Like Clockwork (22 page)

‘You sure it’s the same weapon each time?’ asked Clare.

‘I’m sure. I can’t prove it, but I think that this time he was rattled – cut too deep, so there’s a good blade mark on the vertebra. That’ll make those ballistics okes very happy. Go get some more sleep in the meantime. Riedwaan’s not going to be up for much today – or tonight, for that matter.’

‘Thanks for that, Piet. We’ll speak later.’ Clare didn’t go back to bed. She watched the sun rise slowly over the mountains. The light did not bring her any clarity, but a visit or two later on to some of the more upmarket florists would do the trick. She emailed Rita, asking her to get onto it as soon as she got into the office.

Clare went in to the station early. Rita Mkhize was already there, phoning florists.

‘Hi, Clare. Thanks.’ She took the take-away cappuccino gratefully. ‘Guess who was meant to be at Sushi-Zen last night?’

‘Who?’ asked Clare.

‘Brian King. India’s stepfather. He had a booking for nine. But he didn’t pitch.’

‘I wonder what changed his mind?’ Clare stirred her coffee. ‘Did you get anywhere with the florists yet?’

‘Nowhere. None of them open before nine-thirty. And we didn’t find anything on the road. If there were tracks, they were lost because of the police van that parked there.’

Riedwaan arrived with Piet Mouton’s autopsy report.

‘This attack was certainly frenzied,’ said Riedwaan. He flicked past Mouton’s meticulous illustrations of the corpse. ‘Look here. India had a contusion on the back of her head and, unlike the other two, there are signs of sexual assault.’

‘Any body fluids?’ asked Clare.

‘No semen. Mouton thinks that she was assaulted with a blunt wooden object. There were splinters in the vagina. Those are being tested now.’

‘Any blood?’ asked Rita, perching on Riedwaan’s desk.

‘Some under her nails. The inside of her mouth is torn. The face bruised. It looks as if she died of asphyxiation. She put up a fight before she died, though.’

‘Time of death?’ asked Clare.

‘An hour max before she was found. Piet thinks she was killed somewhere else and that that her throat was cut after she died. But the killer must have moved very quickly, because there was blood where the body was found.’

‘He kept her somewhere close to where he dumped her,’ said Rita.

‘That is what we have to figure out before another girl dies,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Mkhize, you come with me. I want to have another chat to Luis Da Cunha. Might be worth finding out where he was last night.’

‘You’re clutching at straws, Riedwaan,’ said Clare.

‘Any other suggestions? Or shall I just sit here and watch you think?’

Clare shook her head, pulling the autopsy report to her. She compared the three murders, putting everything she had up on the poster boards she had bought. Charnay had disappeared from the Waterfront, Amore from Canal Walk, India from Long Street. All on busy weekend nights. Piet Mouton had worked out how they were killed. She knew where they had been found. There was the similarity in age, hair colour – but, other than that, the only link between the girls was their killer.

Why were they killed? Clare went to make herself another nauseating cup of instant coffee, thinking of the key each girl had clutched in her bound hand. Cheap keys, untraceable, bought in any supermarket. She sipped, looking out onto the dirty strip of sand behind the caravan.

‘What are you thinking, Clare?’ She had not heard Riedwaan return.

‘What happened with Da Cunha?’ she asked.

‘He’s away. Whole family went to a wedding in Portugal last week.’ That’s him out of the picture.’ He lit a cigarette.

‘Give me a drag,’ said Clare. The nicotine rush was wonderful. ‘I’m missing something. He takes them to a place close by. A place that people probably pass every day. There’s no link between these girls. Charnay did freelance sex work, but I think that was coincidental. He doesn’t fit the profile of a mission killer – out to purge prostitutes. Those girls were out alone. But the last two, we presume, were trying to get home. Charnay – that we don’t know – but she was pretty enough and young enough to be selective. I guess she would have gone willingly with a customer, particularly if it wasn’t someone who had used her before.’

Riedwaan came and stood behind her. ‘We’ve checked everything in her diary,’ said Riedwaan. ‘It shows when she worked, but not who her clients were.’

‘Do you think we should pull that nasty little brother of hers in?’ asked Clare.

‘Rita and Joe have already interviewed him again. Here.’ Riedwaan fetched the notes from his desk. ‘His alibi is watertight. You’ll be interested that there are two assault charges against him.’

‘From the rugby match?’

‘One, yes. The other charge is recent. A girl in his class laid a sexual assault charge against him.’

‘A violent assault?’

‘No,’ said Riedwaan. ‘He’s accused of putting a webcam in the girls’ change room. And posting it on the web.’

‘Charming,’ said Clare.

Rita walked in the door, and Riedwaan asked, ‘You checked on the Isis website for her picture?’

‘I did. No sign of her there. Charnay must have chickened out in the end.’

‘Her friend Cornelle is hostessing there,’ Clare observed.

‘Yes, I spoke to her,’ said Rita. ‘But it’s nothing more than that. She’s not doing movies.’

‘What about Amore Hendricks? She left her friends after the movie ended at nine forty-five. She was meant to meet her uncle at ten-thirty at the taxi rank,’ Clare asked.

‘We don’t even know for sure that she was abducted from Canal Walk. She could have gone anywhere,’ said Rita.

‘She must have met someone en route. It had to be someone she knew,’ Clare persisted.

‘Okay. Then what about the phone call? The one her uncle made at ten forty-five?’

‘He didn’t actually speak to her, remember. My guess is that she stopped somewhere, probably in an outside area.’ Clare checked in her notes. ‘Look here. It was pretty busy that evening. She would have been very easy to get into a car if someone had spiked her drink.’

Riedwaan picked up India’s autopsy report. The smell of the laboratory still clung to it. ‘This poor girl got one
moer
of a
klap
on the head. Piet Mouton is pretty certain it was with an iron bar.’

‘I’m surprised he didn’t kill her,’ said Clare.

‘Look here.’ Riedwaan held out two photographs. ‘Piet thinks that she sensed him, saw him maybe, and that she ducked. ‘Look at the bruises here on her arm. He would have caught her there and then hit her as she tried to get away.’

‘What are all these microfibre reports from the wound?’

‘He must have held her to him and then picked her up or put her into a car. Piet thinks that the fibres are from an overcoat, black cashmere most probably.’

‘An expensive dresser,’ said Clare. ‘That would put our little chef out of the picture.’

Riedwaan turned the page. ‘Read this: bits of acrylic carpet. Most likely from the boot of a car.’

‘You can’t tell the make?’

‘They’re working on it but I don’t think so. There will be blood traces on that carpet if they find the car.’

‘That’s all you’ve got?’

‘That’s it. Apart from a cellphone call that India made at nine-thirty. She called her friend Gemma after the rehearsal to say she’d left her scarf in her bag and that she’d come round and get it the next day.’

‘She didn’t say how she was getting home, did she?’ asked Clare.

‘She didn’t, but Gemma had the impression that she was walking while she was talking to her.’

‘And that was on Long Street?’

‘That’s what the cellphone records say. There was also a free concert at the Pool Bar. Gemma thought she might have been going there. The DJ was at school with them.’

‘Did you speak to him?’

‘Her, actually. Yes, we did. India had said that she would pop in, but the DJ never saw her. Nor did the doorman,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Any other sightings of her?’

‘The only person who says he saw her is the security guard at the 7–Eleven. He saw her walk past the Long Street Baths.’

‘No one else?’

‘Nobody. She seems to have vanished. The easiest place, I suppose, would be Keerom Street. That takes you back to Wale Street and there’s no one to see you there.’

‘No vagrants saw her?

‘Nothing. We’ve checked with the regulars. Not a word until her mother called me after . . .’ he stopped.

‘I couldn’t let Constance down,’ Clare muttered at him.

‘You won’t let her go,’ he replied in a low voice. ‘You’re afraid to let her go,’ Riedwaan’s anger flared for just a moment. ‘
Ag
, I’m sorry too. I was looking forward to spoiling you a bit.’ He touched her hand and she curled her fingers around his. Then he exposed the nape of Clare’s neck and kissed it. Rita coughed as she bent over the desk and straightened the paperwork.

Shivering at the sudden pleasure that rippled across her skin, Clare pulled her shoulders back hard and asked, ‘Shall I go and see the family again?’

‘
Ja
, check it out. Talk to her mother and find out what Brian King was doing while he was not at the restaurant,’ Riedwaan suggested. ‘I’m going to check out valet services. See if anyone has brought in a car with a dirty carpet recently.’

‘Okay.’

Riedwaan went out, closing the door behind him. Clare pressed her hands to her temples to stop the drumbeat of why, why, why.

‘Go home,’ said Rita. ‘It’s not easy.’

‘The case or the man?’ asked Clare.

‘Both,
sisi
. Both.’

It was drizzling when Clare got home. She made a sandwich, fetched her duvet, and settled in to watch an old black and white movie. Its gentle tedium lulled Clare to sleep within an hour. The telephone’s insistent ringing roused her, but when she picked up the phone there was only silence.

‘Who is this?’

Faint breathing was the only reply.

‘Whitney? Where are you?’

‘Clare?’

There was silence. ‘Tell me, Whitney. It’s safe.’ As Clare waited for Whitney’s voice, she picked up the tape on her desk. She had pencilled
Interview: Florrie Ruiters: Local Trafficking
on the spine. Mrs Ruiters had phoned Clare and they had met in a nondescript café in Wynberg. Smoking her way through half a pack of cigarettes, Florrie Ruiters told Clare how it had taken three days to coax her fragile child outside the house again. For it was there, while she’d sat in the sun in the front yard, that Landman’s men had taunted Whitney. Florrie, her fear banished by fury, went on to tell Clare that the price exacted by Kelvin Landman and his gangsters escalated as his stranglehold on the community tightened.

‘It makes no difference, Dr Hart,’ Florrie had said when Clare urged her to press charges. ‘If they get convicted – and it is a
big “if” – a lost docket costs them just a couple of hundred rands, you see.
If
they get convicted they just run things from inside. This government gives amnesties left, right and centre. And heaven help you when they get released.’

‘Can you come?’ Whitney pleaded at the other end of the line, pulling Clare back into the present. ‘I’m at my aunt’s house in Mitchell’s Plain.’

Clare looked at her watch and sighed.

‘Please fetch me now.’ The girl’s terror had settled like a stone in her throat, making it difficult for her to speak. ‘You promised.’

‘What’s happened?’ asked Clare. ‘Who has threatened you?’

‘My cousin says they know where I am. Will you come?’

‘I’ll come,’ said Clare. She picked up a pen. ‘Tell me exactly where you are. I’ll come as soon as I can. Don’t go anywhere.’ Clare wrote down the address. Then she made a call. It did not take her long to arrange what Whitney needed.

Clare wove her way through clogged evening traffic until she reached the highway, then she pulled into the taxi lane. The turnoff came sooner than she expected and Clare easily found the street. She pulled over at the modest little house. It was ice-cream pink, in defiance of the grey sand that seemed to have seeped in all over the area. Whitney opened the door as she heard the car door slam. Her small bag was packed. Her coat was on, a beanie pulled low over her forehead.

‘Hello, Whitney.’ The girl hurtled down the path. Clare opened the car door and Whitney collapsed into the seat. She looked back at the house. A grimy net curtain swung back into place in the front room.

‘What happened?’ Clare asked. Whitney stared straight ahead as Clare started the car and drove back to the highway.

‘They kept asking me,’ said Whitney. ‘They kept asking me what they did to me. They wanted to know the details. And
then they would discuss what they did to me, whether I had got HIV.’ Her voice drifted off into silence. The street lights had come on. They cast a ghostly orange light that flickered rhythmically across their faces as Clare drove. Whitney did not move a hand to wipe the tears that glistened on her cheeks. Clare turned back onto the highway, away from Cape Town.

‘Where are you taking me?’ asked Whitney.

‘I know a woman on an apple farm up near Elgin. I phoned her and she said you could stay. You’ll be safer there. And they don’t know what happened to you,’ said Clare.

They drove in silence for a long time. Clare decided not to ask Whitney why she had not gone back to see the counsellor after the first session. The charges that she had reluctantly laid – at her mother’s insistence – had been withdrawn, and Whitney had refused to speak to Rita Mkhize when she’d arrived to follow up.

‘There was somebody else there the first night.’ Whitney’s voice was just audible above the car’s engine. Clare turned to look at her. The girl was staring straight ahead. Her jaw was clenched with the effort of memory, the effort of speech. ‘He watched.’ She turned briefly to face Clare. ‘He watched what they did.’ Again, Whitney looked into the black night. Cape Town had receded into the distance. They started to climb the steep pass that would take them over the peaks that bordered False Bay.

‘He told them what to do. Sometimes he told them to do the things again. Then again.’