Daddy's Girl (11 page)

‘He was driving?’

‘He was here in the middle of the afternoon. That’s what I told Mrs Faizal.’

‘You didn’t tell him the school was closing early?’

‘I didn’t think about it,’ said Mister Henry. ‘Everybody knew.’

‘She’s missing, Mister Henry.’ Clare stepped closer to him. ‘What else did you see?’

He stepped away from her, and a gust of wind off the mountain snatched the words from his mouth.

‘What did you say?’ asked Clare.

‘I saw her here.’ He bit the loose skin next to his fingernail. ‘After the class.’ He pointed to the
overgrown gate. ‘I’d come out for a smoke. I saw her.’

‘You saw nobody else?’ she asked.

‘Not a soul. This is a wealthy area. Once the maids go home there’s no one about.’

‘What was she doing?’

‘Standing there near the gate. I called her and she looked at me. That’s when I saw the tears.’

‘Did you ask her why she was crying?’

‘Madame Merle called me right then, so I went
inside. I was going to ask her afterwards, but by then she was gone.’ The sun came out. It was behind Henry, and Clare couldn’t see what was in his eyes.

Madame Merle leaned out of a window.

‘Mister Henry,’ she called, ‘warm up.’

‘I must go.’ He hurried away.

A few seconds later, Mister Henry appeared at the window. He held Clare’s gaze for a moment before banging it shut.

Riedwaan’s hands were scratched and his shoes wet from working his way up the ravine that separated Devil’s Peak from Table Mountain. After leaving Clare the night before, he’d ridden directly to the mountain. There, he’d repeated the search organised by Rita Mkhize that Friday evening. He had zigzagged his way up territory familiar from his childhood, when, with his friends, he’d slid
down the smooth granite cliffs of the waterfall.

Like the police dogs, Riedwaan had found no trace of Yasmin. By four, the tablecloth of cloud forced him, cold and exhausted, to take shelter under an overhang. He’d slept fitfully for a couple of hours. At dawn he had worked his way down again, past the ballet school with the Beetle parked outside. Next to it was a green Mini. Clare’s car.

Riedwaan headed towards his house in the Bo-Kaap. Unlocking it, he paused briefly at the second bedroom.

‘Yasmin’s Palace’ – the sign hung askew on her door.

Feeling his knees give way, he dropped into an armchair. The only chair in the room. He looked at the scattered bits of bunk bed he’d promised Yasmin he’d assemble, the tools still lying there from his first and only attempt. The
Jack Daniel’s beckoned him. His glass next to the bottle on the table. Riedwaan got up and put it away in a cupboard, ignoring the voice that said one whiskey wouldn’t hurt.

One wouldn’t. It’d be the second that would cause the trouble. And the third and the rest of the bottle. He took the glass to the kitchen and filled it without rinsing it, swallowed the water. Traces of whiskey under the
dust. He filled the kettle, put on the gas, splashed his face above the dirty dishes in the sink. The kitchen air smelt stale, so he opened the door onto the courtyard. When the kettle boiled, he spooned some Nescafé into the least dirty mug.

Riedwaan Faizal’s phone was out of his pocket before the second ring. ‘Private number’ flashed on the screen.

‘Faizal.’

‘De Lange.’

Shorty
de Lange from ballistics, the lab buried in trees and scrub forty kilometres east of Cape Town.

‘I heard about your daughter,’ said De Lange. ‘You find—’

Riedwaan cut him off. ‘Not yet.’

‘I’m sorry, man.’ Riedwaan waited; Shorty de Lange was not a man you hurried. ‘I didn’t like that crime scene, those two little girls. Something new, that – two girls with no known connection to any
gangsters, shot like dogs.’

‘Ja.’ The kitchen door blew shut. ‘Fuck it.’

The two warm bodies heaped together in that open field in Maitland seemed like a lifetime ago.

‘Come over to the lab,’ said Shorty. ‘I think you should see what I’ve got.’

Riedwaan left the mug on the counter with last week’s bread, and shut the front door behind him.

Half an hour later, he swerved onto
the off-ramp to the lab, daring the road to claim him. It didn’t, and he slowed down at the security entrance. The guards waved him through.

De Lange was waiting for him.

‘Rita Mkhize called me.’ He held Riedwaan’s eye. ‘Said you’d been suspended.’

‘What else?’

‘Said I should keep you in the loop. That she’d answer for it.’

‘She’s a good girl,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Tough, that
lady.’

They were walking down the unlit corridor. It was empty except for the posters of gunshot wounds tacked onto the walls.

‘What you got here?’ Riedwaan’s voice was working, but only just.

‘A feeling.’

‘Since when did you get feelings, Shorty? Unless it’s winter or your wife forgot to pack your lunch. Cold. Hungry. Those are your feelings.’

De Lange’s office was decorated
with the colours of the Free State rugby team. The walls were lined with pictures of the players. Two were autographed by a lock whose parents had been shot on their farm. Shorty had found the cartridges, tracked the guns, matched them. The killers were both fifteen years old. Third offence. They got thirty years each.

De Lange picked up a brown folder and several small, clear packets. All
except one contained cartridges. The other held two crumpled bullets.

‘From the younger girl,’ explained De Lange. ‘The pathologist got them for me. Looks like they went straight through her older sister’s body. She didn’t weigh much, according to the post-mortem report – but still, her fifty-two kilos was enough to slow them down. They lodged in the little sister she was trying to protect.’

Riedwaan picked them up. So small in his hand. No dark family secrets to reveal, just bullets crashing through young lungs, stopping young hearts.

‘I’ll show you.’ De Lange unlocked the computer room. Inside, the air conditioning hummed, cooling the four large computers standing on a scuffed square of linoleum. De Lange tapped a keyboard.

‘Here.’ He pointed to the close-ups of cartridges,
the six grooves distinct where the bullet had spun down the barrel. ‘Six perfect matches. Same gun fired all these shots. Ibis went into orbit over these.’ He’d called up the International Ballistics Information System on his computer.

‘So, what were those?’

‘That gun’s been out of action for a while, but it has been used before. Five cases came up on the database.’

‘Let me see them,’
said Riedwaan.

De Lange downloaded the files. No arrests, but a record of all the bullets that were found at the murder scenes. De Lange kept track of them all, trying to find patterns in the shootings that terrified people living on the Flats.

‘Gang violence?’ asked Riedwaan.

De Lange nodded. ‘Turf war.’ He opened a map of the Cape Peninsula. ‘A dealer in Heideveld, a couple of gangsters,
a mother going to church in Mitchell’s Plain – she was a witness to the first shooting, apparently. And a kid reading a story in bed to his little sister caught a bullet in the head.’

‘Where?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Edge of Maitland.’

‘Okay, but that’s four,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You said five.’

‘The fifth case is this one.’ De Lange opened the last file. The same detailed close-ups of the
bullets found in the bodies, and the casings sprayed across the crime scenes. ‘That triple murder near Paarl. Mother, grandmother, a little girl. The women were farmworkers. The little girl just happened to be there.’

‘Graveyard de Wet,’ said Riedwaan.

The name cooled the room as effectively as any air conditioning.

‘A general in the 27s, last time he was inside,’ De Lange said. ‘It
was one of the cases I gave expert testimony in. You sent him down. No weapon ever found, but the judge didn’t care. Life without parole. This gun was only ever used where Graveyard de Wet was involved. This is his gun.’

‘I know, Shorty, I know. You said so at the time,’ said Riedwaan. ‘But what have those two schoolgirls got to do with a long-dead turf war?’

‘Nothing, that I know of,’
said Shorty. ‘But this gun knows.’

‘Guns and gang wars,’ Riedwaan was thinking out loud. ‘The last time I looked, that lowlife de Wet was in jail.’

‘You’ve checked?’ asked Shorty. ‘There was the president’s prisoner amnesty so that he could free all his buddies who are in jail for corruption. He let out a few other lowlifes to make it less obvious.’

‘No one got amnesty if a weapon
was involved. Members of parliament, fraudsters, shoplifters, embezzlers, yes. But no gangsters, no rapists, no killers.’

‘You sure?’

‘I saw the list,’ said Riedwaan. ‘New legislation. They have to.’

‘You know who those girls were?’ asked De Lange.

‘Identified at the scene. Father, brothers, uncles all clean. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some gangster moving
himself up the ladder.’

‘You should check it out yourself, Faizal. I’m suspicious. It’s my job. It’s been a long time since that gun was used. And now it’s back.’ De Lange paused. ‘The same day your daughter goes missing. The day you get suspended.’

‘I’ll check it out.’ Riedwaan scrolled through his phone for his contact in Correctional Services. He gave him the name – Graveyard de Wet.

Five minutes, and he called back.

‘And?’ Shorty asked.

‘Graveyard de Wet’s not been using that gun,’ Riedwaan said. ‘He’s dead. No relatives want his body, so there’s a pauper’s funeral on Friday.’

‘That’s good news, then.’

Riedwaan took out a coin. He tossed it: heads. He flipped it again: tails.

‘I suppose it is.’

Shorty walked with Riedwaan to his motorbike. He rested
his broad hand on Riedwaan’s shoulder for a moment. A bontebok grazing nearby bolted, her calf at her heels, when Riedwaan kicked his bike to life.

An invisible eye on Clare’s face, the oculus in the door darkened for a moment. Then the deadbolt unlocked and Shazia Faizal stood framed in the doorway.

‘Yes?’ A wedding photo hung on the wall behind her. Shazia in white satin, her swelling belly only partially hidden by the bouquet. Riedwaan next to her, handsome in a dark suit, his eyes focused on a spot beyond the photographer.
Clare felt as if he were watching her.

‘Dr Hart. They said you’d be coming.’ A thin woman, her black hair cropped short, appeared behind Shazia. The hand she extended to Clare was papery to the touch. ‘Latisha van Rensburg. My husband is Inspector Clinton van Rensburg. Come through.’

In the sitting room, the television chattered to itself. Latisha van Rensburg led Shazia to the sofa.

‘Please sit, Dr Hart.’

The two women were silhouetted against the view of Table Bay wallpapered across the window. Clare sat opposite them.

‘Special Director Ndlovu assured Shazia that she must just wait,’ said Latisha. ‘That Captain Faizal was profiled as risky but not homicidal, and that he wouldn’t bluff it much longer.’

‘He knows where she is,’ whispered Shazia. ‘He must.’

‘We’ll find her again.’ Latisha put an arm around her. ‘You did before.’

‘Why is he doing this to me?’ asked Shazia, all authority relinquished to the older woman at her side.

‘What happened the last time?’ asked Clare.

‘Riedwaan took her, he kept her for the weekend,’ said Shazia. ‘That’s when I got the interdict against him.’

‘Did you think Riedwaan would harm Yasmin?’ asked
Clare. ‘Or you?’

‘Not that time.’

‘Has he ever hurt you?’

‘No, but he’s never here, is he? Always at work, always with his unit.’

‘So, why the interdict?’ asked Clare.

Shazia’s eyes flashed, the slow burn of marital anger flaring beneath her anxiety.

‘They told us after the family violence workshop. You might have heard, the police captain who shot his wife and his three
children. Director Ndlovu didn’t want us to take any risks. Riedwaan wouldn’t sign the papers for Canada. We’re going in a week, and Riedwaan has to sign if I’m going to get there in time to start my new job.’

That explained the pale patches on the walls where pictures had been removed. The uncurtained windows, the boxes stacked behind the furniture.

‘Your husband’s not going to follow
you?’

‘He was offered a job there, but he won’t. I said he had to choose, and he chose his work. Chasing those gangsters is all he cares about. He said he’d sign, but when I went to fetch Yasmin and she wasn’t there and he didn’t answer my calls, I knew it was just another one of his lies. He’s got her, and this time he’s not going to let her go. So I phoned the hotline.’ Shazia twisted her
hands together. ‘Director Ndlovu said we were to phone directly. The call centre routes any calls to her so that she can see that something’s done before… before…’

‘Before any violence,’ said Latisha. ‘It was to prevent any more family murders.’

‘Director Ndlovu is a psychiatrist,’ said Shazia. ‘She assessed him and she says that he’s a risk.’

There was doubt in her eyes. Because she
was wrong about her husband? Or the doubt that gets you killed, that lulls you into giving the man who sleeps in your bed, the father of your children, one more chance. The gap he needs to kill you. Clare rubbed her temples, feeling the familiar dull beat behind her eyes.

‘What do you need from us?’ Latisha asked.

‘Photographs,’ said Clare. ‘Pictures of Yasmin. There’s a chance that if
she was taken, there may be an image of her somewhere on one of the cameras in the city.’

‘Shazia?’ Latisha put both her hands on Shazia’s face. ‘Look at me. Listen to her. Yasmin’s your baby. You must keep the possibility in mind that… that she’s somewhere else.’

Shazia shook her head.

‘Can Dr Hart have the photographs?’ asked Latisha. ‘She’ll return them soon.’

‘In the cabinet
in the sitting room there’s an album.’

Latisha fetched it, handed it to Clare. On the first page, a shock-haired infant – a hospital tag still on her wrist – lying in the crook of a muscular arm.