Like Clockwork

by Margie Orford

  ‘Thank you,’ said Clare. ‘Shall we record the interview there?’

  ‘Why not?’ he replied. He leaned towards her, placing one manicured hand on her exposed knee. Clare shivered involuntarily. ‘But no cameraman. No sound man. Only you.’ Clare swallowed. His physical presence was unnerving. She looked down at the card.

  ‘Fine,’ she agreed. She slipped the card into her bag and got up to leave. ‘I’ll see you there at eleven.’ Her knee felt hot when he removed his hand.

  Otis Tohar’s guests were drinking steadily. He circulated, slapping fawning politicians on the back, complimenting the overweight wives of eager businessmen. Clare watched Tatiana as she drifted unnoticed out of his orbit. She had bruises blooming like bracts of irises up her arms. She turned to see where Tohar was, then drew aside a heavy blue curtain and stepped behind it.

  Clare followed her into the concealed passage. Ahead was a staircase spiralling down to the floor below and into Tohar’s private quarters. Clare heard whimpering. There was a sliver of light from a door at the end of the passage. Clare pushed it open to reveal an editing suite and, behind it, a home cinema. The woman was folded into the director’s chair, her back to a phalanx of video cases packed into glass-fronted shelves. Her slender arms were clenched with knuckle-whitening force around her knees. Her head was bent, the black hair a parted curtain. On her exposed neck was the tattoo: two verticals scored through with an X. Clare repressed the urge to reach out and touch it.

  ‘Excuse me, Tatiana,’ said Clare. ‘Is something wrong?’

  Tatiana’s head snapped up, a video cassette in her hand. Her eyes were blank for a moment and then they blazed with fury. She stood up and pushed past Clare.

  Clare looked at the cover left behind on the desk. It was blank. There were banks of tapes, but the shelf above the edit suite was locked. Each of the videos had the Isis logo stuck to it. The lock was flimsy. Clare tried to twist it open, but before she could do so, she heard voices. She slipped back into the passage, her heart pounding. She was halfway up the stairs when whoever it was turned into the passage and closed the door that Clare had left wide open.

  Clare pushed the curtain aside and walked straight into Otis Tohar. She was so close she could smell the sharpness of him beneath his expensive cologne.

  ‘Dr Clare Hart. Were you lost? In search of entertainment?’ he said, pulling her away from the curtain as he shook her proffered hand. The arm that slipped around her waist brooked no resistance. She allowed herself to be propelled across the floor towards the bar.

  ‘I was looking for you. My friend, Kelvin Landman, tells me that you are going to be interviewing him for your latest film. Tell me, I have a special interest in film.’

  ‘I’m researching a documentary on the business of trafficking women and children,’ said Clare.

  ‘How worthy,’ said Tohar. ‘You know, I suppose, that we have refurbished all the Isis clubs?’

  ‘We?’ said Clare.

  ‘Oh, yes, I acquired several of the buildings where the Isis Clubs were established. And the land for the new Isis Safari Lodges – secluded, exclusive. Everything a busy man could want. You might be interested in doing a story. Not at all what you’d expect to find. Willing girls. Happy customers.’ His eyes trailed over her body. Tohar put his arm around Landman who had materialised next to him.

  ‘It’s a growth industry, isn’t it, Kelvin?’

  Landman nodded. ‘Unlimited. Just have to hold onto our wilder dreams while we keep an eye on the cash flow.’ His voice was laced with honeyed menace. Tohar turned back to Clare. ‘We are both very interested in movies. I am sure that it is going to be most interesting working with you, Dr Hart.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Clare. ‘But I don’t do promotional work.’

  ‘Very principled,’ said Tohar. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I must see to my guests.’

  He and Landman walked towards the busy gaming tables set out in a corner of the room. Clare attributed the icy feeling in the pit of her stomach to hunger, not fear. She went in search of Jakes and something to eat.

  18

  The boy walked ahead, his buttocks moulded by the tight trousers, T-shirt clinging to his slight chest. The path across the beach to the tidal pool was slick with rain and seaweed abandoned by the receding tide. He turned into the lee of the wind, sheltered by the curved wall that led to the open sea. Waves thrashed over the black rocks, waiting for the return of the lulled storm. The first real storm of the winter, thought the boy, absenting himself from what was coming. Fifteen minutes of being there but not being there, and he would have the money he craved.

  The man – fiftyish, paunchy, yet still muscled – braced himself against the rough concrete. Unzipped himself.

  ‘Strip.’

  The boy hesitated.

  The man yanked him forward. ‘Strip. And kneel.’ The boy capitulated. What did it matter being cold for a while, having mussel shells cut into his knees? It would be over so soon. The boy took off his clothes, his dark skin goose-pimpling in the cold. The man pushed him down, hands clamped at the base of the boy’s slender throat. He moved him slowly at first and then faster. The boy obeyed the terse orders, drifting loose now above the pool. Mind closed. Eyes, on instruction, open. It was when the man pulled him back for a final, choking plunge that he saw her lying between the rocks. The man finished, pushed him aside, enjoyed watching the boy scrabble for the negotiated notes he threw at him. And was gone. Back for dinner with his wife and daughter.

  The boy pulled on his clothes, his eyes held by the pale undulation of the girl’s body. He picked his way over to her, chilled by her stillness. He put his hand out to draw the wisp of her expensive top over the displayed breasts. He draped a ribbon of seaweed across her face, shutting out the blinded eyes. She was ice-cold to the touch. He felt sick as he ran back towards the road, away from her. He looked back once when he stopped to tuck the money into his pocket, then he caught a taxi home.

  He heard his mother’s soothing mutter calm his stepfather as he took the staircase up to his bedroom. His curtains were open. On the other side of his window Lower Main Road, deserted now and wet, trailed away towards Salt River. He shut his eyes, but all he saw was the girl, alone and dead on the rocks. Her long hair would be floating on the tide soon. The boy opened his eyes again but still she lingered, her right hand arced in a ballerina’s beckoning, a mute plea.

  He had to help her, but there was no way he was going to call the cops. He picked up his phone, checked for airtime. There was enough for an SMS. He riffled through the heap of papers on his desk. Right at the bottom was the folder he had kept from the documentary course he had done in the holidays. Dr Clare Hart. That was her name. She had given him a card when he had talked to her after a screening of one of her films. He had seen in the paper that she was involved in the investigation of the other murdered girl. His thumbs whirred across the tiny keys, forming the condensed message. He pressed ‘send’ and the icon swirled back and forth across the screen. Then it was gone. The boy sighed with relief: the dead girl was gone too. She was someone else’s problem now.

  He drew the curtains, then felt behind his abandoned tennis racket on top of the cupboard. The small wooden box had not been moved. In it was everything he needed to bridge him into the next day. He took the syringe out, admiring its slender elegance as he fitted the needle. The burner was lit, then the powder dissolved on the spoon and was drawn into the syringe – the vein on his thigh eager for the needle. He avoided the soft inside of his arm. It was the first place an inquisitive teacher would look, and it made his clients wary. They liked to sully his innocence themselves. He pulled the blankets over himself and subsided into a chasm of sleep.

  19

  Clare was extricating Jakes from a cluster of women when the text message came through. Her anxiety, always circling below the surface, surged at the jarring beep. She opened her phone – ‘Girl’s body. Graaff’s Pool.’ She froze. She checked the message detail
s. ‘Private number’ came up on her screen.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jakes, sensing her distress. She held her hand up and walked to the window facing the sea, dialling Riedwaan’s number.

  The clouds lay low over the sea, but the rain had worn itself out. She could just make out Graaff’s Pool. There was no one there, no one walking, no one loitering. A cold drizzle had driven even the hardiest vagrants off the benches and under the construction sites along Main Road. She shivered as she imagined a body out there, beyond the night-blackened sea wall.

  Riedwaan answered. ‘Did I wake you?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Ja,’ he yawned. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Someone’s found another body, Riedwaan. A girl.’

  ‘Where is it?’ Riedwaan was wide awake now. He was already out of bed and dressing, phone in hand. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at a party. Someone sent me a text message. I’ll explain later. Meet me at Graaff’s Pool. That’s where the SMS said the girl’s body was.’

  ‘I’ll be there now,’ he said.

  Clare wanted to say more but the words stuck, sharp in her throat. She snapped her phone shut.

  Otis Tohar was standing next to her. ‘A beautiful view, no?’ He pointed in the direction she had been looking. ‘One never knows what a night like this might bring, does one? Who were you calling?’

  ‘A friend,’ said Clare, surprised into answering his intimate question.

  ‘Someone to meet for a nightcap? How lovely for you.’

  Clare did not correct him. Instead, she thanked him for the party and fetched Jakes. The lift sank to the basement with a sigh. Clare pictured Otis Tohar watching the blue flash of police lights, the red of the ambulance from his eyrie, and the fear she had repressed came rushing back.

  ‘What was the big rush?’ Jakes asked as they turned onto the wet street.

  ‘I need to go down to Graaff’s Pool,’ she told Jakes. ‘Drop me at home so I can fetch my car.’

  ‘Graaff’s Pool? That’s not a good place in the middle of the night. I’ll come with you, be your knight in shining armour.’

  ‘It’s fine, Jakes. Just take me home.’ But Jakes was weaving his car through the late-night taxis towards the beachfront. Clare was too tired to argue with him, and she did not really feel like waiting there alone. Jakes parked with the exaggerated accuracy of someone who has had too much to drink.

  Riedwaan’s car was not there yet. It would take him twenty minutes to get there from the Bo-Kaap, where he rattled around alone in his too-large house. Clare was out of the car before Jakes had switched off the engine. She walked down the path, past the walls blocking the pool from public view, and the discarded condoms. Clare waited for her eyes to adjust to the flickering light as the clouds scudded along, hiding then revealing the moon. The tide was coming in. If there was a body here they would need to move it soon – before the water reclaimed it. The rocks were jagged black teeth against the night sky, the sand a grimy white. Clare surveyed the rocks. She could see nothing soft, nothing human. She ventured closer to the encroaching water’s edge, empty mussel shells crunching under her heels.

  The slim body was wedged into a shallow crevice, the dark hair haloed around her face. Clare felt faint. She stepped back from the body and phoned Riedwaan. ‘Call Piet Mouton and your scene of crime officers,’ she said. ‘We have a serial killer on our hands.’

  A wave rushed forward then pulled back with a sigh. The girl’s long boots with their spiked heels were flecked with foam. Clare switched her phone to camera and circled the body at a careful distance, taking photographs. The rising tide would soon obliterate any evidence. One breast was exposed, the other covered by the flimsy fabric of her top. There was a tear near the shoulder, as if someone had tried to cover her. Clare’s blood ran cold when she zoomed in on her hand – a bound, bloody pulp in which a dull metallic gleam was discernible. It would be a key, Clare was sure. The waves pulled back and Clare balanced herself over the rocks to photograph the girl’s feet. The girl’s head pointed south, towards Signal Hill, the rounded hillside that framed the tower block that Clare had just come from. The girl’s eyes were sunken, and the blood had dried into a mocking harlequin’s tear on her soft cheek.

  Jakes gasped when he saw the body.

  His camera would give them far better photographs than her cellphone. ‘Where’s your camera?’ Clare asked, ‘It could take a while before the police photographer gets to the scene.’

  ‘It’s in the boot,’ he replied. ‘I’ll get it.’ She walked back up with him, steadying herself on his arm. She felt him shake and held onto him more tightly.

  ‘How the hell did anyone get a body here without someone seeing him?’ asked Jakes.

  ‘Rent boys and their clients are not likely to rush to the nearest police station,’ said Clare.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s peculiar,’ said Jakes. ‘It’s quite a way from the road to the pool.’ Jakes opened his boot and was taking out his camera bag when Riedwaan pulled up. He got out of his car and looked from Jakes to Clare, noting the absence of Clare’s car. Riedwaan’s hostility was palpable when Clare introduced the men.

  ‘I took some pictures with my phone,’ said Clare as she led the way back down the path. ‘The tide is coming in so fast that I was worried any evidence might be obliterated. I’ve asked Jakes to take some more pictures with his camera. In case your guys take a while.’

  ‘How helpful,’ Riedwaan said. Jakes had gone ahead, camera at the ready. Riedwaan put both hands onto her shoulders. ‘How did you know about this, Clare?’ He could see the hesitation in her eyes. ‘You have to tell me. Otherwise we are both in shit.’

  ‘I told you, someone sent me an SMS.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Riedwaan.

  ‘It’s a private number,’ said Clare. ‘Do you think Rita could track it down?’

  ‘Ja,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I’ll get her on it ASAP.’

  Riedwaan bent down to look at the dead girl. ‘Amore Hendricks,’ he said, his voice heavy with pain. He was going to have to tell her parents. His face would forever be the one that lurked in their nightmares of their daughter’s death.

  Riedwaan turned to greet the scene of crime officers. Within minutes the area was taped off and lights had been set up. The police photographer was taking pictures of the body and the beach sand around it. A uniformed officer bent down and was checking every footprint in the vicinity. Another officer was collecting anything that could be collateral evidence; anything that might show how long the killer had spent with the body, what he had done here. Clare would add this to what she already knew to draw up a profile of the killer. The work of shifting from a single murder case to a special investigation would keep Riedwaan very busy. Clare envied him his preoccupation.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Riedwaan,’ she said

  ‘Okay. You can come and make your statement. I’ll give you the preliminary autopsy report then.’

  Jakes was waiting at the car, smoking a bummed cigarette. He gave her the roll of film he had shot, opened the door for her and drove towards her flat without a word. Riedwaan watched the car until it merged with the late-night clubbing traffic. He turned back to the task at hand, attributing the tightness in his chest to the horror before him.

  Riedwaan waited for Piet Mouton to arrive, which he did, ten minutes later. Mouton looked around. ‘The bloody tide is coming in fast, man. Not much to see here any more.’ He straightened up, wheezing at the effort. ‘You’re lucky you found her at all. If the tide had got her, you would have had fuck-all to compare with the last one.’ Mouton shook out a cigarette, and offered one to Riedwaan. The match hissed as it hit the water. ‘Who found her?’

  ‘Clare did. Somebody SMS’d her. Rita’s tracing the number.’

  ‘Jesus, Riedwaan, stay away from that woman. She’s a corpse magnet.’ Mouton put his pudgy hand on Riedwaan’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. ‘She’s a bit too clever for me and too skinny, also. Not my type.’ Piet didn’t
have a type. He had Mrs Mouton. Soft, plump, could cook like an angel, allowed no mortuary jokes in her house. She would be waiting for Piet with a slice of cake and a pot of tea when he finished the autopsy.

  ‘Are we going to autopsy her tonight?’ asked Riedwaan.

  ‘You trying to show up the rest of the police force, man?’ Piet asked him. Riedwaan shrugged.

  ‘Okay,’ said Piet, looking at his watch. It was well after midnight. ‘The night is young and it doesn’t look as if the two of us have much else to do.’ A wave splashed his shoes. ‘There’s nothing I can do here with the tide rising so fast.’ Mouton made a series of quick sketches of the girl’s body and tested her limbs for rigor mortis.

  ‘How long has she been dead, Doc?’

  ‘Hard to say. It’s been bloody cold tonight, but I’d say pretty much the same as the other girl. Thirty-six hours max. I’d say he likes to keep them with him a while once they are nice and quiet.’

  ‘You going to do swabs here, Doc?’ asked the older of the two mortuary technicians. He was blowing on his hands to keep them warm. A freezing drizzle was drifting off the sea.

  ‘No,’ said Mouton. ‘You boys can pack her up. We’ll get her inside. I’ll do everything in the lab. That rain looks like it’s here for the night.’

  The two men lifted the girl gently and settled her onto the stretcher. Mouton zipped up the body bag, covering her blinded face just as the rain began to come down in earnest.

  20

  Riedwaan followed Piet Mouton to the mortuary, stopping to buy coffee on the way. He would phone Clare in the morning. He did not want Jakes answering the phone. What he felt like doing was punching the bastard in the mouth. That would wipe the smug smile off his face. Riedwaan’s fist was clenched around the polystyrene cup. It spilt, burning him. He balanced the coffee in the open ashtray to avoid doing any more damage to himself, then parked next to Piet’s car. Theirs were the only two in the parking lot. He keyed in the entrance code to the lab and took the lift up. Piet was already setting out his instruments and containers. Riedwaan pushed open the door and gave the pathologist his coffee.