Gallows Hill (18 page)

‘Gallows Hill,’ said Clare.

‘Yes? I can see it from my house,’ she said. ‘And I saw it all on TV – that stuff about the skeletons.
All old slaves, prisoners.’

‘Not all,’ said Clare. ‘One was the skeleton of a woman about your mother’s age when she died.’

‘Lots of women of that age disappear,’ Lilith gave a dismissive smile. ‘You know that.’

‘I’m sure it’s your mother, Lilith,’ said Clare. ‘We need to test your DNA, see if it matches with hers, but for that I need your cooperation. And –’

‘How? How can you
be so sure?’ Lilith’s hands shook as she lit a cigarette.

‘The remains were in a crate,’ said Clare. ‘Some scraps of a silk dress survived, a sandal. A piece of a necklace. I managed to trace the dress – it turned out to be a designer dress, made in Amsterdam. The V V label. The designer, Vincent van Kleef, kept photographs of women who bought his clothes. I’d taken the skull we’d found at
Gallows Hill to a forensic artist. She did a facial reconstruction.’

‘Show me,’ said Lilith.

‘I’m not sure that’s the best idea.’

‘Don’t tell me what’s a good fucking idea and what’s not,’ said Lilith. ‘You say you found my mother’s bones dumped at Gallows Hill. Show her to me. Let me see her face.’

Clare took out her folder. Showed Lilith the photographs of the bust. Then she
laid out the pictures that Van Kleef had sent. Also the
Cape Times
pictures of Suzanne’s last opening.

‘Your mother was murdered,’ said Clare. ‘Here in Cape Town. In February 1988. She didn’t abandon you.’

Lilith leaned back in her chair, her robe falling open. Shesnatched at it, but Clare had already seen the symmetrical row of cuts and scars on the inside of her thighs. They were all too
familiar.

‘Okay. If you need DNA tests, I’ll do them,’ whispered Lilith. ‘Just tell me where to go.’

‘Raheema Patel,’ said Clare, writing down her number. ‘You can go in the morning.’

Lilith put the number into her pocket. A departing ship soundedits horn. The melancholy of the distant sound filled the silent kitchen.

‘What I do know about my mother is this,’ said Lilith, looking
up at Clare again. ‘She didn’t resist the Struggle.’ Lilith’s mouth hardened around the word, shorthand for heroism and betrayal. ‘It drew her in. She made art. She was detained then released. She made more art. There was a crackdown. Someone must have ratted on her, because she left. Went into hiding. Disappeared. Left me.’

It was as if Lilith was slipping away from the present, as distance
gathered in her eyes. Coldness, too.

‘That’s how I made sense of my life,’ she said. ‘My loss. Now you tell me I have the same loss, only no sense. Why would someone kill her? The people who wanted her, all they needed was to come and pick her up. They could keep her as long as they wanted. They’d done it before.’

‘Who?’

‘The security police,’ said Lilith. ‘Thinking about that night
is like falling. Like being in a nightmare. Falling, falling into blackness.’

‘Your Icarus girl,’ said Clare.

‘Exactly.’ Lilith spread the photographs out. People in evening dress. Artists in T-shirts printed with slogans. An Injury To One Is An Injury To All. Champagne glasses everywhere. Paintings on the walls, Suzanne’s vermilion signature. A little girl clutching a black woman’s hand.
Another one, curled up on the woman’s lap.

‘That’s me,’ said Lilith.

‘And this?’ asked Clare.

‘That’s Sophie. Sophie Xaba. She was there too. My nanny. My other mother. I’d forgotten I’d been at that opening.’

‘You were there for the whole evening?’

‘No,’ said Lilith, her brow puckered in concentration. ‘I’d have been there for the first part. In exchange I’d have to sit with
Sophie, quiet as a mouse.’

‘And after?’

‘Sophie would’ve taken me home, given me supper, tucked me in, I suppose. Waited until my mother got home before she went home. She didn’t live in.’ Lilith turned away from Clare as she exhaled. ‘You could talk to my grandmother, ask her what she knew.’

‘What do you think she’ll tell me?’ asked Clare.

‘There was a letter from some anonymous
authorities,’ said Lilith. ‘It arrived months later. That I do know, the old bitch did tell me that much in the end. She was supposedly buried in some place in the middle of nowhere, called Rietfontein. That’s where Suzanne the revolutionary landed up.’

‘And Sophie Xaba,’ said Clare. ‘Do you know where she is now?’

‘I was angry with her too, as a child. I thought she’d also abandoned me.
But my grandmother wouldn’t let me see her. She said it was better to put the past behind me. Bury it.’ Lilith laughed. ‘Quite ironic that, seeing what you’ve unearthed.’

‘Tell me about Sophie, your nanny,’ said Clare.

‘I loved her in that simple way children love the people who feed them,’ said Lilith. ‘But she was a paid-for mother. A lot of us grew up like that, didn’t we? Our first
true loves were paid for by someone else, coming to an end with the last cheque. Tainted love.’

Lilith turned her cup in its saucer. She had not touched her coffee.

‘She had her own problems, much worse than mine. I know that now,’ said Lilith.

‘Who told you?’ asked Clare.

‘I suppose I must’ve pieced it together,’ said Lilith, her head on one side as if listening to a distant sound.
‘Those bits of conversation that stick in a child’s mind.’

‘What do you remember about her?’

‘She lived in Crossroads. Her house was destroyed. Her son disappeared. The Black Sash ladies tried to help,’ said Lilith. ‘They might know if she’s still alive, I can’t imagine Sophie’s problems just went away. She’s probably still on a list for a government house. I should try and find her, I
suppose.’

Lilith ran a finger over a photograph of Suzanne. Her slim tanned arms were bare. The long green dress. A sheet of thick blonde hair that fell in waves, just like Lilith’s. The silver necklace.

‘My mother called me Lily, I remember. Said I was her night flower.’

A helicopter chattered across the sky, and through the window they saw a rainbow of water arcing beneath it. The
mountain was on fire again.

‘There was a fire that night.’ Lilith glanced up at Clare. ‘Those pines up there. I must have seen them from my bedroom window. On fire, hurling fireballs. The whole sky Van Gogh swirls of red and black and yellow.’

‘What else do you remember?’ asked Clare.

‘Nothing. I didn’t even know I remembered that.’ Lilith turned to Clare. ‘Are you close to your mother?’

‘My mother died when I was 18.’ Clare saw the familiar image: an empty road curving into the arid distance, a white bakkie flung against the fence, two broken bodies, a meagre plume of dust drifting towards the Namaqualand horizon, full-stopping her childhood.

‘She and my father. A car accident.’

‘I’m sorry.’

The windows shook in the wind.

‘With my mother,’ said Lilith, stacking
the photographs and packing them away, ‘there’s before, and there’s after. It’s as if the tectonic plates of my life split and I drifted away on the wrong one. On the other side of the chasm is the life I should have had. My mother smelling of Chanel and cigarettes and turpentine. And then there’s this.’

Clare took her hand. She could feel the ridged scars on the inside of her wrist. Lilith
allowed her hand to rest in Clare’s for a moment.

‘Remember I said to you I had one more piece for my show; for the closing?’ Lilith pulled away. ‘The one I said you should come and see?’

‘Yes. I’d like to see it,’ said Clare.

‘I’d thought that’s why you came here this morning,’ said Lilith. ‘I didn’t think you’d come to unravel my life.’

‘This is a step to putting things right,’
said Clare. ‘Finding the truth about your mother.’

‘You think it’s possible to fix broken things?’ asked Lilith. ‘They always seem to break again, along the same old cracks.’

She untied her dress and turned her back to Clare.

‘My last work for the exhibition.’ Her narrow back was freshly tattooed – the black ink beaded with blood. ‘It’s my mother’s death certificate. It’s what made
me.’

The cat’s teal-blue collar was lying abandoned next to Riedwaan’s front door. He smiled as he picked it up – the wily animal had finally rid herself of the thing. He switched on the lights and looked around for Fritz, but there was no sign of her. He checked the kitchen. Nothing there either, but there wasn’t much food left and the water bowl was empty. Riedwaan filled both. He was about
to call Clare when his phone rang. Putting the collar onto the kitchen table, he said, ‘Faizal.’

‘Captain?’ Louise, Phiri’s secretary. ‘There’s been an accident.’

‘Who?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Sergeant Rita Mkhize.’

‘Where is she?’ demanded Riedwaan. ‘What’s happened?’

‘The report came through as I was leaving. Sergeant Mkhize passed away,’ she said. ‘Something doesn’t look right,
I think you should come in. There are some photographs here that someone sent through.’

‘The cops?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘No,’ she said. ‘They came here, marked for you.’

‘What are they, Louise?’ said Riedwaan. ‘Tell me.’

‘Photos of Rita,’ Louise’s voice broke. ‘Of the accident.’

‘Who sent them?’ demanded Riedwaan.

‘There’s a number here,’ she said. ‘On the fax. Otherwise, it’s
anonymous.’

‘Any trace on the number?’

‘Not yet,’ said Louise.

Riedwaan pulled out a pen and paper.

‘Give me the number.’ He wrote it down.

‘The photos,’ he said. ‘What do you see?’

She told him. He listened, his expression grim.

‘Give me ten minutes,’ said Riedwaan.

Louise was waiting for him with an envelope. Inside were some grainy cell-phone pictures taken in
bad light, in the rain. A Toyota split open like a sardine can. Rita lay across the steering wheel, her white T-shirt stained dark where the steering shaft had pierced her chest.

Her eyes open. Nobody home.

Riedwaan turned the picture face-down on the table. Looked through the others. Angled shots from under the car. A close-up of the engine. Skid marks. A couple of wide shots. A tree
in the road. Hard to know how the tree landed where it did, short of a hurricane. The vehicle was in a ditch, so probably invisible from the road.

‘I should have gone myself.’ Riedwaan lit a cigarette. ‘She’s 24 years old and I fucking sent her up there on her own.’

Rage burned away the grief, shutting down the pain in his eyes.

‘The accident report said Rita had been drinking,’ said
Louise. ‘But she never touched anything stronger than Fanta in her life.’

‘Somebody killed her, somebody covered it up, and somebody’s going to pay the full price. You can tell Major Phiri where I’ll be.’

‘Be careful, Captain,’ said Louise. ‘Don’t take the law into your own hands.’

‘Who else is going to do it, Clare?’ he asked, stubbing out the cigarette.

At home, Riedwaan phoned
Goodman Langa. Told him what had happened, what he needed. Packed a bag. Then he lay on the bed and waited until it was time to go the airport.

He was glad to be alone.

Clare drove back down Signal Hill and stopped at Giovanni’s for some supper things. Her phone rang as the cashier was packing her bags.

Pedro.

‘I managed to track down Ian Wilde, the photographer,’ he said.

‘You’re a saint,’ said Clare. ‘Where did you find him?’

‘He lives out in Kommetjie now,’ said Pedro. ‘He says he’ll see you. Tomorrow.’

‘Thank you,’ said Clare. She felt lighter than she had for days. ‘I need to get home now. I’m done.’

‘Sea Point or the Bo-Kaap?’ he asked.

‘Home,’ she said. ‘Sea Point.’

‘You should watch the footage I shot today,’ he said. ‘You need to make
some editing decisions.’

‘God, yes,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even ask you what you got.’

‘Some great material,’ he said. ‘But my sound man ended up doing the interviews. You’re the one who should’ve been doing them, Clare. You have the gift of asking exactly the right follow-up question.’

‘This business has consumed me,’ said Clare, her eyes meeting Lilith’s on a poster at the stop street.

‘That much is evident,’ said Pedro. ‘But you need to take charge. Your attention’s all over the show.’

‘Divided,’ said Clare. ‘That’s all.’

‘You know that doesn’t cut it as an excuse in television,’ said Pedro. ‘Drink more coffee, snort some more coke, just get the job done within budget on time. That’s all there is to it. It’s a man’s business, this. It’s best to remember you’re here
under sufferance.’

‘Does that include you?’

‘You know it doesn’t,’ he said. ‘But you know it’s the truth.’

‘I’ll get this film done,’ said Clare. ‘And you can stop lecturing me. Right now I need to get home.’

Clare opened the window. The warm air was heavy with the smell of bushfires still blazing on Lion’s Head. ‘I’ve done as much as I can for one day.’

Gulls wheeled above
her when she parked, calling to her as if she’d never been away. The cool white rooms of her apartment were a relief. The only colour in the room was the books along a wall and a few artworks. A Kathryn Smith print and a small Marlene Dumas sketch that had cost her too much. She checked through the flat quickly – living room, bedroom, spare bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, study. All as she had left it.
The tension in her shoulders relaxed. When she was with Riedwaan she forgot how much she needed to be alone.

And then her phone rang.

‘Riedwaan,’ she said. ‘Is it Fritz? Did she come back?’

‘It’s Rita,’ he said.

Clare knew immediately.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

And he did.

‘I’m so sorry, Riedwaan, so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Will you be going up there?’

‘Next plane,’
he said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

Clare stripped off her clothes and stood under the icy water when she ended the call. It sluiced away the heat, the noise, her tears. But it could not wash away images of Rita Mkhize’s crumpled body on a gurney in a mortuary. Nor did it undo the anxiety that had settled in the pit of her stomach when she’d said goodbye to Riedwaan on the phone.