Like Clockwork

by Margie Orford

  He spent much longer than he had intended at the bar next to New York Bagel. He drove past Clare’s flat on his way back to his cold, empty house. Her lights were on. He was glad she was safely at home.

  Inside, Clare sat dead still. She held the familiar Tarot card, the envelope it had been sent in abandoned on the table with the autopsy report. She was looking at the card. The High Priestess. Or the Female Pope. The second card of the major arcana. The card that warned against the rational in favour of intuition. The card was both warning and summons to the dark world where her sister paced, hidden, full of fear and hate. Clare’s heart was heavy with the knowledge that Constance had heard of the murder, had summoned her twin to see her.

  Clare slipped the card back into the envelope, putting it into her bag. Then she settled down with the transcripts that Riedwaan had given her and tried to make sense of the girl’s murder.

  7

  Clare cleared her thoughts of Charnay Swanepoel. This morning her obsessive attention was turned on Natalie Mwanga. Nosing her car into the traffic, Clare took the N1, slipping into the correct lane and peeling away on the road that skirted the edge of Atlantis. It was a desolate place. Drifts of young men gathered at street corners, hoping against forlorn hope for some work for the day. Clare glanced at her watch. Nine forty-five. Unlikely that those remaining would be picked up now. She drove past a boarded-up factory, looking for Disa Street. There it was. She turned, looking for the Vroue Helpmekaar Centre for Abused Women and Children. She drove straight past the nondescript house before registering the steel mesh on the windows. She parked under a tree that was bent double by years of relentless wind. Clare greeted the tall woman who came out to meet her.

  ‘Welcome, I am Shazneem,’ she said, enveloping Clare’s smooth hand in her own. The lyrical name jarred with the shorn grey hair and the well-worn biker’s jacket. ‘We were waiting for you, Dr Hart.’ Shazneem put an arm around Clare’s shoulders, shepherding her towards the yellow front door, her large body positioned protectively between Clare’s and the street.

  ‘We’ll talk in my office first.’ Shazneem opened a door with ‘Centre Director’ and a colourful butterfly painted on it. ‘And then I’ll take you to meet Natalie. She is expecting you.’

  Clare settled into the offered chair. Shazneem manoeuvred her bulk with surprising agility around the cramped desk and into her chair. Its tall back framed her, giving her the look of an Amazon queen. But when she reached over for her notebook and pencil, a wave of exhaustion played across her features and the illusion was gone. She was just a middle-aged woman doing a relentlessly demanding job.

  ‘What can you tell me about trafficking, Shazneem? Do you think it happens?’ Clare asked her first question, her pen clicked open, poised to write, her small tape-recorder whirring softly.

  ‘I know it happens, we know it happens, and it is happening more and more. We see the women, the girls, who make it and find their way to the shelter. They are just the tip of the iceberg. But we can’t prove it, can we?’ Fury staccatoed her words. ‘How do we prove it when so many of these girls are desperate to start with? Fleeing wars, fleeing poverty, believing that they are being offered a better life – and there is no law to protect them. For the gangsters who run the trade, it is risk free and the profits are enormous. Guns make money and, sure, drugs are profitable – but both are high-risk investments requiring complicated arrangements and a trail that is often not that difficult to trace back to the mastermind. With women, or children, there is almost no risk.’ Shazneem calmed herself with a sip of water. ‘The return on an investment that requires the smallest capital outlay – a plane ticket or a taxi ride and a bribe. It is limited only by the number of clients a body can service.’

  ‘What proof do you have?’ asked Clare.

  ‘None that will stand up in court. The women are too terrified to testify.’ Shazneem’s eyes flashed with a rage that had etched deep lines onto her soft skin.

  ‘I must warn you to be very careful, Clare. I don’t know if this is connected, but yesterday we had a visit from three men. They came here, to the shelter, enquiring after Natalie. They said they were her brothers.’

  Clare blanched. ‘How did they know she was here?’

  ‘Natalie has no brothers,’ said Shazneem. ‘But these men knew she was here. Or they know more about what you are doing than they should. I would be careful who you talk to about this investigation.’

  The tendons in Clare’s neck tightened. Silence stretched between the two women, deepened by the shouts and giggles of the shelter’s children playing in the weak sunlight.

  ‘Perhaps I should speak to Natalie now,’ said Clare.

  Shazneem stood up. ‘Her room is at the back. It is safest there.’ Clare followed her outside. They crossed a bleak courtyard, empty except for a shabby plastic jungle gym. The two little boys playing on it fell silent when they saw Clare. They did not respond to her greeting until instructed to by Shazneem. Then they turned back to their game, the visitor forgotten.

  Shazneem knocked on the third door.

  ‘Entre.’ The voice was gentle. Shazneem opened the door and stood back to let Clare enter.

  ‘Natalie, this is Dr Clare Hart,’ she said, ‘I’m the person who is doing the film on trafficking.’ Before Clare could greet the woman seated on the bed, Shazneem turned and walked back the way they had come.

  ‘Bonjour, Natalie,’ said Clare.

  ‘Bonjour, Madame. Please come in and sit down.’ Natalie, silhouetted against the window, gestured graciously towards the chair. Clare sat down and waited. The room was very still. Sunlight filtering through the bars glanced off Natalie’s angled face.

  Natalie Mwanga looked at the woman sitting opposite her. She guessed that she was about her own age. Clare’s dark eyes were clear, but fear lurked around her soft mouth, hardening it. Clare Hart would have lines like vertical knifemarks on each side of her mouth before she was much older. Natalie had those lines coming too.

  Clare waited for Natalie to decide whether to trust her with her story. It was a delicate moment that could be destroyed with one careless word or sudden movement. Natalie would look good on television, her beauty would sell her story.

  The stillness took Natalie back to the chaos that had driven her from her home village. The first bout of noise and violence had come from her husband – who’d been chosen for her – and not from the war. Although once she left him, the war did catch up. Like a hyena, it snapped at her heels, driving her and her daughter from displacement camp to displacement camp, where Natalie traded her careful English for a bemused aid worker’s spare tent, cooking pot, mosquito net. Like the other women who were young enough, she cajoled food from peacekeeping troops. She used charm when she could, or the temporary gift of her still-firm body when necessary. Her daughter she refused them, even when offered almost-fresh meat for her. She had made her way to Kalangani, where the fighting skirted the town and where she had some relatives. Here her daughter would be safe. But this, Natalie intuited, was not the story Clare wanted.

  Natalie’s voice bridged the distance between them. ‘I will tell you, Madame, my story how I got here. For your film I will tell you. For my daughter.’

  ‘Can I record this?’ asked Clare, opening her camera bag.

  Natalie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Why not?’

  Clare slipped the video camera out of her bag and flicked out the legs of the tripod to set up the camera. Natalie adjusted her hair, wiped the corners of her mouth, the instinctive gestures a camera elicits. She sat straight up in her chair and pulled her skirt over her knees.

  ‘Shall I look at you or there?’ she gestured towards the lens.

  ‘Look at me,’ said Clare. ‘Forget about the camera. I’ll ask you questions, so don’t worry about saying things right or wrong. Just speak to me.’

  Natalie nodded.

  ‘Tell me who you are, where you are from,’ said Clare.

  ‘I am Natalie Mwanga,’ she said. �
�I am thirty-five years. I am from the Congo before I came to South Africa. The cousin of my father comes to me and he says you are suffering a lot. Why don’t you go to South Africa, you will find a job, you will find everything. Go and find your new life. I didn’t know what he thinks – what he means for me. When we came to South Africa he says, “You must do everything that I tell you.” And in the afternoon I saw him coming with his friends, here in Cape Town. And he said, “If you make sex here with the people, you are going to find a lot of money.” I was forced to do it.’

  The woman’s voice died away. ‘Do you know what it feels like? What I feel like when it happens?’ she asked. Clare shook her head.

  ‘I just start to cry. I did feel bad, so bad. I just cry every day, every time. I am not used to do it.’

  ‘Did they give money to your uncle?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Yes, they gave money to him. I don’t know how much. When I asked him how much they gave him, he said, “It is not your problem. You eat here, you drink here, you sleep here. What do you want to know how much they give?” I was afraid of the HIV, about infection. But God loves me. I did the test and I am well. I am well.’ Natalie’s face transformed with the delight of this reprieve.

  ‘How did you get away?’ asked Clare.

  ‘It was a Saturday, I think. He did lock the front door but he forgot to lock the back door. I didn’t go to the police. I also didn’t know where they were. I didn’t have any papers. When I asked my uncle for my papers he said, “Myself, I’m your paper.” So I ran to my friend. She told me, “I can’t help you. My house is small. Maybe my boyfriend won’t accept you to stay here.” She told me to go to the church. I went there and I got help. I spent four days at the church and then Shazneem came to fetch me from the shelter.’

  ‘And your family?’ asked Clare.

  ‘I have one girl in my country. She is thirteen years. She is beautiful. I am so afraid for her.’ Natalie had only needed one or two questions to free the river of her story, but now she fell silent.

  ‘I was very afraid of that camera,’ said Natalie. Her quiet voice agitated the motes of dust suspended in the light that lay between them.

  ‘Why?’ Clare asked. She reached over to switch off the camera.

  ‘When I first come here to Cape Town some men make a film. These men, they pay my uncle.’ Natalie stopped. Clare switched the camera back on.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. There was enough tape for another five minutes.

  ‘They are men there and they take my clothes. They say they will teach me to make love. I say I am a married woman. That I know. They laugh and give me other clothes to put on. A lady helps me because I don’t know how to wear these clothes.’ She stopped and looked down at her hands. They are broad, strong, the nails bitten to the quick. ‘I am very ashamed of that,’ she whispered. ‘They make picture and there is one man who say, do this, do that. He is like Hollywood and he has the camera too sometimes. Sometimes another man with a camera.’

  ‘What did they want you to do?’ asked Clare. Her tape ended, clicking into the silence.

  Natalie raised her head. ‘I don’t want to say about it. I am very ashamed. More than the men because now I am here the men are over. I am safe. But in my film I am never over. Always I do the things, do the things in the film.’ She wiped the tears that welled in her eyes. ‘Maybe if you find that film you will bring it back to me so that I can stop.’

  Clare switched off the camera again. ‘If I see it I will try to get it. Thank you, Natalie.’ She packed up her things and readied herself to leave.

  ‘Dr Hart, I give you my story for your film. I would like to ask you for something,’ said Natalie.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Clare. Her stomach knotted.

  ‘With my daughter. Help me bring her here where she can be safe. Where she can eat and go to school.’ Natalie handed her a sheet of paper. It was dog-eared, as if it had been smoothed open countless times. A young girl’s face looked out at her from beneath the Red Cross letterhead. It was dated six months earlier.

  ‘You know the right people. I saw your film on television,’ said Natalie.

  Clare took her phone out of her bag and dialled. The tension around Natalie’s shoulders went as Clare gave the information about her daughter.

  ‘They will do what they can. That was the director of the Southern African Refugee Centre,’ said Clare. ‘They will phone the shelter as soon as they have located her.’

  ‘Good,’ said Natalie, satisfied with their transaction. ‘I will phone you and tell you what they do.’

  The interview was over and Natalie looked exhausted. Clare felt exhausted too. She was glad that she had a flask of tea in her car. She was going to need it before the next part of her journey.

  8

  Clare sat in her car. She lifted her hands to her temples and pressed, trying to contain the horror that pulsed there. She turned the key and the car purred in response. The street was empty, desolate, as she paused, looking for running children before turning right. Someone had flanked a concrete garden path with petunias but the tender pink petals had been mutilated by the south-easter. Clare turned away from their defeat. She did not pay much attention to the white car ahead of her that indicated left towards the majestic solidity of Table Mountain.

  She turned right, accelerating across the oncoming lanes when there was a lull in the traffic. She headed north, where the mountains petered out into hills and wheatfields. She was looking out for the sign to Serenity Farm, so she did not notice the white car pull over into a lay-by. Even if she had, she’d have been too far away to notice the fury that her sudden disappearance provoked in the driver.

  As always, the faded lettering on weathered wood came too soon after the bend. Clare turned left sharply, a driver hooting in her wake. And then the sound of traffic was gone. Overhead, the ancient, ghostly gums reached their branches upwards and over. Their embrace created a dappled arch that extended like the nave of a cathedral towards the house in the distance. Clare drove down the rutted drive, avoiding the corrugations that had become worse over the years she had been taking this road. This suspended moment was the bridge between her world and the cloistered place that sheltered her twin.

  Clare parked her car at the reception area and got out. She always remembered not to lock here. To do so would bring the fear of the world that surged back and forth on the freeway into this haven, but it took her some effort to override the instinct to both lock and double check.

  Father Jones was waiting for her on the polished red steps. ‘Hello, Isaiah,’ she said, lifting her face to be kissed. He leaned towards her, breathing her in. His hand smoothed the familiar curve in the small of her back, and her body softened in response.

  ‘Welcome, Clare,’ he said. Twenty years had not diminished her feelings for him. When he hooked his arm at her elbow, as a brother would, they were aware of the loss – but it was one they had both accepted..

  ‘I am glad you came.’ There was no reproach. He understood her long absences. ‘Constance has been so anxious since your call.’

  Clare looked at him. ‘More anxious than usual,’ Isaiah amended. ‘She’s waiting for you.’

  They walked down the narrow path, the plants they brushed against wafting sharp autumn scents up to them. Isaiah stopped at the edge of the clearing. On the other side of it stood the cottage, white, symmetrical, perfect, where her beautiful twin had purdahed herself. Isaiah pressed her arm.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

  Clare stepped past the sundial to knock on the front door. Constance would not answer before she had allowed Isaiah to return up the narrow path. Clare listened for the susurration of her sister’s skirts, her body alert as she waited for the door to open to reveal Constance. Her other self.

  ‘Hello, Clare. I’m glad you came. Come in, you must be so tired.’ A white hand reached from the dim interior and took hold of Clare’s brown arm, drawing her inside. Constance closed the door. The sisters embraced,
blonde hair mingling with black.

  ‘Why did you send me this?’ asked Clare, pulling away to show the enigmatic card to her twin.

  Constance took it. ‘The first card is the key to the present. This is the High Priestess.’ She turned the card over in her hand. ‘It’s the Female Pope, the emblem of the law.’

  Clare looked blank.

  ‘This is you, Clare. Always thinking, never understanding.’

  Clare followed Constance into the sitting room. She sat down, her arms tight around her legs, her body rocking now.

  ‘Please keep it, Clare. You will need it.’ Clare capitulated, putting the card back in her bag. Then she knelt beside Constance and held her. Her sister quietened in her arms.

  ‘He’s out there again. I feel him. He’s moving.’ She turned her face into the hollow below Clare’s shoulder.

  ‘No, he’s not.’ Clare did not believe her own lie.

  ‘Who killed that girl, then? Who carved her up like that?’ whispered Constance, her breath hot on Clare’s face. ‘Who?’

  ‘The police will find him. I’m working with them. I’ll find him.’ Clare pushed her sister’s hair away from her face. ‘Try to rest now. You’ve not been sleeping, have you?’

  Constance shook her head and leaned against Clare. There was nothing for it now but to hold her sister until she exhausted herself and fell asleep. Clare settled in to wait. It was dark before Constance fell asleep. Clare covered her and let herself out. The moonlight was cold as she crunched back up the path to her car.

  As soon as she got home, Clare stripped and stepped under a scalding shower, trying to erase the ghost scars imprinted on her body when the real scars had in fact been carved onto Constance. She stepped out of the shower for her shampoo and stopped in front of her mirror. She had small, neat feet. Her legs were well proportioned with the muscular leanness to the hips and thighs that comes with running. Her waist curved inwards then flared towards small, curved breasts that had only recently started to soften. That could be disguised when necessary with a quick splash of cold water or a strategic run of a finger down her ribs. Her belly was taut, the unmarked skin stretched tight across her pelvis. She twisted her long hair on top of her head, revealing her elegant neck and the curve of her shoulders. It was a good body. One that had captured the attention of several men and one or two women.