Like Clockwork (31 page)

Tatiana lifted her head. ‘At the Isis Club. Where I work before I come here.’ She looked away, was quiet. Then she added, so softly that Clare almost didn’t hear her, ‘Also when they make the movies.’

‘Where did you find them?’ asked Clare.

‘I find them in Mr Tohar’s coat. He come home very late. I do not see him. I just hear him. But I got up early. I find his coat lying in the sitting room. So I pick it up because he hates a mess. And those fell out.’

‘When was that?’ asked Clare.

‘Two nights ago.’ She leaned forward and tapped the driver’s shoulder. ‘We go now?’

Clare stepped back onto the pavement. Two nights ago Theresa Angelo had disappeared.

Six in the morning. Charnay Swanepoel on the promenade had been first.

Six in the evening. The time they had found Amore’s body at Graaff’s Pool.

Midnight had produced India King.

Like clockwork, one after the other. Clare immediately dialled Tatiana’s number, watching as she lifted the phone to her ear. The taxi was only a hundred metres down the road.

‘What kind of coat does Tohar wear?’ she asked.

‘A black one,’ said Tatiana. ‘Is cashmere. Very expensive from Italy.’

‘Thank you.’ Clare watched the taxi disappear behind a bus. Theresa Angelo’s broken body would turn up when the sun reached its zenith tomorrow – unless Clare got to her before anything terrible happened.

Clare called Riedwaan on her way home, willing him to answer. She needed him for back-up. She snapped her phone shut, killing his voice asking her to please leave a message. There was a bad taste in her mouth, and her body ached with tension that she decided to walk off on the promenade. Heavy fog had rolled in from the south-west, and the Green Point foghorn blared anxiously at passing ships. Skeletal fingers of mist were swirling off the sea, making it difficult to see more than a few metres ahead. ‘Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?’ was the percussion of Clare’s stride. She stopped to call Riedwaan again. Then cursed his voicemail and walked on along the promenade, all the way to Clifton and back again.

It was almost dark as she heard the raised voices cut through the evening silence. The fog was disorientating, but the argument sounded as if it was coming from Three Anchor Bay, where the elephant seal, exhausted by his thousand-mile swim, had heaved himself up to rest. Clare walked towards the glow of a fire that the animal’s guard had made to keep himself warm. She could see the outline of a man, beside himself with agitation. He lunged at the guard, grabbing him by the front of his jacket and pulling him off his feet.

‘Hey!’ shouted Clare, running towards them. She went up to the guard, who had fallen back against the railing.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked him, helping him back on his feet. His attacker was swallowed by the dense fog.

‘I’m okay. I’m okay. What is his problem?’ The guard was enraged. ‘He wants to go now to the boathouse. But nobody can sail out in that swell.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Clare.

‘I don’t know. He’s a crazy man. He came earlier and he wanted to go to the boathouse. The other people who have boats also wanted to go. So I explained to them that no one can go while the elephant seal is there. Nobody. They don’t mind at all. They are happy. Except him. He says he must go. It is his right. I say rubbish. That big seal came thousands of miles to visit here. He can have some peace now until he goes back home.’ The guard poured himself some tea from his flask, added four soothing spoons of sugar and drank it down. ‘That man tells me he will phone the mayor. I point to the sign and I tell him that the mayor ordered that we close the beach for the seal. Hah!’ the guard spat, still furious.

‘When was that?’ asked Clare.

‘That was this afternoon. Then he came back now. First he tried to give me money. I said no. He asked me if I wanted more money. I said no again. I tell him he must go away. That is when he started shouting at me, saying I must let him in. He grabbed me here,’ he said, pointing to the front of his jacket.

Clare went to the railing and looked down. There were three boathouses below, the doors bolted against the weather. In the gloom on the other side of the beach was a slipway that dipped under the promenade and came out at the high-water mark on the beach. Here, there was another bolted door in the granite sea wall that curved around to the lighthouse about three hundred metres away. The great animal lay inert on the beach, its large eyes blinking whenever the lights of a car
disturbed it. The slipway had been blocked off since the arrival of the seal

She turned to the guard. ‘Do you have binoculars?’ she asked, her heart beating faster.

He ducked into his booth and handed her his glasses. Clare looked down at the seal. She could make out the bristles around his stubby nose. She lifted the glasses up to the door. It was tightly locked, but there were tracks on the sand. Slowly, she swung the glasses around the sea wall. The granite was pitted and scarred by the sea. There was a glimmer of light about fifty metres away where the sea wall dipped into the next inlet. She focused carefully. It seemed to emanate from the stone itself, then vanished. She handed the glasses back to the guard.

‘Thank you,’ she said, light-headed with hope. She snapped open her phone. Two rings, and he answered.

‘Riedwaan,’ she whispered. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in Bellville. With Dr. Death.’

‘Riedwaan, I think I’ve found her. How soon can you get here?’

‘Give me half an hour. I’ll be with you. Where are you?’

‘I’m above the Three Anchor Bay boathouses. She’s here, I’m sure of it.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ he asked.

‘I went to see Otis Tohar.’

‘Tohar?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘How is he connected?’

‘I’m not sure, Riedwaan. But I’m going to find out.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I’m going after her, Riedwaan.’

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ll get Joe and Rita to organise back-up for you.’

‘Be quick.’

‘Don’t ever tell Phiri that we had this conversation. He’ll have my balls for breakfast.’

‘What good would that do me?’

Clare closed her phone and went back to her flat for a torch. She could not wait for Riedwaan, there was no time. She unlocked the drawer beside her bed. The cold stillness of the gun was comforting. She picked it up, checked it was loaded and slipped it into the inside pocket of her trousers. It was like holding an old lover, the familiar shape snug against her thigh.

She looked through the untidy heap of paper on her desk. The map was not there. It wasn’t in the kitchen either. Clare looked next to her bed. Nothing. She was sure she had kept the map of the underground tunnels. She looked next to her bed again. It had slipped behind the headboard. She coaxed it out, trying not to tear the thin paper.

Clare spread the map of the old drainage system in front of her. On it, she marked the places where the bodies had been found. It was the one near Sushi-Zen that interested her most. The storm-water drain opened right onto the patch of lawn where Xavier had found India’s body.

She traced the route of the tunnel. It ran under the lighthouse and then snaked back towards the promenade wall. Here it branched, and a second, narrower, tunnel seemed to lead to the slipway at Three Anchor Bay. There must surely be an entrance nearby, leading to the boathouse. If these girls had been held there, then that would be the way in. Or, for the killer, a way of getting them out. There was plenty of space to hide someone there and, with a genuine boathouse in front, to deflect suspicion.

Clare sprinted to the storm-water drain near Sushi-Zen. The entrance stank of human excrement. She held her breath and stepped over the filth. The darkness closed in on her. She switched on her torch. A rat, its eyes gleaming red, scuttled past her. She forced herself to keep going, bearing right all the while, towards the boathouses. And praying her instinct was right.

Theresa’s head ached. She remembered helping the man and then the excruciating pain of the blow. The wound oozed if she moved, and warm blood matted her hair. She breathed in deeply, trying to order her jumbled thoughts. If she had even a chance of survival she would have to make sense of this. Of him. He had bound her hands and feet tightly. Blood had trickled into her eyes, but she forced them open, pushing away the agony in her head. Theresa had no idea how long she had been unconscious. The man had parked his car. She had heard his footsteps as he came round to open the boot. The air was fetid. Her skin had crawled at the exploratory touch of his hands, smooth and clammy – it was like being touched by something dead. The man hoisted Theresa over his shoulder, but she kept her body limp. He grunted. She was heavier than he had bargained for.

Theresa was not the sort of girl to blow over in the wind, her father always teased her. The thought of her father made her weak with hopelessness. How would he find her? Theresa opened her eyes. The car was parked underneath a stone shelter. The man pulled a heavy wooden door open and carried her into a darkness so dense it almost seemed solid. He dumped Theresa onto something lumpy and hard. Pain shot through her shoulders that had been twisted backwards. She
heard him breathing deeply, satisfied. Theresa did not move.

Then he was gone, slamming the door shut. The key grated in the lock. He shot two bolts across. They were obviously stiff, but the door was too thick to hear if he swore or not. Like runnels, tears ran through the blood on Theresa’s face and into her hair. She shifted her weight off her arms, relieving the pain in her shoulders and neck. She was barely able to move – he had tied her expertly.

It was not only dark but also cold where she lay. She spread her fingers out wide, trying to feel what it was she was lying on. The fibres were tight, hard, pressing into her hips and her shoulders. Rope, thought Theresa, a great coiled-up rope. She listened to the muffled thudding.

‘The sea. Where?’ Her voice in the darkness startled her. It sounded cracked, as if it belonged to someone else, someone old. She thought about the girls she’d read about who had been found dead on the promenade. Their killer had not yet been caught. Panic rippled through her. Theresa breathed in and out carefully, forcing herself to keep calm. She turned away from the wave of horror bearing down on her.

‘Work it out. Work it out.’ The darkness was filling with tiny sounds. She focused on them, distracting herself by trying to work out what they were.

She thought of the promenade, where she and her mother sometimes went for walks. They parked at the swimming pool and walked from there, enjoying the whoosh of air that the skaters dragged behind them, the nannies with their over-dressed charges on the swings. She retraced the grey ribbon of stone from memory, counting benches, deciding whether they were yellow or blue, placing orange dustbins, cracked paving, snatches of overheard conversation. Theresa reached the turning point of her imaginary walk just as she saw the boathouses at Three Anchor Bay. The man would have driven
his car down the slipway and unloaded her there. No one would hear her here. There would have been no one to see her, either. No one would remark on an expensive car parked on the slipway. If anyone saw a man get out of the car with a girl they would look away. At night it was only street prostitutes who brought their clients here – rich men, sailors with shore leave, whoever was paying. A woman’s scream would attract no attention – even if it was heard.

Theresa turned her face to the wall. Dread overwhelmed her. She closed her eyes and let herself slip back into oblivion. She did not hear the skritch, skritch in the recesses of her cell. The rats – fattened of late, and replete – waited for their moment.

Theresa surfaced despite herself, awoken by the resistance of the rusted bolts, her throat burning with thirst. She listened to his approaching footsteps. She couldn’t bear to die this thirsty. She kept her eyes shut. She would fight to stay alive. She couldn’t bear the thought of dying at all.

The man was close now. She had to buy herself some time, recover from the blow to her head, force herself to think. His smell, pungent with adrenaline, assaulted her nostrils. His breath brushed her cheek, moved over her lips. She did not flinch. The man’s warm breath moved down her throat and neck, followed by a hand that traced the outline of her body without quite touching it. A low moan escaped him, thick with desire and relief. Theresa’s skin burnt when he held his hand over her breast. She flinched, unable to contain the revulsion. He must have looked at her face again, because she felt his breath on her throat once more and then it was gone. She felt his hands at her ankles. He was untying the ropes there. The blood rushed painfully back into her feet. He pushed her over and released her hands.

Every fibre of her being recoiled, but she willed herself to
stay limp, silencing the scream burning in her throat. His hands moved over her body. Purposeful, this time. He removed her shoes with practised dexterity. Her jeans went next. Her top was more difficult, but he slipped first one arm then the other out, like a mother undressing an infant. Then he jerked it over her head. The cord of the hood scraped her face. She felt the cold blade on her skin as he sliced off her bra and panties. The trickle of blood where the scalpel nicked her was hot. He traced the hips bracketing her hollowed stomach. His fingers passed over the mound of dark hair and lingered on the small mole on her thigh. Theresa wondered if being a virgin made her feel worse.

The man bent close, burying his nose in the hollow of her throat. Slowly he moved up towards her ear, breathing her in, sniffing for the essence of her. His wet lips left a trail of slime on her skin. Nausea pressed at the base of her tongue. He knew she was ready for him. He put his lips close to her ear and stroked her eyelids with infinite softness.

‘Wake up, beautiful. We’re going to have some fun together.’ The ordinariness of his voice pressed the air from her lungs. She had to look this nightmare in the face. She opened her eyes.

He smiled at her. His face was familiar, nice-looking, the man who had waved at her from the yacht. Friendly lines crinkled the corners of his eyes. He was so close, she could see his thick eyelashes. They were very long – like a girl’s.