Gallows Hill (25 page)

Clare looked at him sharply. ‘Did she tell you that?’

‘I stay in touch,’ said Basson. ‘Old habit. Look. What do you want me to say? All of this is in those reports you have there. I’m telling you
nothing new.’

‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

‘What do you think, Dr Hart?’

‘No,’ said Clare. ‘I don’t. You would never have let me in if you had.’

Clare stood up to leave.

‘Thank you for your time.’ She stood in front of a small woodensculpture. A girl in a blue bathing suit, her raised arms giving the figure a sense of ineffable yearning. ‘Claudette Schreuders.’

‘Read the business papers, my dear.’ Basson narrowed his eyes. ‘Art is the best insurance policy for the future.’

‘So they say,’ said Clare. ‘Better than shares, better than gold.’

‘Expensive, but I also like to possess them.’

‘Unusual preference,’ she said. ‘In the same newspapers I’ve read how some people with your background, if I may call it that, did guns, others did drugs.’

‘Like shit,’ smiled Basson. ‘It happens.’

‘You did art. And secrets, I suppose one might say. A sideline in secrets.’

‘That’s all in the past.’

‘It’s not that easy to get the past behind us, Mr Basson,’ said Clare. ‘Suzanne le Roux was part of your past, but you lost her, didn’t you?’

‘She was a traitor,’ said Basson. ‘She worked against us. This was a beautiful country. We
lost it. Anyway, that’s the way we thought, then.’

Clare wandered to a landscape painting.

‘Where did you learn about art?’ she said. ‘It’s not something that’s taught at Police College.’

‘No,’ said Basson. ‘I picked it up. When I did security for PW Botha, I learnt about art then. The state had quite a collection in those days.’

‘It still does,’ said Clare.

‘Probably,’ said
Basson. ‘I lost interest.’

‘What are your interests now?’ asked Clare.

‘Golf, wine, travel, the occasional woman,’ smiled Basson. ‘The usual things for men of my age.’

Lights flashed behind Riedwaan’s car as he crested a hill. Nobody would drive in this weather, in the dark, unless they really had to. He kept his eyes on the lights, the prickle at the back of his neck telling him that things were not good.

The rain came down even harder. It was the only thing that might work to his advantage. He switched off his lights and pulled over between some
trees. A bakkie passed in a slew of water, a bull-necked farmer up front, a huddle of bedraggled farm workers crouched in the back.

He drove on again. Where had Rita been going? Who had she seen? The questions kept time with his windscreen wipers. Riedwaan crept along through the iron-grey curtain of rain.

A cow stepped into the road, forcing him to brake. The car spun round but stayed
on the road. The animal stared at him for a moment and then trotted into the bush, her calf following. Riedwaan stared after her. She had made this journey twice. Why had she gone back? What had her killers been looking for? What was their connection with his pursuers in Johannesburg?

Leopard Lodge. The signpost flashed out of the darkness and Riedwaan turned off. The lodge was nothing more
than a handful of prefabs and a tacky roadhouse bar. The paint was peeling and a name was showing through – a now-defunct government department.

The place was already filling up with drivers sick of the rain, their mud-spattered bakkies parked in a semi-circle around the bar. Trucks rattled loudly along the pot-holed road before parking under the trees. A kwaito song was grinding to a finale
when Riedwaan arrived.

News of the smoking ban in restaurants had apparently not reached this far into the bush, and a haze of blue smoke hung over the bar. Glasses were not the thing either, and large bottles of Black Label beer sweated under the lights.

The barman turned reluctantly from a scantily dressed girl to take Riedwaan’s order.

‘Lime and soda,’ said Riedwaan.

The barman
threw him a disbelieving look, but chucked in a couple of ice cubes before turning his attention back to the girl.

Riedwaan called him over again and ordered a steak, double chips, and no salad.

He sat at a table in the furthest corner of the room. Watched the door – more truckers, a couple of office workers, some businessmen, bellies straining their shirt buttons, wedding rings cutting
into fat fingers. A few more girls wearing short skirts who looked as if they may have stuffed their school uniforms into the bags slung over their shoulders.

Not that that seemed to worry the men who were buying them drinks.

Apart from the barman and a waiter, there were no other staff except for an elderly cleaning woman who collected dirty glasses and who brought Riedwaan his food.
A slab of meat on a white roll, chips, onion rings.

Riedwaan ate without tasting his food. When he’d finished, he went over to the barman to pay for the meal.

‘You remember this woman?’ he asked, showing him a photograph of Rita. The barman glanced at it and shook his head.

‘You never saw her?’

‘No,’ said the barman.

‘She stayed here. She ate here,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Look again.’

‘I don’t know her,’ he said, sliding some change across to Riedwaan.

‘The woman who brought me the food – she works every day?’

‘Every day.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Outside,’ said the barman, turning his attention to two men who stood in the doorway.

The cleaning woman was sitting in the lee of the building, out of the rain.

Riedwaan greeted her, ‘Hello, Ma. Do you remember
this woman?’

He showed her a portrait photograph of Rita. Hair neatly braided,a white shirt, her features neat and even, a sparkle in her eyes.

The woman studied it, handed it back to him.

No response.

‘She stayed here two nights ago,’ he said.

The rain drummed harder on the corrugated iron roof.

‘She drank at the bar,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Haikhona. Not this one,’ she said.
Emphatic.

‘She ate here too,’ said Riedwaan. And left a tip – R10. It had been there in Rita’s neat accounting.

The old woman rolled a cigarette. Said nothing

‘The police,’ said Riedwaan. ‘When they came after the accident, they spoke to you.’

The woman spat. ‘They never spoke to me.’

‘She was a good girl,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Her family loved her.’

‘She’s your daughter?’ turning
to Riedwaan.

‘No.’ Riedwaan looked at the photograph of Rita again. ‘Yes. Yes, in some ways she was.’

The match flared. The end of her roll-up glowed.

‘She drank three Fanta Orange.’ Her voice resigned, knowing she was doing the right thing, but knowing too that it would turn out wrong.

‘That’s all?’ said Riedwaan. ‘No beer, no brandy?’

‘Your daughter was a good girl,’ she
said. Riedwaan did not correct her. ‘Not like these other girls who look for sugar daddies.’

‘The police were here?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘They were here.’ She coughed, a TB cough.

‘Did they ask you about her?’ asked Riedwaan when the spasms had passed.

‘I am an old woman,’ she said. ‘Why will the police talk to me?’

The front door opened, spilling girls and noisy truckers.

‘You are not from here,’ the woman said.

‘No,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I am from Cape Town.’

She gave him a sideways glance.

‘Police?’

‘Is it so obvious?’

She smiled. ‘People from Cape Town don’t come here.’

Riedwaan slipped Rita’s photograph back into his jacket.

‘Another person was looking for her,’ she said.

‘Tell me,’ said Riedwaan.

‘They came in here,’ she said.
‘They asked for her. But she was gone already. Later I went to the storeroom to fetch more beer. There was someone in her room. I saw him come out.’

‘Did you see who it was?’ asked Riedwaan.

She shook her head. A bell rang inside the kitchen. She nipped her cigarette, tucked it away for later. ‘He had a dog with him.’

Riedwaan followed the mud-splashed signs to the reception desk.
It was deserted, and the register was conveniently open on the counter. He turned it around and paged backwards. Rita’s familiar scrawl.

Name, date of arrival, ID number. She’d been booked into Cabin 4. She had not checked out.

‘Can I help you?’

The woman moved with remarkable stealth, considering her bulk.

Riedwaan turned the register back again.

‘Cabin 4,’ said Riedwaan.
‘Is it free?’

‘They’re all available, cash up front. It’s the last one, by the thorn tree.’ She shoved him a key.

Riedwaan bumped down a track that ran alongside a fence. On the other side was a farm road. It was easy to feel paranoid in a land of strangers, but still, the fewer people who knew he was here, the better. So he drove through the open farm gate and parked his car behind some
trees. Then he walked back to the cabin.

The room was Spartan, and not that clean. He put on the light and was rewarded with the smell of burning. The lampshade had two dead moths trapped inside.

He tipped the contents of a Nescafé sachet into a mug and waited for the kettle to boil. He searched inside the cupboards, under the mattress and the carpet that was lifting in the corners, in
the bathroom.

Nothing.

He had not expected anything. The room had been ransacked after Rita was killed. There was nowhere to hide anything. The Gideon Bibles. Two of them in the drawer of a bedside table. Riedwaan flipped through them both. The first was empty. In the second, a slip of paper. Riedwaan caught it as it fluttered to the floor. A doodle, like the ones that littered Rita’s
desk. This one, her last, was of a circle segmented as neatly as a sliced orange. Or the blades of a fan. Or a pie chart. Fuck knew. He folded it carefully and put it into his pocket.

They’d missed that. What else had they missed? Why had she left this? What was she trying to say? Fuck-all, he told himself. People didn’t speak from the grave. If they did, he’d be out of a job.

Riedwaan
dropped onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The room was stuffy after the downpour, so he flicked on the fan switch. It turned slowly, a helicopter blade in the thick, stale air. The mechanism was catching on the ceiling, slowing the blades. Riedwaan stared up at the mottled expanse of ceiling. The dull scrape of the blade was irritating, so he switched it off.

What had he missed? The
box containing her effects. Amazingly, the cash was still there. Rita’s cell phone too – also unusual. So, where was her iPod? He knew she’d have been listening to it while driving the car.

The cicadas had started their cacophony, which was not loud enough to mask the sound of cars stopping on wet gravel. Riedwaan sprang to the window and peered through the curtain. A black BMW was in the
parking lot outside the roadhouse. Two men got out, and a pit bull jumped out the back. Collar on, muzzle off. Waleed Williams. Walking towards Reception as if he owned the place, his thugs in his wake.

The front door to Riedwaan’s cabin was in full view of the parking lot at the end of the track. He grabbed his maps and went into the bathroom. The window, covered in green mould, had rusted
shut. He slipped his knife between the frame and the window and worked it up rapidly. He felt it give. The window was tight, but a childhood spent going places he shouldn’t have had taught him the art of twisting his shoulders through a narrow opening.

He closed the window behind him and sprinted for the trees. He made it just as Williams emerged from Reception. Minutes later, Riedwaan heard
the double gunshot that was Williams’s preferred method of opening a locked door. Paranoia had paid off. Riedwaan’s car was half a kilometre down the dirt track. He orientated himself and ran.

Lightning to the east. Thunder growling in the distance. The rain and the dark would hinder him, but he hoped it would hinder his pursuers more. Riedwaan headed up the farm track. The map he’d looked
at showed that it came out on the tar road 10 kilometres to the east. He’d be dead if he came across a farm patrol. Nervous farmers who fired warning shots straight at the chest and only asked questions after their man was down.

But it seemed a better option than running into Williams and his men.

Up ahead was a gate. The cattle grid and a dirt road. A couple of hundred metres down, there
were some bluegums and a zinc dam. Riedwaan drove with his lights off. He owed it to Rita complete what she had started.

Pedro da Silva was already at the quarry when Clare arrived. Lion’s Head was etched against the fading sky, and below, on Signal Hill, the swathe of grass was tawny in the evening light. The crew was unpacking equipment, sorting out electrical outlets, setting up. The thud of a generator echoed around the granite cliffs. Pedro was in his element, in control, directing the lighting technicians,
a stills photographer, and a couple of runners.

‘Hey, the director,’ said Pedro to Clare. ‘You decided to pitch.’

‘Everyone looks like they know what they’re doing,’ said Clare. ‘And you could do this in your sleep. Anyway, I want an aerial shot, I’m going to do a recce.’

Clare scrambled up the side of the quarry to get a bird’s eye view. She ducked under a wire fence and went closer
to the edge, clutching at a tussock to keep herself steady. She picked up a piece of black rock at her feet, felt it warm in her palm. Below her, the cliff edges of the quarry plunged into a pool of water. She could see the group of singers on the grass nearby, a crowd that had gathered to commemorate the dead at Gallows Hill. They wore white shirts. Pedro was crouching beside the water, filming
their reflection. The wind had dropped, so their voices floated up into the still night.

The shot would be worth it. She climbed back onto the contour path and walked down towards the entrance of the quarry. Clare felt a movement behind her. She turned a little too sharply and nearly lost her footing.

‘Hello. Sorry to startle you.’

Clare was surprised to see Merle Osman on the path.
Her dress was an exact match for the pair of pale amber Afghan hounds at her heels. She fondled the smaller dog’s mane as it leaned its sleek body against her, thumping its plumed tail. The bigger dog growled, the sound buried far in the back of its throat.