sixteen
Karamata was finishing his coffee in Tamar’s office when Clare got back to the police station. ‘Are you ready to see the sights?’ he asked. He was scheduled to take Clare to the dump site where Nicanor Jones was found.
‘I’m ready. Are you coming, Tamar?’ asked Clare.
Tamar shook her head. ‘I am still going through all the ship logs to see if there’s any pattern with which ships were in and these murders.’ She leant back on her yellow couch. She looked so slight, despite her pregnancy.
‘Find anything yet?’
‘Not much. The Russian ships, of course. The
‘I do,’ said Clare. ‘From the last time I was here.’ She couldn’t read Tamar’s expression.
‘There’ve been a couple of others, but there’s no consistency,’ said Tamar. ‘I need to do a few more checks. I’ll catch you later.’
Clare picked up her files and followed Karamata to the Land Cruiser. He opened the door for her, before heaving himself into the driver’s seat.
Karamata took the road past the lagoon, but soon turned off onto a dusty track. Clare opened Nicanor Jones’s file. A class photograph, taken several years earlier, was stuck in the front. A little boy with shiny eyes and a wide mouth smiled up at her, frozen in his last recording of an official moment. In the next picture, his eyes were hollows and the white cheekbones shone through. There was one of his torso. It was bloody, the skin on the bony chest torn away. Clare looked away.
‘Not pretty,’ said Karamata.
‘No,’ said Clare.
Karamata turned right, into pure sand. The wheels held and the Land Cruiser topped the dune. Hidden below at the foot of the dune lay a scavenger’s paradise.
‘That is where I found him.’ Karamata pointed to the rusting razor wire looped along the edge of the dump. He pulled out a panoramic shot and held it up. The composition foregrounded the boy’s limp body, giving perspective to the vast expanse of the sand.
From their vantage point, Clare could see the road that led back to town, the lagoon and the harbour beyond it. ‘On this side of the fence?’ she asked.
‘Yes. He had been tied to that pole.’ Karamata pointed to a sturdy log that held the swags of razor wire in place.
‘Whoever dumped him didn’t come through the dump then. If he’d gone through that wire, alive or dead, it would’ve lacerated him. Whoever dumped him must’ve come across the sand. You didn’t see any tracks?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Karamata. ‘But the wind had been blowing, so anything would’ve been covered with sand.’
It was as sparse a crime scene as the schoolyard, according to the docket. ‘He wasn’t killed here, was he?’
‘No,’ said Karamata. ‘He’d been dead five days when he was found.’
Clare pictured the shrine she and Tamar had made to the child full of woe, Wednesday’s Child. That made the time of death Friday, the same as Kaiser Apollis. She looked at the autopsy pictures again. The mutilation was the work of human hands. So where was he? Why keep his body away from scavengers? When was he put here?
Clare looked over the unforgiving sand and rock. It made no sense, the risky display, the complications of transporting a corpse several days dead, the exhibition in a public place. Or was it intended that children see it? A warning of sorts, like Shipanga had said.
‘The body must’ve been in full view of where the waste-pickers sleep,’ she observed.
‘They say they saw nothing and heard nothing,’ said Karamata. ‘They certainly said nothing.’
A blue dump truck moved along the black ribbon of tar. It lumbered past a windowless brick building then onto a weigh-bridge. A man with a clipboard took note of the number plates and weight before waving the truck on.
‘George Meyer. The boss.’ Karamata cut the engine. ‘That’s his incinerator.’ The chimney, dark against the grey sky, spiralled smoke into the still air. It drifted towards the town.
‘So much easier to just burn a body,’ Clare said, half to herself.
‘You’d think so,’ said Karamata, ‘but you’d have to get it past George first. He’s very German about his record- keeping!’
‘His movements have been checked, I suppose?’
‘We spoke to him,’ said Karamata. ‘He was at home all weekend. Him and that funny little boy of his, Oscar.’
The truck stopped in the middle of the dump site. Scrawny supplicants emerged from the heaps of waste and swarmed around the vehicle, heads bowed, hands lifted. The driver jumped out and walked over to the foreman standing to the side, sjambok at the ready. The waste-pickers worked with practised efficiency, filling sacks with discarded affluence.
‘The other economy,’ Karamata noted. ‘At the moment it’s the only one that’s stable.’
‘The fishing is over?’
‘Finish and
‘You didn’t put money in fishing?’ Clare asked.
‘Not me,’ he laughed. ‘I didn’t have the right surname or the right connections. I suppose I should be glad about that now.’
Karamata started the engine, and the vehicle pitched forward down the vertiginous dune. He pulled onto a track that led to the dump and parked outside the entrance to the building.
‘Let’s say hello to George Meyer,’ he said. ‘A courtesy.’ He pushed open the screen door and Clare followed him down the immaculate passage. The third door was open.
‘Mr Meyer?’ Karamata ducked slightly as he stepped inside the office. His bulky form dwarfed the furniture.
George Meyer was at his desk. The little redhead Clare had seen cycling along the lagoon was sitting at a small table. The boy’s eyes widened in recognition when he saw her.
‘Sergeant Karamata. Madam.’ George Meyer stood up and smoothed down his hair, nodding at Clare.
‘This is Dr Hart,’ said Karamata. ‘Dr Hart and I want to talk to the boys who live on the dump.’
‘Sign in, please.’ Meyer pushed a ledger towards Karamata. ‘New policy since that body was found here. The boys are afraid. This makes them feel safer.’
‘And are they?’ asked Clare.
‘I doubt it,’ said Meyer. ‘Whoever’s killing them wouldn’t start out here on the dump.’
‘Why not?’ asked Clare.
‘Well, everyone here would recognise a stranger, wouldn’t they?’
‘They would,’ said Clare, ‘if it was a stranger.’ She went over to look at what the child was drawing while Karamata took care of the formalities. Oscar had covered the page with drawings. Flowering people, winged trees, dolphins. The eerie whimsy was so at odds with this rough place.
‘Those are beautiful.’ Clare smiled at the boy, but the child looked down at his freckled hands, twisting them in his lap. ‘What’s your name?’ She bent down beside him.
‘This is Oscar,’ Meyer answered for the child. ‘He’s been mute since his mother died six months ago.’
The pieces clicked into place: Meyer, Virginia Meyer. Clare remembered a book she’d read the last time she was in Walvis Bay. She turned back to the child. ‘Your mother studied the Kuiseb plants, didn’t she? She worked with the desert people, trying to understand how they use them.’
The boy’s eyes lit up, confirming Clare’s question.
‘She was my wife.’ George Meyer looked down as he spoke. ‘Before that, she and Oscar lived in the Kuiseb for many years.’ He held out his hand, and the child sidled over, but Meyer did not draw the child into the shelter of his arms. The two of them stood, side by side, watching Clare and Karamata get back in the vehicle.
‘Unusual colouring Oscar has,’ she said as they drove away.
‘He takes after his mother,’ said Karamata. ‘Virginia was like Moses’s burning bush with all her red hair. And such a white skin, no good for this country.’
