arrived. They sat and looked out over the sea towards Robben Island, washed pink by the dipping sun. A trick of the light made it seem close enough to touch.
‘Hard to imagine it as either a prison or a leper colony,’ said Marcus. ‘I’m designing a new visitors’ centre for the island where tourists will be able to order exactly what Mandela and his fellow prisoners had eaten. ‘For two hundred rand you’ll get a bowl of lumpy pap and a tin mug of tea,’ said Marcus.
‘I’ll bet you’ll be able to sleep in the cells soon. At five hundred a shot,’ said Julie, shaking her head.
‘You think you’re joking!’ said Marcus. ‘That’s phase two.’
It was a relief to be drinking wine and talking about ordinary things. Clare let the conversation wash over her, a balm after a brutal Monday. The food was superb. Clare marvelled at the precision with which each piece of moist, pink salmon was butterflied, each vegetable pared paper thin. Their talk ebbed and flowed pleasantly around Marcus’s work, Julie’s children. Beatrice’s most recent misdemeanours were reported for Clare’s amusement. And Imogen’s school successes were listed for her praise. Clare managed to deflect the conversation from what she was working on until dessert.
‘By the way, Clare. I found out who owns that building on Main Road,’ said Marcus. ‘The one where all the illegals live.’
Julie looked concerned. ‘Are you all right, Clare?’ she asked. ‘You’re so pale.’
‘I’m fine. Just a lot on my plate at the moment. Thanks for doing that, Marcus. Who owns it?’
‘Your friend, Otis Tohar,’ Marcus replied.
‘Oh,’ said Clare. ‘Did he buy it recently?’
‘Apparently so. Flour months ago. Cash. But I heard that he had a cash-flow crisis, and Landman conveniently stepped in with the bridging finance. Two million. The pound of flesh Landman needed to bring his friend to heel.’
‘Still, that’s a lot of cash,’ said Julie.
‘My deep throat at the deeds office told me that it was not all Tohar’s money. Apparently he had a little help from a friend,’ said Marcus.
‘Do you know who?’ asked Clare.
‘Your other friend. Kelvin Landman. He runs quite a few little sidelines.’
‘What I want to know,’ said Clare, ‘is how you pay a loan like that back. A gangster like Landman is not likely to give easy credit. With such a huge cash loan, he must have Tohar right where he wants him.’
Clare had finished her dessert. Julie gathered the plates and stood up to clear the table. Then they stacked the dishwasher and switched it on.
‘Coffee?’ asked Julie.
They took their coffee cups through to the sitting room where Marcus had resuscitated the fire. An SMS from Imogen finally eventually summoned her parents home. Clare saw them out. Glad to be alone, she went out to the balcony and watched a ship drift across the night horizon.
31
The chef’s assistant wiped the last sushi knife clean and flung his apron into the laundry basket. Exhausted, he scrubbed feebly, ineffectually, at the red stain on his trousers. He said goodnight to the stern Japanese chef, shrugged on his jacket, and hooded himself against the wind outside. He hurried over the road, shoulders hunched. Looking out for cars, he didn’t notice the moonlight being lightly tossed by the waves close by. Glad for the shelter of the bus stop by the palm trees, for the kick of the longed-for joint, he slowly looked up at the sea, at the quiet wink of the lights across Table Bay.
The girl lay on the grassy bank between two palm trees. A flower among restless plastic bags, abandoned sticks, dog shit. Her black hair arrowed due west, her feet were splayed east – the left one naked, the right encased in a long, stilletto-heeled boot. Her bloodied hand, bound with a thin blue rope tied agonisingly tight, was partially obscured by a plastic bag that had drifted against her body. Her clothes were ripped, and the buttons of her blouse had popped open, exposing breasts feathered with stretch marks.
She lay there as if she were sunning her long legs. He called. Nothing – no response. He went over to her, thinking she was just another young clubber full of drugs. Her body was beautiful. It had been a long time since he’d touched a woman without having to pay for it. He bent down, cupping her breasts in his hands. They were as full as the moon. The wind lifted the scarf around her neck, the movement drawing his eyes towards her face. The exposed smile of her slit throat hurled him back towards the bus stop. Her throat had been cut with such savagery that a neck vertebra was visible, seeming to have been scored. Her eyes were open. She gazed blindly up at the heavy moon. His expensive white trainers imprinted their logo in blood on the pavement.
He saw a bus approaching. He controlled his breathing and got on.
Sat down.
Nobody saw her. Nobody looked.
She receded as the bus moved away. Then she was indistinguishable from the mounds of seaweed strewn across beach. He rubbed his hands together: they burned where he had touched her.
32
Clare went into the kitchen after Julie and Marcus had left. She rinsed the coffee cups with Fritz winding in and around her ankles, delighted to have Clare to herself again. She was tidying the cushions when the doorbell went.
Clare pressed the button immediately. ‘Julie! Your pashmina’s here. You didn’t need to come up. I would have dropped it off for you.’
But there was no answering, guilty laugh, just the hush of an empty pavement. The hairs on the nape of Clare’s neck rose. She went into the hallway. The knock on her door was insistent, unfamiliar. The wood looked very flimsy. Her hand sidled towards the panic button.
‘Who is it?’
‘It is me, Giscard.’
Clare had seen Giscard earlier, guarding cars in his usual spot. Clare opened the door as far as the security chain allowed. It embarrassed her to have to speak to him through the small gap.
She dropped her hand but she didn’t open the door. ‘What are you doing here? Are you all right?’
‘I know it is late, Madame Clare, but I must tell you something about the girl in the newspaper. The one who is gone.’
Clare closed the door, then slid back the chain to open it. ‘Come in,’ she said. He followed her into the kitchen. ‘What is it?’
‘The girl everyone is looking for. India King,’ he struggled with the unfamiliar name. ‘I think I know where she is.’
Clare felt the strength drain from her legs. She sat down.
‘How do you know? Where is she?’
‘Somebody, a friend, told me he sees her there near the beach. At the Japanese restaurant past the lighthouse.’
She went cold. ‘Sushi-Zen?’
‘Yes, yes – that is the one. The man who saw her, my friend, he works there.’
‘What do you mean, “saw her”, Giscard? Where did he see her?’ Giscard shifted in his chair.
‘He saw her there on the grass. The moon is shining too bright. He sees her there. He think she is sleeping. But when he goes to her he sees she is dead.’
Questions skittered through Clare’s mind as she reached for the phone and dialled the police station. ‘Put me through to Riedwaan Faizal.’ She had asked him to join her this evening, trying to make peace. To their mutual relief, though, he was on duty. The phone buzzed in her ear. She was about to put it down, try his cell number,
