His voice was laced with honeyed menace. Tohar turned back to Clare. ‘We are both very interested in movies. I am sure that it is going to be most interesting working with you, Dr Hart.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Clare. ‘But I don’t do promotional work.’
‘Very principled,’ said Tohar. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I must see to my guests.’
He and Landman walked towards the busy gaming tables set out in a corner of the room. Clare attributed the icy feeling in the pit of her stomach to hunger, not fear. She went in search of Jakes and something to eat.
18
The boy walked ahead, his buttocks moulded by the tight trousers, T-shirt clinging to his slight chest. The path across the beach to the tidal pool was slick with rain and seaweed abandoned by the receding tide. He turned into the lee of the wind, sheltered by the curved wall that led to the open sea. Waves thrashed over the black rocks, waiting for the return of the lulled storm. The first real storm of the winter, thought the boy, absenting himself from what was coming. Fifteen minutes of being there but not being there, and he would have the money he craved.
The man – fiftyish, paunchy, yet still muscled – braced himself against the rough concrete. Unzipped himself.
‘Strip.’
The boy hesitated.
The man yanked him forward. ‘Strip. And kneel.’ The boy capitulated. What did it matter being cold for a while, having mussel shells cut into his knees? It would be over so soon. The boy took off his clothes, his dark skin goose-pimpling in the cold. The man pushed him down, hands clamped at the base of the boy’s slender throat. He moved him slowly at first and then faster. The boy obeyed the terse orders, drifting loose now above the pool. Mind closed. Eyes, on instruction, open. It was when the man pulled him back for a final, choking plunge that he saw her lying between the rocks. The man finished, pushed him aside, enjoyed watching the boy scrabble for the negotiated notes he threw at him. And was gone. Back for dinner with his wife and daughter.
The boy pulled on his clothes, his eyes held by the pale undulation of the girl’s body. He picked his way over to her, chilled by her stillness. He put his hand out to draw the wisp of her expensive top over the displayed breasts. He draped a ribbon of seaweed across her face, shutting out the blinded eyes. She was ice-cold to the touch. He felt sick as he ran back towards the road, away from her. He looked back once when he stopped to tuck the money into his pocket, then he caught a taxi home.
He heard his mother’s soothing mutter calm his stepfather as he took the staircase up to his bedroom. His curtains were open. On the other side of his window Lower Main Road, deserted now and wet, trailed away towards Salt River. He shut his eyes, but all he saw was the girl, alone and dead on the rocks. Her long hair would be floating on the tide soon. The boy opened his eyes again but still she lingered, her right hand arced in a ballerina’s beckoning, a mute plea.
He had to help her, but there was no way he was going to call the cops. He picked up his phone, checked for airtime. There was enough for an SMS. He riffled through the heap of papers on his desk. Right at the bottom was the folder he had kept from the documentary course he had done in the holidays. Dr Clare Hart. That was her name. She had given him a card when he had talked to her after a screening of one of her films. He had seen in the paper that she was involved in the investigation of the other murdered girl. His thumbs whirred across the tiny keys, forming the condensed message. He pressed ‘send’ and the icon swirled back and forth across the screen. Then it was gone. The boy sighed with relief: the dead girl was gone too. She was someone else’s problem now.
He drew the curtains, then felt behind his abandoned tennis racket on top of the cupboard. The small wooden box had not been moved. In it was everything he needed to bridge him into the next day. He took the syringe out, admiring its slender elegance as he fitted the needle. The burner was lit, then the powder dissolved on the spoon and was drawn into the syringe – the vein on his thigh eager for the needle. He avoided the soft inside of his arm. It was the first place an inquisitive teacher would look, and it made his clients wary. They liked to sully his innocence themselves. He pulled the blankets over himself and subsided into a chasm of sleep.
19
Clare was extricating Jakes from a cluster of women when the text message came through. Her anxiety, always circling below the surface, surged at the jarring beep. She opened her phone – ‘Girl’s body. Graaff’s Pool.’ She froze. She checked the message details. ‘Private number’ came up on her screen.
‘What is it?’ asked Jakes, sensing her distress. She held her hand up and walked to the window facing the sea, dialling Riedwaan’s number.
The clouds lay low over the sea, but the rain had worn itself out. She could just make out Graaff’s Pool. There was no one there, no one walking, no one loitering. A cold drizzle had driven even the hardiest vagrants off the benches and under the construction sites along Main Road. She shivered as she imagined a body out there, beyond the night-blackened sea wall.
Riedwaan answered. ‘Did I wake you?’ Clare asked.
‘
‘Someone’s found another body, Riedwaan. A girl.’
‘Where is it?’ Riedwaan was wide awake now. He was already out of bed and dressing, phone in hand. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m at a party. Someone sent me a text message. I’ll explain later. Meet me at Graaff’s Pool. That’s where the SMS said the girl’s body was.’
‘I’ll be there now,’ he said.
Clare wanted to say more but the words stuck, sharp in her throat. She snapped her phone shut.
Otis Tohar was standing next to her. ‘A beautiful view, no?’ He pointed in the direction she had been looking. ‘One never knows what a night like this might bring, does one? Who were you calling?’
‘A friend,’ said Clare, surprised into answering his intimate question.
‘Someone to meet for a nightcap? How lovely for you.’
Clare did not correct him. Instead, she thanked him for the party and fetched Jakes. The lift sank to the basement with a sigh. Clare pictured Otis Tohar watching the blue flash of police lights, the red of the ambulance from his eyrie, and the fear she had repressed came rushing back.
‘What was the big rush?’ Jakes asked as they turned onto the wet street.
‘I need to go down to Graaff’s Pool,’ she told Jakes. ‘Drop me at home so I can fetch my car.’
‘Graaff’s Pool? That’s not a good place in the middle of the night. I’ll come with you, be your knight in shining armour.’
‘It’s fine, Jakes. Just take me home.’ But Jakes was weaving his car through the late-night taxis towards the beachfront. Clare was too tired to argue with him, and she did not really feel like waiting there alone. Jakes parked with the exaggerated accuracy of someone who has had too much to drink.
Riedwaan’s car was not there yet. It would take him twenty minutes to get there from the Bo-Kaap, where he rattled around alone in his too-large house. Clare was out of the car before Jakes had switched off the engine. She walked down the path, past the walls blocking the pool from public view, and the discarded condoms. Clare waited for her eyes to adjust to the flickering light as the clouds scudded along, hiding then revealing the moon. The tide was coming in. If there was a body here they would need to move it soon – before the water reclaimed it. The rocks were jagged black teeth against the night sky, the sand a grimy white. Clare surveyed the rocks. She could see nothing soft, nothing human. She ventured closer to the encroaching water’s edge, empty mussel shells crunching under her heels.
The slim body was wedged into a shallow crevice, the dark hair haloed around her face. Clare felt faint. She stepped back from the body and phoned Riedwaan. ‘Call Piet Mouton and your scene of crime officers,’ she said. ‘We have a serial killer on our hands.’
