Daddy's Girl (15 page)

Riedwaan parked in front of La Perla on the Promenade, where Voëltjie Ahrend often enjoyed his breakfast at two in the afternoon. The manager hadn’t seen Ahrend since Wednesday. The next stop was the McDonald’s drive-thru near the Waterfront. Voëltjie’s favourite eating establishment. Riedwaan ordered himself a burger and chips and ate them while he flicked through the CCTV. Not a sign
of him.

On to the Winter Palace in Maitland. The place advertised itself as a gentlemen’s revue bar, but at noon it was just a strip club on the dingy urban fringe of Cape Town. The girls sleeping off the night before told him Voëltjie would be in later. They hadn’t seen him there for a couple of days, he’d been coming in less often now, ever since he’d appointed a night manager. He seemed
to be onto better things. Bigger things. They lit cigarettes and watched Riedwaan leave.

Just one place left to look. Riedwaan took the dogleg off the highway, dropping into the no-man’s-land beyond Cape Town International. The signposts had long since been stolen for scrap metal, but Riedwaan was riding back into a past he thought he’d buried. Smoke swayed over the shanties, where men slumped
against cracked walls, enervated from waiting all day at the side of the road for piece work that never came.

This was where Voëltjie Ahrend had grown up; every pair of ears, every pair of eyes his, bought and paid for. No questions asked by the hard-eyed little boys running down the sandy paths between the three-storeyed blocks of flats. The bleak walk-ups were gang-tagged, the territory
claimed for the 27s.

On Midnight Street, a few tattered posters hung from broken fences and lamp posts. MISSING, written in red ink, gashed the face of a little girl. The first poster brought Riedwaan to a halt. The small face with its halo of black curls, so like Yasmin. The green almond eyes stared back at him. Chanel Adams, from this street, missing since Thursday. Last seen walking alone.

He turned again and rode on through the narrowing streets. But first he had to find Yasmin. The houses were crowded against barbed-wire fences, windows closed, curtains drawn tight against the silent street. The only thing shiny and new was the razor wire looped across every window and door of a freshly-painted house. There was no number behind the razor wire. But Riedwaan didn’t need the number
to know it was the right house. The Maserati filling the front yard set it apart. Riedwaan parked his bike on the pavement littered with broken bricks and debris. He kicked over a placard lying against the fence.

SAY NO. The rest of the slogan had been burnt off.

‘Say no to drugs.’ A heavy-set woman leaned over her wall. ‘It’s what the poster says. Some people had a vigil here last night.
Against those gangsters selling tik. It’s not safe here for adults. How must it be for the children?’

‘I’m looking for a little girl,’ said Riedwaan.

‘I thought you looked like police.’ The woman looked Riedwaan up and down. ‘There were people protesting about that little Chanel Adams who disappeared. Her brother’s
mos
in the Neighbourhood Watch too.’

‘What do gangsters want with such
little girls?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘They smoke
tik
, they sell it to people. It turns them into animals. Then they see a little girl by herself, they don’t think she’s only seven. They just feel
jas
, so they
sommer
take them, rape them, kill them afterwards. For the most, it’s not that lot.’ She gestured at the house with the razor wire. ‘It’s the people they sell to.’

‘And Chanel Adams?’

‘Her brother’s Lemmetjie Adams. He thought maybe because of what we’ve been doing in the Watch, they went for his little sister to warn him.’

‘They inside now?’ Riedwaan gestured towards the fortified house.

‘They’ll be waking up about now. Nobody moves in there till late afternoon.’

‘Was the Maserati here last night?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘
Ma se wat
?’ asked the woman, straightening
her
doek
.

‘That car, there.’ Riedwaan pointed.

‘It wasn’t there last night when the Neighbourhood Watch had the vigil. Nobody would try anything with Voëltjie Ahrend in the house.’

Riedwaan ran his hand over the car’s cool flank. It had been freshly polished.

‘It woke me up at four this morning,’ said the woman. ‘That
ma se
car over there. The engine growls, like his dogs. And
they were cleaning it too. With a hoover. They’ve got no respect, those gangsters. For them day is night and night is day. You know Voëltjie?’

‘You could say that.’ Riedwaan pushed open the gate. Inside the house a dog bayed – a Boerbul, judging by the huge muzzle pushing through the bars.

‘I’ll watch for you,’ said the woman. ‘See if you come out.’

‘Thanks, Aunty.’

Riedwaan knocked.
The door opened a crack. A boy of about fourteen stood in the gap, his body lean beneath his baggy shirt, his eyes flat and hard.

‘
Waar’s Voëltjie
?’ asked Riedwaan.

The boy pointed down the narrow pathway along the side of the house, revealing the 27 tattooed on his wrist as he did so. Voëltjie Ahrend’s new branding, one that had been bought, not earned in the old way through jail time.
Riedwaan pushed open the back door. The smell of onions and cumin frying. Supper. The woman at the stove put her spoon down when she saw Riedwaan, a lopsided smile working through the lines criss-crossing her face.

‘Riedwaan Faizal.’

‘Auntie Ruby,’ Riedwaan responded.

‘You swore you’d never
kuier
here again.’ Ruby Ahrend snapped her fingers at the supine girls on the couch. One of
them slid off, taking her snivelling infant with her.

‘Never is a long time,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Where’s your son?’

‘What do you want with Voëltjie?’

‘Go and call him, Auntie Ruby. I want to speak to him now.’

Her black eyes flicked past Riedwaan’s shoulder.

‘You up early today, Ahrend.’ Riedwaan didn’t look around. He could see Voëltjie’s reflection in the stainless steel pot.
Ruby Ahrend was not a woman you turned your back on, not in a kitchen full of knives.

‘Voëltjie’s always up for business.’ He knotted his dressing gown cord. ‘But it’s not that often that Voëltjie gets house calls these days.
Kom sit by jou Voëltjie, Ma
.’ Ruby Ahrend sat next to her son, resplendent on a red velvet settee.

‘What do you need from Voëltjie, Captain Faizal? A golf membership?
An invitation to the J&B Met?’ He studied his nails. ‘Money? Drugs? Women?’

Riedwaan put a small pink hair clasp on the coffee table.

‘Where is she?’ he demanded.

Voëltjie Ahrend picked up the clasp, turned it over in his hand, discarded it.

‘A little girl. Of course. Voëltjie heard the news. That pretty little TV doctor with a thing for gangsters, she hasn’t worked it out for
you yet?’

‘Fuck you, Ahrend.’

‘Information’s
mos
Voëltjie’s speciality. If you can afford it.’ His eyes, black and hard as his mother’s, glittered.

‘I was wondering how long it would take you to come to Voëltjie, Faizal.’ Ahrend extended a hand, and a girl on a settee opposite handed him a lit cigarette. ‘Thinking that if something goes wrong with your kak life it must be because of
Voëltjie.’

‘What do you want for her?’

‘What could Voëltjie want that you could give Voëltjie?’ He looked Riedwaan over. ‘Everything Voëltjie wants, Voëltjie
maar
takes.’

‘Where’s my daughter?’ Riedwaan kept his voice even. ‘Your car’s on CCTV leaving town at the time she disappeared. And I found that in your apartment.’

‘Did you, now? Voëltjie would like to see your warrant some
time. But Voëltjie won’t get technical, will he? Rather tell Voëltjie this: Why would Voëltjie take her? How would all this attention work for Voëltjie? Voëltjie’s a busy man. Deals here, deals there. Voëltjie doesn’t need your attention. Voëltjie doesn’t want your attention. If your work with your little unit bothers me, I speak to people who understand how business works.’

‘Then why were
you cleaning your car at four in the morning?’

Ahrend unwrapped a Sweetie Pie. ‘Voëltjie knows how you feel.’ He licked the chocolate fragments off his palm. ‘You see, it hurt Voëltjie, losing that boy you shot. He was like a son to Voëltjie.’

‘You set up that ambush, Ahrend,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You set it up so he could prove himself.’

‘So eager to please.’ Ahrend shook his head. ‘So
much promise. Van Rensburg’s walking again?’

‘It took two operations and three months.’

‘Really?’ Ahrend sneered. ‘His daughter? Pretty little thing, as I remember. Yours too.’

‘I’ll trade,’ said Riedwaan.

‘What could you have that Voëltjie could want?’

‘We tracked the gun you used on those girls in Maitland.’ Riedwaan watched Ahrend’s face. Expressionless, except for the dilation
of his pupils. ‘If the price is right, an eyewitness won’t take that long to find.’

‘
Nog altyd die slim kind in die klas
.’ Ahrend leaned back in his chair. ‘Such a waste, when you think what you could have made of yourself.’

‘Graveyard de Wet’s gun. Interesting,’ observed Riedwaan, ‘using it the day after he died.’

‘Graveyard’s not dead.’

‘Nobody inside tell you?’ asked Riedwaan.
‘You, laying claim to the 27 as if you somehow deserved to be called General? Not the old general making way for the new? Or was it just to impress your new masters?’

‘Fuck off, Faizal,’ said Voëltjie, standing up.

‘
Hoor wat hy wil sê.’
The mother put her hand on her son’s arm and drew him down again.

‘If those girls were supposed to seal the deal by guaranteeing the 27s territory,
Ahrend, then you’re going to be nothing but a boy again. A boy at the beck and call of your new masters. A little Voëltjie again. Rich, yes, but a Russian’s servant. If my daughter’s part of that, then you’ll lose it all, you’ll be history. You give her back to me and we can work something out.’

‘If that little girl of yours comes back – and it’s a big if, from what I know about little girls
– then her life won’t be worth living unless you stay out of Voëltjie’s way.’

‘Where is she?’ repeated Riedwaan.

‘Voëltjie doesn’t want to kill you, Faizal. Voëltjie just wants to make you understand something.’

‘What would that be?’ Riedwaan braced himself, calculating the odds.

‘That Voëltjie is a businessman now, and that you, Faizal, won’t be giving me shit for very much longer.’
Voëltjie Ahrend snapped his fingers. ‘You saw what happened to your friend Van Rensburg. Don’t you think that’s worse than being dead?’

Six at the door. And the three women inside – the kind you counted when calculating the odds in a fight.

Riedwaan caught the biggest of Ahrend’s men under the chin, the man’s head jerking backwards with a satisfying snap. He fell, knocking the TV to the
floor. Riedwaan pushed over the display cabinet, the figurines and photographs shattering on the tiles. He landed two more good punches before his arm was twisted behind him.

‘Voëltjie spoke nicely to you.’ He lit a cigarette.
‘Maak oop.
’ The boy who had let Riedwaan into the house pulled his shirt open, the buttons skittering across the floor. Voëltjie Ahrend held the cigarette, glowing orange
in the dim room, against the smooth skin on Riedwaan’s chest.

‘It seems like you’re a slower learner than I thought,’ said Ahrend. ‘
Vat hom buite.
Teach him a lesson,
een wat hy sal onthou.
’

Three of the men frogmarched Riedwaan out of the house. A gun rammed into his back. In the yard a dog lifted its head and growled. The boy’s kick was dead on target. The animal howled, snapping to
the end of its chain.

The yard opened onto a littered stretch of wasteland criss-crossed with paths. Car wrecks listed into the sand, tattered plastic bags snagged against their broken-down bodies. Five hundred metres away, in the gathering dark, the dense Port Jackson scrub was a dark smear against the white sand.

Riedwaan twisted towards the man with gun, dropping to his knees. Not much
of a start, but at least the gun was no longer jammed into his kidneys and his arm was at his side again, his hand balling around a rock in the sand. Riedwaan swung up and back, dropping the youngest. This was going to hurt, of that he would make sure. In the open: this was the place to fight.

The butt of the gun cracked across his jaw, the man’s fist in his face. They weren’t shooting yet
– a good sign. But if they got him to the scrub beyond the dunes, Riedwaan knew that in a couple of days a pathologist would be standing over him, cradling blowfly maggots to estimate the time of death.

At three-fifteen Clare paid the entrance fee to the Arderne Gardens. The traffic on Main Road was muffled by the shrubs planted along the palisade. She turned up an avenue of trees towards the shadowed centre of the garden, the path disappearing into a maze of trees and cool undergrowth. The oaks seemed to be taller, denser, but she hadn’t been back for fifteen years. She walked on into
the emptying park, holding the past at bay. As she navigated her way past the scent garden she crushed a leaf of lemon verbena between her fingers, but the fragrance failed to mask the rankness of the undergrowth.

The labyrinth lay to her right. A golden orb spider had spun her web across the pathway to the maze. A trapped insect struggled, suspended on a deadly silk trapeze. Clare ducked
under it. Feeling uneasy, she spun round. But all she saw was shadows in the late afternoon light, insubstantial and shifting, along the avenue of trees. She checked Pearl’s instructions again and hurried on, the rustling foliage closing over her head.

She hurried towards the lawn on the other side, relieved to be back in the sunlight.

‘Dr Hart?’

‘Pearl?’ Clare turned. She hadn’t noticed
the slight figure in the deep shade of an oak tree.

‘You’re so
bleek
, Doc. You look like you seen a ghost.’ Pearl lit a cigarette.