Daddy's Girl (20 page)

‘You disappeared. What was I to think?’ said Clare. ‘Are you going to tell me where you were?’ asked Clare. ‘And what happened?’

‘I went looking for Voëltjie
Ahrend,’ said Riedwaan.

‘On your own?’

‘On my own.’

‘What a brilliant idea,’ Clare said. ‘And now you need to go to a hospital.’

‘Not a chance. Ndlovu will have me in three seconds if I go to an emergency room looking like this.’

‘She’s been after me too. I saw her twice this evening – once outside your house,’ said Clare.

‘What do you mean, outside my house?’

‘Come
into the bathroom so I can clean you up a bit,’ said Clare, ignoring his question.

Riedwaan followed her and asked, ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’

‘I’m a doctor’s daughter.’

Looking anything but reassured, he watched her open the medicine cabinet.

‘Sit on the edge of the bath,’ she ordered, ‘and take your shirt off.’

Obeying her rather warily, he dropped the shirt on the
floor.

Clare kept her eyes on his face and ran her fingertips over his cheekbone. Then, taking a pair of tweezers, she carefully worked a piece of gravel out of his forearm.

She slid her fingers over the black scorpion tattooed on his shoulder. The smooth brown skin was turning purple.

‘Someone hit you with a gun butt?’ she asked.

‘Could be,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Felt more like a crowbar,
though.’

‘So, not too much common ground in the conversation?’

‘We didn’t see eye to eye, no.’ He winced as she cleaned the torn skin on his temple. ‘On certain issues. My daughter. The murder of those two girls in Maitland. Graveyard de Wet’s gun.’

Clare stopped swabbing for a second. ‘Graveyard de Wet, the 27s general?’

‘You know him?’

‘I saw his daughter today. Pearl.’ Clare
dipped a fresh swab of cotton wool in disinfectant. ‘She told me she’d been hearing things about Yasmin. Rumours. She’s trying to find out more.’

‘Why’s she doing this?’

‘She’s got a soft spot for little girls,’ said Clare. ‘No one ever had one for her. Pearl herself never stood a chance with a father who was a 27. He raped her mother when she was fifteen, that’s how Pearl was conceived.
She never knew him, but she bore the brunt of her mother’s rage. He was released from prison when Pearl was twelve. She was desperate to meet this father-hero that everyone talked about, and begged her mother to let her go to him. He raped Pearl the night she met him. When her own little girl was born, she gave her away to keep her safe.’

‘He’s dead now,’ he told Clare as she resumed her cleaning.
‘When I found out about the gun, I checked. He died last week. Natural causes.’

‘I hope that makes Pearl breathe easier,’ said Clare. ‘What she’d heard was rumours. Mainly about Voëltjie Ahrend, that he owes money, that things are being stirred up. She was planning to find out more.’

‘Voëltjie Ahrend,’ said Riedwaan. ‘He’s using Graveyard de Wet’s reputation to advance himself. He’s as
ruthless as any 27, says he’s a general, but hasn’t spent the time in jail to earn the rank he’s claiming.’

‘If you went looking for this fight, how come you’re alive?’

‘A woman from the Neighbourhood Watch – I’d spoken to her before I went into the Ahrend’s house – she saw me being dragged into the bush. She said she hadn’t heard any gunshots so she waited until it was dark, and then
she came to find me.’ He held out his wrists, his ankles, showing Clare where the wire had bitten into his skin. ‘She untied me, brought me round, took me to my bike. I managed to get back okay.’

‘You’d be dead if that woman hadn’t found you. Or else they wanted you to survive. In which case, why? What use are you to them alive?’ Clare hooked a piece of gravel out of his cheek. It clattered
into the sink.

‘That was a rock,’ observed Riedwaan.

‘You look better without the blood, but only marginally.’ Clare taped up the worst cuts. ‘My reputation,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be finished, working with you.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘That was the other rumour. That some cops might be involved in Yasmin’s disappearance. You know, making this case you’re working
on walk – the one involving Ahrend and the 27s. Happens to dockets all the time.’

‘The cops, we’re like America,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Everyone loves to hate us, but when they need help, they call, and then we can’t get there quick enough for them. Everyone has an idea of how we are and how we should be – even our own bosses. And it changes every few weeks, depending on which way public opinion
blows. It’s right to be prejudiced against us, you just need different prejudices. The ones you have are the wrong ones.’

‘Which ones are wrong?’ Clare washed her hands.

‘That we’re all on the take. Or that half of us are so strung out that we’d shoot our families in a fucked-up moment of revenge. Or because of a misguided saviour complex – what the shrink I was sent to called it.’

‘And you, have you—?’

‘I’ve often thought about saving them,’ said Riedwaan, ‘from me.’

He caught her arm, pulled her close to him, so that her head was against his chest. She winced.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine.’

‘No, you’re not.’ He held her at arm’s length and rolled her shirt up; the bruises were already purple on her ribs and on her hip bones above her jeans.

‘Who did this to you?’ He turned her around, saw the mark next to her spine, the span of a man’s foot.

‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘I also have conversations that go wrong sometimes.’

‘Where was this little conversation?’

‘I went to find Calvaleen. I still haven’t managed to talk to her, though,’ said Clare. ‘Someone jumped me in the scrub outside the Winter Palace.’

‘And how come
you’re alive?’ he asked.

‘Your friend, Special Director Ndlovu, has been looking for you. She obviously decided that I’d lead her to you. So she came along. Right place, right time.’

Riedwaan pulled her shirt straight.

‘You were lucky too,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Clare.

‘Doesn’t really add up, though. What was she doing at exactly that spot?’

‘I didn’t think
to ask, I was too shaken,’ said Clare, cleaning the last wound. ‘Over to you, now. You can do the rest. Have a shower and we can get to work.’

She disappeared down the passage. Riedwaan could hear her moving about. The click of her answering machine. A woman’s voice. Then a man’s voice. Riedwaan froze. Cape Flats. Saying his name was Lemmetjie Adams. That his mother told him to phone. She
wanted to know if Clare had anything for them. Chanel. The other little girl who had gone missing.

Riedwaan stepped under the hot shower and the water hurt every inch of his body – but silenced the desperate voice on the phone. He wished he could escape the torture of his thoughts as easily. The head-doctor had given him pills. She gave everybody pills. The pills were in his bathroom cupboard,
each one snug in its flat foil bubble. Not much use to him here.

Coming out of the bathroom, he asked, ‘You haven’t maybe got any cigarettes?’

‘Nothing,’ she shook her head. ‘You’ll get some across the road.’

Riedwaan went to the garage down the road to pick up some Camels. On his way back, he saw Clare watching him from her balcony, a cup of tea in her hands.

Upstairs, he tapped
out a cigarette. By some miracle, his lighter had survived his encounter with Voëltjie Ahrend. He turned it over in his hand, revealing the engraving of a scorpion’s tail.

‘Yasmin saved her pocket money to buy this for my birthday. A scorpion because I’m Scorpio,’ said Riedwaan.

‘That explains the tattoo, then,’ said Clare.

Riedwaan nodded. But he didn’t tell Clare how he’d pulled
Yasmin onto his lap and she’d moulded her body to his, curling one arm around his neck.

‘Her birthday’s on Tuesday, isn’t it?’ Clare asked.

Riedwaan nodded. ‘I asked her what she wanted. She said she wanted me to come and live with her and her mommy again.’ Riedwaan lit his cigarette. ‘It’s like her heart’s been balanced on a high-wire that stretches between me and her mother. No fucking
safety net. All I could say to her is that we needed more time.’

‘What adults always say, I suppose,’ said Clare. ‘When they can’t tell the truth.’

‘Yasmin wanted to know what we did with all that time, all by ourselves.’

He flicked his cigarette off the balcony. It glowed orange for a second, and then died.

‘Let’s get to work.’

Clare spread her map out on the table. Table
Bay, the sweep of white beach, the jumble of the harbour, the contours of Table Mountain. She traced the arterial roads, the side streets, the empty spaces. Parks, fields, dumpsites, riverbanks that Clare had marked with black roses.

‘You think it’s the same man?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘There’re similarities in all of them. Lonely, isolated children. Very young. They all went missing, but it
wasn’t noticed immediately.’

‘Anything else?’ he asked, with just an inch of professional distance between himself and what he was looking at.

‘The injuries.’ Clare took a deep breath. Professional was good, better than looking at this man in front of her and thinking that it was his only child they were talking about. ‘Their feet,’ she said. ‘The soles of their feet were full of lacerations,
fresh ones. As if they’d run over hard stony ground. Three of them were found with just one shoe on.

‘A hunter. He makes them run, his quarry. Puts one shoe on the child, and then dumps her. Keeps the other shoe.’

‘A
memento mori
,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Like a saint’s relic.’

‘A trophy, the technical term.’ Then, almost whispering, ‘They’re so intimate, a person’s shoes. Tell you everything
– and nothing.’

Riedwaan fingered the single rose at the edge of Table Mountain.

‘For Yasmin?’

Clare nodded.

He took his phone out of his pocket. ‘Listen to this,’ and he turned up the volume. The wind in the pines, the rush of water coming off the mountain, the swish of a car, the faint echo of piano music drifting – one, two, three, one, two three. As faint as a pulse.

‘This
is what it sounds like,’ said Riedwaan when the recording finished playing. ‘The place where she disappeared. You’d think there’d be more, wouldn’t you?’

Clare was silent as she relived the sounds of that place.

‘Tell me. What am I missing?’ Riedwaan ran his fingers over the clusters of pins on Clare’s map. ‘Why can’t I see her?’

He played Yasmin’s message again, the sound of her voice
an exquisite torture.

‘Sound can be as intimate as touch,’ Clare said.

‘“The comfort zone”,’ Riedwaan read, peeling a Post-it off Clare’s map. ‘The East City, Salt River, Maitland. That’s not what I’d call these parts of town.’ He faced her. ‘Does it mean anything? Has it got something to do with my daughter?’

‘The comfort zone.’ Clare looked away from his bruised face. ‘It’s where
a killer feels safest, the area around his house, or whatever hole it is that he lives in.’

‘The area where Rita tracked the call.’ Riedwaan’s voice cracked.

Clare could not think of anything to say, so she put her hand out, intending to soothe the muscles knotted into cables across his shoulder blades. But Riedwaan put his hands on Clare’s hips, the sharp angle of the bone cradled in
his palm. He pulled her towards him, his head against her heart, The warmth of his body penetrated the thin silk of her shirt.

‘Some coffee,’ said Clare. ‘That would help.’

A heartbeat of silence. Then she disentangled herself and pulled away, closing the door behind her.

SUNDAY

The plumber was an early riser, so he was dressed and finishing his second cup of coffee when the doorbell went.

‘I’m sorry, Jimmy, so early.’ The old widow from next door.

‘Sunday, bloody Sunday, I don’t do work, but I do climb Lion’s Head. But why you up so early, Aunty?’

‘I woke from the stink,’ she said. ‘I think my drain is blocked. I saw your light was on, and I thought
maybe Jimmy’ll check for me.’

‘Right, I’ll come over now.’

She spent most of her time keeping an eye on the neighbourhood. Nothing else to do, now that all her sons were working in Dubai. No one to look after her either, except Jimmy next door.

Jimmy locked the house as he left. He took her arm and guided the old lady home, settling her back into her seat in the spotless kitchen.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘so where’s the problem? I don’t smell anything.’

‘It comes and goes, so it must be coming from outside. Must be the outside drain or the manhole,’ she said. ‘I could smell it from my bedroom.’

‘You wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look.’

‘You’re a good boy, Jimmy. Can I make you anything to eat?’

His heart sank. He’d be late, but she had no one else to cook
for, and she’d go on at him until he ate something.

‘Something small, Aunty, would be nice.’

Jimmy went into the neglected yard. The air carried the night chill, with just a hint of early-flowering jasmine. Underneath that, a hint of wet decay. He checked the outlet pipe from the kitchen, scooping out the leaves blown in by the wind, but found nothing blocking the drain. Following the
old pipes, he moved along the perimeter of the house. Nothing at the bathroom either.

A trace of the smell caught the back of his throat. He followed the sewage pipes to the manhole set in concrete below the washing line. The smell was stronger here. Jimmy prised off the metal grille. The smell of a drain, not pleasant, but nothing a plumber wasn’t used to. He put the cover back just as the
wind gusted across the barren yard, blowing sand into his eyes.

A dead dog. Or maybe a cat that had given up its mangy ghost on the scrubby lot that stretched away behind the row of semis that ended at the old lady’s house.

There was a gate in the corner of the hibiscus hedge that screened her yard from the open field. Jimmy cut through the wire and pushed it open. Nothing but heaps of
litter, a couple of used condoms, weeds. He picked up a stick and poked at the heap of rubbish. Loose bags, a rolled up piece of carpet. He poked again. No cats. No dead dogs. Jimmy stood up, the sweet, rotting smell twisting his gut into a knot of anxiety. He stood up and tugged at the carpet, hoping not to find a smothered litter of kittens or puppies.