Gallows Hill (21 page)

He asked the shopkeeper if he had another phone – one he could use to send
a text. The man didn’t bat an eyelid. He understood the need for anonymity in this part of the city.

‘Twenty rand,’ he said, opening a drawer and handing Riedwaan a battered Samsung.

Riedwaan sent Clare a text that was not entirely truthful.

In Joburg. Am OK. Temp no 071 3547792. Don’t call. I’ll call u.

The message indicated sent. For good measure, he removed the SIM from the
Somali’s phone. ‘How much?’ he said.

‘One hundred,’ said the man.

Riedwaan handed over the cash. Walked ten blocks, hired another car.

He re-played their last conversation in his head. Rita’s excitement, the hint of bravado.

He called the number of the farmer who had found Rita Mkhize bleeding on the road in Mpumalanga.

‘Du Randt.’

‘Riedwaan Faizal here. It’s about the
accident.’

‘Better if we meet,’ said Du Randt.

The directions meant nothing to Riedwaan, and he thought the time was optimistic, but he’d try anyway. Just 250 kilometres – half of them a dirt road.

He took off, heading for the tangle of highways that choked the city. The horizon was soon fractured with smokestacks and pylons marching across endless green veld.

Riedwaan drove northeast,
into a gathering storm. The clouds hanging low on the hills ahead were scudding forward, fat with rain. Lightning whipped at them, the thunder a distant drum roll. The temperature was dropping. And then he was in it. The storm buffeting the tinny car. Riedwaan hunched forward in the driving rain. The road was slick with water and visibility was almost nil. The thought flashed through his
head that nobody knew where he was. It was probably best that way.

Clare rolled up the window, switched on the air conditioning. It breathed out little gasps of cold air. Not enough to counter the afternoon heat as she drove to Woodstock. She parked in Sir Lowry Road. Dickensian, decayed, policed by blade-thin teenage boys who ran errands for the gangsters in their fortified houses. This was not the Cape Town seen in the tourist brochures handed out at
the airport.

She pressed the buzzer, her own reflection thrown back at her by an opaque glass door panel. Behind her, a reflection of crumbling Victorian row houses, mean when they’d been built, now a slum. Four too-skinny women sat on an orange sofa on a stoep.

The door whispered as it opened. A girl, her bony ankles in the grip of viciously high-heeled shoes, raised an eyebrow.

‘I’m here to see the director,’ said Clare.

‘We’re not quite open yet.’

‘You’re open enough for me,’ said Clare. ‘This won’t wait.’

The girl wrinkled her nose, as if trying to identify an unpleasantodour.

‘Name?’

‘Clare Hart. Say I am here to talk about Suzanne le Roux.’

The gallery girl prodded her phone, said a few words, and listened.

‘Follow me, please,’ she said,
opening the door wide. The room was icy.

Merle Osman’s angular body was dressed with a brutal elegance. Tailored silk jacket, cigarette pants, square-toed shoes. All as black as her cascade of hair.

‘Thank you, skat. Bring us some coffee.’ The girl glided away.

‘You can sit over there, Clare,’ she said, gesturing. ‘An Eames chair is one of the few works of art that has its uses.’

‘Thanks, Ms Osman,’ said Clare.

‘Call me Merle.’ Merle Osman folded herself into a chair opposite Clare.

‘Nice premises. How long have you had the gallery?’ asked Clare.

‘We were the first to move here, pioneers, Gilles and I,’ she said. ‘Early 90s. We moved from Green Point. Much cheaper. Now everyone’s following us. Woodstock’s the place to be. Green Point’s just for tourists.
Like the Waterfront.’

‘Where was your original gallery?’ asked Clare.

‘Off Somerset Road,’ said Merle Osman. ‘We’ve been here 15 years or more.’

‘I suppose you’ve seen all the trouble at Gallows Hill?’

‘Horrible.’ Merle Osman shuddered. ‘I thought those days of burning tyres and throwing stones were long gone.’

The gallery girl reappeared, a tray in her hands.

‘Put it down,
skattebol. Thank you. Now, run along.’ She poured the coffee into tiny cups. ‘So, you’re a fan of Lilith’s, are you?’

She glanced up when the door opened. It was Gilles Osman, the smooth, pale skin of his face stretched taut over angular bones.

‘Have you met my brother?’

‘I saw you, at Gallows Hill,’ he said with a rueful smile. ‘I’m sorry you had to deal with that.’

‘Oh, were
you there?’ asked Clare.

‘For his sins, Gilles is on the Green Point Heritage Committee,’ said Merle. ‘Has been, forever.’

He picked up a coffee cup. ‘You’re here about Suzanne le Roux, I hear.’

Merle Osman put her cup down. Bone china. Just the faintest rattle.

‘Her remains, I mean.’ Gilles Osman said.

‘Yes,’ said Clare, ‘You’ve been informed?’

‘Cape Town,’ he waved a
hand. ‘This place is a rumour mill.’

‘That’s true.’ Clare decided not to take the folder of clippings, evidence, out of her bag.

‘The only way to keep a secret in this town is to hide it in plain view,’ said Merle Osman.

‘Did you know Suzanne le Roux?’ asked Clare.

‘We represented her,’ said Osman. ‘Still do, when something comes up for sale. Doesn’t happen often, though. She didn’t
produce much work.’

‘We made her what she is,’ said Merle Osman. ‘And her work is quite valuable now.’

‘It was valuable then too,’ Osman said.

‘She was more than a client, I understand?’ said Clare.

‘May I ask about your interest in Suzanne?’ said Merle Osman.

‘I’ve been working on a film about slavery at the Cape. That’s why I was called to Gallows Hill in the first place
– when the old bones were discovered. Suzanne’s remains were found at Gallows Hill,’ said Clare. ‘I need to know more about her in order to find out who killed her.

‘Of course you do,’ said Osman. ‘We all do. It’s been such a shock. It’s unravelled all our assumptions.’

‘Have you spoken to Lilith?’ asked Merle Osman.

‘Yes,’ said Clare.

‘Our connection with Lilith goes back a long
time.’

‘Lilith was found alone,’ said Clare. ‘By the security police who had come to detain her mother.’ The silence in the room was intense. ‘But Suzanne was not at home. She’d disappeared, gone into hiding, apparently. Wasn’t there. I was wondering why that version of events was so easily accepted.’

‘There was nothing to counter it,’ said Osman. ‘Everything seemed to fit. There were
many people in hiding at the time. Things were different then.’

‘What did you know of her political involvement?’ asked Clare.

Gilles Osman looked at his sister. Back at Clare.

‘How well do you know Suzanne’s work?’ he asked.

‘I’ve seen some of it,’ Clare said. ‘But not much. What was her work like, how was it received?’

‘She was radical,’ he said. ‘She had an instinct for
the erotic as much as she had a need to bear witness to the slaughter going on in the townships.’

‘She could be exhaustingly principled at times,’ said Merle Osman.

‘She was young. So were we. One forgets.’ Osman turned to Clare. ‘Suzanne made everybody uneasy.’

‘You’ll recognise her work. It’s emblematic of the time.’

He passed her an old catalogue.

On the cover was a self-portrait,
the bold vermilion signature visible in the right-hand corner. Clare flipped through the prints. The woodcuts she’d seen in the paper. The stilled screams of mourning mothers, the blank eyes of soldiers massed on sand dunes, the bulldozers and crushed shacks. In the last of the series, a broken doll lay in the foreground, dizzying the perspective.

‘Suzanne was moving in a different direction
at the end,’ said Osman.

‘Originality. Lovers. Transgression. Beauty. Sex. Politics.’ Clare picked out the words from the introduction. ‘In my experience, any one of these is enough to get a woman killed, never mind all of them together.’

‘Suzanne made trouble wherever she went. Political transgression is just as fashionable now as it was then,’ he said.

‘What were her politics?’ asked
Clare, looking up from the catalogue. ‘Not much sign here that she was an activist.’

‘She was in way over her head,’ said Osman.

‘We all assumed she’d heard she was next,’ said Merle. ‘Which is why she went into hiding. That’s why she died out there in some hellhole full of insects.’

‘Merle thinks that Main Road marks the end of civilisation,’ smiled Osman.

‘She’s not the only
Capetonian who thinks that,’ said Clare. ‘Were you born and bred here?’

‘Bred in Cape Town. Born in the Karoo,’ said Merle Osman. ‘Carnarvon. It’s on the road to nowhere.’

‘It’s not always that easy, burying one’s past,’ said Osman. ‘But your question about Suzanne. The security police were after her.’

‘Jacques Basson,’ said Clare. ‘I heard he had it in for her. Did he ever come to
the gallery?’

‘Why would he?’ asked Merle Osman.

‘I don’t know,’ said Clare. ‘Looking for Suzanne, I suppose? Checking up on her work? If she was your artist, you’d have been under surveillance too.’

‘I am sure we were,’ said Osman. ‘But we managed to walk that fine line between provocation and trouble. That poor child.’

‘You saw her that night, of course,’ said Merle Osman, putting
down her coffee cup.

‘Oh?’ said Clare, looking from sister to brother, their features mirrored in each other’s faces.

‘Suzanne?’ said Osman. ‘Of course we did. It was such a wonderful launch. She really was there, right on that magical edge of success. Stellar she was, that night.’

‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘I saw the pictures in the
Cape Times
. It was packed.’

‘Not only Suzanne,’ said
Merle Osman, her eyes on her brother.‘Later, there was also the child. We had to deal with her too, of course. Or you did, Gilles.’

‘Do tell me,’ said Clare.

‘But when the police found Lilith, they called me,’ said Osman.

‘The security police, you mean? Basson and the others who’d come to detain Suzanne?’

‘Of course,’ said Osman, putting his cup back onto the tray. ‘Lilith was
like a wild thing. Absolutely out of control, kicking and scratching. Wouldn’t let anyone near her. Wouldn’t speak either – mute with terror. That’s all in the social worker’s records, of course. He put his cup down. ‘I’m sure you’ve checked.’

‘I did interview Wilma Smit – ’

‘Yes, that was her name,’ said Merle Osman. ‘I’d forgotten.’

‘I’m curious,’ said Clare. ‘Why did the police
call you?’

‘I was her mother’s art dealer, and also her friend,’ said Osman.

‘Of which she had few,’ said his sister.

‘Come now, Merle,’ said her brother, ‘Suzanne was so lovely, so talented, so competitive. It wasn’t easy for such a tall poppy to flourish.’

‘You were actually more than a friend, Gilles. Her lifeline. You sell yourself short. You were always getting her out of
trouble. And she was always getting you into trouble.’

‘And how did the social worker get hold of you?’ pressed Clare.

‘Quite simple, Clare,’ smiled Osman. ‘Suzanne had my number listed alongside the plumber and the fire brigade as someone to contact in an emergency. The closest, really, to next-of-kin, I was.’

‘But you were executor of her will, anyway,’ said Merle Osman. ‘Along with
that old lawyer, Dobrowski. He passed away a few years ago, if I recall.’

‘Yes,’ said Osman, ‘he died some time after Lilith inherited.’

Clare scribbled some bulleted notes.

‘Do you have any more questions?’ asked Osman, glancing at his watch. ‘I do need to get on. Mad time of year, this.’

‘Just a few,’ said Clare, leaning forward. ‘Best to get it all covered at once, I find. Saves
time. Tell me, how was Lilith that night? Do you remember?’

‘Like it was yesterday,’ said Osman. ‘Little Lilith was a ball of terror. Dehydrated. It was hot, just like this year. The wind too, howling round the house like a banshee. No wonder she was terrified.’

‘So, you’d have met Basson that night then?’

‘It’s quite possible he was still there when we were called inabout Lilith.There
were police all over. And then the social workerarrived.’

‘What about Suzanne’s friends?’ asked Clare. ‘Her family?’

‘Suzanne was estranged from her family. They were very conservative. Didn’t approve of her friends or her habits. I think that’s the most polite way of putting it,’ said Osman. ‘But the social worker got in touch with Suzanne’s stepmother. She took the girl.’

‘It was
a disaster,’ said Merle Osman. ‘She ran away. As Lilith got older, she became increasingly aggressive.’

‘We kept an eye on her, made sure she got an education. Made her an artist.’

A flock of pigeons flew at the window, banked in time, and settled on a ledge where they preened in the black glass windowpanes.

‘Our relationship with Suzanne was probably more complicatedthan that between
most artists and gallery agents,’ said Merle Osman.

‘And Lilith?’ asked Clare. ‘What was your relationship with her?’

‘Lilith.’ Osman went to stand behind his sister’s chair. ‘A complicated girl.’

‘That’s a polite way of putting it,’ said Merle. ‘Gilles was always very tolerant of her.’

‘She’s so brilliant, so gifted,’ he said. ‘So alone. We had to keep an eye on her.’

‘Even
before her mother abandoned her?’ his sister said.

‘She didn’t abandon her, Merle. Suzanne wasn’t to know what would happen.’

‘You’re still making excuses.’ She gave an impatient wave of her hand.

Osman looked away. An old conversation, a private one, groovedon familiar paths.

‘We were lovers once,’ said Gilles. ‘I may as well tell you.’

‘You and how many others?’ said Merle
Osman.

‘I doubt this is relevant to your interests, Dr Hart,’ said Osman, his hand on his sister’s shoulder.

Clare was silent as she paged through to the end of the catalogue.

The last works were abstractions. A white background, with a blue and red tracery as fine as cracks in porcelain.