‘I’ll leave that to Whitney to decide,’ said Clare. Erika September turned to go back to Whitney. ‘You can see her now,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I hope she presses charges. I see too many like her.’
‘What about anti-HIV treatment?’ asked Clare as she followed the young woman down the dimly lit passage.
‘She has just had the first dose. You’ll need to monitor the treatment carefully. She must come for her follow- up.’ The doctor paused with her hand on the heavy door. She looked directly at Clare. ‘She has been assaulted over an extended period. If it was more than seventy-two hours then the medication won’t work if she is infected.’ She opened the door and stood back, letting Clare into the treatment room. Whitney lay on the high bed, curled into a tight foetal ball under the covers. She had been sponged down and dressed in a white hospital gown.
‘Whitney,’ said Clare, bending close to her. ‘It’s Clare. I brought you here.’ There was no response from the girl. Clare touched her arm but Whitney flinched as if Clare’s cool fingers were a branding iron. Clare did not remove her hand from Whitney’s arm. She felt the flesh recoil instinctively at her touch, and then slowly relax again when no hurt followed.
‘Whitney,’ she whispered into her ear, ‘how do you feel?’ The girl curled up even tighter. ‘Who did this to you?’
‘Nobody.’ Her voice was cracked, broken with her body. ‘It was just an accident. Nobody.’ Clare traced the girl’s delicate shoulder blades under the gown. A yellow ooze had seeped through, staining the starched cotton.
‘What’s this?’ she asked Dr September, who was standing on the other side of the bed.
‘It’s burn ointment.’ Erika September had grown up on a farm. She felt certain that Whitney had been burnt with a branding iron – just as her father had marked each year’s new batch of heifers. ‘There are cigarette burns on her hands and thighs too.’
Clare’s stomach contracted. ‘Whitney,’ she tried once more. ‘Can we call the police in the morning?’ Whitney shook her head. ‘Where is your family? Can I phone your mother?’ Again just a shake of her head.
Dr September took Clare by the arm and moved her towards the door. ‘It won’t work. I see more and more of these “accidents”. She won’t report anything. I am sure she is terrified that whoever did this to her will do it to her mother, her little sister. Or to her all over again. That is what they will have told her.’ Dr September’s voice dropped. ‘We have collected all the samples for analysis. So, if by some miracle she does press charges, we’ll have evidence.’
‘I’ll come and see how she is in the morning,’ said Clare. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’
‘Her body will heal, she’s young. It’s the rest of her that I’m not so sure of,’ said Dr September, looking back at Whitney.
Clare picked up the pathetic heap of clothes, the cheap skirt, the torn black T-shirt with its jaunty white swoosh. She hung up the long coat Whitney had been wearing when Clare had found her. A small, shiny crucifix earring clattered to the floor. She picked it up and reached into the pocket of her jeans. The earrings made a perfect pair. She closed her hand around them and left the hospital, flicking open her phone the minute she was in her car. Riedwaan answered. He hadn’t been sleeping, and there was a sharp edge to his voice.
‘I found her,’ she said.
‘Where?’ Riedwaan asked.
‘Hiding in a skip on a building site in Glengariff Road. I took her to the City Park.’
‘How did you know she was there?’ asked Riedwaan.
‘Giscard saw her escape and followed her up the hill. He told me.’
‘And you didn’t think of calling me?’ Silence stretched tautly between them.
‘I thought that it might be better for her if a woman fetched her,’ said Clare eventually.
‘Did she tell you what happened?’
‘Not a word,’ said Clare, ‘but I found her earring. It matches the one I found in the room.’
‘No chance of her reporting this?’
‘I doubt it. The doctor is good, though. She collected what evidence she could.’
‘Why do bastards like Kenny ever get let out of jail?’ Clare could hear the rage crackle in Riedwaan’s voice.
‘What is his background?’ Clare asked.
‘Kenny McKenzie?’ said Riedwaan. ‘Kenny worked for Kelvin Landman years ago when he still lived on the Flats. He was released from Pollsmoor recently, where he was very upwardly mobile in the 28s prison gang. His parole officer said that he had gone through an extensive skills-training process, and that he was now only going to be an asset to our community.’
‘Working with Landman, do you think?’ asked Clare.
‘Hard to tell. Kelvin Landman seems to have gone so squeaky clean you’d swear he was going to run in the next election.’ Riedwaan paused. ‘You on your way home now?’
‘I was. Shall I come over?’ Clare’s voice was tentative.
Riedwaan knew what it cost her to ask him this, but still he answered, ‘I think I need to sleep now, Clare.’ He heard the sharp inhalation of breath, and felt perversely happy that he had hurt her. ‘Bastard,’ he muttered to himself. He picked up his whiskey glass. He would feel like shit tomorrow. But what was new?
Clare blinked quickly a couple of times, even though there were no tears, and drove home. Too exhausted to change her clothes, she just kicked off her shoes and collapsed into bed. The duvet was comforting but sleep took a long time to come. When she did finally fall asleep, her dreams were haunted by the battered girl.
26
The phone buzzed malignantly. Clare picked it up. ‘Hello.’ She peered at her alarm clock – not yet six.
‘Dr Hart,’ said a clipped voice. ‘This is the City Park Hospital.’
‘Yes,’ said Clare, sitting up wide awake. ‘What is it?’
‘The young lady you brought here is discharging herself. We cannot take responsibility for that as it is against the doctor’s wishes. She is being disruptive.’ There was a disapproving pause. ‘And there is the matter of the bill.’
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes. Make her wait.’ There was a muffled exchange. Then the woman was back on the line, her voice compressed with thin-lipped disapproval.
‘She’ll wait. This is not the right procedure at all.’ Clare put down the phone, cutting her off. She showered and dressed, putting clean clothes for Whitney into a basket. The city was still half-asleep as she hurried across town, terrified that Whitney would vanish again.
The girl sat hunched on a hard plastic seat that was the furthest from the admissions desk. She looked up when Clare opened the door, and handed her a parcel of clothes.
‘It’s freezing outside, Whitney,’ said Clare. ‘Go and put these on and I’ll take you home.’ Whitney stood up with difficulty and limped to the bathroom. Clare went over to the woman on duty. She glared at Clare – the light harsh on the skin swagged beneath her eyes – and shoved an account at her.
‘Settle this now, please.’
Clare looked at the figure and wrote a cheque. The woman snatched it with a red-tipped claw, her eyes assessing it with practised scepticism. She clipped the invoice and the cheque together and pulled over her receipt book.
‘Sluts,’ she muttered as Whitney came out of the bathroom wearing the borrowed tracksuit. ‘What do they expect?’ She tore out the receipt and gave it to Clare. Clare took Whitney’s arm as the colour drained from the girl’s face.
‘Come,’ she said, ‘I’ll take you home.’ The girl followed, exhausted by this final display of will, collapsing into Clare’s car.
‘Where do you live?’ asked Clare. There was no answer. Clare glanced at Whitney, her face pale in the morning light. ‘I’ll take you home with me. When you’ve rested we can decide what to do.’
Clare drove through streets rapidly filling with scurrying office workers and school children. Newspaper vendors had materialised at the traffic lights, selling yesterday’s deaths to commuters. Whitney stared at her lap. Clare parked and helped Whitney out. She took the plastic bag holding her clothes and helped the girl inside. Clare was
