‘What does it say, Constance?’ Clare always asked her this question. ‘What did they write on you?’
‘Can’t you read it?’ she always replied. ‘Don’t you
As Clare got out of the bath, Constance roughly wrapped the white dressing gown around her and pushed her feet into a pair of slippers. Clare was aware of her sister’s anger, and tried to distract her from the violence of her memories.
‘Let’s get something to eat,’ she quietly suggested, and walked ahead of Constance to the kitchen. The room was warm and orange-hued: the Aga was burning, as it did all through the winter, and the sun was filtering through the stained-glass windows. Clare opened the fridge, set out milk, cheese, yoghurt, the last remaining figs. She was desperate for coffee, but there wasn’t any. She settled for rooibos tea and honey, a mug for her, and one for Constance. She made the toast and they ate in silence. Constance subsided into herself.
‘Constance, won’t you please paint whatever it is you always trace on my back?’ Constance looked startled. Then Clare got up slowly and put a thick piece of paper in front of Constance. She fetched a brush and the blue tube of paint already open on her sister’s easel. ‘Paint it, Constance. Paint what you always draw on my back. Make me see it.’ Constance just closed her eyes and remained perfectly still.
Clare’s thoughts shifted to Riedwaan waking alone this morning. She wanted, needed to be free of the brutal calligraphy that had tethered her to Constance for two decades. But first she needed to understand. She looked up with surprise as Constance suddenly reached for a brush and dipped it into the paint. She began to draw: angles, loops, spirals. It was beautiful, but it meant nothing to Clare. Constance’s back was just a welter of crude scars, her painting just random shapes.
Looking exhausted, she eventually gave the picture to Clare. ‘Let’s sleep now, Connie.’ Constance followed Clare to the bedroom, where they lay down – spooned, just as they had slept as children. Clare fell asleep at once and woke hours later, with a sleeping Constance in her arms. Clare extricated herself and got dressed. Then she made tea and took a cup to Constance.
‘I’m leaving now, it’s past five already,’ she said, smoothing her sister’s hair from her eyes. Constance smiled and turned towards the wall again.
‘There’s something for you on the desk, Clare,’ said Constance. Clare picked up the brown envelope. She could feel the familiar shape of the card inside. She pulled it out gingerly. The sixteenth card. The Tower. Two figures hurtled down, head first, towards the jagged rocks at the base of a citadel.
‘What does it mean, Constance?’
‘It’s warning you of catastrophe.’ Constance sat up. ‘It’s a warning about the face of evil. Take it with you.’
Clare put the card into her handbag. There was no arguing with Constance, she knew.
‘You can also read it as illumination. Perhaps you are closer to understanding things than you think.’
‘I wish I was. I’ll see you soon.’ Clare kissed her sister on the forehead and left, making sure that the door locked behind her. The sky was dreary and cold.
The remains of a lonely day stretched before her, but Clare turned eagerly to things there was still some hope of resolving. On her own way home, she drove past the Hendrickes’ house. The murdered girl had lived in Mountain View, a bleak estate on a cold, windswept patch of denuded sand dunes. Serried ranks of dwarf houses bunkered down behind high walls, pinioned against their backyard braais by shiny new cars parked most precisely in front. Clare could see women moving back and forth behind the front windows, serving invisible dinners to invisible families – the television flicker making life just bearable.
In one house, otherwise indistinguishable from the rest, there was a candle in the front window. A small shrine. Clare drove past slowly, turned, parked, and was about to get out to meet the occupants, to ask some questions, to pry. She saw a man come out and bend down with a pleading expression to a woman in the garden who was sitting listlessly on a child’s swing. The intimacy of their grief stopped her. She looked in the cubbyhole for copies of the interview tapes Riedwaan had given her. She found the one labelled ‘Parents’ and put it into the tape deck. Then she fast-forwarded past the opening preliminaries, to where Riedwaan began to probe the raw wound of a daughter’s murder.
‘When last did you see Amore, Mr Hendricks?’ asked Riedwaan, his voice comforting, low, his accent exaggerated by the electronic device.
‘Saturday afternoon,
‘Where was that?’
‘She was here, at home.’
‘What were her plans?’
‘She was going to the Canal Walk shopping centre. She’s
‘Why, Inspector? Why our baby?’ This was the first time that Mrs Hendricks had spoken. Riedwaan, Clare knew, would have had no answer to that question, knowing as he did that an innocent victim was a rare thing. He was silent for a while, perhaps waiting for Mr Hendricks to master his grief.
‘How did she get to town?’ he eventually asked.
‘She got a lift with our neighbour. They were going to the movies.’
‘Who is he?’ Clare could hear a lilt of interest in Riedwaan’s voice.
‘Not he. She. Mrs Vermaas and her mother. They dropped her off and she went to her rehearsal.’ Clare knew that her devastated dance teacher had corroborated this. The other dancers in her group had worked with Amore till six before dispersing in twos and threes for supper or home. There was a long pause. Then Mr Hendricks continued. ‘She SMS’d me at seven to say that she had a very exciting surprise for us later. That she would tell us when she saw us.’ The tape crackled in the silence.
‘That’s the last we heard.’ It was Mrs Hendricks who spoke eventually, with distilled pain.
‘How was she planning to get home?’
‘She was meant to meet my brother at ten-thirty. He has a taxi. He was going to drop her off at home, as usual.’ Mr Hendricks’s voice faded as he moved away from the microphone. Clare pictured him moving closer to his wife, holding her hand perhaps. ‘But she never arrived. He phoned her and he says the phone was answered. He could hear Amore’s voice. Heard her laughing. That he could hear glasses and music. He thought it was a bar or a restaurant. And then the phone went dead. Before he could speak to her. He tried to call again but her phone was switched off. And he couldn’t find her.’
‘What did he do then, your brother?’
‘He alerted security – he knows those guys – and he put a call out to the radio taxis. Then he called us and told us to come. He also called the police. He had a very bad feeling because there was just no sign of her. Nothing. Nothing.’
‘What time was that, Mr Hendricks?’
His wife answered. ‘It was just past eleven. You see, the shift changes at ten-thirty. That is why he always comes home then. He brings the afternoon shift home and quite a lot of them live near here…’
Clare cut her off by jabbing the rewind button. The tape whined, forced back a few loops. ‘… the shift changes at ten-thirty.’ That is what Mrs Hendricks said again, quite clearly. It would explain why Amore hadn’t been seen. Each shift reported back to one of two security centres. It was here that they handed their two-way radios and their luminous bibs to the next shift, and then went home. If Amore Hendricks had gone somewhere then – willingly or not – none of the security guards would have seen her.
Clare watched the house. Behind the drawn curtains someone blew out the candle, snuffing out the last remaining light. Clare was chilled to the bone. She saw Mr Hendricks take his wife in his arms. She sagged against him, broken. Clare drove away. The swipe, swipe on her windscreen did not improve her visibility until she was back in Sea Point.
Clare knew she would have to explain her disappearance to Riedwaan, but she felt utterly drained. She poured herself a glass of wine instead and drank it, listening to one of the classical CDs that Riedwaan had bought on her last birthday. She poured herself another glass and left her cellphone off. She would face her life again on Monday.
