she’d left a lot of junk behind. There were masses of clothes in the cupboard, some folded, others still wrapped in transparent plastic, collecting dust in closet hidey-holes. There was an alarming predilection for the tools of beauty, especially high-sheen lip gloss, of which there were several tubes, some unused with the sticky white barcode still attached. Most were in red and hot pink shades, complementing the room’s colour scheme. A Nike shoebox of odds and ends was tucked at the back of the topmost tier of the built-in cupboards. Vee hoped it would yield something more interesting, but after opening it she wasn’t sure.

  Feeling bad, Vee twiddled a condom packet, flicking it back and forth between the fingers of one hand like a casino chip. She didn’t have any qualms about rooting through a stranger’s belongings, and a teenager who brazenly kept condoms in a shoebox wouldn’t exactly be falling apart over the threat of discovery.

  Vee was far more worried about the shrunken woman downstairs, drowning her sorrows in a relay of tea and menthol cigarettes. Rekindled interest in the case had let mayhem loose, and the little house in Little Mowbray was overrun with invisible demons. Though Adele insisted to the contrary, she’d most likely taken some comfort in the lull that followed the hysteria of Jacqui’s disappearance and allowed herself a life – one tempered by loss, but normal. Now the bandage had been ripped off before the healing process was complete, and the wound was seeping.

  Grief deflated its victims. Adele, wrapped in a dressing gown and shrivelled to half the woman she’d been two days before, had greeted Vee at the door and granted her free reign in her daughter’s room. ‘The police went through everything countless times. Nothing up there surprises me any more,’ she said, triumphant, daring the new challenger to bring on a fresh gush of anguish. Vee would’ve preferred to do her ferreting in the evening but arguing proved useless. Adele had already taken leave for the day and that was that.

  Vee turned the condom over in her palm. It was the cheap variety, encased in foil so thick and crunchy you half-expected to find a baked potato rather than a contraceptive inside. ‘Make-Me-A-Daddy condoms’, standard fare at free clinics and university campuses. Reliable, some of the time. Maybe Jacqui had been knocked up after all.

  Vee tossed it back into the box. In her book, seventeen was a little young to jump from heavy petting to going pro. She’d waited a couple more years herself, and ended up taking the plunge with a dullard who hadn’t deserved it. Jacqui had clearly opened her eyeballs to life sooner. But condoms in the house, though – you wouldn’t pull that if you weren’t courting trouble. The back of a closet wouldn’t throw off any mother worth her salt. This shoebox was giant middle finger in the rule of law’s face: ‘Up yours, I’m doing me and you can’t stop it.’

  ‘Did you find anything?’ Adele asked from the doorway. Vee jumped. Adele looked like Sisyphus, lugging the unbearable sum of her sins up the hill of daily life, only to have to haul it up again the next. For all her burdens, the woman moved like a ghost.

  ‘I knew about those,’ Adele dismissed the contents of the box with a wave of a hand, ‘like I knew about Ashwin and boys before him. Don’t take it the wrong way, she wasn’t all over the place with anyone who winked at her. She wasn’t that kind of girl. But kids these days, they get there so much faster than we used to when I was young. It’s a scary reality. You can’t stop it.’

  ‘So she flouted your authority a lot, then?’

  Adele gave a dry chuckle. ‘Yeah. Sometimes it felt like all she did.’

  She stayed in the doorway, clutching the front of her robe and looking lost. Her eyes scanned the room for a place to sit, somewhere she would cause the least disturbance, preserving the shrine as it had always been. Vee drew out the chair behind the desk but Adele chose the bed instead, perching so close to the edge it looked like she might fall off. Her skill and ease holding the pose told of many visits to the room, probably staring into space for hours or crying her heart out. Vee settled down beside her.

  ‘How did she meet Ashwin?’ Vee said gently. ‘Y’all had been living here for years and she had a healthy social life. Athlone’s a long way for a popular girl to go for romance.’

  ‘I told you, she was nothing if not dogged in her loyalty. There was no reason to hide away after Sean passed on. The dirty secret was out. I needed a change from the old neighbourhood; schools were better here and Ian made a contribution for her sake. But Athlone always had a hold on her. That’s where she spent her childhood and some of her best friends still lived there. They met because she hung out there from time to time.’

  ‘Did you put her on the pill when you found out about their relationship?’

  Adele sniffed and shook her head. ‘No. That would’ve made it painfully real, that she wasn’t a child any more.’ Her breath wafted stale from sleep and heavy with the sweet smell of alcohol – brandy or rum, Vee couldn’t tell. So, not just tea in the tea, then.

  ‘I told her to be careful and I’m sure she was,’ Adele continued. ‘She swore she was, but I didn’t know exactly how she was going about it. We did talk about sex and things like that, but …’

  She shook her head more vigorously as she looked down at her hands. ‘God, I have so much to answer for.’

  ‘What about her father? Were they close enough for her to confide in him? Maybe she felt more comfortable talking to a doctor who also happened to be her dad.’

  Adele flinched like she’d been slapped. ‘Jacqui had her secrets but she was close to me. She wouldn’t hide major things from me, because I respected that she was too old for me just to punish her. Ian just spoiled her,’ she hissed, tears welling up. ‘The older she got, the less time he could spare. At least he was consistent and ignored all his kids. Whenever he did manage to drag himself over here, he compensated by buying things she didn’t need or giving her money to do just that.’

  She flapped her hands around at random objects – the clothes, computer, cosmetics – to illustrate. ‘Useless junk to make up for being a lousy father. Jacqui was too naïve and good-hearted to see through it, but I knew that once she got older she would. She wanted to be one of his ‘real children’. Like if he filled her life with the same material things, it would be the same as living in a fancy house with them and being a fucking Fourie. She was desperate for that status to make her life meaningful. It made me sick.’

  Or maybe Jacqui was just a carefree girl who took her good fortune where she found it, and didn’t sweat the small stuff like most hormonal teenagers, Vee thought. Doting parents who lavished gifts and overlooked bad behaviour were thin on the ground in adolescence.
Jacqui sounded like a skilful sweet-talker.

  ‘Was she close to her half-siblings? You told me they knew about each other, but how well? Did they spend time together?’

  ‘I suppose.’ Adele sounded reluctant to answer. Her shoulders sagged. ‘From the outside it seemed she got along with all three of them all right, but I sensed some underlying friction. Maybe it was just the normal tension between young adults, but I got the feeling there was more. Ian and Carina run their home like they do their careers – by the book. Those kids should be much more individual and aggressive, but somehow they haven’t fully matured. You’ll notice it when you meet them. They follow their parents’ orders, and I’m sure their instructions went along the lines of ‘don’t get too chummy with your bastard sister’. Not that Jacqui didn’t manage to win them over. Her personality was impossible to resist.’

  ‘Did she ever say anything specific to you about it?’

  ‘Kids need their secrets. And anyway, how bad could it be? They got along well enough for children who hadn’t grown up together, who had only found out about each other’s existence when the eldest was dying. Under the circumstances, they had taken to each other better than any of us adults would’ve expected. Lemons into lemonade. If something more serious had been bothering Jacqui, she would’ve told me.’

  Kids need their secrets and parents need their lies. Or they needed to tell themselves something even when they knew or suspected differently. Adele didn’t quite meet her eyes, so Vee tried another tack.

  ‘She, Serena and Lucas were all in their late teens. Did they share interests, was she closer to either one of them? I’ll be speaking to both of them, of course, but it would really help if I had a clearer picture of how your daughter spent most of her time and with whom.’ Vee still needed to chase down Bronwyn Abrams and Tamara Daniels, two of Jacqui’s closest friends and the most hopeful leads about how her final day had played out.