Daddy's Girl (18 page)

‘I want you to help me find somebody.’

‘Try an on-line dating service,’ said Danny. ‘It works for me.’

‘Very funny,’ said Clare. ‘I’m looking for someone in particular and the
only trace I have of her is her voice.’

‘You think she wants to be found?’

‘Play this.’ Clare handed him a cassette. Danny pressed play, filling the room with Yasmin’s voice.

‘
Yasmin. It’s me, Yasmin. Daddy, please, please find me, Daddy. I’m so cold, Daddy, so cold. The man says you must find me, Daddy. I heard him. He said you know what they want. He said you know what to do. That
if you lose me it’s because you don’t love—’

Sobbing.

‘Where are you, Daddy? It’s very dark…’ A crashing sound, a whimper.

Then silence.

‘Who is she?’ Danny swivelled round in his chair so that he could look at Clare.

‘A little girl who’s missing. Her name is Yasmin. I was at her father’s house when the message came through.’

‘Have the cops got this?’

‘He is a cop,
the father,’ Clare explained. ‘He asked me to find her.’

‘Why would a cop ask you to help find her?’

‘Long story,’ she grimaced. ‘For another time.’

‘So what do you want me to do with this?’

‘Find out where it was recorded,’ said Clare. ‘I thought if you could work that out, I’d have some idea of where to start looking. You know you can do anything with sound.’

‘I make music,’
said Danny. ‘I put sound together.’

‘So, this is the same. Just in reverse. All you have to do is take the sound apart,’ she said. ‘If anyone’s able to find something in that cassette, you are.’

‘Clare, Clare, why so obsessed?’ Danny searched her face. ‘Where did she go, the laughing girl I once knew?’

‘Hey, no personal questions.’ Clare handed him the tape. ‘Just do my tape for me.
Please.’

Danny fiddled with some machines and cables and dials. Behind him, Clare paced up and down.

‘You’re making me nervous,’ said Danny. ‘I can’t do anything until its digitised, and I can’t think with you striding about like a tiger. Go and make some tea or something.’

Clare went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on. She looked in the fridge for some milk, and found a
slice of pizza. She wolfed it down. The kettle boiled and she poured water over the teabags.

Putting Danny’s tea next to him, she pulled a stool over to sit on.

The computer gurgled.

‘There,’ he said. ‘It’s done.’

He fingered his keyboard and the screens jumped to life.

‘Okay, it’s digitised now. I’ll put it onto my hard drive and then I have a lovely little plugin called Smack.’

‘What do you think you’ll find?’

‘Be patient, Clare,’ said Danny. ‘I have no idea. I’ve never done this before.’

‘Okay, then, tell me what you’re trying.’

‘There’s a compressor in the mike of a cellphone,’ said Danny. ‘To cut out background sound. You’d still hear stuff in the gaps, though. Smack knocks out the background sound when you speak, and allows it back in during the gaps.’

‘So, what are you doing?’ asked Clare.

‘If you have a strong compressor like this one, then you can go in between voice sound, right in between words. See? This is a graphic rendering of the sound.’

On the screen was what looked like an ECG graph, turning the spikes of sound into vital signs.

‘It smacks the peaks down and you can hear more of the background sound if you push up
the volume. Usually, I know what the elements are that I put together to make sound. This is something else, this is doing the whole process in reverse.’ He ran his cursor over the peaked lines on the screen.

‘Here, this is your little girl speaking…’

‘Yasmin,’ said Clare. ‘Call her by her name.’

‘Okay, Yasmin. This is her speaking. It’s a voice print. A person’s voice is like their
fingerprints. Almost impossible to disguise.’

Clare listened carefully to the ambient sound that Danny was unpacking for her as he scrolled through the recording. Wherever it was indistinct, he replayed the section again, trying to identify the fragments. She closed her eyes, immersing herself in the sounds of the space that Yasmin occupied when she spoke. Filtering out her own self, her agitation.

A scrap of melody.

A church bell, perhaps.

An Imam’s call?

The hubbub of taxis.

The whine of a car.

Dogs baying.

A low thud, a deep sonic boom.

Beneath it all, a low rhythmic rasp. What you heard when you lay with your head on someone’s chest.

‘Is that her?’ asked Clare.

Danny adjusted some more dials, breaking down the sound into more spikes. The disembodied
breathing filled the studio.

‘That’s not Yasmin breathing. Listen. It’s coming in between the spikes of her voice.’ Danny massaged the corners of his eyes. ‘That’s someone standing close by.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Clare. ‘What do you mean, he’s standing there?’

‘Someone was with her,’ said Danny. ‘Or near her, when she phoned.’

‘Someone who wanted this message to come through,’
Clare said to herself.

‘I’d be careful if I were you. These don’t sound like people you should mess with. You told her father?’

‘I can’t get hold of him,’ said Clare. ‘Not since this afternoon.’

‘You’re not worried?’

‘Yes, I’m worried.’ Clare put her tea aside. ‘But there’s not much I can do.’

‘Well, this is as much as I can do,’ said Danny. ‘I’ll print it for you.’

Clare
spread out the sheets covered in black spikes and asked, ‘What is this?’

‘Your aural map. A bell, an Imam calling people to mosque, flower sellers, children’s voices, a deep boom, dogs. A door slamming or something heavy dropping.’

‘You think it happened inside?’

‘In some kind of covered space. A big one, there’s a lot of echo,’ said Danny. ‘But that’s a guess.’

‘An educated one?’

‘An educated one, yes. There’s a lot of echo on everything. Doesn’t sound like a house to me, but that’s not something that’ll get you anywhere in court.’

‘I’m not in a court, not yet.’

‘Take this disk. Play it in your car, play it at home. Maybe it’ll speak to you, like music used to. I copied the Smack plugin too. If you’re cutting your documentaries on your laptop, you’ll be able
to use it if you need it.’ Danny took a stray lock of Clare’s hair and tucked it behind her ear. ‘Then maybe you’ll find her. Your lost girl.’

At the door, he rested his fingers in the hollow of her throat for a moment.

‘I still feel sometimes that I’m going to find mine.’

‘Yasmin,’ said Clare. ‘Her name is Yasmin.’

‘I’m sorry, Doc.’ Charlie Wang let Clare in and darted back to his stool.

She saw three monitors, each filled with Yasmin’s face fragmented into cheeks, forehead, jaw, neckline, eyes. A fourth was running CCTV footage. The fifth monitor was screening a slideshow taken from Yasmin’s photograph album: with her mother and father, dancing with Calvaleen van Rensburg, holding a gold certificate
at an Eistedfodd, running into the sea at Camps Bay.

‘This stuff just takes time. You’ve just got to pray there’s something to find.’

‘If there is, you’ll find it, Charlie.’ Clare unbuttoned her coat.

‘You got more pictures for me?’

‘Sound, this time.’

Charlie took the CD from her and slotted it in. Yasmin’s voice filled the room.

‘Skip ahead,’ said Clare. ‘It’s too eerie,
with those pictures of her everywhere.’

Charlie jumped the sound.

‘There. Stop. Danny Roman isolated the sounds that he could identify.’

Charlie Wang listened, his head to one side.

‘You want me to locate those?’ he asked, keying the information in. ‘There you go, Doc.’ The satellite map of Cape Town appeared on his screen.

‘You see this?’ He pointed to an area highlighted
in green. ‘These are the areas where you’ll find these combinations of sounds – if they’re identified correctly, of course.’

‘Go through them,’ said Clare.

‘The Bo-Kaap, Sea Point, Green Point, the Waterfront, Maitland, Milnerton, Muizenberg, Kalk Bay. Pretty much all the urban areas along the seafront, and anywhere you’ve got mosques and churches next to each other.’

‘That really
narrows it down, doesn’t it?’

‘I’ll email it to you. At least you’ll know where not to look,’ said Charlie. ‘I wish I could help you more.’

‘You can,’ said Clare, her eyes fixed on the pictures of Yasmin. ‘You can help me see someone. Get your jacket.’

At the Salt River circle, Clare took the road to Maitland. Alongside it, shipping containers were piled high, destined for the trucks
that thundered northwards on the highway to Johannesburg. Beyond the scrapyards and container lots was Coronation Road. Bedraggled houses on one side, derelict sports fields on the other.

‘This is over and above the call of duty, Doc,’ said Charlie.

A blonde girl wearing a fur bikini and white boots stood outside the Winter Palace, just visible at the end of the discreet drive. The entrance
had been planted with firs and other conifers. These softened the bleak surroundings; they also offered privacy for the customers. Clare drove on and parked close to a clump of stunted trees some distance from the entrance.

‘Do you think we should park so far away, though?’

‘I don’t want my car noticed,’ said Clare.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘All I need is cover, Charlie. Don’t
take this personally. I go in on my own and I stand out. I go in with you and no one pays me any attention.’

Clare undid the top buttons of her blouse, shook out her ponytail and fluffed her hair around her face. She found a red lipstick in the cubbyhole and applied it.

‘Wow, you look… different.’ Charlie stared at her. ‘Is that all it takes?’

‘Looking pretty isn’t rocket science,’
said Clare. ‘So, we go in, you come with me. We sit for a bit. I go to the bathroom. You take a taxi home. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ Charlie was straightening his jacket over his T-shirt.

‘You nervous?’

‘I don’t go out much, Doc,’ said Charlie.

‘One double whiskey, and you’ll be fine.’ Clare shoved a wad of R100 notes into his pocket. ‘You pay the door fee, otherwise it’ll look weird.’

‘It’s already weird,’ said Charlie.

A couple of BMWs were parked under the watchful eye of the bouncers. Further away there were other cars, with tinted windows and mag wheels. And also a few family cars – teachers, doctors, getting rid of the family blues.

‘A gold mine, married men,’ Clare muttered as the burly bouncer took their money and handed them their gold tickets. Covered in Cyrillic
script, these offered a complimentary White Russian cocktail.

The lighting was low, absorbed by the red and purple plush on the walls, gleaming on the white couches arranged around small gold tables. Music thumped, and above the stage a sign flashed information about the next show – something to do with two bad girls and a riding crop. Some men were seated at tables arranged around the elevated
stage.

‘Could we sit in the corner?’ Clare requested of an usher.

‘This way, please,’ he said, leading them to a table on the other side of the bar.

‘Your drinks,’ said a girl, putting them on the low table.

A man wearing a white suit sat at a table near theirs. He snapped his fingers at the barman.

‘Two for the ladies.’

The barman poured two vodka shots and pushed them
across the bar towards two young women. They tipped pale cleavages in the direction of the man. Crooking a finger, the man unwrapped a Sweetie Pie, and the two girls got up. Long pale legs on high heels, breasts pushing against sheer tops, hair bleached and bouffant. They sat down and smiled, eyes blank.

‘Tatiana.’ He leaned forward, cupping the woman’s breast in his hand as if he were weighing
fresh meat at a butcher. Then he dropped his fist lightly into her lap. Tatiana did not move.

‘This is like a movie,’ breathed Charlie Wang, draining his glass. ‘Who are these people?’

‘Not people you want to get to know, Charlie.’ She hadn’t touched her drink. ‘I’ll be leaving now, and won’t be back for a while. You watch the show, then go outside and go home.’

‘What’re you going
to do?’

‘I want to talk to one of the girls who works here.’

‘Is that safe?’

‘Of course it’s safe. I just want to do it in private.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thanks for doing this.’

Charlie watched Clare make her way between the tables. The man in the white suit was watching her too. She went into the bathroom and washed her hands, waiting a few minutes before she came out.
Charlie at the table, watching the show. No bouncers nearby. Nobody looking at her as she walked towards the exit. She pushed open the curtains and stepped into another world.

Overhead strip lighting. Scraps of clothing, sequins, dressing gowns and shoes heaped onto white plastic chairs and on the floor. A girl wrapped in a grubby pink dressing gown sat with a Russian-English dictionary in
one hand, a cigarette dangled in the other.

Against a nearby wall, six mirrors were lit with unforgiving neon. In front of two of them sat girls applying make-up, their blonde hair pulled tightly back, exposing dark roots. The riding-crop girls, judging by their jodhpurs.

‘Is backstage here, not audience,’ said the girl closest to her in heavily-accented English. She had one false eyelash
in place, and was holding the other in her hand.

‘I’m looking for Calvaleen,’ said Clare.

The stripper stuck on the other eyelash.

‘Local girl,’ said Clare. ‘Ballet dancer.’

‘We all begin as ballet dancers. Me from St Petersburg, her from Moscow.’ The girl screwed open a brush and painted her lips scarlet. ‘Name again?’

‘Calvaleen,’ said Clare. ‘Calvaleen van Rensburg.’

‘What name is that?’ asked the other girl, loosening her candy-floss hair. ‘Not good for working.’

‘We have one local girl here. She leave.’ The girl in the pink gown put down her dictionary and rummaged in a heap of make-up at the mirror next to her. ‘Here, is photo from party.’