Like Clockwork

‘I’m going to see the mother later today.’

‘Good. And our man? What are we looking for?’

‘You know it’s impossible with one victim to have anything more than a feeling. Nothing, I suppose, from the records?’

‘No. No murders. I did have a call from a friend in Jo’burg. They have an unsolved sexual assault there from about six months ago. The girl looked similar to this one: dark hair, about sixteen. Same sort of weird bondage, but on both hands. And a blindfold, she claimed, so she could give no description.’

‘Any DNA?’

‘There was some. Blood and semen. But different blood groups, so maybe there were two of them. The girl survived but she had been severely assaulted. He’s sending the report down.’

‘You don’t know where she was before the assault?’

‘I do,’ said Riedwaan, shuffling through his notes. ‘She was at the Da Vinci Hotel.’ Clare had stayed there once. It was a replica of a Florentine villa in the heart of the sprawling chaos of Africa’s wealthiest and most violent city.

‘The friend who was meeting her was late and the victim had left by the time she arrived. It was busy – a Friday night – and no one saw her leave.’

‘Our girl disappeared on a Friday too. From the Waterfront,’ mused Clare.

‘Toxicology reports show traces of cocaine in the girl’s bloodstream. And Rohypnol.’

‘Can we interview her?’ asked Clare.

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Riedwaan. ‘She’s dead.’

‘Dead? How?’ asked Clare.

‘Suicide, apparently. Two months after the rape. Her family didn’t accept the verdict, but there was no evidence that indicated murder.’

Clare closed her eyes.

‘There is one other thing, Clare. The victim was convinced that her attacker filmed part of the assault. She said she heard the whirr of a camera.’

‘Lots of home movies these days. The woman I interviewed who was trafficked, she also told me that she had been filmed.’

‘We’re going to stumble across a little nest of home-made porn,’ said Riedwaan.

‘It’s probably all over the Net,’ said Clare.

‘You want to meet me for a drink later?’ asked Rediwaan.

‘Not tonight,’ Clare answered. ‘I’ve had quite a week.’

‘Friday, then?’

‘I’m going to my sister for dinner tomorrow night,’ said Clare. ‘Why don’t you come?’ Silence stretched between them.

‘I don’t think family is quite the thing for me, do you?’ said Riedwaan.

‘Maybe not,’ said Clare. She was ashamed at how relieved she was that he’d refused. ‘I’ll email you the profile as soon as I’ve got something more coherent.’ Clare cut the connection, wishing immediately that she had agreed to meet him that evening. She picked up her pen and started making careful notes, regret dissipating as she worked. She would be visiting the dead girl’s home the next day.

10

Clare did not recognise the address – Welgemoed was not an area she ever had reason to visit. She was glad of Riedwaan’s directions. A woman out of uniform might be easier for Charnay’s family to talk to. It was a champagne-crisp morning, the light shimmered above the leaves of the trees lining the street she turned into. Here stolid face-brick houses, products of the affluent sixties, stood at the ends of long driveways. After the roar of the highway, the suburb seemed quiet. The only movement – the only sound – was a gardener pushing a lawnmower. It was as easy to find number 27 as it would have been to find any other house.

The house was silent. Every window was closed, with a net curtain blinding it. She thought she saw someone pass an upstairs window, but it could have been a shadow from the tree that blocked the sunlight from the house. Deep inside, a melancholy chime responded to her finger on the doorbell. The door flew open. A boy looked at Clare sourly.

‘Wie is daar?’ a voice called to him.

‘It’s that woman. About Charnay,’ he replied, not taking his eyes off Clare. ‘My mother is in there,’ he said, standing aside. He pointed down the passage to an open door. From it, sunlight spilled into the gloom.

The dead girl’s mother sat in the centre of the room, hunched as if a knife was twisting low in her gut. Mrs Swanepoel looked up at Clare, her eyes emptied of all emotion except the knowledge that she was alive and her child was not.

‘Ek kan jou nie help nie,’ said Mrs Swanepoel. ‘I cannot help you.’ She remembered to repeat it in English. ‘I told the police everything I know.’

Clare bent low and knelt next to the woman. She knew better than to touch her. The formulaic gesture of comfort would flay the woman.

‘She was an angel,’ said the mother, reverting to the familiarity of Afrikaans. ‘That is why she was taken from me.’

Clare turned away from her, pinioned by loss on her suburban carpet. She did not need to talk to her, could not bear to ask her more questions to which she had no answers. She had read Riedwaan’s interview transcripts anyway.

‘Can I look through her room?’ Clare asked.

Mrs Swanepoel did not move. ‘J.P.,’ she whispered. ‘J.P., take Miss Hart to your sister’s room.’

‘Ja, Ma.’ The boy who had let Clare in reappeared. Clare followed him up the stairs. Here all the doors were closed. He led her to the end of the passage. ‘Friends Welcome, Family by Appointment’ said the hand-drawn sign on her door – a remnant from a very recent childhood.

The boy opened the door and stood back to let Clare enter. The room was an orgy of pink: walls, curtains, carpets, bed – in every shade of the colour. Anything that could be flounced had ruffles and bows and flowers on it. It was oppressive. Clare wondered if the feeling of absence had been there before Charnay went missing. Clare repressed an urge to throw open the windows.

J.P. did not come in. ‘I’ll come back for you,’ he said, closing the door before Clare could respond.

She was relieved when she did not hear the key turn. She stood in the centre of the room, at a loss, reaching for a sense of the absent presence of the girl. Every flat surface was covered in pictures cut from celebrity magazines. All of them were of Charlize Theron. Charnay seemed to have gathered every available image of the actress. On her desk was a scrapbook full of articles tracking the star’s ascent from obscurity to the zenith of Hollywood fame. Clare sat down and read the notes that Charnay had made alongside the articles. They read like an instruction manual rather than a fan’s obsession. The pictures might be of Charlize, but the focus was Charnay.

Clare settled herself, dislodging a small avalanche of cushions. She reached down to pick them up. There on the floor, revealed as she shifted the bedspread, lay a blue card. Clare picked it up and held it up to the light. A series of numbers had been pencilled there and then erased. There was a sound from the passage. Clare slipped the card into her pocket as J.P. opened the door.

‘Look in her cupboard,’ he instructed. Clare obeyed. It was stuffed with expensive, wispy clothes. A pile of high-heeled shoes tumbled out. She noticed the labels as she bent to put them back.

‘Expensive, hey?’ he sneered. ‘I bet you could never afford them.’ Clare did not correct him. ‘How do you think she paid for them?’ He stepped close to Clare. There was a sprinkle of pimples around his nose. His breath was rank. ‘Think about how she paid,’ he repeated. ‘My mother thinks it was from modelling. But she believed anything that little hoer told her.’

His hatred was palpable. It was all Clare could do to stop herself from stepping back from it. It would give him pleasure, she was sure, if he sensed that he had unnerved her. ‘Did she go to meet someone last Friday?’ asked