Daddy's Girl (35 page)

She braked when she realised she’d overshot the narrow gravel road. She reversed. The metal gate and the old sign were overgrown with lank winter weeds. Clare swung left, bumping over the gravel, but Riedwaan was already out of the vehicle, a bolt cutter in his hands. He cut the chain on the old gate and pushed it open. The Cricket Pavilion
sign was pitted with bullet holes. They bumped down the track until they came to a clearing. Clare parked and they both got out. The pistol tucked into its holster was loaded.

‘Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia and us. Not many countries need bulletproof vests for children.’ Clare slipped the child-sized Kevlar under her own as Riedwaan strapped his on too.

The path ahead of her was overgrown,
the carcasses of an old cart and a couple of cars protruding above the weeds. ‘Keep Out’ signs hung from the rusty barbed wire.

The old ticket office stood desolate, a bar welded across the faded blue door. The stench of human waste indicated that vagrants had found shelter on the porch. There was no one there now, nothing except a stack of old cardboard and rags in the corner. A tattered
advertisement for a game a decade earlier still clung to the notice board.

‘That’ll take too long to get open,’ said Clare. ‘Let’s go round the back.’

All the windows were smashed, but the jagged apertures had been sealed with grenade mesh welded to the frames. Clare hurried on, listening for the sound of Riedwaan’s footsteps on the other side of the building. She couldn’t hear anything.
The building was tall and sturdy. She picked her way across the uneven ground, steadying her breathing. Trees shifted and sighed in the wind.

The back of the pavilion was also barred shut, planks nailed diagonally across a door that seemed to have been splintered with a crowbar. Empty bottles littered the back porch. In a corner were discarded straws, broken light bulbs – the detritus of tik
users. On the walls were layers of graffiti. Out of the line of sight of both the living and the dead. A place where teenagers pushed out of crowded homes could hang out undisturbed.

Clare righted an empty drum and stood on it, angling her torch in the skylight above the door. Inside, pigeons roosting on rafters shuffled a little, then settled their heads under their wings, away from her probing
light.

The interior was stripped bare. There was nothing to be seen but a single broken chair and rubbish that had blown in through the broken windows. Near the change-rooms was a hole in the floor, with wooden steps disappearing into it. The cellar. Clare climbed off the drum and stood on the porch. The building was slightly elevated but the lower vents had been welded closed. The cellar
was impenetrable.

‘Find anything?’ Riedwaan came around the corner.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘The building’s like Fort Knox. And you?’

‘Nothing on the other side. No one’s been here for months. Did you see inside?’

‘Take a look yourself,’ pointing to the drum. ‘I couldn’t see anything. There’s a cellar opening, but no sign of anything. No footprints, no apparent disturbance. Nobody’s
been inside recently. Not here, anyway.’

‘Nothing,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Fucking wild goose chase.’

‘Wait,’ said Clare. ‘Bring your torch here.’

She spread out the map she’d stuffed into her pocket.

‘We’re here,’ she said. ‘Charlie told me that the old electricity meter served the cricket pavilion. But look at this.’ She pointed to the faint outlines on the map. ‘This whole area was
once part of the sports grounds. And the pavilion was just one part of it. Look here. You see, there’s another building at the end of these fields. If it’s all one complex there should be only one electricity meter. We’re looking at the wrong end.’

‘So where do you think we should be looking?’

‘Listen to those sounds,’ said Clare. Apart from the late-night cars whining along the N1, all
was quiet. In the distance, the wretched yip of dogs that had long since given up hope of being rescued. Then the sound she’d heard with Danny Roman, barking that grew more frenzied, as if someone were passing by the place where they were chained.

‘Remember the sound in between Yasmin’s voice?’ There was more of it. ‘I think that way, closer to the highway, where the shipping yards are.’

‘If you’re right,’ said Riedwaan, ‘we should walk there. Moving the car now will attract too much attention.’

Clare moved along the fence, Riedwaan just in front of her.

A church bell tolled the half-hour from across the empty fields. Twelve-thirty. In the distance, the thump of music from the Winter Palace. Clare wouldn’t have noticed the car if the cat hadn’t hissed at her, disappearing into the darkness with its scrawny kittens in tow. The car was parked deep under the trees, more a dim shadow than a solid object.

An inconspicuous Toyota. Unobtrusive.

She put her hand over her torch and switched it on, her fingers dulling the light.

‘Looks like it’s been here a couple of days,’ Clare whispered.

She tried the doors, finding them unlocked. She slid in the back and felt along the car seat. A small plastic Disney figure and a takeaway box. On the floor, a litter of pizza boxes. Clare checked in the front. Some scrunched paper napkins.
She opened the boot. A jack, a spare tyre, a worn pink ballet slipper.

Clare picked it up, looked inside it. The grubby imprint of five toes circling the ball of a foot. A tiny object. She shook it out.

The molar gleamed white in her hand.

A milk tooth, childhood serrations worn smooth.

She dropped it into Riedwaan’s hand. He curled his fingers tightly round the tooth.

‘That
path,’ said Riedwaan, pointing to the disturbed leaf litter. ‘Let’s go.’

They pushed their way through the scrub, coming to a clearing.

Ahead of them was a building. The exposed steel ribs of damaged roofing stood silhouetted against the distant streetlights.

‘SWIM,’ said Clare. ‘What Pearl was trying to tell me in her text message. The old public swimming pool. You can’t see it from
the street any more, not the way it’s wedged between the highway and the shunting yards now.’

Riedwaan and Clare moved as one towards the only light ahead: a faint square above the weeds at the back of the building. The doors and windows were boarded up. They worked their way slowly round the building.

Nothing to be seen in any of the dim rooms they looked into.

The front entrance
had a steel plate welded across it, but a hole had been hacked into the back wall where the plaster had crumbled.

‘I’m going in,’ said Riedwaan, setting his phone. ‘Put your phone on vibrate mode. I’ll call you in five minutes. If it’s clear, follow me inside.’

The roar of a goods train masked the sound of Riedwaan cutting through the razor wire coiled across the entrance.

Then he
ducked inside as a truck went past on the highway.

Clare strained to hear what was happening inside, but the night threw back strange bangs and echoes that she couldn’t make out. She listened for Riedwaan’s footsteps, but by the time the vehicle had passed on the flyover there was nothing but silence in the old building.

The five minutes took an excruciatingly long time to pass, and by
the time they did, Riedwaan had still not called. She waited another two minutes. Then she pushed her way through the hole and hugged the wall, allowing her eyes to adjust to the gloom. She was in a large square room. A change-room. In its centre was a concrete block, with remnants of nailed-down planks here and there. Opposite her were two exits. With all the debris on the floor, it was hard to
tell which one Riedwaan had used. She stopped at the first opening and listened.

Silence.

She peered down the narrow passage curving away into the darkness. No light at the end of it. Clare eased the gun, cool and reassuring, out of its holster. It lay snug across her palm, the wood of the handle as smooth as the metal, but warmer to the touch. The gloom ahead of her was unnervingly silent.

She made her way to the next entrance, wider, lighter, with its glass roof panels still intact. Ahead of her she heard voices, muffled by the thick walls of the building. The sounds came from the other side of the room. There were four doors on the opposite wall, one ajar. A pale ray of light stretched across the dusty floor. She adjusted her Kevlar vest and inched her way along the wall, past
the old tuck shop opening and towards the ticket kiosk.

Voices ahead of her.

She ducked behind a counter.

A radio playing, Heart FM requests.

Takeaway boxes littering the floor.

The rattle of a door being jimmied open behind her. Footsteps. Silence. Clare strained to hear, but the blood drumming in her ears was so loud that she heard nothing. She sensed the body heat a fraction
of a second before a hand clamped over her mouth, an arm encircling her ribs.

‘Don’t move.’

‘Jesus,’ said Clare. ‘You almost gave me a heart attack.’

‘Yes, I could feel.’ Riedwaan loosened his grip around her ribs.

‘You find anything?’

‘Nothing yet,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Then I heard the voices here.’

‘The radio,’ said Clare. ‘That’s all I heard. Someone on their own, I guess.’

‘I’m going in,’ said Riedwaan. ‘So you need to tell me, can you shoot?’

‘I grew up on a farm – of course I can shoot.’

‘Cover me, then,’ he whispered.

‘Aren’t you going to wait for more back-up?’

‘On its way,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Phiri?’ asked Clare. ‘You called him?’

‘Van Rensburg,’ he said. ‘He got me out. He’ll back me up.’

‘You explained where?’

‘He just said
he’s on his way.’

Riedwaan nudged the door and it swung open.

The dockets she’d glimpsed on Van Rensburg’s desk, Van Zyl’s illegible notes. She’d seen them before: the heroin cases Van Rensburg wanted nothing to do with.

‘Wait,’ she hissed.

But the door had already slammed shut behind him.

Clare felt inside her jacket, found her cellphone, scrolled down for Latisha’s home number.

Graveyard de Wet hunched his shoulders into his jacket and rehearsed the plan in his head. The trees gave him cover, and the slight rise behind the Winter Palace provided a vantage point. And behind him, shipping containers were stacked like giant Lego blocks next to the highway. Everything was laid out before him. Coronation Road, the wide, straight street that led to the new building
on the corner. Some cars already outside, their owners at the bar. The whole thing was an investment that had been claimed by shooting those two girls with a gun that belonged to him, Graveyard de Wet. Claimed with the power of the 27s – without that power being earned.

The names of those sentenced to die were etched in his mind, indelible as the tattoos on his body. His daughter he’d already
left for dead on the floor of her house. Next was Voëltjie. The policeman’s little girl would be a
bonsela
. She was with Voëltjie, he was sure. Just the kind of stupid thing Voëltjie would do, with a picture in his head of himself like some sort of Mafia gangster. The Godfather of the Flats. Voëltjie would give him the girl; he’d do anything to live a little longer. Beg, plead, cry like the
wyfie
he was – the
wyfie
Graveyard had made him in the cells.

The doctor would be for afters – she was a tough one, but they were the most fun. He closed his eyes, picturing her white bedroom. The patterns he’d make on her skin – a canvas of the pain inside him. He ran his knife across his thumb, drawing a bead of blood. Just right.

The Maserati turned into the parking lot, and De Wet made his
way through the scrub around the Winter Palace. He watched as the doorman opened the car door and Voëltjie Ahrend got out, his white suit a beacon against the dark trees. Bending close to his ear, the doorman spoke to Voëltjie. Then Voëltjie turned to his bodyguard, smiling, arms out as he shrugged. The bodyguard leaned against the blue sports car, watching with a scowl as the doors of the Palace
were flung open and Voëltjie entered alone.

Crouched thirty metres away, Graveyard de Wet watched as his quarry walked up the red carpet, tugging at his cufflinks. In the cells, he had seen a reflection of himself in Voëltjie Ahrend. Had taken him under his wing, taught him the secrets of the Number.

De Wet remained hidden in the small clearing on the edge of the parking lot. He pictured
Voëltjie Ahrend walking past the women on the stage, to the mirrored door at the back of the club. The door sliding open, Voëltjie stepping into the inner sanctum. A boy worth fuck-all, a
weggooikind
, sitting down in the seat of honour opposite his host at the shiny oval table.

This was the deal Voëltjie had told him about, spinning it out as if he was watching
Scarface
. He wouldn’t worry
with the tame lawyer from Constantia. Nor with Valentin the Russian, the go-between who’d come to Cape Town as a member of a kick-boxing team ten years before.

De Wet focused on a bull-necked Russian who stepped out of a car and strode to the entrance of the Palace. The man moved like a 27s general in a prison exercise yard, with an instinctive authority.

It was Gorky himself – Voëltjie
had told him all about the ruthless Russian. Told him, too, about the new ways, paying a fee instead of shooting. That way, the Russians had already elbowed themselves some space on the Atlantic seaboard, pushing the other syndicates out.

Voëltjie’s bodyguard walked towards the scrub to take a piss. Knife in hand, De Wet followed him. He turned the knife in the man’s throat and watched as
his life oozed into the mud.

Then he took the dead man’s pack of cigarettes.

He lit one and smoked it. Watched as more cars arrived. A BMW spilt two young men; security searched them, let them in. Next, a couple of Polos, a 4X4. Not bad, for a Monday night.

Voëltjie Ahrend’s attention was fixed on the huge Russian at the head of the table. The man’s eyes were such a pale blue that
they appeared almost white. As hard and opaque as pebbles.

‘
Die Voëltjie
,’ he said in perfect Afrikaans. ‘We’re ready for you.’ A subtle inflection in his voice.