Gallows Hill (9 page)

The barman filled Riedwaan’s glass again, pushed over a saucer of olives. He stayed where he was, behind a pillar covered with silk roses, out of Williams’s line of sight.

Cigarettes. More champagne. A table dance.

A man appeared at the door. He had Johannesburg written all over himself. The watch, the snakeskin shoes, the swagger. At his side was the lawyer, Malan. The company Williams
kept had clearly not improved. Except that he had added politicians and lawyers to his usual choice of gangsters, dealers and pimps. That’s what living in Jo’burg did. Taught a man to drink with anybody, if he could turn it into a deal.

Williams raised his hand to greet the new arrivals. The girl slid away as the two men approached.

Malan dropped into a seat next to Williams. His plump
friend took a seat on the other side. That smug face, a cabinet minister with no apparent competence apart from his presidential connections. One hundred pounds overweight, one hundred per cent in the palm of the man who was sloshing champagne into his glass. They all looked so comfortable as they raised their glasses in a toast.

Riedwaan asked for the bill. The fact that the barman gave it
to him meant he didn’t think he was a cop. Given the total for two Irish whiskeys and four olives, it was apparent that this was not a favoured haunt of policemen who paid their bills.

Williams noticed Riedwaan when he stood up to leave.

‘Faizal,’ said Williams. ‘Expensive place to drink on that tip you get from the police at the end of the month. There are other ways. Ask your colleagues.’

‘Hond, not everyone sits up to beg for a bone.’

The air felt thick.

Riedwaan nodded at the lawyer and said, ‘Malan.’ Then, turning to their companion, he introduced himself: ‘Captain Riedwaan Faizal.’

The lawyer looked away, and shifted in his seat.

‘And you are –?’ Riedwaan shifted his gaze to the the third man.

‘Aaron Mtimbe.’ His voice was high-pitched, as if it had half-broken
and then stopped.

‘A good place for a family holiday,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You enjoying Cape Town?

‘Doing business can be a challenge in the Mother City,’ said Mtimbe folding his hands across his belly. A broad gold wedding band glinted in the light. ‘Different rules.’

‘Same rules,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Just a different application.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ said Mtimbe in his jarring sing-song.
‘In the end, everyone can be brought into line. The Cape, whether you want it or not, is part of South Africa’s future.’

‘At Gallows Hill it looks like your future’s on hold,’ said Riedwaan.

The music surged and the stage curtain swung open.

‘That pretty little doctor, she’s got some fight in her.’ Williams leaned back in his chair, legs splayed, eyes on the two girls wrapped around
the poles. ‘Will make it fun.’

‘You touch her, you vuilgoed –’ Riedwaan had him by the collar. He twisted it hard enough to get Williams’s full attention. ‘I’ll shoot you like the dog you are.’

Riedwaan’s house was in darkness when Clare got back from the restaurant; Fritz was sitting on the doorstep, looking murderous. She attempted to buy some affection by giving the cat a full saucer of milk. But all this earned her was a truculent flick of a tail as Fritz stalked off into the night. Clare poured herself a whiskey.

She sensed a movement outside. She looked up, but saw
nothing apart from her reflection in the window.

She took out her notes from the autopsy. The woman had looked like a Madonna.

It was cooler now, sea air stealing ashore. The night was clear, moonless. A bat swooped low, navigating the narrow street, then vanished into the eaves of the abandoned house on the corner.

Clare thought about Pedro da Silva. And Riedwaan – what should she
tell him? Her connection with Pedro da Silva was so tangled. He had claimed her attention and her body longer than anyone else had. It would be difficult to know where to start explaining him, difficult to know where to finish. What was there to say, anyway, that wasn’t about the past? And her past was a blank, as far as Riedwaan was concerned. She’d made sure to keep it that way.

But Riedwaan
had a nose for secrets, she knew. He could sense them in the same way as a trained police dog sensed traces of a cadaver. She shared this talent. In a woman it was called intuition.

Clare registered the noise of the bike only when its engine cut.

The wind snatched the front door, slamming it behind Riedwaan. He tossed his helmet onto the hall table and came to find her.

‘Where have
you been?’

‘That’s a nice welcome,’ she said. ‘Good to see you, too.’

‘You didn’t answer your phone.’

‘You know I don’t like my phone,’ said Clare. ‘It was on silent.’

‘Don’t do that.’ Riedwaan cupped her face in his hands.

‘What happened?’

‘Waleed Williams happened,’ said Riedwaan. ‘He said he’d had a talk to you.’

‘He did,’ said Clare. ‘He said to tell you to make
this investigation go away.’

‘Hond’s preferred signature: sending messages to his enemies on the bodies of their women. First time he did it, he was sixteen. Carved a message onto the pregnant belly of a rival gangster’s girlfriend. She didn’t make it. Nor did many others.’

‘I’m fine,’ Clare said. ‘I’m here. I can look after myself.’

‘Yes, I know. I know,’ he said, the panic receding.

‘But would you drop the investigation just because of his threats?’

Riedwaan pushed his hands through his hair. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I suppose not.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Clare. ‘So there was no point in giving you the message then, was there?’

‘Just be careful,’ said Riedwaan.

‘I’m always careful.’

‘Where exactly were you, though?’

‘Shooting with Pedro da Silva,’
she said. ‘At the Slave Lodge. It was pretty straightforward.’

‘This stuff is never straightforward,’ he said. ‘Look at my family, spent 150 years pretending they came from Java on some fucking involuntary 18th-century package tour and just happened to like it here.’

‘Have you eaten?’

‘A Thai curry,’ she said. ‘And you?’

‘A Gatsby and some samoosas that Rita bought,’ said Riedwaan.
‘She’s trying to kill me.’

‘What did she have?’ asked Clare, with a smile.

‘Two Gatsbys,’ said Riedwaan. ‘She’s indestructible, that woman. This is for you, by the way.’

He handed Clare the folder he’d got from the City Council.

‘State land,’ she said. ‘Have you got a construction date for that warehouse?’

‘No mystery at all. Started early 1988. It’s all on the council documents.
All quite legal,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Company was called Tony Gonzalez Construction. Medium-sized firm. Did a lot of work in the area. Hired by a company that had a long lease on that property.’

‘Did you run a check on him?’

‘Rita’s doing it,’ said Riedwaan. ‘She’ll email it. Only problem is, he emigrated to Australia in 1989.’

‘It’s a start,’ said Clare.

‘It’s a straw,’ said Riedwaan.

‘I’ve got to grab at something,’ said Clare.

‘He’s doing the same stuff in Sydney,’ said Riedwaan. ‘The details are there.’

‘And the tenants?’ asked Clare.

‘That site has been empty for a decade at least. There’s a list of companies that leased the building for storage. Small close corporations, most of them. Rita checked with the company register. Saskia Properties was the letting
agent. Sole owner, surname Sykes. The address is there.’

‘Okay, here’s something for you. The preliminary autopsy report,’ Clare said.

‘Age, race, sex, probable cause of death, approximate age of the remains,’ Riedwaan read out loud. ‘The prof has given you a lot to work with.’

‘There’s more,’ said Clare, setting out the photographs. ‘Look at these. An expensive dress bought in Amsterdam,
no wedding ring, but she was buried wearing an unusual piece of silver jewellery. So, not a robbery. Grooves on the back of the pelvis, so we know she’d given birth. A well-dressed young mother, possibly Dutch, disappears without a trace. Someone must have known. Someone killed her,’ said Clare. ‘And someone knew where to hide her.’

‘Then she’d have been the contractor’s pregnant girlfriend,’
Riedwaan speculated. ‘He didn’t want his wife to know. Buried her there, just before the slab was thrown.’

‘Could be. But the only lead I have is the dress she was wearing. The designer said he has a collection of photographs of women who’ve bought his clothes,’ said Clare. ‘And I’ve got someone working on a facial reconstruction. So we can try to find out what she looked like, at least.’

‘That’s a last resort, usually,’ said Riedwaan.

‘I know,’ said Clare. ‘But I’ve got nothing else. If she was Dutch, maybe someone around here will remember her.’

‘What about your film?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘This was meant to be about old bones.’

‘Tim Stone’s emailed me to say he’s done a preliminary inventory of the remains,’ said Clare. ‘We’re shooting tomorrow.’

‘Hey, enough work
for one day.’ He put his arms around her, slipping his hands under her shirt. Kissing her. Bringing her out of herself. His touch always her undoing.

A dog barked – short, sharp, guttural – waking Clare.

Three in the morning.

She lay on her back, waiting. But the dog was silent again.

Riedwaan’s arm lay across her hips as he slept. It pinned her to the bed. A car passed by, the
lights arcing on the ceiling. Then the room faded to darkness again as the sound disappeared. She moved a little. Riedwaan tightened his hold on her hip. His hand moved down across her belly.

‘You’re too sleepy to follow through,’ she whispered.

‘I’m not.’

‘Liar.’

She listened to the silence. Even the dog had given up.

‘I’ve got to move back to my place,’ Clare whispered.

‘Marry me instead,’ he said into the back of her neck.

‘Ask me in the morning.’

But he was asleep again.

9 February

‘This business is exploding.’ Riedwaan walked in and put the newspapers on the kitchen table. He’d also bought milk, white bread and one grapefruit. ‘I don’t know what’s causing more trouble. The skeletons, or the fact that this development seems to have happened without any bidding process.’

‘Gallows Hill,’ said Clare. ‘So many unhappy spirits. So much trouble.’

‘Phiri got your
preliminary report,’ said Riedwaan. ‘He’s happy. Still offering you a job, if you want one.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Same thing I always tell him,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Teams are not your thing.’

‘That’s an understatement,’ said Clare.

He put two slices into the toaster. ‘You want some?’

‘I’ll have the grapefruit,’ said Clare.

‘Sorry,’ said Riedwaan. ‘It was the only fresh
thing in the café so early in the morning.’

‘It’s fine for me.’

‘I found you some cashews,’ he said. ‘Unsalted, unroasted. You’re going to ruin my reputation, making me buy food like this.’

‘You’ll survive,’ said Clare, flicking through the papers. ‘I see what you mean. It’s everywhere.’

‘A mass grave in a verneukde piece of government land in a quiet news week,’ said Riedwaan,
spreading peanut butter on his toast. ‘Means I’m fucked.’

‘Hond Williams everywhere, too,’ said Clare, scanning the
Cape Times
.

‘What’s he saying?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘The developers plan to commemorate the dead, and compensate the living,’ she read. ‘Blah, blah, and the development must be expedited.’

‘Okay, but what’re they planning to do with all those bones?’

‘All human remains
will be re-interred and the construction work will be modified so that no further disturbance of the deceased takes place,’ she read.

‘There’s no fucking way he said any of that,’ said Riedwaan, pouring coffee. ‘He never got past Grade Four.’

‘I’d like to know who’s going to be compensated,’ said Clare, closing the newspaper. ‘Especially without DNA testing on the remains.’

‘Phiri’s
called a press conference this morning,’ said Riedwaan. ‘He phoned me now, when I was in the café.’

‘What time is the conference?’ asked Clare.

‘At nine,’ said Riedwaan. ‘It’ll be live on Cape Talk if you want to listen. I’d better get moving.’

He dropped a kiss on the back of her neck.

The sound of Riedwaan’s bike in the morning usually brought Fritz out of her hiding place, but
when Clare called the cat, there was no response. She tipped some pellets into a bowl, rattling them as she called again. Still no sign of Fritz. She put the bowl on the kitchen step and went back inside. The cat was making it clear that staying the weekend with Riedwaan was one thing, but that a weekend that drifted into Tuesday or even Wednesday was another thing entirely.

She checked her
email. Rita Mkhize had clearly spent her evening sifting through the Deeds Office documents, and Clare opened several attachments.

Rita’s dossier revealed that Tony Gonzalez was shockingly law-abiding. Nothing in South Africa. In Australia, two speeding fines in 20 years.

Clare made some more coffee. Six o’clock South African time meant two o’clock in Sydney. She Googled Tony Gonzalez
Construction, and called the Australian phone number. Clare talked her way past the secretary and waited.

‘Tony Gonzalez.’ The South African vowels had moderated.

‘Your company put up a warehouse in Gallows Hill in Green Point in 1988,’ said Clare, after introducing herself.

‘Bad luck, that place,’ said Gonzalez. ‘Bad luck.’

‘What kind of bad luck?’ asked Clare.

‘Trouble all
the time,’ Said Gonzalez. ‘One thing after the other. The developer didn’t pay, then things started to happen. It was the time too, the politics. Bad,’ he said. A pause. ‘I haven’t thought about that place for 20 years, maybe more. Why are you asking about it?’

‘The warehouse you built was recently demolished,’ explained Clare. ‘A young woman’s body was found under the slab.’

‘The whole
place was full of skeletons,’ said Gonzalez. ‘I could hardly get my staff to work, they were so spooked. Gallows Hill. Flat as a pancake, the place they used to hang all kinds of riff-raff in the old days. Every time we dug we’d find more bodies. The owners just told us to shut up and build. Times were tough, so we did.’