Blood Rose

eighteen

Ragnar Johansson was hesitating between two blue shirts. Clare Hart, she made him worry which near-identical shade would be best. He chose the darker of the two, walked over to his apartment window and did up the buttons, looking out at the emptied street. The night had settled in, but he could still make out the cranes offloading the trawlers that had berthed that afternoon. The girls would be busy already. It was eight-thirty and cold out, but Ragnar Johansson decided to walk. He liked the fog. It blocked out the flat desert lines of Walvis Bay, let him pretend that he was somewhere else, not immured here at the arse end of the world, no better off than when he arrived. The security gate rattled shut behind him as he strode towards the lagoon.

Clare was easy to find in the deserted holiday complex. Hers was the only cottage spilling light onto the worn grass, as she had not closed her curtains. Ragnar stopped beyond the pool of light to watch her through the open window. She had her back to him and he could see the curve of her waist, the slim hips in faded jeans. She slipped her hands under her hair and twisted her hair up, exposing the nape of her neck. She pinned up the thick coil, then turned and looked out into the blackness. Wary as a gazelle. Ragnar lit a cigarette, ignoring a tug of desire. When he had finished smoking, he went across the dark garden and knocked. She opened the door, standing aside so that he could enter.

‘Hello, Clare.’

‘How are you?’ She closed the door behind him.

‘You look beautiful,’ said Ragnar.

‘You were watching me.’

‘How did you guess?’ Ragnar kissed her cheek. ‘Same perfume.’

‘No. 19.’ Clare picked up her jacket and they walked along the water’s edge, immediately falling into step. They had been easy together, physically. She let him take her arm, glad to put the day behind her.

‘What happened to your boat?’ she asked.

‘Money’s tight. Had to sell it.’ Ragnar could taste the bitterness of failure on his tongue.

‘I didn’t know,’ said Clare, walking up the steps to the Raft.

The restaurant was built on stilts against which the lagoon’s dark water lapped. It was usually frequented by tourists or locals celebrating rare special occasions. Tonight, the candlelit tables were mostly empty.

‘You didn’t stay in touch, did you?’ said Ragnar.

‘I never said I would.’

A waitress showed them to a window table, the lights rippling on the lagoon beneath them. The lighthouse at Pelican Point pulsed on the horizon.

‘What are you doing now?’ Clare asked. ‘I can’t imagine you without your boat.’

‘Lots of kite-boarding, a little consulting for the mayor and his team. I just got a new ship to skipper, the Alhantra,’ said Ragnar. ‘And a licence for orange roughy. Very popular in the US and in Spain. Expensive, so worth fishing. Tonight can be a celebration, if you like. That and seeing you again.’

The waitress brought the wine and bread. Ragnar poured.

‘It didn’t take you long to track me down,’ said Clare.

‘A single woman under two hundred and fifty pounds is always news in Walvis Bay.’

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Who told you? I can’t believe that your nearly running me over was a coincidence.’

‘Actually, that was,’ said Ragnar. ‘But Calvin Goagab had told me you were here. I saw him yesterday afternoon. After you’d been there. There’s official concern about this incident, about what it’ll do to tourism here.’

‘What about official concern about finding who hung a child’s body in a playground?’ Clare bristled.

‘Oh, there is, but this is a port.’ Ragnar leant towards her. ‘Goagab’s saying that what they found in that playground was just a quick midnight transaction gone wrong. Whoever did it was back on board ship before the body was discovered.’

‘And the others?’

‘Unrelated probably,’ said Ragnar. ‘Captain Damases is inclined to jump to conclusions.’

The waitress arrived with their food, before Clare could respond.

‘You did well with that documentary.’ Ragnar noted the flare of anger in her eyes and changed the direction of the conversation.

‘It worked,’ said Clare.

‘You made some people uncomfortable.’

‘Good,’ said Clare. ‘I meant to.’

‘Some quite influential people, Clare. People lost money. A lot of money. Goagab was one of them.’

‘You too?’ asked Clare.

‘That’s not what I lost when you left.’ He took her hand, turning it over and running his thumb over the vein pulsing in her wrist.

‘Let’s not go there, Ragnar,’ said Clare, withdrawing her hand to pick up her wine glass. The nights they had spent alone together up the Skeleton Coast… she would had to have been an ice queen to resist him.

Ragnar let it go, and they ate their meals without further conflict. They talked of people Clare had met on her last visit: who’d made money; who hadn’t. The bill arrived and Clare reached for her purse.

‘Let me get this.’ Ragnar put his hand over hers. ‘If you owe me I’ll be sure of having dinner with you again.’

‘I’m finessed then,’ Clare smiled.

‘Shall we get a brandy?’ asked Ragnar as they stepped outside into the cold wind.

‘Where were you thinking?’ Clare was tired, but she wasn’t quite ready to go back to her lonely bed.

‘Der Blaue Engel.’

‘Where is it?’ The name was familiar. Clare tried to place it.

‘It’s a club down near the harbour.’ He saw Clare hesitate. ‘Think of it as anthropology.’

Ragnar put his arm around Clare’s shoulders and they walked back towards the harbour. Clare remembered where she’d heard the name. From the story about the lap dancer who’d come off worse for wear after a visit to one of the rusting trawlers anchored outside the harbour.

‘Gretchen von Trotha,’ said Clare, ‘doesn’t she dance there?’

‘How do you know her?’ Ragnar asked with obvious surprise.

‘I don’t,’ said Clare. ‘Elias Karamata, one of the cops who’s working on this case, told me that she’d been beaten and thrown off a Russian ship. The name stuck.’

‘Someone fished her out, a South African,’ said Ragnar. ‘Ironically, he had a Russian name. Gretchen owes her life to that man.’

Clare could feel the dull thump of the bass long before she could hear any music. The club’s logo was a naked pole-dancing angel, complete with wings and a halo.

‘That must drive the fundamentalists nuts.’

‘It does,’ said Ragnar. ‘Sundays, there are always pickets by the Christian Mission ladies, lying in wait for their husbands, I suppose.’

Inside, the air was thick with smoke. Around the pool table, girls were leaning along their cues to the advantage of their cleavages. A few couples were dancing, and waiting women nursed Coca-Colas at the bar. A group of drunken Russians working their way through a bottle of vodka at the bar looked Clare over then returned to their drink. Only two tables were occupied.

‘That’s him.’ Ragnar pointed to one table where a man sat alone. ‘The guy who pulled Gretchen out of the water.’ The man’s shirt was moulded over his lean belly, long legs stretched out, the steel caps glinting at the end of his dusty suede boots. A cigarette dangled from one tanned hand. He had tilted his chair back and his face was hidden in the shadows.

‘Is he trying to play Clint Eastwood?’ asked Clare.

‘I don’t suggest you ask him,’ said Ragnar. ‘He’s not much of a joker.’

Clare recognised some of the occupants at the other table, groaning with champagne bottles, near the stage. D’Almeida had his secretary, the beautiful Anna, on his arm. He raised a glass to Clare. Opposite him sat Goagab, in conspicuous Armani. Two heavy-set men in their forties were with them. One of the men held a delicate girl on his knee, a smile plastered over her discomfiture. The other one ran lazy eyes over Clare, his tongue flicking across his moist, parted lips.

‘Politicians?’ asked Clare.

‘Businessmen. Politicians. One and the same in this part of the world. My new bosses,’ said Ragnar. ‘They own the Alhantra. They’re celebrating the licence too.’

‘You want to join them?’

‘Not now that I have you to myself.’ His hand brushed hers. It was disconcerting, the intimate roughness of his skin.

‘What will you have?’ he smiled.

‘A brandy, please.’

The bar was filling up as men drifted in singly and in compact, eager groups. Chinese, Spanish, Senegalese, South African, freshly showered, hair slicked, eyes darting towards the women unpeeling themselves from bar stools, the pool table.

‘When’s the show?’ Ragnar asked the barman pouring their drinks.

‘Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.’ The barman pushed across a brochure that showed a young woman – maybe twenty-five – coiled around a pole.

Five minutes later, the lights flickered, then stayed off. A prerecorded drum roll drowned out Clare’s objections. The velvet curtains opened, and a nubile blonde stepped into the spectral light, her body voluptuous beneath the transparent layers of blue chiffon, the scar beneath her left eye a slender crescent bleached white by the spotlight. Her eyes, shadowed by dark, arched brows, revealed nothing.

‘Der Blaue Engel?’ asked Clare.

‘That’s her. Gretchen von Trotha. Not yet in all her glory. Then she’s quite something,’ said Ragnar. ‘Another?’

‘One more,’ said Clare. ‘Then home?’ Her interest was piqued.

‘Nicolai,’ called Ragnar. The barman filled Clare’s glass, his eyes on her face. ‘Enjoying the show?’ he asked.

‘It works for the audience,’ she said.

Gretchen moved effortlessly, disdain infusing her movements with an erotic menace. The rowdy groups of men sat transfixed. She peeled off first one garment then another, until she stood naked except for her tattooed wings, a tinsel halo and the wisp of silk between her thighs.

A movement to Clare’s right drew her attention to D’Almeida’s table. A fat politician was snapping his fingers at the barman. Nicolai bent low for the man’s order. He looked up at Gretchen and nodded. A whispered word from Nicolai and she left the safety of the stage. The fat man leant back in his seat and beckoned her into the space between his splayed knees. She stepped closer, nipples glinting in the dim light as he tucked money into the thigh-high boot gripping her soft flesh. Her skin was milky; her limbs were smooth and firm. The shaved pubis lasciviously childlike as she twirled out of his grip and made her way to the lean man sitting alone at the table in the corner.

The man took a note and slipped it into her halo before standing up and sauntering out. Gretchen removed the rolled-up note and looked at it as she walked back to the stage, ignoring the beseeching, empty hands that reached after her.

‘I think I’ve had enough lap dancing for tonight,’ said Clare. ‘Let’s go.’

It was cold out. Clare pulled her collar up and her beanie down as they walked towards the unlit cottages.

‘If I didn’t know better, you could pass for a boy,’ said Ragnar.

‘Maybe I should be careful then,’ she said, unlocking the door. ‘Walvis Bay is not the safest town to be a boy in.’

‘You should be careful anyway, Clare.’

‘You’re the second person to tell me that.’ She turned to face him, remembering Lazarus’s clumsy attempt. ‘Is that a warning or a threat?’

‘A warning.’ Ragnar’s hand was cold on her cheek. He slid a finger down her neck, finding the warm skin under her collar. ‘From a friend.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind.’

Clare stepped away from his caress and into the cottage, ignoring his wry look as she said a swift goodnight and locked the front door. But as Ragnar’s footsteps died away and the stifling silence draped the night again, she did wonder if she’d made the right call.