Blood Rose (29 page)

‘It was Mara’s mother,’ she said. ‘Mrs Thomson.’

A pause, a heartbeat long. ‘What must I say to the mother? That her daughter got an itch for a sailor?’

‘Has it crossed your mind that something might have happened to her?’ said Clare.

Van Wyk spread out his hands and examined his fingernails. ‘If she’s dead, her body’ll pitch up sometime, and we’ll send her home in a box. If she’s alive, she’ll run out of money and go home anyway. All the same in the end.’

‘To you maybe. Not to the desperate woman I had on the phone.’

Van Wyk uncoiled himself from his chair, his pupils pin-pricks. ‘Mara was nothing but trouble. She lodged a complaint against me after we picked up one of those street kids of hers stealing in the harbour. She got me shunted into this pointless fucking unit. And now it’s my job to look after a stupid little foreign slut who can’t keep her knees together?’

‘She’s missing, Sergeant,’ said Clare.

Van Wyk was close to her now. Clare kept her eyes on his.

‘You don’t belong here, Dr Hart.’ His fingers closed around her wrists. The bones shifted when he twisted. ‘Just like Mara didn’t, so you stay away from things that don’t belong to you.’

‘Don’t you ever threaten me,’ said Clare, bringing her right knee up, fast and accurate.

Van Wyk let her go, his eyes glazing with pain as the office door flung open.

‘Morning, Clare.’ It was Karamata, cheerful and crisply dressed for the new day. ‘Morning, Van Wyk. You’re here—’ He looked from Clare to Van Wyk. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ Van Wyk managed to say. ‘I was working most of the night. Dr Hart and I were just talking about solving cases, weren’t we?’ He didn’t give Clare a chance to reply and walked down the passage, his tall, thin body cutting through a sudden flood of early-morning arrivals.

Clare flexed her wrists. She made herself breathe deeply,
slowing her heart rate and ordering her jumbled thoughts. ‘He’s like a hand grenade without a pin,’ she said.

‘Oh, you mustn’t worry about him too much,’ said Karamata. ‘He’s always touchy first thing in the morning.’

‘I won’t,’ said Clare, with feeling. ‘I was worrying about Mara Thomson. Her mother called to say she never arrived home.’

Karamata stirred sugar into his tea and shook his head. ‘If we followed up every report like this, we’d never do anything else. She’ll call her mother when her money runs out.’ His cellphone rang. He nodded at Clare and went into the corridor, firing a rapid volley of Herero into the receiver.

Clare sat down at Van Wyk’s desk to get Mara’s number from the case dockets on the shared server. She found it quickly and dialled. Mara wasn’t answering. Unease, long since upgraded to anxiety, turned into fear.

Clare massaged her wrists, working out what to do, watching the screensaver on Van Wyk’s computer. Her curiosity was piqued at his unprecedented diligence. She didn’t imagine he’d been working on an expense report on the hunt for Spyt. She reached for the mouse. There were a couple of cases in the documents folder, but when Clare opened them, they were empty. She called up the mail programme minimised on the bar at the bottom of the screen. Viagra spam, a couple of e-mail memos from police headquarters in Windhoek. Routine stuff from Tamar. The sent box was sparse too. Nothing in the delete box either. She checked the file history. Nothing there. Clare sat back in the chair for a second. There was one last thing for her to try. She went to the recent items in the menu. Google. She clicked on the search history. One website only. Van Wyk had spent some time on it.

The site was dark, almost black. Explicit content warnings competed with the pop-ups of beckoning girls inviting viewers
to ‘cum see my first time’. So this is what he does in his spare time, Clare thought. Her mouth dry, she clicked on the entrance portal. The names and images of twenty half-naked women appeared. Amateur shots in suburban homes, classrooms, offices. Clare scrolled down the web page. The photos had been posted from all over the world, but they had two things in common: the youthfulness of the girls and the subtle brutality of their submission. In offices, classrooms and toy shops, around family dinner tables and in everyday places, were images of girls doing everyday things. One click transformed the image, and the girl was stripped, splayed and penetrated.

Clare scrolled through the images, but there was nothing to identify the anonymous postings. She was about to log out when the name of a video link caught her eye: Namib Nature Girls. Clare opened the first video. It was grainy, downloaded from a handheld camera, but it made her stomach turn. It was Van Wyk all right. He was standing in his uniform, his cap jaunty, his belt unbuckled, poised behind a naked, spread-eagled body. It was impossible to identify the recipient of Van Wyk’s attentions. Then the film cut to a wide shot.

Clare froze. The ghost-smell of a putrefying cat caught at her throat. The altar, the ring of stones, the amphitheatre, the encircling trees. She looked closer at the body on the altar. It was a girl, her eyes glazed, limbs limp, a blank smile on her face. Her clothes in a pile on the floor. She looked drugged. LaToyah or Minki. The names scrawled on the cave. And Chesney, the other name. It must have been him holding the camera. There were other videos too. She flicked through the site, looking for Mara, but there was no sign of her. There were no boys either. The videos were strictly heterosexual. There were a couple of Angolan girls who Clare had noticed hanging around the entrance of the docks, so young that the breasts had barely budded on their
skinny chests. She wondered how much these girls, paying in kind in the revolting little films, paid him in cash as well. Fury surged through her as she e-mailed the link to Tamar and hurried out of the office.

Riedwaan was pacing in front of the cottage when Clare got back. ‘Where were you?’ He flicked his cigarette away and followed her in. ‘What took you so long?’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Clare asked.

‘Unfamiliar territory.’ Riedwaan’s desire for an argument had ebbed as soon as he had Clare safe in front of him again. ‘It puts me on edge.’

‘I went past the station,’ said Clare, making coffee.

‘So early?’

‘I got a call from Mara Thomson’s mother,’ Clare said. ‘From London. Mara was meant to arrive there yesterday, but she never got off the plane.’ Riedwaan looked blank. ‘Mara volunteered at the school, teaching the homeless kids soccer,’ she explained.

‘So what’s bothering you?’ he asked.

‘She knew those boys better than most people in this town,’ said Clare, the kernel of anxiety unfurling from the pit of her stomach. She pushed the coffee away. The caffeine would only make her feel worse. ‘She looked like them, too.’

‘Did you go past her place?’

‘Yes, and all her stuff’s gone.’

‘Boyfriend?’ Riedwaan knew more about missing girls than he cared to.

‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘A sailor. Nice looking. I’ve met him.’

‘If she’s young and she has a boyfriend, that can mean two things,’ said Riedwaan. ‘She’s safe and fucking him silly and her mother will be furious. Or she’s dead. Either way, the boyfriend’s your first port of call.’

‘I’m going to see if she missed her flight first,’ said Clare.

‘Fine. I’ll catch you later.’ Riedwaan stopped in the doorway, silhouetted by the sun. ‘Clare,’ he said.

‘What?’ She turned from the sink where she had been rinsing her cup.

‘You’ll call me if you need me?’

‘Of course, I’ll call you.’

Clare locked the door behind Riedwaan, walked to the bathroom and turned on the shower tap. Her wrists hurt. They would look like Darlene’s by tomorrow. It was only when was in the shower, hot water needling down her back, that she realised that she hadn’t told Riedwaan about Van Wyk. She pulled on her clothes, wishing that she had.

Riedwaan’s cellphone beeped as he parked his bike outside the police station.
Call me
, read the text. He dialled, smiling.

‘Februarie, you cheap bastard.’ Riedwaan could hear maudlin country music playing in the background.

‘You still interested in that murder in McGregor?’ Februarie grunted.

‘You had an outbreak of altruism or what?’ Riedwaan closed the door to the office. Neither Karamata nor Van Wyk was in. Tamar’s door was closed.

‘You wouldn’t know altruism if it gave you a blow job,’ said Februarie.

‘What then?’ said Riedwaan. ‘You think I’m phoning you back because I like the sound of your voice? Just like I came to see you because of your pretty face.’

‘As charming as ever, Faizal. No wonder you’re such a onehit wonder with women.’

‘What have you got?’

‘Some more background on your Major Hofmeyr. Seems he started in Pretoria with some obscure unit doing research. He was from the wrong side of the tracks with no links in the Afrikaner establishment. But he was a bright boy and he did well. Soon he had a beautiful wife from one of the oldest Cape families, nice house, fancy car, and trips overseas. Then he was transferred to another unit and sent to some hellhole in the Kalahari where–’

‘Vastrap,’ Riedwaan interrupted. ‘His wife’s already told us. She was less clear about what he did there.’

‘That’s the odd thing,’ said Februarie. ‘It looks like it was a promotion. More trips overseas. More money. He didn’t do the party circuit like some of the others, but he had what he wanted in terms of research and travel. I can’t find much, but it looks like it was weapons development and testing.’

‘What kind of weapons?’

‘Possibly nuclear. It looks like it was part of Operation Total Onslaught, PW Botha’s baby. Born in 1972, baptised with the Soweto riots in 1976. The best minds; the best facilities; unlimited funding. It makes sense that it would be nuclear.’

‘And then?’

‘He was sent to Namibia in the eighties, where you could do what you liked, pretty much. Play God, and no one would ever know. And if they found out, what would they do about it?’

‘Why was he shunted sideways?’

‘Can’t say if he was really. It was all classified. And shredded in the early nineties before Mandela could say
amandla
. De Klerk sold them down the river by decommissioning unilaterally in 1990.’

‘What else have you got?’

‘Well, I had another look at that TRC stuff. Like I said, Hofmeyr’s name came up in a few of the hearings. The usual things: torture, a few extra-judicial killings, assaults. Him and two others, all from the same unit in Namibia, but it didn’t look like he was going to apply for amnesty. And because nobody said anything, it just went away.’ Februarie paused. ‘Never happened for me,’ he added.

‘You fucked up in the wrong direction, Februarie. You went after the guys with money to buy enough politicians to make their own parliament.’

‘That’s my problem with altruism,’ said Februarie.

‘It’s terminal,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You’re born with it. This therapy session is costing me five bucks a minute. I’m sure you can get it cheaper down there. Tell me what happened.’

‘Extra-judicial killings,’ Februarie mused. ‘A good concept that – always makes me wonder what a judicial killing is.’

‘No philosophy either, Februarie. What else? How is this connected to Hofmeyr’s murder?’ Riedwaan tried not to sound impatient; withholding information was Februarie’s favourite game.

‘Ja, well, Hofmeyr had a change of heart. He approached someone to make a full disclosure about what they’d been doing up there in Walvis Bay. Him and his friends.’

‘He must’ve stood out like a parade ground corporal in a ballet tutu,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Funny, you mention Tutu. The only person who looked like he might be happy about it was the Arch. Hofmeyr wanted forgiveness, I suppose. The major was dying of cancer, so I guess he was afraid of that final court date. His offer was shoved from one desk to another, and then he was murdered. So it all went away overnight.’

‘Until you started looking,’ said Riedwaan.

‘I was shafted,’ said Februarie. ‘Apparently my paperwork was bad.’

‘Was it?’

‘Of course it was. My paperwork’s fucking terrible. But it always was before I got into any of this.’

‘Why then?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘I found out that he had visitors before he died,’ said Februarie, after a pause.

‘Who told you?’

‘The maid. Who else?’

‘She see them?’

‘No. Hofmeyr told her not to come for a couple of days. But the woman who worked next door told her anyway. Two men. They argued on the second night. Then they left, and two days later, he was dead. Too many coincidences. The visitors while the wife was away. The convenient gangsters.’

‘You think it was the wife?’

‘You know what I think of wives,’ said Februarie. Riedwaan knew. The whole force knew. Februarie’s wife left him for her boss. Februarie had refused to take the fact that the boss was solvent, always sober and never violent as mitigating circumstances.

‘But no. Not her. It’s the visitors. I’ve been looking for them since I last saw you.’

‘And did you find them?’ Riedwaan felt his fingertips tingle in anticipation.

‘No. But I did get the names of the two friends Hofmeyr was going to implicate in his disclosure.’

‘Where did you get this from?’

‘It might be hard for you to swallow, Faizal, but I still have a few chips to call in.’

‘Who are they?’ Riedwaan asked. ‘Hofmeyr’s friends?’

‘Malan.’

‘Malan?’

‘Malan.’ Februarie was enjoying Riedwaan’s discomfort.

‘Now there’s a helpful name. There must be thousands of them.’

‘This one runs a security consulting business out of Good-wood in Cape Town.’

Riedwaan knew the area well, poor and working class, clinging to respectability despite the backyards filled with cars on bricks. ‘You got a number for him?’

‘Jesus, Faizal. You ever heard of a phone book? Phoenix Engineering. Look it up.’

‘Give it to me, Februarie. I know you’ve got it.’

‘Okay, I’m standing in front of the place right now,’ Februarie laughed.

‘I thought you were at the Royal,’ said Riedwaan. ‘That shit music I heard in the background.’