Like Clockwork

by Margie Orford

  Clare had a fleeting vision of India lying cold in the morgue, her lovely body stitched together again after the postmortem in readiness for the funeral. There was no privacy in death. She would be stacked on one of the metal tiers that held Cape Town’s dead – among those who had died in suspicious circumstances. A street child banged at her window, his outstretched hands demanding money. Clare shook her head and started her car, wincing at the thud of his fist on the boot as she pulled away.

  38

  It was already very dark when Clare got home. She dispelled the feeling of neglect in the flat by switching on lights and closing curtains. She took the dead flowers from the hall and dumped them in the bin. She was expecting Riedwaan at eight. They’d be going through the case again – they were still missing something vital. She looked into the fridge: a lone cauliflower, which had bloomed black fungus. Mister Delivery would be bringing dinner. Clare made a pot of tea and took it through into the lounge. Then she took the cassette she had taken from Brian King’s study and pushed it into the video machine. With Fritz on her lap, she curled up on her couch and pressed ‘play’. The television screen flickered into life.

  The opening shot was a close-up of a woman driving. Then the camera pulled back, revealing an oak-lined drive. It had clearly been shot from inside the house – every now and then the hand-held camera wobbled, inadvertently including curtains and the side of a window. The camera’s hidden eye swept down again when the woman parked. It did not bother with her face; rather it zoomed in obscenely on her breasts, then her buttocks, as she leaned into her boot to pick up her shopping. The woman’s obliviousness imbued the ordinary scene with menace. The camera panned as she turned. Clare sat bolt upright, spilling scalding tea onto an incensed Fritz. The house and garden that came into view was the one she had been in that afternoon.

  The screen went dark, then flooded with light as the woman opened the door and was briefly silhouetted against the sun, keys in hand. She set her bags down and closed the door behind her. Then strangely, suddenly, she was looking directly at the camera, her face frozen in horror. She was uncannily like India. The woman’s body sank down, as if the weight of what she saw crushed her. A man stepped into the screen. He was hooded, but the wedding band on his hand was unmistakable. It was Brian King. He took the woman’s wrist and twisted a piece of blue rope around it, viciously tightening it. Clare watched, waiting for the woman – it could only be Mrs King – to struggle, to protest. But she did neither. She held up her other hand, cowering like a dog that hopes its punishment will soon be over.

  Her husband twisted the rope round her hand, forcing her to her knees. He ordered her to strip, but she shook her head mutely. Stupidly. King jerked her to her feet and dragged her down the passage towards the study where Clare had sat that very afternoon. He pushed her towards a door behind his desk and made her open it. The camera followed her, then stopped to pan across the three men in the room. They all wore hoods. Cathy King’s knees buckled, and her husband kicked her over the threshold.

  ‘Now you are going to be useful, bitch.’

  His voice hissed with revulsion towards the woman grovelling at his feet. He clicked his fingers and one of the men stepped forward. He raised the horsewhip in his hand and brought it down hard on her back. The thin fabric of her silk shirt parted immediately, revealing the tattoo – two vertical lines bisected with an X – and delicate red beads of blood.

  Clare pressed ‘stop’. The film, for all its hand-held feel, had been professionally shot and edited. The shots were tight and the sound clear. It had a layered, Hitchcock feel. Kelvin Landman had said that you could make as much money out of celluloid girls as you could out of live ones. Apparently, Brian King shared the same idea.

  Clare put down the remote and picked up her tea again. She would wait for Riedwaan before she watched the rest. She dug around in her bag, remembering that King had given her his business card. There it was, tucked into her wallet: King and De Lupo: Wolf Media, Director. Brian King would certainly know how to get a video shot and edited. Yet Clare knew that the police would do nothing unless Mrs King pressed charges. Somehow, Clare doubted that she would.

  The phone rang, startling her. She picked it up.

  ‘Clare? It’s Riedwaan. I thought you’d forgotten. I’ve been ringing your doorbell for the past five minutes.’ He was irritated.

  ‘Sorry. It can’t be working.’ She buzzed him in and went to the front door to welcome him. He had two Woolworths bags – one with dinner, one with two bottles of wine. Under his arm were three folders. Charnay, Amore and India. Their three dinner companions. Clare’s appetite drained away, though she was glad of the wine that Riedwaan poured her.

  They went back to the lounge and Clare lit the fire while Riedwaan cleared space for the three files. He put the photographs on the table and laid the final autopsy reports next to each one. The wood crackled, domesticating the room and drawing Fritz away from the couch and next to the fireplace.

  Clare went through to her study and brought her own photographs and notes. She laid these down next to Riedwaan’s files. ‘This is the stuff I’ve been gathering for my film about trafficking. At the heart of it all is Kelvin Landman,’ said Clare. ‘I know you want to focus on the killer of the girls, but I’m convinced that the two things are linked. Landman’s tentacles spread everywhere. He’s like a cancer, corrupting everything he touches.’

  ‘You’ve been working hard.’ Riedwaan reached out, tentatively massaging Clare’s tense neck. The presence of the three dead girls neatly filed on her table seemed to cool the warmth of his hand. She didn’t relax – but she didn’t pull away, either. Over her shoulder, he read the profile she had been working on. ‘Looks like one person. Although he could have an accomplice. Targets his victims. They look similar, similar age. Out alone, hence vulnerable. Some indication that he set it up a rendezvous beforehand. Presume that the first two went willingly. Third one not. Has a car. Extreme need for control. Very precise planning needed for the fantasy to work.’

  ‘This describes Landman exactly, Clare. But he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. He’d have someone to work with him.’

  ‘It could also describe Brian King or that rent boy’s client, Da Cunha,’ she suggested.

  ‘We’ve got a DNA sample from India, a good one. There was semen on the body, and that’s been analysed. It matches the sample of that girl who was raped in Johannesburg. The suicide.’

  ‘God, Riedwaan, how did you get the lab galvanised? They usually don’t do anything unless the case is going to court.’

  ‘Let’s just say I had a favour or two to call in and somehow this got itself to the front of the queue.’

  ‘Have you been able to match it with anyone?’

  ‘Nothing. None of the fuckers we have on file.’

  ‘We have to keep on looking, then,’ said Clare. ‘Do you have any DNA for Landman?’

  ‘None. But the two different groups – that points to two men.’

  ‘We could bring King in for questioning. He could do some explaining,’ said Clare. ‘It could just as easily be one person – about twenty per cent of men are a different blood group to that indicated by their semen.’

  ‘But he was at the Isis – like he said he was,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I also checked up on the girl he spent the night with. I don’t like him, but so far there’s no chink in his alibi.’

  ‘I took a very nasty video from his house,’ Clare revealed. ‘A film of him orchestrating the gang rape of his wife.’

  ‘Did she lay charges?’ asked Riedwaan.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Clare.

  ‘There’s not much to be done until she does.’ Clare reached for the remote. ‘Don’t show it to me,’ said Riedwaan. He pulled her away from the video machine. ‘I’ve had enough for today.’ He traced the underside of her jaw, down the soft curve of her neck. Clare leaned into the enclosure of his arms.

  ‘Are you going to stay?’ she asked

  �
��I am.’ Riedwaan pulled her to her feet. ‘For a while. Let’s go to bed. I’m too tired to eat.’

  He was asleep by the time Clare was out of the bathroom. She slid in next to him, unused to moving so quietly in her own bedroom. He reached for her without waking. With someone breathing beside her, it was so much easier to relinquish her body to sleep.

  39

  It was just past four when Clare awoke, drenched in cold sweat. She had dreamt that she’d stumbled into a vast hall of mirrors. She stared back at herself in each mirror, her eyes wide open, each image reflected to infinity in every mirror. The shattered repetition of herself was dizzying. She hunted desperately for the door where she had entered, but it was gone. She tried to calm herself within the slow horror-time of the nightmare by staring down her own reflection. She was naked, suffused with shame at her body exposed and slug-like in the harsh light. As she tried to cover herself she realised that her hands were bound with blue rope. She tried to cry out but no sound came. When she opened her mouth, she saw that she had no tongue.

  Clare sat up, switched on her bedside light, and calmed her breathing. She delved back into the nightmare as it receded. There had been a ghost with her in the mirrors. Hovering over her image had been the outline of a man with a camera, filming her shame and terror. Her hands had been painfully bound. She flexed her fingers and then smoothed out the bed where Riedwaan had lain. The indentation of his body was already cold. She curled up under her duvet. The touch of his hands lingered on her body, but she was glad to be alone.

  ‘They make a picture of me. Like a dog I must beg for them to hurt me,’ Natalie Mwanga had told her.

  Clare pushed the duvet off and went to the lounge. The video she had taken from King was still in the machine. She pressed ‘play’ and watched it through to its bitter, humiliating end. Chilled, Clare went back to bed. ‘He was a director … he was telling them what to do … when they hurt me … he would make them do it again.’ Whitney’s soft voice whispered to Clare in the dark, ‘Why?’ Clare had no answers. She got back into bed and drifted into a troubled sleep just before dawn broke.

  40

  Whitney waited, fully dressed and wide awake, for the siren to blast across the valley. It came, summoning Dinah de Wet from the saggy warmth of her bed. Whitney lay under her blankets listening to Dinah cough. The kettle boiled for Dinah’s tea. The toaster browned her single slice of white bread, the door banged shut. A tractor roared into life, taking everyone to work. Whitney heard the muffled morning shouts receding towards the orchard.

  With the return of silence, she was up. She made herself some coffee for now, and jam sandwiches for later. She thought about writing a note. ‘Dankie, Tannie Dinah, vir alles …’ is what she would have liked to say. But she didn’t. Instead, she picked up her packed rucksack and headed for the door before it got any lighter. There was nobody around. She slipped between the houses and found the path that curved around the dam. A ghostly swathe of white arum lilies guided her to the farm road. Here she walked faster, hands deep inside her pockets, head down against the wind. There was snow somewhere, it was that cold.

  Three kilometres later, the dirt road met the tar. She turned towards the west, trusting that her heart would guide her. The sun was up behind her now. It shone bleakly, not warming her at all. She crossed the N2, taking a road that skirted Cape Town. She had worked out her route by studying the old school atlas Dinah’s daughter had left behind. After she’d walked for more than an hour, a truck pulled over. Whitney looked at it warily. There was a man in it, alone.

  ‘Where you going, girlie?’ He smiled. He seemed nice. A farmer, she guessed.

  ‘To near Malmesbury,’ she answered, standing close to the passenger window he had leaned over to open.

  ‘Come, meisiekind. It’s blerrie freezing outside. I’ll give you a lift.’ He opened the door. Whitney looked down the road ahead of her. It was a long way to walk. She slipped her rucksack around in front of her and climbed in.

  ‘I’m Johan,’ he said, turning the radio on.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’ The warmth of the heated car enveloped her immediately. She didn’t want to tell him her name, and he didn’t ask.

  They drove through the awakening farmlands and the small satellite towns that were spilling cars into Cape Town. Just before Atlantis, they joined the N7. Whitney had nearly fallen asleep when she saw the sign. She sat up. ‘Can I get out just after the turnoff, please?’ she asked.

  ‘Where exactly are you going?’ asked Johan.

  Whitney decided to tell the truth. ‘I’m looking for a place called Serenity Farm,’ said Whitney. Her hands traced the outline of Clare’s book beneath the fabric of her bag. ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘Ja, I’ve seen the turnoff just past Atlantis. It’s mos that farm for mad people. Larney loonies, hey?’ Whitney didn’t say anything. ‘Why are you going there?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve got a friend,’ she said. ‘She lives there.’

  ‘Oh.’ He glanced at her but he didn’t say anything more. They drove on in silence until he pulled over. The small wooden sign pointed up the dark avenue of trees. ‘Good luck, hey,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said as she got out.

  ‘You should smile more, you’re a pretty girl when you smile. You could give me a blow job for the petrol?’ Whitney froze. Her hand crept towards her rucksack. ‘Hey, relax. I was only asking. You never know when you’ll get lucky. See you.’

  Whitney did smile as she walked between the welcoming trees. She had slung her rucksack onto her back again. The gun nestled against her. She had hidden it below the book, right at the bottom. She pictured it, calm and grey and smooth. It had been waiting for her in the farmhouse when she had gone with Dinah to do the cleaning yesterday. It had beckoned her from the farmer’s cupboard, gleaming among socks and condoms and small change. It had fitted so snugly into her hoodie’s deep pocket. And now here it was, giving her courage as she walked along the endless lane of trees.

  Clare’s book had told her things – things that Clare had not known she was disclosing about Constance. It had told Whitney things that she thought only she knew. Whitney knew where to find Constance. She had to find her. She walked down the path, the sound of her footsteps loud in the quiet of the dawn, towards the sequestered cottage. She knocked quietly. The door opened as if someone had been expecting her. Constance stared at Whitney, startled but not afraid. Whitney took the older woman’s thin shoulders and turned her around. She pulled down Constance’s white shift, exposing the lumpy mass of scar tissue across the width of her back. Whitney wet her finger on her tongue and traced the marks like an artist tracing a pattern she knew by heart.

  ‘You can read it?’ asked Constance. Whitney nodded. Constance’s breath was warm on her neck as she leaned forward to kiss the scars. She took her hand and drew the girl inside, locking the door behind them.

  41

  The sun was high in the sky when Clare eventually awoke. She pulled on her dressing gown and fetched the Cape Times from outside her door. She wondered where Riedwaan was.

  ‘Woke and couldn’t fall asleep again. Speak to you in the morning. Riedwaan.’ She found the note propped on the counter when she went to make coffee. Clare crumpled it in her hand and waited for the kettle to boil. The phone rang as she was going back to her bedroom.

  ‘Yes?’ She balanced her cup as she climbed back into bed. ‘If this is a game, then we’re quits now.’

  ‘Clare? It’s Piet,’ was the bemused reply. ‘I’ve got those results for you.’

  Clare was glad he couldn’t see her blush. ‘Sorry, Piet, I thought you were someone else.’

  ‘Apparently. So, do you want them?’

  ‘Yes, of course I want them. What did you find? Did they match the fibres you found on India?’

  ‘That’s what’s odd,’ said Piet. ‘They didn’t match. But I ran a second check and I found that some of the fibres did match what I found on India’s shirt. There are a f
ew that are identical.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ asked Clare, noticing the business section of the newspaper, which had slipped to the floor. There was a banner headline announcing the end of the property boom.

  ‘The fibres are very similar, both cashmere. But the dyes are different. One is a synthetic dye, the other is a much more expensive natural dye.’

  ‘Which ones matched the fibres I brought you?’ asked Clare. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, oblivious to the cold.

  ‘The synthetic ones. There were only a few of them. The ones I’d found were under the naturally dyed ones.’

  ‘Where did you find the synthetic ones? Where on her body, I mean,’ asked Clare.

  ‘They were around the shoulders, a sprinkling on the nape of her neck. Where you would expect, if someone put an arm around your neck to hug you,’ said Piet.

  ‘But definitely traces of two people?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Thanks, Piet.’ She disconnected and dialled Riedwaan’s number immediately.

  ‘Clare, I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Riedwaan. Piet Mouton just called me about those fibres I dropped off with him. They match some of those on India. They’re the ones I took from King’s coat when I was there.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Clare. ‘Different dye, according to Piet.’

  ‘It could just mean that he gave his daughter a hug before she went out.’

  ‘A girl with a bolt on the inside of her bedroom door is going to hug her stepfather before she goes out?’

  ‘You’ve got a point there,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Maybe I’ll pay him another courtesy call and check when he saw her for the last time.’