The boy heaved himself off his stool. He was a replica of his father, down to the tatty white vest and the plain cigarette curling smoke between his fingers.
‘This way.’ The boy eyed Riedwaan and thought better of offering to take his bags.
The room was clean and, if one ignored the red and black colour scheme, comfortable.
‘Thanks.’ Riedwaan dumped his bags on the floor. ‘Can I get something to eat?’
‘Nah,’ said the boy. ‘We only do breakfast.’
‘Jesus, man. I’ve ridden from Solitaire with nothing to eat. Can’t you do me a toasted sandwich or something?’
‘Ham?’ said Rusty.
‘With a name like Faizal? You must be joking,’ said Riedwaan.
The boy looked blank.
‘Get me cheese or something.’
‘Come through to the bar. I’ll get it for you. But you explain to my dad.’
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
Riedwaan opened the curtains. The fog had closed in. He couldn’t make out if he was looking at a parking lot or the lagoon. He closed them again and went to shower. The hot water dissolved two days of grime and stiff muscles. He pulled on his jeans and a clean shirt and went through to the bar.
His supper was waiting: toasted white bread and cheese, swimming in butter, no sign of salad. Lots of tomato sauce. Just how he liked it.
‘You want a drink to go with that?’ said the old man.
‘Whisky. No ice,’ said Riedwaan.
The man poured him a double. ‘Name’s Boss,’ he said. ‘What you doing up here? A holiday?’
‘Kind of,’ said Riedwaan, his mouth full. ‘This is a good sandwich.’ He washed it down with the whisky. ‘Boss. Is that a nickname?’
‘Short for Basson. My surname.’ He poured himself a shot and shook a cigarette out of the pack lying on the bar. ‘You want one?’
Riedwaan took one and leant forward so his host could light it for him.
‘So where you headed?’ asked Boss.
‘I’m going to be here for a bit. Not sure how long.’
‘Where you from?’
‘Cape Town.’ Food, whisky and a cigarette. Riedwaan felt human again.
‘Oh,’ said Boss. ‘The States.’
It was Riedwaan’s turn to look blank. ‘The States?’
Rusty rolled his eyes back. ‘It’s what they used to call South Africa pre-94, when there were all those little fake countries. Transkei, Ciskei. All those independent states. You remember, the whole apartheid thing.’
‘Oh that,’ Riedwaan said dryly. ‘I remember.’
‘What line of work are you in?’ asked Boss.
‘Investigations,’ said Riedwaan.
‘Insurance?’
‘No.’ Riedwaan pushed his glass forward for another shot.
‘You must be in the police,’ said Rusty, a rare flash of understanding in his eyes. ‘Remember, Pop, Captain Damases made the booking?’
They both eyed Riedwaan. Riedwaan stubbed out his cigarette.
‘You working up here then?’ asked Boss.
‘A bit.’ Riedwaan did not care to elaborate.
‘Those fishing scams?’
‘Not really,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Thanks for supper. I need to sleep.’
‘It’s those kids they keep finding in the desert, I bet,’ said Rusty. Another light-bulb flash. He was going to wear himself out at this rate. ‘I think it’s a sailor. One of those Russians. They’re all faggots. Drinking vodka, living on those ships for so long. What do you say, Pop?’
Boss ignored his son, turning to rinse the glasses in the sink.
‘You must know that lady policeman staying at the cottages down the road,’ Rusty said excitedly.
‘I think I do,’ said Riedwaan, getting up.
‘She’s hot,’ said Rusty. ‘I’ve seen her run past here in the mornings. Nice little tits. I bet I could get her to work up a sweat for me.’
Rusty’s fingers were in Riedwaan’s muscular hand, bent further back than their original specifications should have allowed. Riedwaan’s voice was low, intimate in Rusty’s ear. ‘You go near her and you’ll be combing the desert for your balls.’
The boy rubbed his hand. He decided it was best to say nothing.
Riedwaan finished his whisky. ‘What time is breakfast?’
‘Six-thirty on. You want bacon and eggs?’
‘No bacon. Just the eggs. Thanks.’
Riedwaan went back to his room and checked his cellphone. A missed call. Yasmin, his daughter. Damn, he’d forgotten his biweekly call. He pulled off his boots and lay on the bed, meaning to phone Clare. Instead, he fell at once into that deep, untroubled sleep that is the gift of innocence or physical exhaustion.
thirty-eight
Four o’clock and Clare was wide awake, her duvet on the floor, a sheet tangled around her bare legs. Her dreams had been horrible: the dead boys winking at her with their bloody third eyes. The laugh of the hyena echoed through her subconscious, mocking her in a language she could not understand. She got up, opened her stoep doors and stepped onto the balcony. The silence pressed in with the fog. Not a sound, not a car. Roosting seabirds rustled their wings, calling softly, occasionally, as if to reassure themselves that they weren’t alone in the vast salt marshes. The cold, and the pulse of an idea, drove Clare back inside; if she couldn’t sleep, she might as well work.
She dressed quickly, flattening two cups of coffee in quick succession. The sound of her car starting was so loud she was convinced that she had woken the whole town, but nothing stirred. No lights came on.
A sleepy night sergeant waved her through the police station gates. In the special ops room, dim light filtered in from the street, making Clare’s pinned-up victims look like a macabre boy band. She flooded the room with neon and sat down at her desk. Opening her notebook, she drew up columns, one for each boy. The first victim with nothing on his chest. Then 2, 3. The missing number 4, and 5, the last one. Five columns, four bodies. Clare wrote down what she knew about them, what she knew about their deaths. Then she wrote down what she didn’t know.
She made another column for the killer. Nothing to put there, but a bullet matched to a shooting two thousand kilometres away, and a white vehicle glimpsed in the dark. A predator that slipped through the night, unheard. Utmost secrecy and yet the bodies displayed where it would be impossible to miss them. She looked again at the map of the place where Lazarus had been found. One road in. One road out. Beyond it, tracks of sand unmarked by vehicles; the only tracks left were those of animals. Kaiser Apollis, too. Moved unseen and in silence. How? When she reached for the answer glimmering on the horizon of thought, it slipped away like a mirage on a desert road.
Debit and credit. No matter which way she juggled it, she could not get the books to balance. The truth was hidden below the surface, like the rivers that coursed deep underground. Clare put her head on her arms and closed her eyes to think and promptly fell asleep. Fully clothed, under a flickering neon light, Clare did not dream at all.
It was the smell of fresh coffee that woke her. ‘Not like you to sleep on the job.’ A voice that should have been in her dreams but wasn’t, a gentle hand smoothing the hair from her forehead.
‘Riedwaan.’ Delight in her voice. She looked a mess; she could feel it. Hair all over the place, her cheek red
