Like Clockwork

by Margie Orford

  But this body was not the body that Clare saw. The body she saw when she was naked was the body of her sister, Constance. They were the same height. But where Clare’s body was muscular, Constance’s was soft. Criss-crossed with scars, her thighs and breasts carried the knife emblems of the gang that had used her to initiate two new members. On her back, illegible now, were brutal signatures where they had carved their initials. Her left cheekbone was curved as sharply as a starling’s wing, the other had been reconstructed out of the shattered mess left by a hammer blow that had glanced off her skull and spared her life. For some reason the men, how many or whom Constance could never say, had not struck a final blow. They were distracted perhaps, or bored with the messy pulp that she had become. And so she had lived, her hip-length hair hiding a shattered face and the cold snake of fear coiled inside her thin body.

  This was the ghost-body Clare saw in her mirror. Clare let her hair go, and its curtain fall ended the familiar hallucination. She returned to the shower and scrubbed. The water was so hot that she did not notice the tears coursing down her perfectly matched cheekbones.

  9

  The sliding doors were open: the dawn was surprisingly forgiving, despite the unsettled waves. Clare sat on the sofa, the sweat from her run already drying. She forgot her coffee as she watched the sun rise, the colours reflecting on the expanse of white flooring. The door to her bedroom was open, the room empty except for the bed and an exquisite view of the Atlantic and a wall covered with her books. These provided the only colour in Clare’s sanctuary. The mountains, tinged pink by the sun, were an army frozen in its march up the bleak West Coast. She longed for that endless coast road snaking along the base of the mountains that led to the stone house whose low white buildings were screened by dusty eucalyptus trees. It was invisible from the road, secret. There Constance’s voice still echoed happily with hers around that distant, long-abandoned farmhouse of their childhood.

  Clare stood up, shaking memories from her as she stretched her stiffening muscles. She walked to the phone and, cradling the receiver in her hand, thumbed in the number without needing to think of the sequence. Three … four … five rings.

  It was her defence against the work she did … seven … eight … rings. A ninth ring … Panic rose in Clare, as it always did if someone was not where they ought to be.

  ‘Hello … Shit! The phone. Hello? Hello?’ Her beloved sister, at forty, still unable to answer a phone without dropping it.

  ‘Julie! I’m still here. It’s me. Clare …’ Her panic dispelled.

  ‘Darling! How are you? Where have you been? Weren’t you going to call me?’ Julie had adopted their mother’s way of speaking when they had still been very young children – an effusive torrent that swept along anyone in earshot. ‘It’s a bit mad here. But come for supper. Tonight, or maybe the weekend would be better. I’ve missed you. So have the girls.’

  The thought of her nieces, both so alive, so protected, comforted Clare. ‘Thanks, Julie. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Shall I bring something?’ But Clare was talking to a dead receiver. Julie had turned her attention to Beatrice’s breakfast and Imogen’s frantic hunt for her homework and her hockey stick. Clare put the phone down, soothed by the domesticity of Julie’s life.

  She made fresh coffee and took it to her desk. The autopsy report and the interview transcripts were there. Riedwaan had faxed the ballistic reports. She fished them out of the tray and read them, letting her mind sift through the information.

  There was one body. So far. Clare was convinced that there would be others. Or that there had been others that had not been picked up. She took the picture of Charnay out again and laid it in front of her. There were no injuries to suggest that she had been knocked out and then abducted. Charnay had gone willingly with her killer, so he must be personable. Charming too, to have access to a girl as beautiful as Charnay Swanepoel. It would have been later, when it was too late, that his abhorrence of women, of girls, emerged.

  The phone rang. Riedwaan’s name came up on the caller ID. She picked it up. ‘Hi.’

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going to see the mother later today.’

  ‘Good. And our man? What are we looking for?’

  ‘You know it’s impossible with one victim to have anything more than a feeling. Nothing, I suppose, from the records?’

  ‘No. No murders. I did have a call from a friend in Jo’burg. They have an unsolved sexual assault there from about six months ago. The girl looked similar to this one: dark hair, about sixteen. Same sort of weird bondage, but on both hands. And a blindfold, she claimed, so she could give no description.’

  ‘Any DNA?’

  ‘There was some. Blood and semen. But different blood groups, so maybe there were two of them. The girl survived but she had been severely assaulted. He’s sending the report down.’

  ‘You don’t know where she was before the assault?’

  ‘I do,’ said Riedwaan, shuffling through his notes. ‘She was at the Da Vinci Hotel.’ Clare had stayed there once. It was a replica of a Florentine villa in the heart of the sprawling chaos of Africa’s wealthiest and most violent city.

  ‘The friend who was meeting her was late and the victim had left by the time she arrived. It was busy – a Friday night – and no one saw her leave.’

  ‘Our girl disappeared on a Friday too. From the Waterfront,’ mused Clare.

  ‘Toxicology reports show traces of cocaine in the girl’s bloodstream. And Rohypnol.’

  ‘Can we interview her?’ asked Clare.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Riedwaan. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Dead? How?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Suicide, apparently. Two months after the rape. Her family didn’t accept the verdict, but there was no evidence that indicated murder.’

  Clare closed her eyes.

  ‘There is one other thing, Clare. The victim was convinced that her attacker filmed part of the assault. She said she heard the whirr of a camera.’

  ‘Lots of home movies these days. The woman I interviewed who was trafficked, she also told me that she had been filmed.’

  ‘We’re going to stumble across a little nest of home-made porn,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘It’s probably all over the Net,’ said Clare.

  ‘You want to meet me for a drink later?’ asked Rediwaan.

  ‘Not tonight,’ Clare answered. ‘I’ve had quite a week.’

  ‘Friday, then?’

  ‘I’m going to my sister for dinner tomorrow night,’ said Clare. ‘Why don’t you come?’ Silence stretched between them.

  ‘I don’t think family is quite the thing for me, do you?’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Clare. She was ashamed at how relieved she was that he’d refused. ‘I’ll email you the profile as soon as I’ve got something more coherent.’ Clare cut the connection, wishing immediately that she had agreed to meet him that evening. She picked up her pen and started making careful notes, regret dissipating as she worked. She would be visiting the dead girl’s home the next day.

  10

  Clare did not recognise the address – Welgemoed was not an area she ever had reason to visit. She was glad of Riedwaan’s directions. A woman out of uniform might be easier for Charnay’s family to talk to. It was a champagne-crisp morning, the light shimmered above the leaves of the trees lining the street she turned into. Here stolid face-brick houses, products of the affluent sixties, stood at the ends of long driveways. After the roar of the highway, the suburb seemed quiet. The only movement – the only sound – was a gardener pushing a lawnmower. It was as easy to find number 27 as it would have been to find any other house.

  The house was silent. Every window was closed, with a net curtain blinding it. She thought she saw someone pass an upstairs window, but it could have been a shadow from the tree that blocked the sunlight from the house. Deep inside, a melancholy chime responded to her finger on the doorbell. The door flew open. A
boy looked at Clare sourly.

  ‘Wie is daar?’ a voice called to him.

  ‘It’s that woman. About Charnay,’ he replied, not taking his eyes off Clare. ‘My mother is in there,’ he said, standing aside. He pointed down the passage to an open door. From it, sunlight spilled into the gloom.

  The dead girl’s mother sat in the centre of the room, hunched as if a knife was twisting low in her gut. Mrs Swanepoel looked up at Clare, her eyes emptied of all emotion except the knowledge that she was alive and her child was not.

  ‘Ek kan jou nie help nie,’ said Mrs Swanepoel. ‘I cannot help you.’ She remembered to repeat it in English. ‘I told the police everything I know.’

  Clare bent low and knelt next to the woman. She knew better than to touch her. The formulaic gesture of comfort would flay the woman.

  ‘She was an angel,’ said the mother, reverting to the familiarity of Afrikaans. ‘That is why she was taken from me.’

  Clare turned away from her, pinioned by loss on her suburban carpet. She did not need to talk to her, could not bear to ask her more questions to which she had no answers. She had read Riedwaan’s interview transcripts anyway.

  ‘Can I look through her room?’ Clare asked.

  Mrs Swanepoel did not move. ‘J.P.,’ she whispered. ‘J.P., take Miss Hart to your sister’s room.’

  ‘Ja, Ma.’ The boy who had let Clare in reappeared. Clare followed him up the stairs. Here all the doors were closed. He led her to the end of the passage. ‘Friends Welcome, Family by Appointment’ said the hand-drawn sign on her door – a remnant from a very recent childhood.

  The boy opened the door and stood back to let Clare enter. The room was an orgy of pink: walls, curtains, carpets, bed – in every shade of the colour. Anything that could be flounced had ruffles and bows and flowers on it. It was oppressive. Clare wondered if the feeling of absence had been there before Charnay went missing. Clare repressed an urge to throw open the windows.

  J.P. did not come in. ‘I’ll come back for you,’ he said, closing the door before Clare could respond.

  She was relieved when she did not hear the key turn. She stood in the centre of the room, at a loss, reaching for a sense of the absent presence of the girl. Every flat surface was covered in pictures cut from celebrity magazines. All of them were of Charlize Theron. Charnay seemed to have gathered every available image of the actress. On her desk was a scrapbook full of articles tracking the star’s ascent from obscurity to the zenith of Hollywood fame. Clare sat down and read the notes that Charnay had made alongside the articles. They read like an instruction manual rather than a fan’s obsession. The pictures might be of Charlize, but the focus was Charnay.

  Clare settled herself, dislodging a small avalanche of cushions. She reached down to pick them up. There on the floor, revealed as she shifted the bedspread, lay a blue card. Clare picked it up and held it up to the light. A series of numbers had been pencilled there and then erased. There was a sound from the passage. Clare slipped the card into her pocket as J.P. opened the door.

  ‘Look in her cupboard,’ he instructed. Clare obeyed. It was stuffed with expensive, wispy clothes. A pile of high-heeled shoes tumbled out. She noticed the labels as she bent to put them back.

  ‘Expensive, hey?’ he sneered. ‘I bet you could never afford them.’ Clare did not correct him. ‘How do you think she paid for them?’ He stepped close to Clare. There was a sprinkle of pimples around his nose. His breath was rank. ‘Think about how she paid,’ he repeated. ‘My mother thinks it was from modelling. But she believed anything that little hoer told her.’

  His hatred was palpable. It was all Clare could do to stop herself from stepping back from it. It would give him pleasure, she was sure, if he sensed that he had unnerved her. ‘Did she go to meet someone last Friday?’ asked Clare.

  ‘How must I know?’ he spat. ‘She never bothered to speak to me.’

  ‘Where did she go when she went out?’ asked Clare.

  ‘To the Waterfront,’ he said. ‘That’s where they always went.’

  ‘They?’ queried Clare. The boy shifted his weight, regretting his slip.

  ‘Cornelle,’ he said. ‘They did everything together.’

  ‘Did you tell Captain Faizal this?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Nobody asked me,’ he replied. ‘Anyway, she always told my ma that she was going to sleep at Cornelle’s. And Cornelle said she was coming to sleep here. They were friends for so long that everyone stopped checking.’

  ‘Except you,’ said Clare. The boy looked awkward. He pointed to a framed photograph on the bookshelf. ‘There’s Charnay. And that’s Cornelle.’ The two girls were dressed in porn-star chic – like all girls their age. Cornelle was blonde and very slim, squeezed into clothes a size too small. She contrasted with the darker beauty of Charnay. Clare wondered how they had paid for these clothes. It cost a lot of money to look that cheap. Clare held the picture closer. It was difficult to work out where it had been taken. The blurred background did not look like someone’s house.

  ‘They worked well together,’ said J.P. He was at the door, holding it open for her. Her time was up. She put the picture down.

  ‘Where is Cornelle now?’

  ‘At school,’ he answered. ‘She was in the same class as Charnay.’

  Clare followed J.P. Swanepoel to the front door. ‘J.P.,’ she said, ‘what were you doing on Friday night?’ He was motionless except for the tic-tic-tic of a vein in his neck.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I would like to know,’ said Clare. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘On rugby tour.’ His voice cracked a little. ‘We went to the Boland on Friday morning. You can ask my coach.’

  ‘I will,’ said Clare, ‘and you let me know if you think of anything else about Charnay.’

  The dead girl’s brother looked sullen. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Any new friends she might have made,’ said Clare.

  He laughed. ‘She made a new friend every hour.’ He closed the door behind her. He was still watching through the thick, ridged glass when she opened her car door. She waved at him, but he did not wave back. She drove around the block before calling Riedwaan.

  ‘How did it go?’ he asked.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Clare. ‘I’ll tell you when I see you. There was just one thing I wanted to check now.’

  ‘Ja,’ said Riedwaan. ‘What?’

  ‘J.P. Her brother,’ said Clare. ‘Did you talk to him?’

  ‘Rita Mkhize did,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Why?’

  ‘I just wanted to check on his alibi. Can I speak to Rita?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Riedwaan. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Rita,’ she heard him call. ‘Clare wants to speak to you.’ He took his hand away. ‘I’ll see you later?’

  ‘I’ll call you,’ she said. Riedwaan handed the phone to Rita.

  ‘Hi, Clare,’ Rita said. ‘What did you want to know?’

  ‘About J.P. Swanepoel. What did you think?’

  ‘Not my type,’ laughed Rita. ‘And I most certainly was not his type either. A little blast from the old South Africa past.’

  ‘What did he tell you about his weekend?’

  ‘He said he’d been on rugby tour,’ said Rita.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I checked it out. His coach told me they left early Friday and were only back on Sunday evening. And that J.P. was there all the time.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Clare.

  ‘There was one other thing,’ Rita added. ‘I’m not sure if it’s important.’

  ‘What?’ asked Clare. Her pulse quickened.

  ‘He was sent off twice. Once for punching an opponent, and once for kicking someone in the scrum.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Clare. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Any time,’ said Rita. ‘Have a good weekend if I don’t see you.’

  Clare looked at her watch. It was close to the end of the school day. A chat to Cornelle would be worth the wait. Clare found Welgemoed High easily.
There was only one exit – the rule now at government schools after a spate of assaults. She parked opposite a cluster of mothers chatting next to their Jeeps and BMWs.

  11

  Cornelle walked out of the school gates alone. She jerked at the book bag slung over her shoulder, reaching for the cigarettes in her blazer pocket as soon as she had rounded the corner. She swivelled, hip bones jutting above her grey skirt, towards Clare’s greeting.

  ‘Hi, Cornelle. I was hoping we could talk about Charnay.’ Clare leaned over and opened the passenger door. ‘Get in,’ said Clare. ‘I’ll drive you home.’ The girl narrowed her eyes, but the day was raw, and her cold hand was already reaching for the door. She folded herself into the passenger seat, shaking her blonde hair loose from its regulation ponytail.

  ‘How do you know my name?’ she asked. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Clare Hart. I’m part of the team investigating Charnay’s murder.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Cornelle, interested now. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I was at Charnay’s house earlier. J.P. showed me the photograph of you two. I just wanted to talk to you about her.’

  Cornelle turned her head away, her hair curtaining her expression. She dragged again on the cigarette and then lit a fresh one from the glowing stump. Clare ignored the smoke.

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘She was my friend,’ said Cornelle. ‘We used to do everything together. Before.’

  ‘So what happened last week?’ asked Clare. ‘Where did you go? Where did she go?’ Cornelle kept her face averted. She shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. We didn’t always spend our weekends together.’

  ‘Charnay’s mother thought you did. What about yours?’

  ‘Mine doesn’t give a fuck,’ said Cornelle. She ground her half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray. ‘She wouldn’t even have noticed if I had disappeared.’ Cornelle dashed the back of her hand against her cheek. Clare could not see if there were tears.