Like Clockwork

by Margie Orford

  Clare watched the house. Behind the drawn curtains someone blew out the candle, snuffing out the last remaining light. Clare was chilled to the bone. She saw Mr Hendricks take his wife in his arms. She sagged against him, broken. Clare drove away. The swipe, swipe on her windscreen did not improve her visibility until she was back in Sea Point.

  Clare knew she would have to explain her disappearance to Riedwaan, but she felt utterly drained. She poured herself a glass of wine instead and drank it, listening to one of the classical CDs that Riedwaan had bought on her last birthday. She poured herself another glass and left her cellphone off. She would face her life again on Monday.

  30

  Clare was up early. She came back from her run refreshed, prepared for the day. She’d scheduled a meeting for that morning, to work through the details of the profile and to strategise the next moves. Chief-Superintendent Phiri had the press breathing down his neck and the Minister for Community Safety about to break his balls. He was desperate for some meat to throw at them at the press conference scheduled for two o’clock. But Clare did not want the profile she was assembling to be released. She hoped that none of the forensic evidence would be passed anonymously to a journalist. That had happened once before, and a child murderer had walked free because of it.

  Clare was sure the killer would be watching the press. He was an exhibitionist, the daring display of his corpses left no doubt of that, and he would delight in taunting the police. She switched her phone back on. There was only one message – from Riedwaan. He had been married so long that the intimate habits of obligation came easier to him than to her. It was her own weakness that had taken her to him on Saturday night. This had opened up the hurt for both of them again. Clare hoped that it was not going to derail theIr work on the case.

  ‘I’d better listen to it now, and then phone and apologise. Again!’ she said to Fritz who was rubbing herself against Clare’s legs, hoping for breakfast. Clare listened to the message. Riedwaan’s voice was filled with an icy, impotent rage. ‘Where the fuck are you? It’s Sunday morning. There’s another girl missing. Her name is India King. Our man is just getting into his swing and you’re playing games with me. I hope you’ve got something very smart for me. Call me back. I’ll have my phone on.’

  Clare’s legs went numb. She slid to the floor with her back to the wall and called Riedwaan – but there was no answer. She left a message that she would meet him as soon as he called. Then she called the station. Joe Zulu told her that Riedwaan wasn’t there, but he gave her what meagre information there was about India King.

  Clare showered and dressed in five minutes. She took her coffee to her desk to wait for Riedwaan to call her back. Her notes about the murders were strewn across her desk. She arranged them neatly before putting them to one side, so that her thoughts could sink down into the dark space where the killer lurked.

  She sensed him, his implacable rage all the more frightening because he seemed to have plenty of resources. Firstly, a car – how else would he get the bodies where he left them? He had money too, or access to it. The clothes he decked his pathetic corpses in were absurdly expensive. He had control, too: the bound hands told her that. Or did they? Clare stared out of her window at the reddening sky. She picked up a pen and jotted some more notes:

  He needs to exert control. Why?

  The control he exercises over the girls is displaced – there must be some other place where he periodically loses control.

  Sexual fetish.

  No assault.

  Money?

  Murders: not cheap.

  A text message pulled her back into the present. It was from Riedwaan. ‘Meet me at the station. Eight-thirty.’ Clare gathered her papers, finished her coffee and walked to the police station. Being outside calmed her enough to face what was coming. She opened the door of the caravan where their investigation was housed. Riedwaan had cleared a wall for India. All that was there were her name and a photograph. Her brown eyes sparkled at Clare across the room. Riedwaan’s greeting was cold. He did not thank her for the file she handed him. Clare went out to get some more coffee, leaving him to read the profile she had written.

  Soon afterwards, Clare went with Joe and Riedwaan to retrace India’s movements before she’d disappeared. Nothing. Her friend had said goodbye after the rehearsal. India had said she was meeting someone.

  ‘No,’ said Gemma, her friend. She didn’t know who or where. But she had been distracted so she hadn’t really paid attention. ‘Yes,’ she said, they often split up, went their own way.

  By the end of the day that was all they had: that India had gone to the Little Theatre on Long Street. That she had left at about nine-thirty – perhaps to meet someone, perhaps not – and that she had vanished. She had not been seen again. Not by a car guard or any of the sleepy bouncers Riedwaan had woken. She had simply vanished.

  ‘Girls like her don’t just vanish like that,’ said Joe, shaking his head.

  ‘Not unless she slipped into a car,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Well-dressed girl getting into an expensive car. Who would notice?’

  Rita Mkhize sauntered in. ‘Hey, Riedwaan. Your fax from ballistics.’ She handed him the two pages. He skimmed them quickly.

  ‘Confirmation that it was a scalpel. But not a type widely used here any more. More like the kind of blade widely used thirty years ago. Still deadly, though.’ He read on.

  ‘Now here’s something interesting,’ he said. ‘The keys are duplicates. Both girls had their hands tied around copies of the same original.’ He handed the fax back to her. ‘Rita, won’t you check out all the key duplicating places from Sea Point to Woodstock. Find out which have this particular mastering system.’ He pointed out the section she needed. ‘You and Joe might want to pay them a visit.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Rita. She turned to Joe. ‘I’m going back to my office to put that list together.’

  ‘Don’t you like our palace?’ asked Joe. Rita laughed as she made her way down the caravan’s rickety steps. Joe watched her disappear into the main building.

  ‘Those keys you can buy anywhere,’ said Joe. ‘It’s a long shot.’

  ‘What would you suggest, Joe? You got any aces up that designer sleeve of yours?’

  ‘Cool it, Riedwaan,’ said Joe. ‘I’m just thinking about where we’re putting our time.’

  ‘There’s another girl missing, Joe. Should I just sit here on my gat?’

  ‘Well, we’re not going to catch anything if we fight,’ said Clare. ‘Let’s go over those statements again and see if there’s something we’ve missed. Phiri needs something for the press this afternoon.’

  Riedwaan turned back to the growing pile of folders on his desk, tension knotting his neck. ‘Okay, let’s get going.’ He opened India’s file – it was the slimmest one, just a missing-person report – as if it would suddenly reveal the truth. It didn’t. They worked through lunch, ordering pizza to keep them going.

  Phiri came by just before two. He skimmed through Clare’s report.

  ‘I’m cancelling the press conference,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing new here. These guys are after my blood and your profile.’

  ‘What will you do, sir?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘The press won’t be happy.’

  ‘I’m going to issue a statement about India King’s disappearance. I will advise young women to stay indoors or move with an escort.’

  ‘That will make you very popular,’ said Riedwaan.

  ‘Thank you, Captain Faizal, your concern is noted.’ Phiri slammed the caravan door.

  ‘Sir,’ Riedwaan called after Phiri through the small window, ‘ask anyone who has been approached in a threatening way to come forward.’

  Phiri nodded curtly and slipped in the back entrance, avoiding the gaggle of journalists at the front.

  ‘That will go down like a ton of bricks,’ said Clare.

  ‘I’m going to join Rita and Joe. I want to see how they’re getting on with those keys.’ Riedwaan picked up his keys.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘I’m going to go through these old cases – see if I pick up anything similar to this.’ She reached her hand towards him. He took it, and bent down and kissed her cheek.

  ‘How do you get away with it?’ he asked.

  ‘See you,’ Clare smiled as she turned back to the heap of unsolved cases in front of her. ‘Get some rest.’

  She worked till six. She had invited Marcus and Julie for a belated birthday dinner, and dashed home to wash away the long hours she’d spent with Riedwaan and the rest of the team, glad that she hadn’t cancelled. Clare set the table just inside the balcony doors and put the graceful arum lilies she had bought into a vase. She had ordered an elaborate array of sashimi from her favourite Japanese restaurant, which was delivered just as Marcus and Julie arrived. They sat and looked out over the sea towards Robben Island, washed pink by the dipping sun. A trick of the light made it seem close enough to touch.

  ‘Hard to imagine it as either a prison or a leper colony,’ said Marcus. ‘I’m designing a new visitors’ centre for the island where tourists will be able to order exactly what Mandela and his fellow prisoners had eaten. ‘For two hundred rand you’ll get a bowl of lumpy pap and a tin mug of tea,’ said Marcus.

  ‘I’ll bet you’ll be able to sleep in the cells soon. At five hundred a shot,’ said Julie, shaking her head.

  ‘You think you’re joking!’ said Marcus. ‘That’s phase two.’

  It was a relief to be drinking wine and talking about ordinary things. Clare let the conversation wash over her, a balm after a brutal Monday. The food was superb. Clare marvelled at the precision with which each piece of moist, pink salmon was butterflied, each vegetable pared paper thin. Their talk ebbed and flowed pleasantly around Marcus’s work, Julie’s children. Beatrice’s most recent misdemeanours were reported for Clare’s amusement. And Imogen’s school successes were listed for her praise. Clare managed to deflect the conversation from what she was working on until dessert.

  ‘By the way, Clare. I found out who owns that building on Main Road,’ said Marcus. ‘The one where all the illegals live.’

  Julie looked concerned. ‘Are you all right, Clare?’ she asked. ‘You’re so pale.’

  ‘I’m fine. Just a lot on my plate at the moment. Thanks for doing that, Marcus. Who owns it?’

  ‘Your friend, Otis Tohar,’ Marcus replied.

  ‘Oh,’ said Clare. ‘Did he buy it recently?’

  ‘Apparently so. Flour months ago. Cash. But I heard that he had a cash-flow crisis, and Landman conveniently stepped in with the bridging finance. Two million. The pound of flesh Landman needed to bring his friend to heel.’

  ‘Still, that’s a lot of cash,’ said Julie.

  ‘My deep throat at the deeds office told me that it was not all Tohar’s money. Apparently he had a little help from a friend,’ said Marcus.

  ‘Do you know who?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Your other friend. Kelvin Landman. He runs quite a few little sidelines.’

  ‘What I want to know,’ said Clare, ‘is how you pay a loan like that back. A gangster like Landman is not likely to give easy credit. With such a huge cash loan, he must have Tohar right where he wants him.’

  Clare had finished her dessert. Julie gathered the plates and stood up to clear the table. Then they stacked the dishwasher and switched it on.

  ‘Coffee?’ asked Julie.

  They took their coffee cups through to the sitting room where Marcus had resuscitated the fire. An SMS from Imogen finally eventually summoned her parents home. Clare saw them out. Glad to be alone, she went out to the balcony and watched a ship drift across the night horizon.

  31

  The chef’s assistant wiped the last sushi knife clean and flung his apron into the laundry basket. Exhausted, he scrubbed feebly, ineffectually, at the red stain on his trousers. He said goodnight to the stern Japanese chef, shrugged on his jacket, and hooded himself against the wind outside. He hurried over the road, shoulders hunched. Looking out for cars, he didn’t notice the moonlight being lightly tossed by the waves close by. Glad for the shelter of the bus stop by the palm trees, for the kick of the longed-for joint, he slowly looked up at the sea, at the quiet wink of the lights across Table Bay.

  The girl lay on the grassy bank between two palm trees. A flower among restless plastic bags, abandoned sticks, dog shit. Her black hair arrowed due west, her feet were splayed east – the left one naked, the right encased in a long, stilletto-heeled boot. Her bloodied hand, bound with a thin blue rope tied agonisingly tight, was partially obscured by a plastic bag that had drifted against her body. Her clothes were ripped, and the buttons of her blouse had popped open, exposing breasts feathered with stretch marks.

  She lay there as if she were sunning her long legs. He called. Nothing – no response. He went over to her, thinking she was just another young clubber full of drugs. Her body was beautiful. It had been a long time since he’d touched a woman without having to pay for it. He bent down, cupping her breasts in his hands. They were as full as the moon. The wind lifted the scarf around her neck, the movement drawing his eyes towards her face. The exposed smile of her slit throat hurled him back towards the bus stop. Her throat had been cut with such savagery that a neck vertebra was visible, seeming to have been scored. Her eyes were open. She gazed blindly up at the heavy moon. His expensive white trainers imprinted their logo in blood on the pavement.

  He saw a bus approaching. He controlled his breathing and got on.

  Sat down.

  Nobody saw her. Nobody looked.

  She receded as the bus moved away. Then she was indistinguishable from the mounds of seaweed strewn across beach. He rubbed his hands together: they burned where he had touched her.

  32

  Clare went into the kitchen after Julie and Marcus had left. She rinsed the coffee cups with Fritz winding in and around her ankles, delighted to have Clare to herself again. She was tidying the cushions when the doorbell went.

  Clare pressed the button immediately. ‘Julie! Your pashmina’s here. You didn’t need to come up. I would have dropped it off for you.’

  But there was no answering, guilty laugh, just the hush of an empty pavement. The hairs on the nape of Clare’s neck rose. She went into the hallway. The knock on her door was insistent, unfamiliar. The wood looked very flimsy. Her hand sidled towards the panic button.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It is me, Giscard.’

  Clare had seen Giscard earlier, guarding cars in his usual spot. Clare opened the door as far as the security chain allowed. It embarrassed her to have to speak to him through the small gap.

  She dropped her hand but she didn’t open the door. ‘What are you doing here? Are you all right?’

  ‘I know it is late, Madame Clare, but I must tell you something about the girl in the newspaper. The one who is gone.’

  Clare closed the door, then slid back the chain to open it. ‘Come in,’ she said. He followed her into the kitchen. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The girl everyone is looking for. India King,’ he struggled with the unfamiliar name. ‘I think I know where she is.’

  Clare felt the strength drain from her legs. She sat down.

  ‘How do you know? Where is she?’

  ‘Somebody, a friend, told me he sees her there near the beach. At the Japanese restaurant past the lighthouse.’

  She went cold. ‘Sushi-Zen?’

  ‘Yes, yes – that is the one. The man who saw her, my friend, he works there.’

  ‘What do you mean, “saw her”, Giscard? Where did he see her?’ Giscard shifted in his chair.

  ‘He saw her there on the grass. The moon is shining too bright. He sees her there. He think she is sleeping. But when he goes to her he sees she is dead.’

  Questions skittered through Clare’s mind as she reached for the phone and dialled the police station. ‘Put me through to Riedwaan Faizal.’ She had asked him to join her this eve
ning, trying to make peace. To their mutual relief, though, he was on duty. The phone buzzed in her ear. She was about to put it down, try his cell number, when he picked up. ‘Riedwaan. Someone has found India King.’ She could hear him exhale.

  ‘Where?’ he asked. ‘Who found her? When?’

  ‘On the beach outside Sushi-Zen at about midnight. There is a bus stop there, two palm trees. She’s there.’ Clare could hear him scribbling it down. ‘Giscard told me. It was his friend who found her – he works there.’

  ‘I’ll send Rita with a car to fetch Giscard. We will also have to find this friend of his.’ He put down the phone.

  Clare stood up. ‘I’ll make us some coffee. The police are on their way.’

  Giscard looked longingly at the door.

  ‘Giscard, you knew you would have to speak to them if you came to me.’ She poured his coffee, handed him the sugar. ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Xavier, my friend, he stays with me because he is also from DRC. He came home tonight and he was very, very strange. He was talking about the dead girl, the dead girl. He keep saying he touch her. That it is wrong that he touch her because she is dead. But he say he did not know she is dead.’ He stirred more sugar into the coffee, as if trying to make sense of Xavier’s incoherence.

  ‘What else?’ asked Clare. She took the spoon from him. The sound of it scraping on the bottom of the cup was grating her nerves raw.

  ‘He have blood on his new Nikes. I asked him how it got there but he say to me he did nothing. Just that he found her. He saw her when he was waiting for the bus.’ He looked up at Clare. ‘Please help me, Clare. I must come to you because he came on the bus. Maybe the driver sees the blood and tells the police. I say to him: come with me to the police. You must tell the truth or they will find you. I tell him that the police in South Africa will find you. It is not like DRC. They will want to find who killed this white girl. But he won’t come. He is too afraid.’

  ‘He won’t be deported if he has his papers.’

  Giscard stared at her. ‘He is not afraid of them. He is afraid of her. Her body is warm when he touch her, like she is alive.’