Blood Rose

clenched, voice low. ‘But you didn’t tell me they were both coming.’

‘I only knew for sure a few days ago.’

A truck hurtled past on the inside lane, hooting. Riedwaan swerved again.

‘A few days?’ said Clare. ‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’

‘I thought you’d be angry.’

‘I am angry.’

Riedwaan took the off-ramp to the airport. ‘Shazia and I have a child together. We’ve been married for twelve years. I have to talk to her to sort things out.’

‘I know.’ Clare looked out of the window, dashing the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘But you should’ve told me.’

‘You’d still have been upset,’ said Riedwaan.

‘I’d have been able to make a choice then.’

‘Let me explain.’

‘No! You had your chance. Just drop me and go.’

There was a steel edge to Clare’s voice. The armour she used to protect herself from feeling too much moved along familiar grooves to protect the vulnerability she had risked with Riedwaan. His separation was too recent and his ties to his family were too strong. It was her fault for letting him insinuate himself into her life, her heart. She was as angry with herself for letting it happen as she was with him for doing it.

Riedwaan ignored her and parked the Mazda. ‘Talk to me, Clare.’ He switched off the ignition and turned to face her.

‘About what?’

‘About all of this.’

‘Why didn’t you think of that before, genius?’ Clare opened the door.

Riedwaan got out too, waving away the porter. ‘I can explain.’

‘You’ve had weeks to explain,’ said Clare. ‘Yesterday, when Yasmin called. Perfect opportunity to explain. Not telling me is worse than lying to me.’

‘It’s complicated.’ Riedwaan put his hands on her arms.

‘It was complicated,’ said Clare, shrugging him off. ‘Now it’s simple.’

‘It’s hard to talk to you about this, Clare,’ said Riedwaan. ‘It’s hard for me to tell you anything. I don’t know what you think. What you feel. What you want.’

The blinds came down over the hurt in Clare’s eyes. ‘There’s a bag of your things at the front door,’ she said. ‘Fetch it from Rita.’

‘Clare, I’m so sorry.’

‘It’ll be simpler professionally.’

‘I’ll call you,’ said Riedwaan.

‘About the case. This subject is closed.’ Clare touched his cheek, back in control, fingers cool, more dismissive than a slammed door. She strode towards the international departures terminal and into the embrace of the automatic doors.

‘Fuck it,’ Riedwaan said and went back to his car.

He threaded through the cars offloading passengers at domestic departures and joined the sluggish flow of traffic making its way into town.

‘Fuck it,’ he said again as the traffic gridlocked on the Eastern Boulevard.

eight

Clare handed over her ticket and passport, submitting to the pat-down when the security machine beeped.

‘Your bra,’ smiled the woman who searched her. ‘The under-wire always sets this thing off. But what can you do? We all need a bit of lift.’

‘Don’t we just,’ said Clare.

The morning mist was still wreathed across the Cape Flats, stranding Table Mountain and the leafy suburbs that clung to its base, but as the plane headed north, trees, fields, roads, towns, then villages, fell away and the land became drier, stripped of any vegetation except the hardiest plants. Clare opened the file that Rita Mkhize had put together. Precise notes in convent-school cursive. A plastic sleeve for expenses and petty-cash slips. A list of contact numbers. Empty file dividers for the postmortem report, forensic analysis, ballistics report, and Clare’s profile. Anticipation tingled up her spine.

Tamar Damases had e-mailed an aerial photograph of Walvis Bay. It showed a marshy river delta south of the port. Extending northwards was a slender sand peninsula that protected the lagoon and the harbour. At the tip of this encircling arm was Pelican Point, around which the calmed Atlantic tides swirled into the bay. The little town squatted behind the harbour. It was a bleak place, pushed closer to oblivion by the collapsing fishing industry. The town had ceased to grow as planned, so the school where the body had been found was right on the edge of the town, a bulwark against the red dunes that marched northwards until the dry Kuiseb River halted them.

A lonely place to live and an even lonelier place to die.

Clare looked at the photographs Tamar had taken of the dead boy. Kaiser Apollis might have been fourteen, but he was so under-nourished that it was hard to view him as anything but the child he had been. The thin arms were clasped around the angled knees, the arms and legs shielding the stilled heart. Slender ankles disappeared into too- large takkies. Even in the grainy low-res prints, Clare could make out Nike’s expensive swoosh. The forehead rested on the knees, and the back of his skull was missing. The autopsy was scheduled for the next day. Then the pathologist’s knife would peel open any secrets hidden in the body of this dead child.

Clare closed the file and rested her forehead against the window as the plane started its descent. To the west, the surf-white beach corralled the red dunes. Beyond it stretched the restless Atlantic. The sun, angled low, revealed the Namib Desert’s wind-sculpted dunes, dotted with tiny impoverished settlements. Every now and then, Clare glimpsed a flash of a corrugated-iron roof or the flurry of a flock of goats browsing on the acacias growing along the subterranean Kuiseb River bank – evidence of sparse human habitation. Walvis Bay, blanketed in fog, was invisible.

Clare let her thoughts drift back to Riedwaan. Her anger had burnt itself out, but it had left cold ash in its wake instead of calm. She missed him with an acuteness that hurt. Who would have thought?

‘Thirty days.’ The bulky customs official dropped Clare’s immigration form into an untidy box at her feet. An unexpected smile dimpled her round cheeks as she handed back the stamped passport. ‘Captain Damases told us to expect you.’

Tamar was waiting at the arrivals terminal when Clare exited. Her heart-shaped face was as beautiful as Clare remembered, but the tiny waist was hidden by a pregnancy that seemed ominously close to term.

Tamar’s green eyes lit up with recognition. ‘Let me help you.’ She reached for Clare’s suitcase.

‘You’re not carrying anything,’ Clare protested. ‘You look as if I should drive you straight to hospital.’

‘It’s just because I’m so short that I look huge,’ laughed Tamar. ‘I’m glad you could come.’

Tamar led Clare to a white Isuzu double cab. An officer was leaning against it, smoking. His black shirt stretched tight across a muscular chest. His hair was cropped close, giving his handsome face a hard look.

‘Sergeant Kevin van Wyk,’ said Tamar, ‘this is Dr Clare Hart.’

‘Welcome.’ The man shook Clare’s hand but made no move to help her load her suitcase.

As they exited the airport, Van Wyk turned the radio up just loud enough to make conversation an effort. Clare took Tamar Damases’s cue and watched the desert slip past in silence, wondering how much had changed since her previous visit.

Two years ago, the factories perched like hungry cormorants around the harbour had gorged on bulging catches. Clare had filmed vessel after vessel offloading their silver harvests. Namibia’s suited elite, circling like sharks, had allocated ever-bigger quotas to themselves, buying farms and BMWs hand over profligate fist, ignoring the scientists and their warnings. Now the fish had all but vanished and an eerie lassitude pervaded the town. The bounty that had followed the retreat of the South African army, itself leaving a gaping hole in the town’s coffers,