Daddy's Girl (22 page)

‘Is she yours?’

‘No,’ said Clare.

‘Mm. I didn’t think so. Too skinny to have a baby.’

‘I saw your light on early Saturday morning,’ said Clare. ‘So I thought if you don’t sleep—’

‘Sleep!’ Mrs Levy snorted. ‘I’m eighty-nine. I’ll be dead
soon. For what should I sleep?’ She shuffled across a sitting room jammed with large pieces of furniture, relics of a long-gone past. The glass-fronted dresser was filled with white crockery, ready for Shabbat suppers that probably no longer took place, Clare thought, noticing photographs of young parents and children taken against the backdrop of the Sydney Opera House.

‘Come, my dear. Come
and sit.’ Mrs Levy perched on her chair by the window. Clare sat opposite her.

‘Hymie’s chair,’ observed Mrs Levy.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Clare.

‘Don’t be,’ said Mrs Levy. ‘He had a long life. He was difficult, but I didn’t kill him. I think I deserve a bit of peace before I meet up with him again. Now, what did you want to ask me?’

‘I thought maybe you saw something unusual,’ said
Clare. ‘Or heard something that struck you as out of the ordinary. You sit here most of the day?’

‘I do,’ said Mrs Levy. ‘I sit and listen and watch. Once a week we are taken down to the shops. Once a month, to a movie. Once a year, to a play. I didn’t see your little girl, the one the policeman lost,’ she said. ‘I thought about it when I heard the news. She disappeared when I was watching
Generations
.’ The old woman pulled a crocheted rug over her knees. ‘I thought of that last night too, that if I didn’t watch TV, then maybe I’d have seen who took her.’

She held her head to one side, a little old sparrow. ‘That’s funny.’

The rumble of a truck coming up the road, music throbbing.

Clare opened the window, letting in a blast of cold air, and a louder blast of sound.

‘Oh,’ said Joan Levy. ‘I thought it was the dustbin men, but they were here on Friday evening. Saturday morning, too.’

‘I saw them then,’ said Clare. ‘When do they usually come?’

‘Fridays. I heard them while I was making my tea. It’s their usual time. It’s the music, now that I’m thinking about it.’

‘What else did you hear?’ asked Clare.

‘I switched on the TV, but my programme hadn’t
started, so the sound was off – I hate the adverts. Then I went onto the balcony—’

‘You saw something?’ Clare interrupted.

‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ said Mrs Levy, ‘but I wasn’t looking.’

‘Perhaps you heard something,’ Clare persisted, ‘if the wind had dropped off a bit?’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Levy closed her eyes. I heard the bus that fetches the day staff from the home. I heard the parents
fetching their children in their expensive cars; the teachers going home in their cheap cars. Then I heard the ballet girls. Then it was quiet for a while. Then the dustbin trucks came. You can hear them, the Solid Waste men shouting as they come up the hill. You can hear them now.’

‘That’s it?’

‘The taxi. It was as if the door opened, spilling out that terrible American music about guns
and killing and women with stupid names.’ Mrs Levy pulled herself out of her chair and opened the door onto the narrow balcony. It was festooned with plants that blocked the view of the street below. ‘I was going to give the driver a piece of my mind, but then it was gone again.’

Clare stepped outside and stood next to Mrs Levy, who took Clare’s hand in her own. The street was empty apart
from a group of carers waiting to be fetched, and an old man sweeping the pavement outside the kramat across the road.

‘You’d better find that little girl soon, young lady, or they’ll kill her. That’s what the men do to the little girls in this country. Hunt them, play with them, listen to them cry, kill them.’

‘I know,’ said Clare. ‘I know that only too well. Thank you so much for your
time.’

The lift doors were closing when Mrs Levy called Clare back.

‘Dr Hart.’

Clare put her foot in the door, forcing it to open again.

‘I just remembered something,’ Mrs Levy smiled, pleased with herself.

Clare was instantly at her door.

‘It’s just a scrap,’ she said, hesitant.

‘All I have is scraps,’ said Clare.

‘It was later, now that I think of it. When it
was dark already.’

‘What was it?’ Clare asked.

‘I heard it again. I’m sure. But from much further away. I was surprised. Same terrible music playing. It came from there.’ She pointed down the hill to an area dense with houses and flats.

‘I was so angry, it was so late, so I called the security guard.’

‘Do you know the time?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Levy. ‘It was soon after half
past six. My son in Vancouver Skypes me at quarter to seven every Friday evening. So I was waiting, listening for the call. That’s when I heard it again. The same horrible music. Just for a few seconds, like the first time. As if someone opened a door quick.’

‘The taxi?’ asked Clare, puzzled.

‘Yes of course,’ said Mrs Levy impatiently. ‘That taxi driver is endless trouble. His name’s Moegmat.
I’m sure he makes it so loud because this is a Jewish old aged home.’

‘But was it unusual for him to be back here?’

‘No, no. Him, he’s just a nuisance. It was the other car. It was dark, no lights on. The car was suddenly there, from nowhere, and it was right behind the taxi.’

‘Do you know what make of car it was?’

Mrs Levy shook her head. ‘The phone rang then and I went to talk
to my son.’ Her voice turned bitter. ‘As if that’s a substitute for Friday night supper.’

‘What made you notice the car?’ Clare asked.

‘I don’t know. But I felt I’d seen it before,’ said Mrs Levy. ‘And then you coming here and asking me questions made me wonder if it was the same car that was parked under the trees late on Friday afternoon.’

‘How late, Mrs Levy?’ Clare struggled to
maintain an even tone of voice.

‘Oh, it was after five,’ she replied. ‘I’m sure of that.’

Riedwaan Faizal’s face was so familiar to the harassed constables ending their Saturday night shifts at Caledon Square that they didn’t even notice him come in. The doors on the empty corridors were all closed. The tiny room that was the nerve centre of the search for Yasmin was empty. Riedwaan switched on Rita Mkhize’s computer. The laptop whirred to life with excruciating slowness, but
at last the files came up. Riedwaan typed in the numbers.

The title pages came up. Number, date, place. Nothing else. Riedwaan pressed print, anyway. He’d need the codes when he waded through the swamp of documents at Criminal Records.

‘Faizal.’ The hand clamped down hard on his shoulder. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Don’t you ever go home?’

‘Home’s not what it used to be.’ Manoeuvring round to face Riedwaan, Van Rensburg said, ‘Jesus, man, you’re not pretty at the best of times. What happened to your face?’

‘I walked into the door. Fell down the stairs. Whatever.’

‘Whose door?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I got what I deserved.’

‘Listen, Faizal. I know how you love your daughter. And everyone knows what you’ve
been through in the last year. That’s why I’ve been keeping you out of the cells,’ said Van Rensburg.

‘You’ve also got a daughter,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You’d know you’d fucking die before you’d hurt her.’

‘Would I?’ Van Rensburg turned, pain etched on his face. ‘She’s dying slowly because of me, because of you. Because of what we do.’

Riedwaan lit a cigarette, a tremor in his hand.

‘Give it up, Faizal. Bring her home alive. There’s still time.’

‘You really don’t believe me, do you?’ Riedwaan shook his head. ‘You really do think I’ve done this.’

‘I haven’t arrested you yet, have I? Find her, bring her back, kill the scum who’ve got her, if it’s not you. Do it for both of us. For both our daughters.’

Riedwaan waited until the sound of his crutch disappeared down
the corridor, then he grabbed the sheet of paper from the printer tray and retraced his steps.

The station that housed the Criminal Records was quiet. Riedwaan flashed his ID at the constable on duty, telling him he needed access to where completed dockets were filed. He filled in the log and the man at the front desk returned to his porn magazine.

At the end of the passage was the heavy
door to the case archives. Riedwaan flicked open his phone, found the code he’d watched a colleague key in a year earlier. It had been saved on his phone, unused since then. The door swung open, to his relief. He switched on the lights.

The shelves were a mess. Dockets, boxes of paper, smaller pieces of evidence, all heaped together. He worked his way down the racks of shelving. Old, cold
in the recesses of the evidence store. The files covered in dust. It was nearly an hour before he pulled out the dockets he was looking for. He pulled out the first folder, a neighbour’s complaint in Plumstead. The second, a domestic in Muizenberg. And the third, a drunk driving charge in Milnerton. Minor incidents that would have gone away because charges were dropped or admission of guilt fines
paid.

He swallowed his disappointment. Then, unfolding his printout, he compared the numbers on it to those on the folders he’d found.

He read through the dockets again and again, trying to discern a pattern. He lingered on the last page, signed and dated by the investigating officer, the docket number recorded in writing. Thinking that a cigarette might help him to think straight, Riedwaan
compared that number with the docket number on the cover.

They did not match.

He compared the others. They didn’t match either. Riedwaan looked for the other two folders. The same thing. Simple incorrect filing. An ingenious way of making a case disappear. Untraceable, in fact. Except for the fact that the cases were absurd.

He dialled Clare’s number.

‘You found something?’ she
asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘An old lady complaining about parking because of an illegal business nearby – looks like it was a strip club or something. A Friday night domestic. A couple of black eyes, but no weapon. And a drunk driving charge.’

The background sound of traffic.

‘So why drop the information off at my place?’ she asked. ‘And why with that bit of elastic that young dancers
usually wear round their tummies?’

‘I wish I knew. A cat playing mouse with me.’

‘Check it again.’ A siren. ‘I have to go. Traffic cops.’

Riedwaan looked at the tattered security log, the pages grubby from all the handling. The record of who came in here, and why. He ran his finger down the scrawled names, checking the numbers. He found the first one, but the case had nothing to do
with old ladies and goats. It took him another fifteen minutes to find the second, and only five minutes for the third. The feeling at the back of his neck was not a pleasant one as he read through the cases. As Riedwaan closed the last docket, a sharp voice cut through the musty air. He shoved the dockets under his shirt, zipping closed the leather biker’s jacket.

‘Faizal!’ The man bounded
down the narrow space between the shelves. ‘What the fuck are you doing in here?’ he barked, his face red with rage.

Riedwaan raised his hands. In anyone else, the gesture would have been submissive. With him, it was a provocation.

‘I missed you, Rusty.’

The man’s red hair had been the bane of his life. Riedwaan’s using the nickname tipped him over the edge. He grabbed Riedwaan by
the collar.

‘Your fancy fucking Gang Unit, you think you’re a law unto yourselves. You’re going to see your
moer
at the end of this month. No more expense accounts and fancy GPS systems. You want something from Criminal Records, then you fill out the forms like everyone else.’ Riedwaan was a good six inches taller than the stocky man. He let Riedwaan go.

‘Your blood pressure bothering
you again, Rusty?’ asked Riedwaan, straightening his clothes.

‘I’ll break your legs if I see you here again.’

Clare stood in the street opposite Joan Levy’s window, her back to the clouds sliding over the saddle between Devil’s Peak and Table Mountain. She’d returned to the place Yasmin was last seen, before being taken down the arterial road that fed taxis into neighbouring parts of the city.

Walking on, past the gated cul-de-sac. Clare had walked past it yesterday, presuming it to be a private
driveway. But it was a lane wide enough for a car. An entrance that tradesmen may once have used to deliver goods to the mansions off it, whose grounds had long since been diced into squares and filled with cottages.

More recent residents had erected a security gate. It was country-quiet under the gnarled oaks, and the light was dim below branches that arched over the narrow lane. Clare saw
three parked cars. An Anglia with perished tyres and windows so grimy that she couldn’t see into it, a Golf with a smashed back window, and an old Mercedes that didn’t look as if it had gone anywhere in a while. There were three blocks of flats, each two storeys high. Further along, before the road narrowed to a littered alleyway, were four cottages. These were low, white Georgian buildings, three
of which had been done up and had new vines sprouting over red stoeps. The fourth was dilapidated, the brown paint flaking, the windows boarded up; a bowl of clean water stood at the front door.

Clare knocked.

‘Piss off if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness.’

‘I’m not.’

The door opened a crack. A woman peered out at Clare, and behind her several pairs of eyes gleamed in the dark passageway.
Cats, if the smell were anything to go by.

‘Yes?’

‘I wanted to ask—’

‘I’m not interested in being saved, I told you.’

‘I don’t want to save you,’ said Clare. ‘I just wanted to ask you about a little girl who disappeared from the ballet school up the road.’

‘I feed the cats there.’ The door opened again slowly. ‘But I haven’t been able to since all this trouble.’ Clearly aggrieved,
the woman went on, ‘The school said they needed more security. Poor kitties must be starving.’