periphery, more than a hundred metres away at the house. His head turned and he screwed up his eyes. He saw the figure for an instant, small at this distance; the blue of a garment was the shade he was looking for. He lifted up the binoculars, looked through them and adjusted the focus.
Nothing. 'Shit,' he said out loud.
He kept the lenses trained on the front door. He could only see part of it behind the baroque detail of the veranda, but there was no one there.
Was he imagining things? No, he had seen it. He blinked, concentrating. Small figure, blue ...
'Shit,' he said again, because it might have been imagination. Up on the mountain he had thought he had seen her a few times; it had pumped adrenaline in his veins, but when he adjusted the focus it was usually a false alarm, optical illusions caused by hope and expectation.
He lowered the binoculars and looked at the house with his naked eyes. He wanted to reconstruct the dimensions of that moment.
She had been moving there. Just there, right hand on the doorknob? Left hand stretched back, holding something. The rucksack?
Binoculars up again. Where had she come from? For the first time he recognised the potential of the bougainvilleas, the old overgrown arbour. He studied the depth of it. 'Fuck me,' he said, the possibility slowly dawning in his mind, the way she could have run, the fat policewoman inspecting the flower bed on the left.. .
He reached for his cell phone in the pocket of his denims, took it out without taking his eyes off the house.
It had to be her. It explained how she disappeared without trace. He was almost certain.
Almost. Ninety per cent. Eighty.
If he made a mistake ... 'Shit!'
The house was quiet and cool.
She stood in the hallway and listened to her own breathing. A classic piece of wooden furniture stood against the wall, with a large oval mirror above it. Alongside were dark wood-framed portraits of bearded faces in black and white.
One step forward. The floorboard creaked and she stopped. To the left a large room opened up between two plain pillars; she leaned forward to look inside. A lovely large table with a laptop almost lost between piles of books and papers. Shelves against the walls crammed with books, three big windows, one looking out on the street and the fence she had jumped over. An old, worn Persian carpet on the floor in red, blue and beige.
'I'm in the kitchen.' The man's voice directly ahead was soothing, but she felt frightened anyway.
Books. So like her parents' house. She must be safe with a book person.
She walked in the direction of the voice. One of the rucksack's straps dragged whispering across the wooden floor.
Through a white-painted door frame was the kitchen. He stood with his back to her. White shirt, brown trousers, white sports shoes; he looked like an aged monk with his thinning grey hair around the bald spot that shone in the fluorescent light. He turned slowly from his work at the table, wooden spoon in hand.
'I'm making an omelette. Would you like some?'
He was older than she had thought at first, with a slight stoop, a kind face between deep wrinkles, loose skin above the red cravat around his neck, liver spots on his head and hands. His eyes were watery, faded blue, mischievous behind the over-large gold- rimmed spectacles. He put the spoon down beside a mixing bowl, wiped his hands on a white dishcloth and held one out towards her. 'My name is Piet van der Lingen,' he said, his smile revealing white false teeth.
'Pleased to meet you,' she said automatically, a reflex, and shook his hand.
'Omelette? Perhaps some toast?' He picked up the spoon again.
'That would be wonderful.'
'You are most welcome to hang the rucksack on the pegs at the door,' and he pointed with the spoon to the hall. Then he turned back to his mixing bowl.
She stood there, unwilling to accept the relief, the anticlimax, the relaxation.
'And the bathroom is down the passage, second door on the left.'
'I saw her,' said Barry over the phone, sounding more certain than he felt.
'Where?'
'She went into a house just a block from the restaurant.'
'Jesus. When?'
'A few minutes ago.'
'You saw her?'
'I was lucky, I just caught a glimpse, but it was her. No doubt.'
'A glimpse? What the fuck does that mean?'
They sat in the recording studio. Fransman Dekker wanted to tell her about the Barnard case. Inspector Mbali Kaleni said: 'Just a minute,' and shut her eyes. She wanted the American girl's case out of her thoughts; she had been so sure she would track her down. Now she cleared her head and opened her eyes. 'Go ahead,' she said. Dekker talked, gave her the details in a businesslike way, cursorily, the scowling execution of forced labour.
Mbali was not surprised by his attitude.
She knew her male colleagues did not like her. The one who liked her least of all was Fransman Dekker. But that didn't disturb her because she knew why. Generally the men felt threatened by her talent and they were intimidated by her ethics and her integrity. She didn't drink, smoke, or curse. She didn't hold her tongue either. The SAPS was not a place for sweet talking; the task was too big and the circumstances too difficult for that. She said what she thought. About their egos, too often the axis around which everything turned. About their incessant sexism and racism. About their lack of focus. Too much 'Let's throw a chop on the grill', or 'Let's get a quick beer', like boys that hadn't yet grown up. Too much talk in the office about sport, politics and sex. She told them straight out it was inappropriate. They hated her for that. But Dekker had an extra reason to hate her. She'd caught him out a few weeks ago. He was in the corridor where he thought nobody could hear him. Cell phone to his ear, whispering words of lust to a Tamaryn, when his wife's name was Crystal. When he slunk back into the office she had gone and stood at his desk and said: 'A man should be faithful to his wife.' He just stared at her. So she said: 'Fraud comes in many different guises,' and left. Since then she had seen the hatred in his eyes. Because she knew, and despised him for it.
But there was work to be done here. So she listened attentively. She answered him only in English, although he spoke Afrikaans. Because she knew he hated that too.
Rachel Anderson closed the bathroom door behind her, feeling an urgent need to pee. She unzipped her denim shorts, pulled the garments down to her knees and sat down. The relief was so great and the sound so loud that she wondered if he could hear her from the kitchen. Rachel looked around the bathroom. The walls were a light pastel blue, the porcelain fittings snow white. The old restored claw-foot bath was suddenly tempting, hot foamy water to draw out the dreadful fatigue and dull aching of her body. But she suppressed the thought, a surrender she wasn't yet ready for. And the old man was cooking in the kitchen.
When she was finished she bent over the basin, opened the taps, picked up the soap and washed the dried blood and mud off her hands, all the dirt from touching rocks and plants, walls and earth. She watched it rinse away. She mixed hot and cold water in cupped hands and splashed her face. Then she took the cake of soap, lathered it over her cheeks and forehead, mouth and chin, and rinsed again.
The dark-blue towel was fresh and rough. She rubbed it slowly over her face and hung it up neatly again. Only then did she look in the mirror. In a habitual motion her hands reached for her hair and brushed it back from her face.
She looked haggard. Dreadful. Her hair was a mess, strands had escaped from the plait and framed her face, her eyes were bloodshot and there were lines of fatigue around her mouth. There was a cut on her chin, surrounded by a light purple bruise and another small graze across her forehead; she didn't know where she had got that. Her neck was grimy, like her powder-blue Tshirt.
But you are
She was filled with enormous gratitude. Then came the guilt, because Erin was dead, dear Erin. The emotion washed over her like a tidal wave, sudden and overwhelming, the awful shame that she could be glad at being alive while Erin was dead. It broke down her defences and let her relive it fully for the first time: the two of them fleeing
