Gallows Hill (14 page)

‘Remember that these are only ever approximate forensic facial reconstructions. The nose is all soft tissue, so one guesses. The ears, too. With this skull, there was something very delicate in the bone structure.’ Katrin Goldfarb touched the head with a maternal
tenderness. ‘And the bones are the architecture of the face. Her beauty was grounded in symmetry and proportion. It’s what she was born with.’

The artist glanced at Clare. ‘From what I’ve seen, this kind of beauty is rarely a blessing. It’s something men want to possess. Maybe it’s what got her killed.’

‘Maybe,’ said Clare. ‘But maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘When will this run in the press?’

‘Soon,’ said Clare. ‘I’m going to hold things back a bit, first. Follow a few things up.’

She took a series of pictures of the clay face Katrin Goldfarb had fashioned.

‘I’ll pack her up for you,’ she said when Clare was done.

She picked up the head and put it into tissue paper.

‘It’s hard to make an identification after so long,’ said Katrin,
handing Clare the box as if it were a gift. ‘I did a little girl some years ago for Raheema Patel. Every parent who’d ever lost a child saw their daughter’s face in hers.’

Clare drove back to the Bo-Kaap, the posters on Buitengracht whipping by, a blur of faces. A new band on some, on others, the art scene’s latest ‘It’ girl, her face shadowed in the orange glow of the street lamps.

All
Clare wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep. Instead, she called Vincent van Kleef in Amsterdam.

‘I can send you some images of the woman who may have bought your green dress,’ said Clare.

‘Okay, send them through and I’ll call you back.’

It was the narrowest of possibilities.

Riedwaan returned the Toyota to the police parking lot. He fetched his bike keys and his helmet from
his office. The room felt far too quiet without the base thump that came from Rita Mkhize’s iPod. He considered phoning her, warning her to take care, but he didn’t. She’d laugh at him, tell him again that she was a big girl, which she was – in spirit, if not in size.

He stopped at the Nando’s in Long Street and ordered himself peri-peri chicken, double chips, and litre of Coke. For Clare
he got a chicken burger without a roll, and a salad. She’d eat all his chips, anyway. The thought of her made him tip the pretty Nando’s girl 20 bucks. In return, she gave him a wide, happy grin.

Clare was curled up on the couch, asleep.

‘You want a drink?’ he said, nudging her.

She sat up, curling her legs under her. ‘That’s what I need.’

Riedwaan went to the kitchen. He poured
two fingers for himself, and one for Clare.

‘You look finished,’ said Riedwaan, sitting down next to her.

‘I’m okay,’ she said, leaning against him. ‘Just tired.’

‘What’s she like?’ He sat next to her.

‘Beautiful.’ Clare sipped her whiskey.

‘It’s a job, Clare,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You just have to do it.’

‘How to do it,’ said Clare. ‘That’s what’s getting to me. I feel wiped
out right now.’

‘Don’t.’ Riedwaan put a finger on her lips. ‘I’ve had it for the day.’

‘But –’

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Let me just be with you. Have supper, watch TV, like other people.’

‘Okay.’ She gave him a smile. ‘So, what did you get me?’

‘Burger without the bun, and salad.’ Riedwaan handed her the box.

‘Can I have some of your chips?’

‘Why not?’ he smiled.

‘What’s
funny?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, sprinkling salt and vinegar. ‘Here. Eat. You’ll feel better.’

They ate straight out of the boxes. Cardboard, polystyrene. Essential to the taste of a takeaway.

‘This is not bad,’ said Clare, finishing the chips. ‘Being like other people.’

‘It’s the novelty,’ he said.

‘Does it wear off?’

‘Don’t know,’ he said, turning on the TV. ‘I’ve never done
it long enough.’

Riedwaan pulled her into the crook of his arm.
The Wire
. A TV cop pushing a TV suspect up against a wall. Searching him, making him break into a TV sweat. Clare concentrated on identifying the accents. Her mind skipped whole sections of the plot, if there was one. Baltimore cops frisking gangsters in baggy pants and hoodies. Getting shot. Shooting gangsters. Same cops, same
suspects, same sweat.

‘Looks like home, doesn’t it?’ she said.

‘Ja,’ said Riedwaan. ‘It’s time they did a series about Cape Town.’

‘What would you call it?’ She ran her hand under Riedwaan’s shirt and traced the scorpion tattooed on his shoulder.

‘The Number.’

‘Sounds like a winner.’ Clare stood up. ‘I’ve had enough cops for one day. I’m going to bath and go to bed.’

‘End
of the episode,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there.’

‘Liar,’ she said. ‘Once you start watching, it’s two hours before you stop.’

‘This is the last episode,’ he smiled. ‘Otherwise I would be lying.’

10 February

It took Clare a while to realise that the insistent noise was her phone.

‘Hello,’ she said, groping on the bedside table.

‘Vincent here,’ an accented voice. ‘Amsterdam.’

‘Of course.’ Clare looked at the time. Six o’clock.

‘I know it’s early,’ he said. ‘But your email. I’ve hardly been able to sleep. Such a beauty.’

‘She was,’ said Clare.

Riedwaan came into the room
showered and dressed already. She held the phone away.

‘I’ll call you later,’ she said. ‘Sorry, Vincent, but did you recognise her?’

‘Not at first, but I checked my archive. Looking through the pictures brought back so many memories,’ he said. ‘For a time we lived in a squat in the Ooster dock. All of us anti-capitalists trying to make money. A whole community of artists, designers, anarchists
and exiles. The woman in the green dress, she was part of it for a while. I sent the pictures to you now. I’m sure it’s her in them, the woman you’re looking for.’

Clare opened her laptop, retrieved her mail.

A photograph of the designer, a tiny man engulfed by Amazonian models. She clicked through more images. Too much 1980s hair, too much make-up, but the young women clustered on jewel-coloured
sofas were lovely, nonetheless. So were the androgynous young men sipping cocktails at black granite bar counters.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I have the pictures.’

‘I’ve marked up a couple of possibles,’ he said. ‘The second and third pictures. I think it might be that girl on the right. Like a sun-tanned, bare-footed Grace Kelly.’

Clare enlarged the image. There was a fleeting resemblance
between the smiling woman in the photograph and the reconstruction. It was there in the architecture of the face, in the proportion rather than the detail. Here now, then gone.

‘Do you have a name for me?’ said Clare.

‘I’m not totally sure,’ said Van Kleef. ‘But the notes I had on the back of those pictures said Le Roux. I vaguely remember a Susie, Sonya, Cindy. Something like that. I’ve
emailed you all the pictures I can find of her. There aren’t that many. Just from that summer of 1987.’

‘Must’ve been when she bought that dress,’ said Clare. ‘Do you know what became of her?’

‘No, sorry,’ said Van Kleef. ‘Those days, people came and went all the time in Amsterdam, it was a city of transients. Passing through, looking for a party. South Africans too, escaping your politics,
white boys skipping their call-up. All of them looking for a place to breathe.’

‘Please, try to remember. Anything,’ said Clare.

‘I think she might have painted,’ said Van Kleef. ‘I have this slice of memory. It’s not attached to anything before or after. But it’s about a Sally or Cindy or Suzanne.’ His voice trailed off and Clare willed him to go on. ‘Anyway, she has paint under her nails,
and she’s telling me she paints so that people will feel what she sees. Something like that.’

He paused again.

‘I’m sorry. It’s such a long time ago, I cannot remember anything more.’

‘These photographs may help trigger someone else’s memory,’ said Clare.

‘I dreamt of her last night. That woman in my green dress,’ he said.

Clare caught Riedwaan just as he was getting onto his
bike, giving him a quick summary of the call.

‘Beginner’s luck, has to be,’ said Riedwaan.

‘I deserve a bit of luck,’ said Clare. ‘All things considered.’

‘I hope this hasn’t used it up,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You said you had a name.’

‘Cindy, Sonya, Sally – or Susie or Suzanne. Surname Le Roux,’ said Clare. ‘I’ll have to check the missing persons’ reports from the time. There was nothing
about her in the papers I looked through.’

‘Speak to Basie Steyn,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘I’m going home,’ she said.

Riedwaan wanted her to stay, the thought clear for the first time. How to ask her to stay? He did not have a way. The safest bet seemed to be to say nothing. That worked for most men.

‘I’ll phone you, then,’ he said.

Clare went back inside. She called
Fritz but again there was no sign of her. She felt a twinge of concern, but when she checked the food bowl there were only scraps left. Fritz gone walkabout again – Clare smiled to herself. She bundled her clothes into her suitcase. The books next to the bed, she left. She checked the bathroom. Hair conditioner, bath salts, panties in the washing basket. She did a once-over of the living room and
fished a sarong and a red bikini top from behind the couch. When she looked about, it was as if she had never been there. She pocketed her key and closed the front door behind her. The morning was still fresh, the heat feeling no need to hurry. It had all day to push the mercury up to the predicted 38º.

Clare told herself that she liked to have everything in one place. And she liked to be
alone. This was nonsense, having half her stuff here, half at home. She’d come back later for her cat. She put her things on the back seat of her car and drove down the cobbled streets of Bo-Kaap, joining the clogged traffic in the city below.

‘It’s too darned hot. I’d like to be with my baby tonight, but it’s too darned hot.’ Cole Porter on the radio. Clare hit the off button. The city was
an oven, her car was a furnace, and she was not in the mood for DJ wit. The road past Parliament was closed, the traffic had been diverted, and the warren of one-ways that led off it were clogged with Somali traders. The centre of Cape Town heaved with bad-tempered traffic. A mini-bus taxi cut in front of Clare. She slammed on brakes.

There was no parking anywhere, so she drove up onto the
pavement.

The Caledon Square charge office was mayhem, but Basie Steyn was waiting for her. His face had seen better days. His nose had been broken twice defending his police heavyweight title. Another time by a skinny gangster with an iron bar and a child’s broken body hidden under his bed. The gangster had been better-looking than Steyn before they met. Not afterwards, though. Which may
have worked to his advantage in prison when he got life for rape and murder.

‘Hello, Doc,’ said Steyn.

‘Morning, Basie,’ said Clare. ‘Why’s it so mad outside today?’

‘Some Parliament thing,’ he said, slotting coins into a vending machine. He handed Clare a Coke and took a swig of his own. ‘Some kind of practice run. You’d think so many years into democracy, everyone’d know how to waddle
down a red carpet to eat a free lunch.’

Steyn led Clare into the depths of the building. He unlocked a door.

‘My office,’ he said.

A window. A desk. A filing cabinet. A chair.

‘Lucky you so skinny, Doc. Otherwise you’d never fit in.’

Steyn shoved a stack of coffee mugs out of the way.

‘You were sick, I hear.’

‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘It happened in the Caprivi. I’m better
now.’

‘You nearly died, that’s what I heard.’

‘That’s just Riedwaan exaggerating,’ said Clare.

‘Faizal does a lot of things,’ said Steyn. ‘But one thing he doesn’t do is exaggerate.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Clare.

Steyn threw her a sceptical glance and unfolded a camping chair for her.

‘You sit on this.’

‘Why are you locked away in here?’ asked Clare. ‘Last time I saw you,
you had two floors in Goodwood and a full staff.’

‘Child Protection was dissolved with the other specialist units,’ said Steyn. ‘I got redeployed. Comrade-speak for cutting your balls off – sorry to talk like that in front of a lady. Apparently I’m more useful here.’

‘Are you?’

‘I’m no fucking use to anyone. In six months, I’m gone. Early retirement. Till then, I do what I can. Missing
Persons still gets under my skin. You working with Faizal on this girl from Gallows Hill?’

‘In theory, yes,’ said Clare. ‘In practice, I’m on my own.’

‘What’s Faizal doing?’

‘Digging into Mpumalanga Holdings. The developer got the Gallows Hill site for a song, according to what Riedwaan and Rita Mkhize’ve dug up. Then got the plans passed without a single public squeak.’

‘How’s
that possible?’ asked Steyn.

‘Connections,’ said Clare. ‘Underground and political. Looks like an inner circle that has access to the sale of certain pieces of valuable state land, and then benefits from their development. For buildings the state will rent from them again. It forms a perfect financial circle.’

‘A perfect storm, too, from what I hear,’ said Steyn, ‘Faizal shifting his attention
to politicians. The BEE boys from up north. And their fixers.’

He tossed his empty Coke can into the bin.

‘Not everyone’s happy.’

‘Nobody’s happy when Riedwaan’s involved,’ said Clare. ‘Seems to be the rule, that.’

‘But this time people are very unhappy,’ said Steyn. ‘You hear things in the corridors. Half-things. Then people stop talking. You tell him this. From me.’

‘I’ll
do that,’ said Clare.

Steyn lit a Stuyvesant.

‘You said on the phone you’ve got a name,’ he said.

‘Le Roux,’ said Clare. ‘Susan, Suzanne. Or something like that – maybe Cindy, Sally, Sonya. She may have been an artist.’

Clare placed the photographs on the desk.