Clare put the pages back into the envelope and slipped it into her bag.
‘I couldn’t bring the photos,’ said Riedwaan. ‘But I will let you know when we get the toxicology results. The ballistics tests are not conclusive about the scalpel or knife. Something very sharp, at any rate. She did struggle. Piet found some skin under her nails. But it looks like her efforts were feeble. Piet Mouton is sure that she was drugged when she was killed. Rohypnol or something like it.’
‘That’s typical, though,’ said Clare. ‘Rohypnol makes the victim confused and acquiescent. If they survive they won’t remember. The survival instinct kicks in if your life is threatened with death.’
‘Hence the bruising,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Piet says she was suffocated. The killer used his hands. There were tears on the lips. Her own teeth marked her lips too, so he used a fair amount of strength.’
Clare looked at the picture of the slender girl. ‘Her throat was cut after she died? Why?’
Riedwaan nodded. ‘That’s your department, Clare. Why would he want to silence someone who was already dead? Try and find out what she knew. It might not have any relevance, but it’s something to start with.’ Riedwaan handed her a slip of paper. An address and phone number were written on it. ‘Her family,’ he said. ‘Call them. Talk to them. See what you can find out.’
‘Have they been interviewed?’ asked Clare.
‘Of course,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You can read the transcripts.’ He handed her another envelope.
‘All right,’ said Clare. ‘What are you looking for?’
Riedwaan shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just a feeling. The interviews didn’t go that well.’ He did not need to explain. Clare knew how short the station was on everything – staff, vehicles, computers. Unless there was another murder, the case would not get any additional resources.
‘I’m doing an interview for my trafficking documentary tomorrow.’ Clare stopped short. Then she stood up, putting on her coat, suddenly clumsy.
Riedwaan got up too. He put his hand on her arm, steadying her. ‘Let me give you a lift home,’ he said, his voice gentle despite himself.
Clare leaned towards him, his warmth. ‘Yes, please.’
He could smell her hair, warm and alive against his lips. Then she pulled away.
‘Actually, no, but thank you, it’s not quite dark yet. I’ll walk.’ She turned and was gone.
Riedwaan watched, waiting for her to emerge on the street below. Her arms were hugged close around her body, as if she was carrying something heavy. He lit another cigarette, and when his eyes returned to the pavement below, she had disappeared.
He spent much longer than he had intended at the bar next to New York Bagel. He drove past Clare’s flat on his way back to his cold, empty house. Her lights were on. He was glad she was safely at home.
Inside, Clare sat dead still. She held the familiar Tarot card, the envelope it had been sent in abandoned on the table with the autopsy report. She was looking at the card. The High Priestess. Or the Female Pope. The second card of the major arcana. The card that warned against the rational in favour of intuition. The card was both warning and summons to the dark world where her sister paced, hidden, full of fear and hate. Clare’s heart was heavy with the knowledge that Constance had heard of the murder, had summoned her twin to see her.
Clare slipped the card back into the envelope, putting it into her bag. Then she settled down with the transcripts that Riedwaan had given her and tried to make sense of the girl’s murder.
7
Clare cleared her thoughts of Charnay Swanepoel. This morning her obsessive attention was turned on Natalie Mwanga. Nosing her car into the traffic, Clare took the N1, slipping into the correct lane and peeling away on the road that skirted the edge of Atlantis. It was a desolate place. Drifts of young men gathered at street corners, hoping against forlorn hope for some work for the day. Clare glanced at her watch. Nine forty-five. Unlikely that those remaining would be picked up now. She drove past a boarded-up factory, looking for Disa Street. There it was. She turned, looking for the Vroue Helpmekaar Centre for Abused Women and Children. She drove straight past the nondescript house before registering the steel mesh on the windows. She parked under a tree that was bent double by years of relentless wind. Clare greeted the tall woman who came out to meet her.
‘Welcome, I am Shazneem,’ she said, enveloping Clare’s smooth hand in her own. The lyrical name jarred with the shorn grey hair and the well-worn biker’s jacket. ‘We were waiting for you, Dr Hart.’ Shazneem put an arm around Clare’s shoulders, shepherding her towards the yellow front door, her large body positioned protectively between Clare’s and the street.
‘We’ll talk in my office first.’ Shazneem opened a door with ‘Centre Director’ and a colourful butterfly painted on it. ‘And then I’ll take you to meet Natalie. She is expecting you.’
Clare settled into the offered chair. Shazneem manoeuvred her bulk with surprising agility around the cramped desk and into her chair. Its tall back framed her, giving her the look of an Amazon queen. But when she reached over for her notebook and pencil, a wave of exhaustion played across her features and the illusion was gone. She was just a middle-aged woman doing a relentlessly demanding job.
‘What can you tell me about trafficking, Shazneem? Do you think it happens?’ Clare asked her first question, her pen clicked open, poised to write, her small tape-recorder whirring softly.
‘I know it happens, we know it happens, and it is happening more and more. We see the women, the girls, who make it and find their way to the shelter. They are just the tip of the iceberg. But we can’t prove it, can we?’ Fury staccatoed her words. ‘How do we prove it when so many of these girls are desperate to start with? Fleeing wars, fleeing poverty, believing that they are being offered a better life – and there is no law to protect them. For the gangsters who run the trade, it is risk free and the profits are enormous. Guns make money and, sure, drugs are profitable – but both are high-risk investments requiring complicated arrangements and a trail that is often not that difficult to trace back to the mastermind. With women, or children, there is almost no risk.’ Shazneem calmed herself with a sip of water. ‘The return on an investment that requires the smallest capital outlay – a plane ticket or a taxi ride and a bribe. It is limited only by the number of clients a body can service.’
‘What proof do you have?’ asked Clare.
‘None that will stand up in court. The women are too terrified to testify.’ Shazneem’s eyes flashed with a rage that had etched deep lines onto her soft skin.
‘I must warn you to be very careful, Clare. I don’t know if this is connected, but yesterday we had a visit from three men. They came here, to the shelter, enquiring after Natalie. They said they were her brothers.’
Clare blanched. ‘How did they know she was here?’
‘Natalie has no brothers,’ said Shazneem. ‘But these men knew she was here. Or they know more about what you are doing than they should. I would be careful who you talk to about this investigation.’
The tendons in Clare’s neck tightened. Silence stretched between the two women, deepened by the shouts and giggles of the shelter’s children playing in the weak sunlight.
‘Perhaps I should speak to Natalie now,’ said Clare.
Shazneem stood up. ‘Her room is at the back. It is safest there.’ Clare followed her outside. They crossed a bleak courtyard, empty except for a shabby plastic jungle gym. The two little boys playing on it fell silent when they saw Clare. They did not respond to her greeting until instructed to by Shazneem. Then they turned back to their game, the visitor forgotten.
Shazneem knocked on the third door.
‘
‘Natalie, this is Dr Clare Hart,’ she said, ‘I’m the person who is doing the film on trafficking.’ Before Clare could greet the woman seated on the bed, Shazneem turned and walked back the way they had come.
‘
‘
Natalie Mwanga looked at the woman sitting opposite her. She guessed that she was about her own age. Clare’s dark eyes were clear, but fear lurked around her soft mouth, hardening it. Clare Hart would have lines like
