inside her flat, Clare showered then grabbed a top, trousers, a jacket and scarf with the swift certainty of a woman who owns good clothes and knows how to dress. The local radio station was already carrying the first reports of this morning’s gruesome offering. By this afternoon, headlines about the murder would be plastered all over the city’s lamp posts.
Clare switched off the newsreader’s voice and sat down at her desk. She looked out of the window. The view of the sea restored her equilibrium, and after a while she was able to turn her attention to her own work. Clare pulled a bulging file towards herself. She had scrawled ‘Human Trafficking in Cape Town’ in gold down its spine. She had found that women lured from South Africa’s troubled northern neighbours were being pimped along Main Road, Cape Town’s endless red light district bisecting the affluent suburbs huddled at the base of the Table Mountain. The women also stocked the brothels and the plethora of gentlemen’s clubs. The trade was increasingly organised. Clare was preparing herself for an interview that had required delicate negotiation to arrange. Natalie Mwanga had been trafficked from the Congo and she was risking a great deal by speaking to Clare.
Clare’s investigation was not making her any new friends. She had had to persuade her producer far away in safe London to let her ‘feature’ a trafficker in the documentary. It was a risky proposition and she needed more time. Clare had put out feelers before she had gone to the Congo two months earlier. On her return she had heard that Kelvin Landman might talk to her. He had been pimping since he was fifteen. Clare could not verify the rumour that it had started with his ten-year-old sister. Landman, one of her police sources had told her, had moved rapidly up the ranks of a street gang. He was a man with vision, though, and the porousness of South Africa’s post- democracy borders had been a licence for Landman to print money. His name had become synonymous with trafficking for the sex industry. And Landman ruthlessly punished any transgression of his rules.
Clare had once asked a young street prostitute how Landman worked. The girl pointed to two long, light scars across her soft belly. Punishment for a careless pregnancy. She then told Clare that the baby had been aborted and she had been working again the next day. She’d laughed when Clare asked for an interview, and then wandered away. Clare had not seen her again.
She looked out at the sea again. Mist was rolling in, blotting out the morning’s early promise.
Trafficking was risk free for the trafficker, that was clear enough, and it generated a lot of cash. Lately, Landman had become notorious for insinuating himself into the highest echelons of business and politics. He had even been profiled as a ‘man about town’ by a respectable Sunday paper. Clare pulled out a clean sheet of notepaper and jotted down her questions.
Where did the cash go?
How was it made legitimate?
If Landman was selling, who was buying?
What were they buying?
She would find out. But the dead girl on the promenade surfaced unbidden in her thoughts. Clare stood up abruptly. She needed to get out, to be with people. She picked up her shopping list and headed for the Waterfront. As she drove, she thought she might add a few things to the list she’d made earlier.
Smoked salmon.
Wine.
Maybe some washing-up liquid.
3
Riedwaan Faizal had stared straight ahead of him after Clare’s call, his phone open in his hand. He could picture her as clearly as if she were in front of him. She was brilliant and obsessive, but difficult to work with. She didn’t like teams, she didn’t trust anybody. Her relationship with the law was flexible, although right and wrong for Clare were absolutes. These were not things that bothered Riedwaan. It was Clare herself who got under his skin. He needed her, like a man needed water. He put his phone back in his pocket and stood up. Being with her was like being thirsty all the time and never knowing if you would get a drink. The minute you thought you had her, she slipped away. The one time she had reached out for him he had turned away. Nothing could change that, so he shrugged the thought away.
Riedwaan turned his attention to the dead girl instead. She had not been ID’d yet, but he was sure it was the girl who had been reported missing since Friday. Today was Tuesday. He did not want to think about what had happened to her in the intervening four days. But he was going to have to. He finished his coffee and picked up his keys. This was going to be awkward. The case officer was Frikkie Bester simply because he had answered the call. He had already opened a docket and he was not going to be pleased to have Riedwaan Faizal on his turf. But the station commander, who was generally pissed off at having been landed with Riedwaan, had been very happy to assign him to the case. Riedwaan knew Phiri well enough by now: by giving Riedwaan the case there was at least a hope in hell that it would be solved. And if it wasn’t, then there was his record of insubordination and alcohol and violence to wheel out. At least Phiri had volunteered to call Bester himself.
Riedwaan’s battered Mazda coughed into life long enough to drive the three blocks to where Harry Rabinowitz had found the dead girl. There was a press of people around the taped-off area where the body lay. He could see Bester on his phone, bull neck distended with rage. That would be Phiri, thought Riedwaan, telling Bester that Riedwaan was in charge. Bester stalked over to Riedwaan, flinging his folder at him.
‘Good luck, Faizal. I hope you stay sober long enough to work out which bastard did this.’ Riedwaan straightened the papers in the file and said nothing. A
‘Thanks, Frikkie.’ He saw the man twitch at the use of his first name. Riedwaan suppressed a smile. Words could be powerful sometimes. He opened the docket to check it was in order. ‘Looks perfect. Thanks.’ He ducked under the tape, and did not flinch at the sight of the splayed girl discarded on the pavement. He bent down next to her.
‘Who covered her?’ he asked.
‘The old guy who found her,’ a young constable answered. Her name tag stretched across her breast pocket: Rita Mkhize.
‘Shit!’ muttered Riedwaan. He removed the coat and handed it to the constable. ‘Bag that.’ Then he snapped his phone open and made the calls he needed to. The photography unit was on their way. He looked at the knife wound to her throat. The force of it had all but decapitated her. He put a call through to ballistics. They would work out what knife had been used if there were grooves in the bones. And if they found the weapon to match the wound then he would be one step closer to catching the killer.
Riedwaan looked around. He could predict within seconds who had killed a victim. With female victims it was usually the husband or a boyfriend. He was willing to bet that this was a stranger killing. The body had been arranged. There was a message here, but it was written in a language he had yet to decipher. Riedwaan guessed she had been killed elsewhere and dumped here. He would wait for the forensic pathologist to tell him that: he was a cautious man despite his reputation. He called Piet Mouton.
‘Howzit, Doc. Riedwaan here. Are you on your way?’ He heard Mouton’s low laugh.
‘Jeez, no wonder they call you Super-cop. You must catch these guys all the time. Turn around.’
Riedwaan turned to find the shabby, plump figure of the forensic pathologist right behind him. Riedwaan laughed. ‘Doctor Death and his bag of tricks. I’m glad it’s you.’
‘What have we got here?’ asked Mouton. He looked down at the dead girl. ‘Where is that idiot Riaan?’ he asked, looking around for the police photographer who was smoking and trying to flirt with Constable Mkhize. ‘Come and do your job and leave that poor girl alone. You’re so ugly you’ll frighten her!’ called Mouton.
Riaan Nelson sauntered over with his camera. ‘What you want for your necrophilia collection this time, Doc?’ Mouton told him what to photograph. He was meticulous, and he knew his photographs were essential to Mouton and to Riedwaan. And to this dead girl, in the end. Piet Mouton sketched the girl while Riaan worked. A defence lawyer would pounce on one imprecise line on his autopsy report if it ever came to trial. Mouton checked all around the body. There were two Marlboros very close to her; one was smoked down to the filter, the other had been stubbed out when it was half smoked. He bagged them.
‘Hard to tell with these, but we can give it a try. If there is other DNA on the body, then maybe we can do a
