Like Clockwork

by Margie Orford

  ‘There’s the exit,’ said Theresa, her whisper ghostly in the dark. They made their way around the car.

  ‘Ssh,’ whispered Clare, her hand stopping Theresa. It came again from the passage. A sibilant noise, as if something heavy was being dragged. Clare pushed the door closed and moved a heavy coil of rope in front of it. Fear squeezed at her throat, making it difficult to breathe. Theresa Angelo had no colour left in her face. She shook convulsively. But her voice was calm when she spoke. Clare was beginning to understand how she had managed to survive that far.

  ‘The door’s over there,’ Theresa pointed. ‘But there are two padlocks.’ They heard the dragging sound again, closer this time, right near the door. And they heard a curse – though the voice had been rendered unrecognisable by pain and rage.

  Once again, Clare took Theresa’s hand. Her eyes had accustomed themselves to the dimness. Light filtered through chinks in the double door. She could make out bolts held in place with the huge padlocks. ‘Hide behind the car. Keep behind me.’ Theresa crumpled next to the rear wheel of the Jaguar. Clare had drawn her gun from its hiding place. There was a thud on the inner door. It shifted slightly. She aimed at the bottom lock of the boathouse door. The sound of the shot deafened her, but she steadied her hands and again took aim. The second lock exploded off the padlock just as the inner door burst open. Theresa screamed, scrambling to her feet. She pulled Clare after her, shoving the door open. The cool air welcomed them as they stumbled onto the filthy slipway.

  ‘Clare,’ said Riedwaan. Then he caught Theresa and held her against his chest. ‘Theresa?’ he asked. She nodded, beyond speech.

  ‘Riedwaan,’ Clare was hoarse. ‘He’s in there. He followed us.’

  ‘Here’s our back-up.’ Clare looked up to see Rita Mkhize and three uniformed men from the hostage unit. ‘You go up, Clare. The ambulance is on its way.’ Riedwaan stepped back from her, holding back tears of relief at seeing her safe. From inside the boathouse there was the sound of a door closing. ‘Let’s get him.’ The men followed him as he pushed the boathouse door open.

  Clare led Theresa Angelo back to street level. ‘Can I call my mom?’ Clare handed over her cellphone. ‘You dial, please.’ Clare keyed in the number and waited for it to ring. A woman’s frantic voice answered immediately. Clare handed the phone to Theresa.

  ‘Mom? Mommy, it’s me.’

  Taking the phone from the sobbing girl, Clare gave Mrs Angelo directions. Then they went to wait for the ambulance, which would soon join the steadily increasing number of vehicles flashing their emergency lights.

  Joe Zulu came over with two blankets. He wrapped one around Theresa. ‘Eish, sisi, I am very happy to see you.’ The other he handed to Clare. ‘And you, Clare.’ He had ordered coffee at the petrol station. He heaped sugar into the cups, which he gave to the two of them. Theresa’s hands were shaking so much that he held the paper cup for her to sip.

  The ambulance pulled up just as Theresa’s mother arrived. The car she was in had barely stopped before she was hurtling across the lawn. Mrs Angelo wrapped her arms around her child and held her as if she wanted to absorb her back into her body. Clare watched as mother and daughter turned and together collapsed into the arms of the man who had driven Mrs Angelo there. ‘My baby,’ he breathed into Theresa’s blood-matted hair.

  ‘I’ll follow you to the hospital,’ Mr Angelo said to the paramedics, helping his wife and daughter inside. Then he turned to Joe Zulu. ‘Thank you.’ His voice was hoarse with emotion.

  Joe shrugged. ‘She’s the one who found Theresa,’ he said, pointing to Clare. Mr Angelo turned to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said again. There was nothing else to be said. Clare simply nodded. Her thoughts were with Riedwaan now, deep inside the snaking underground tunnels below their feet.

  53

  Tohar forced himself up from the floor after the little bitch had dared to assault him. She would pay for that – as well as for everything else. He had followed her down the passage, towards the car. He smirked when he realised that she would be trapped in the boathouse. The keys for those locks were snug in his pocket. It might be fun to have a little bit of a game first. The other little tarts had been so tame in the end, acquiescing without any fight. Not as much fun as he had imagined. The Rohypnol had its uses, but it made them all so limp. This one hadn’t had a dose yet, so there must still be quite a bit of fight in her.

  The explosion of the first shot knocked Tohar off his feet. The second sent him scuttling back down the tunnel. The girl was not alone. Who had found her? He went into his studio, as he called it, and hid behind the bed of coiled rope. He traced a pattern there that one of his lovely girls had made with the blood that had drip, drip, dripped from her neatly cut throat. So much blood, even after being dead for a full half-hour. He had been surprised at that. And chagrined that it had spoilt the blouse he had specially bought. He had had to change her top. That had been difficult because her head had flopped annoyingly backwards. Her outfit had been spoiled. So he had been pleased when he got the next one. He had enjoyed her. They had been so baffled, the first ones, so uncompre -hending. Had pleaded so nicely. Not like this stupid little bitch, who had just criticised and asked questions. He was doing some poor man a favour by getting rid of her.

  The sound at the door made Tohar freeze.

  ‘Come out,’ somebody called. There seemed to be several people at the door – all looking for him.

  Tohar felt his bowels loosen. There was a boat in the room, and he quickly crouched behind it. The rasp of his breath sawed through the damp air. He tried to steady its rhythm, and also the hammer blows of his heart against his ribs. He listened. Nothing but the boom of the surf against the sea wall. The taste of fear was sour in his mouth. Fear and rage had formed into a small hard stone that had lodged behind his breastbone – like a tumour, he thought. A tumour just like the little bitches he had excised so neatly, so skilfully. He was like a surgeon: a better surgeon than his father had ever been.

  The sudden thought of his father caused the fear he had contained to surge. His crouching here, the dark, the cold air – all this wiped out the years, and delivered him back into the pitiful boy’s body he had worked so hard to escape. Hiding, waiting for the blows that inevitably came, no matter how well or how long he might hide. Tohar’s father – great doctor that he was – had had the experience, skill and patience needed to lure contagion. For that was what he knew Otis to be. He would wait until hunger or fatigue or a full bladder – any weakness of the body – drove Otis from his hiding place. His father would be there, waiting for him. He would then shake his head resignedly and – his elegant fingers a vice around the boy’s arm – take Otis to his sister’s room. The thought of his sister now unleashed in Tohar a hot flow of rage that drove the ice of fear ahead of it. His pale sister was always seated in the same place, bound to be still for as long as Otis – hungry, exhausted, racked with the pain of not being able to relieve himself – hid away. Placed by their father in the window seat, she waited to witness his entertainment, Otis’s humiliation. There she would sit, forced to watch as their father beat Otis. When he had finished – usually at the point where the boy lost control of his bladder or bowels – their father, the great surgeon, would lift his daughter’s skirt and make a precise incision alongside each of the others that marked the boy’s beatings. Then he would leave the girl, a mute witness now marked by what she had seen, to clean up the room and her brother as best she could.

  The footsteps so close to him yanked Otis Tohar back to the present. The feel of the cold metal pressed against the back of his neck was unpleasant. The rough voice in his ear was laced with menace.

  ‘Stand up, Mr Tohar,’ it said. ‘You are under arrest.’ Tohar rose slowly. His head throbbed where Theresa had hit him. Surely that would count against her when he explained how she had assaulted him.

  ‘Of course, Officer.’ Tohar turned round to see a man whose face was unshaven, whose eyes were blood
shot, and whose clothes were cheap, ill-fitting. ‘Who might you be?’ he asked with cool politeness.

  ‘Riedwaan Faizal,’ answered the man. He kept the gun trained on Tohar. He had a pair of handcuffs which, to Tohar’s surprise, he seemed intent on using. Then he turned Tohar around and pulled his arms sharply behind his back, snapping the cuffs around his wrists.

  The uniformed policeman with Faizal turned Tohar around again and, to his amazement, spat at him. ‘Kom, vuilgoed,’ he ordered, twisting his arms painfully upwards.

  Riedwaan led him away, but as they passed the flickering television, Tohar pulled back. The final scenes of the film were playing out. Tohar tried to get a clearer look at the image of the girl jerking pathetically as he held his powerful hand over her mouth. It was hard to make out who she was, as her face was covered. He thought it might be the previous one. The one before this little cunt, who’d got away. He felt a delicious tightening in the groin as the girl gave a final spasm and then lay still.

  Riedwaan Faizal shoved him forward. Tohar felt a blinding flash of pain as Faizal pushed his cuffed arms up even higher.

  ‘You’ve dislocated my shoulder,’ Tohar gasped indignantly.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Faizal, his voice a malignant hiss in Tohar’s ear. ‘But that’ll be the least of your worries, where you’re going. A handsome fellow like you is going to have lots of fun.’

  Tohar stared helplessly, impassively, as the meaning of Faizal’s words sank in.

  ‘A slow puncture is what you’ll get, I’d imagine,’ said Faizal, his voice so low that only Tohar could hear. ‘That’s something that can be easily arranged.’

  Riedwaan Faizal took the film from the camera and put it into his pocket. ‘This will be interesting viewing, I’m sure. As good as a confession.’

  ‘I have nothing to say without my lawyer,’ said Tohar. ‘And I’m sure he will be most interested in your threats.’

  As he led Tohar to the police van, Riedwaan sneered, ‘Okay, but let’s see how you feel in the morning.’ Then he handed him over to the uniformed police. ‘Get Phiri to book him. I’m sure it’ll give him a kick to do the honours.’

  Riedwaan turned away, lit a cigarette, and dragged on it as if his life depended on it. He watched Clare talking to Joe Zulu, uncomfortable about breaking into their easy chat. But he forced himself to go over to her.

  ‘Well done, Clare,’ he said. Riedwaan put his arms around her. She leaned into his embrace.

  ‘Don’t you need to do all the formalities?’

  ‘Superintendent Phiri will. He loves things like that. Let him have something to keep himself busy. In any case, there are the tapes, so a confession will hardly be necessary.’ Riedwaan had seen the tapes stacked on the shelf. ‘Each one was padlocked into a heart-shaped box. Wedding videos.’

  ‘The keys,’ whispered Clare. ‘The flowers.’ She looked over at Tohar. He was arguing with Rita Mhkize about being put in the back of the van. Rita turned to Joe Zulu who had gone over to help. The two of them bundled Tohar in. Rita slammed the doors shut. Clare heard Tohar yelp as the heavy doors hit his legs.

  ‘So sorry, sir,’ said Rita, dragging the keys across the mesh. She jumped in and started the car.

  Clare sat down on the pavement. She wanted to go home, but she was unable to move. She watched Riedwaan filling in forms and talking to Joe Zulu. He had bagged the tapes and handed them to Phiri. Clare hoped that there would be enough other evidence to convict Tohar so that the parents of the murdered girls would never see the records of their daughters’ deaths. Riedwaan patted his pockets. She knew that he was looking for his keys. Clare told herself that it was for the best that he was going home. She would not have to tiptoe around another person’s heart. Life was just easier on your own. She would strip her bed when she got home and sleep in clean sheets.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Riedwaan helped Clare up onto her feet.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Just drained, now that it’s over.’

  Riedwaan stroked her cheek, then moved his hand surely down the side of her neck. ‘Shall I take you home now?’ he asked.

  Clare was too tired to resist. She nodded and followed him towards her flat, ignoring the whistles from the uniforms. She needed a man’s body in her bed tonight.

  Once home, she drifted into sleep, waking very briefly to feel his hands warm on her skin. The fragment of a dream – a car trailing a plume of dust behind it – was already fading. She leaned over to kiss the sleeping man. Riedwaan smiled and pulled her towards him, holding her fast against his chest.

  EPILOGUE

  Landman is back at his desk. It is very late and the only sound above the distant roar of the surf is the mournful blast of the foghorn. His ears, lulled by the near silence, fail to alert him to the tiny click-click of a key turned deep inside the house. Neither does he sense the silent shadow as it moves down the stairs. He is absorbed in the columns of numbers in front of him. They do not add up, will not add up. He gets up, paces, then sits down in a leather wingback chair. The slow burn of anger in the pit of his stomach ignites into rage at Otis Tohar. The roar of his own blood distracts him so that when the voice – steady, clear – says, ‘Look at me,’ he turns instinctively.

  A girl is standing in the doorway. She looks familiar. Cradled in her hand is a revolver. It gleams dully. The blind, round eye looks unblinkingly at him. He laughs, amused. When he stops laughing the silence is stifling. She moves the steady eye of the gun slowly downwards from his face to the arrogant splay of his thighs. She fires once. He laughs again in surprise, clutching at his groin. His manicured hands are drenched with the rhythmic spurt of arterial blood.

  She smiles, lowers the gun and steps back. She closes the door. He stays calm, staunching the blood with one hand. With the other he scrabbles for his phone. Panic overwhelms him as he realises that this is the other thing that she has taken from him.

  ‘Bitch.’ His voice is already fading.

  There is nothing to do but drag on the cigarette in his ashtray and hope that someone will come.

  Whitney lets herself out of the front door. The car is waiting, its engine idling. The door slams shut behind her. She leans over to the woman at the steering-wheel and lifts the curtain of hair. Whitney kisses the scarred cheek and lets the hair swing back. The woman traces the healed brand under Whitney’s T-shirt.

  They drive north. An hour later the city is behind them. They turn off the tar road. The dust rises and hovers above them. It hides them – though there is nobody watching. Constance Hart is heading home. To a house she has not returned to in the twenty years since Kelvin Landman began his career by carving his mark on her back. Whitney sits besides her, cleaning her stolen gun calmly and efficiently. She hums. It is not a tune that Constance knows yet, but she joins her anyway.