Blood Rose

seventeen

The sun, all day a hot, unseeing eye behind the fog, was sinking towards the sea when Tamar Damases switched off her computer and stood up, arching her back. She couldn’t find any pattern in the dates on which the ships had docked in Walvis Bay Harbour and when her three boys – how she was starting to think of them, her three dead boys – disappeared.

Her own baby kicked, one tiny protesting foot bulging the tight drum of her belly. She put her hand there, feeling the foetus glide away from her touch, safe in its dark, secret world. From the parking lot outside came snatches of shouted conversations, arrangements to have a beer, talk about a soccer practice, the night shift arriving. It was time for Tamar to steel herself for her own long night-shift.

She straightened her desk and rinsed the teacups, ready for tomorrow. She had never liked the thought of the night peering in at the windows, so she closed the curtains. She picked up her handbag and the groceries she had bought at lunch time. The hard-earned package from the chemist was tucked deep in her jacket pocket. It cost her a substantial chunk of her salary. She felt for it again, like an anxious passenger checking their passport, their ticket, just to make sure.

Tamar locked her office door behind her. Karamata was out in the Namib with Clare. There was no sign of Van Wyk. She went through to the special ops room where a light was burning. There was a scarlet pashmina tossed over the back of Clare’s chair. Tamar picked it up and folded it before sitting down.

She considered the boys from Clare’s perspective: Monday’s Child. Wednesday’s Child. And Saturday’s. Three ephemeral children who had slipped into the river of life with barely a splash. Who would have sunk without a trace if Tamar had not reached out for their spectral hands. She held out her own hands now, in front of the desk lamp. They cast a startling silhouette across the display. Tamar read Clare’s notes. First about place, of the crime scenes virtually devoid of physical evidence. They would be; the bodies had been moved and deliberately displayed.

She thought of the bodies, of the boys they had been, wondering about this killer who managed to pick up his victims without witness, without leaving a ripple of anxiety. In such a small town, why did no one notice someone away for hours and days on end? Unless it was someone who was working shifts. Someone who could be all over the place, no questions asked. On the ships, in the factories, in the bars, a truck driver passing back and forth, ferrying goods. The silhouette of a killer, just the shadow of a man on a blank wall. Malevolent, shifting, shape-shifting, like a Javanese shadow-puppet theatre. Tamar thought of this figure moving unseen through the fog and she shivered. Who? Why? And where? The questions beat an urgent rhythm.

A siren wailed, insistent as a hungry baby. It was time to get on to her next shift.

Tamar found her niece leaning against the wall outside her day-care centre.

‘What are you doing out here, Angela?’ she asked.

‘The other children…’ The little girl’s eyes glittered with tears.

Tamar put the sobbing child into the back seat of her car and strapped her in, feeling once again for the package of ARVs in her pocket. Her talisman. She drove home fast, relief flooding her when she realised that Tupac, her nephew, only eleven, had already cooked the macaroni.

She held Angela in her arms and coaxed five, then six, then seven, slow, painful spoons of buttered pasta into the child’s mouth. The boy hovered on the kitchen steps, staring into the darkness. When Tamar thought it was enough, she took her precious package from her pocket and counted out the pills into a Mickey Mouse saucer which Tupac had put out.

Angela pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, but the tears seeped out anyway. They made her feel so sick, the pills. Tupac knelt down beside her, his thin brown hands cupping her face.

‘Please, Angela,’ he said. ‘You’re a dancer. You can do anything.’

Nothing.

‘Take them for me.’ Desperation edged his voice. ‘I’ll tell you a story later.’

Angela opened her eyes. ‘About Mommy?’

Tupac was quick. He popped a tablet in and held her mouth closed. ‘About her and the day you had your first dance class,’ said Tupac.

Angela swallowed. Tamar breathed.

‘Here. Just three more.’

‘Tell me about what she said about me.’

Tupac popped the pills into her mouth, like coins into a slot machine. Tamar was not religious, but she was praying that the expensive drugs would repel the virus that had prowled Angela’s blood since her birth, the virus that had wrested the life from her plump, laughing, fecund sister five years ago.

She put the little girl to bed and helped her arrange her princess puppet. The child had given her a doek, so that the shadow looked like her mother leaning over the bed, always just about to kiss her.

Tupac lay down next to his sister.

‘They wouldn’t play with me today,’ Angela told him. ‘The other children, they say I’m dirty and that I’ll make them sick. Will you get them?’

‘I’ll get them.’ Tupac had defended his baby sister since their mother had died the previous year. ‘But first let me tell you a story.’

Tamar closed the door on his once-upon-a-time. It was always the same story: a little girl and a mother who didn’t really die, who just went away somewhere for a while, who was coming back.

She went to lie on her bed, too tired to eat or change. It was quiet on the edge of the desert when the children stopped murmuring. From far away came the cry of a jackal; further away the answering call of its mate. Tamar folded her fingers over her belly.

Her child might be fatherless, but it was safe.