from where it had rested on her sleeve. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I made you coffee. Here.’ Riedwaan pushed a steaming cup across the desk. ‘And I got you a Florentine from the Venus Bakery. Your favourite.’
The honeyed almonds glistened in their nest of chocolate and dried fruit. Clare picked it up. It was too early in the morning to resist. She bit into the tiny biscuit. It was delicious. Useful too, because she couldn’t eat and grin. Which was what she felt like doing, seeing Riedwaan sitting on the edge of her desk.
‘Thanks for letting me know you were here,’ she said, with her mouth full.
‘I did try. Check your phone.’
Clare pulled it out of her pocket. ‘Damn. So you did. It’s been on silent.’
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Riedwaan.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ said Clare.
‘You could’ve fooled me.’
‘In bed I couldn’t,’ she said.
‘So you came in here?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘Odd choice for soothing company.’
‘I’m going crazy with them.’ Clare gestured to the boys on the wall. ‘Just as I feel I have something, it vanishes like water on hot sand. Have you seen Captain Damases?’ she asked.
‘Not yet. Only Van Wyk, I think it is. He’s about as warm as a KGB agent.’
‘That’s Van Wyk for you,’ said Clare. ‘I don’t think South Africans are at the top of his hit parade. Did you meet Elias Karamata?’
‘Looks like a prizefighter? He said I’d find you in here.’
‘Oh God, I suppose everyone knows I’ve been sleeping here.’
‘Pretty much.’ Riedwaan walked over to the displays, concentrating in turn on each of the four clusters, absorbing what Clare and Tamar had set out.
‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘Fritz Woestyn, the one without a number carved on his chest, he was the first one?’
‘Yes. We’ve been thinking of him as Number 1. Head shot, but not as close as the others. No tattooing that the pathologist could see. So definitely more than two, three metres. The others are all close-up.’
‘Show me where he was found.’
Clare pointed to a red pin on the aerial map. ‘His body was dumped here, but it wasn’t where he was shot.’ Riedwaan was standing close to her, raising the tiny hairs on her arms.
‘Some guys checking a fifty-kilometre stretch just happened to find him?’ asked Riedwaan.
Clare nodded. Riedwaan thought of the vast desert he had just passed through.
‘You could go missing in this desert and not be found for weeks,’ Clare said, reading his mind. ‘The chances of the boys’ discovery were so slim that whoever shot him probably calculated that he wouldn’t be found until he’d been reduced to just another heap of bones. Or they dumped him where they knew he’d be found.’
‘The others?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘Jones, Apollis, Beukes. Run me through them.’
‘The killings get more elaborate after that first one. Nicanor Jones with the 2; Kaiser Apollis had a 3 on his chest. Then a skip to Lazarus Beukes with a 5.’
‘Where’s your Number 4?’
‘Alive and well, I hope. No one’s been reported missing.’ Clare fanned out a series of close-ups: the faces, their mutilated chests, the missing finger joints on the left hands. ‘It’s the same person killing them,’ she said. ‘We don’t have a bullet from each scene, but it looks like the same calibre gun and the same rope – nylon washing line – on the wrists. Same victim profile, too. Marginal boy, fifteen or so, fey, small, nobody to look for him. Also, there’s a time thing. It looks like the murders were done on or around a Friday night, except for Lazarus. At least close to the weekend.’
‘And your man?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘Where does he hang out?’
‘This is the only place I can fix him,’ said Clare, pointing to the first red pin on the map.
‘The takeaway place at the lagoon?’ said Riedwaan.
‘Lover’s Hill. They went there. Well, I know for sure that Kaiser Apollis was there. The cook saw him on the Friday evening he was killed. He ordered some food and then got into a car a few metres down the road.’
‘Okay,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I’m with you. What happens?’
‘This guy picks them up somewhere, probably in town where it wouldn’t be noticed. Then he drives out, dropping them off to get something to eat. The cook noticed Kaiser because it was quiet, but otherwise the boys would be in and out. Invisible. Then they go outside, walk down the road a bit and get back into the car and they drive out into the desert.’
‘There’s no sign of recent sexual assault, is there?’ said Riedwaan, checking the post-mortem results.
‘No. Maybe he’s impotent. Maybe he’s a romantic. Maybe they laugh at him, threaten him. Maybe he gets his kicks in his own special way.’
‘By shooting them?’ asked Riedwaan.
‘Maybe.’
‘So who moves them?’
‘Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong…’ Clare’s voice trailed off as she stared at the accumulating bank of information. ‘Maybe he meets someone out there. They both do something together…’
‘What’s he like, this romantic of yours?’
‘He’d have to be a loner, maybe a shift worker, so no one notices late comings and goings.’ Clare finished her coffee. ‘A textbook killer for a textbook case.’
Riedwaan walked over to the window and looked out over the flat, featureless town. ‘How do people get around this place?’ he asked.
‘On foot or bike, if you’re poor,’ said Clare. ‘A 4x4 if you’re somebody.’ She cocked her head and looked at her display. ‘He’d have a car, or access to a car. Enough money to lure these kids and then buy them food. Something to drink. I’d put his age at around thirty-five, forty. Maybe a bit more. He might be someone the kids think they could take advantage of, but they’d go with just about anyone with a bit of cash.’
‘Even after a couple of them have been killed?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘It must seem like someone they can trust, someone they don’t expect to be a danger.’
‘I agree,’ said Clare. ‘Someone they wouldn’t see as a threat. The car will also look like everyone else’s here.’
‘White double cab, if what I’ve seen is anything to go by,’ said Riedwaan. ‘What would’ve triggered this spree?’
‘Something unravels, the guy ropes of self-control snap,’ said Clare. ‘Stress does it usually. And there you go: a killer on the loose.’ She looked at the pictures of Lazarus’s bloodied face. ‘Whoever it is knows how to seduce. There’s no sign of a struggle and such an intimate death. Blood would splatter on your hands and face as you fire. Quite a sophisticated rush in a way, the symbolism of it: the union, the consummation. Weird.’
‘With you involved it’s going to be weird, Clare,’ said Riedwaan, looking at the pictures of a dismembered hand. ‘You’re sure it’s someone local?’
‘Whoever’s doing this knows this place very well. He wouldn’t be able to be invisible otherwise.’ She paced up and down in front of the pinboard, stopping in front of the photograph of Kaiser Apollis’s shrouded figure. ‘My profile’s still off-kilter,’ she said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘The display aspect of the murders. Herman Shipanga went on about bodies being exhibited as a kind of warning. It’s not just the rush that comes with pulling the trigger. Our killer’s trying to communicate something too, through the bodies. Out in the Kuiseb, where Lazarus’s body was found, you had to ask how he got to be there exactly, where Chanel would find him. I keep thinking: someone knows this place, knows where people will stop in this vast desert, knows its secrets and can work with them. I wonder-’ The door swung open, interrupting Clare. It was Tamar. ‘Did you sleep well, Riedwaan?’ she asked. ‘Comfortable where we put you?’
‘Good bar, good bed, good food. Thanks.’
Clare had hardly noticed Tamar come in. ‘What
‘Morning to you too, Clare,’ said Tamar.
