Blood Rose

thirty

Four pairs of shoes rested on the back seat next to the labelled bundles of clothes packaged in brown paper, as neat as gifts. Clare’s desert bouquet was in the boot. She drove through Swakopmund, a quaint holiday town, thirty kilometres north of Walvis Bay. Its coffee shops displayed dripping slices of Black Forest cake, and its snow-roofed German colonial houses seemed outlandish in the desert. But the street children were the same: wheedling, coaxing or pickpocketing money from flustered, sunburnt tourists. Clare turned towards the copper-domed aquarium, tarnished a Florentine green by the sea air. It was sequestered at the end of the road parallel to the beach.

It was early still and no one was about. Clare had made her way around the back of the building to find the air-conditioned shipping container. She pushed her way into the gloomy interior. The dim, dusty windows and the narrowness of the space gave it the air of a mausoleum. A young man was hunched over a microscope. Long hair curtained his face.

‘Dr Myburgh?’

The man turned. His face was narrow, ascetic. He held out a pale, eager hand. ‘Dr Hart?’ His voice was soft, the hand that enveloped hers warm and dry. ‘Tertius Myburgh.’

‘I hope I’m not disturbing your work.’

Myburgh smiled and gestured to the phials and jars on his shelves. ‘My companions are very quiet, so I’m quite happy with the occasional interruption. Helena Kotze said you’d be coming. What can I do for you?’

Clare put the parcels of shoes and clothes and the posy of desert plants on a trestle table. ‘I’m helping with the investigation into the murder of four boys in Walvis Bay,’ she said. ‘The ones Helena autopsied.’

‘Those Aids orphans?’

‘A couple of them were, yes. Homeless children.’

‘How can I help?’ Myburgh looked puzzled.

‘Their bodies have been dumped all over the place,’ said Clare. ‘At a school, on the Walvis Bay pipeline, at the dump. The latest in the Kuiseb Delta. None of them were killed where they were displayed.’

‘Ah, you want me to tell you where they’ve been?’ asked Myburgh, fingering the pale blossoms on the table.

‘Can you?’

‘I can try.’ Myburgh’s eyes gleamed at the challenge. ‘Pollens are unique and they’re tenacious. If they brushed a flowering plant, it’s going to stick somewhere. Shoes, laces, hoodie ties. Pollen is the most conservative part of the plant. Mutations are rare. That’s why we can pinpoint it so accurately. If there’s a mutation it’s like a red flag, pointing you in the direction of the correct species.’

‘How long will it take?’ Clare asked.

‘This can wait.’ Myburgh gestured at the leaves, seed pods and dissected buds arranged on his table. ‘But it’ll take a day or so. Plants are like people. It’s the little differences that make them unique. What distinguishes one type of pollen from another will be just the tiniest mutation, the smallest difference. With a killer I suppose it’s the same: you look for that one calibration of difference that distinguishes him from me… or you.’

‘Those tiny discrepancies,’ said Clare, ‘that’s what I look for.’

‘My mother always told me you could judge a man by his shoes,’ said Myburgh. ‘When you have a suspect, bring me his shoes. They’ll tell me where he’s been. Take this in the meantime. It’s the plant list I’ve been working on, and here are the corresponding pollens.’ He handed her a pile of paper.

‘These are beautiful,’ said Clare, looking at the magnified photographs of the desert pollens. ‘How long have you worked on this?’

‘About two years, but most of the groundwork was done by an American ethno-botanist,’ said Myburgh.

‘He’s no longer involved?’

‘She,’ said Myburgh. ‘Virginia Meyer. She was killed in a car accident last year.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Clare. ‘I’ve heard of her, and I’ve met her son Oscar. One of the bodies was found at his school. Outside his classroom, in fact.’

‘Strange little boy, he is,’ said Myburgh. ‘He used to do fieldwork with her. Him and an old Topnaar man called Spyt, who was Virginia’s guide. Knows the desert like you and I know our own faces. If you want to know anything about anything in the Namib – plants, stones, animals – he’s your man.’

‘Where is he now?’ asked Clare.

‘Spyt?’ said Myburgh. ‘He could be anywhere. He’s even more of a recluse since the accident. He was devoted to Virginia and he loved Oscar.’ He paused. ‘I suppose Oscar was too young to see how odd Spyt is. All he knew was the magic places Spyt could find in the middle of nowhere.’

Myburgh walked Clare back to her car. ‘Give me your cell number. I’ll call you as soon as I have something.’

Clare wrote down her number for him. ‘There was one more thing I wanted to know,’ she said. ‘Maybe you can tell me.’ She stretched over to open the cubbyhole. The insect husks that Herman Shipanga had found tumbled onto her hand. She was revolted again by the scratchiness of the little ball of carcasses.

‘What’s that?’ asked Myburgh.

‘Something else’s dinner,’ said Clare. ‘I was hoping you could tell me more about it.’ She handed it to him.

Myburgh peered at the orb. ‘Moth wings,’ he said. ‘And long-horned grasshoppers. Some termites. Where did you find this?’

‘The school caretaker found it in the swing where Kaiser Apollis was found.’

‘Impossible,’ said Myburgh, looking at the insects again. ‘You won’t find these at the coast. Inland, yes. I’d say this comes from where Egyptian bats have been feeding. They don’t need full darkness, so they roost in large trees in the delta; otherwise caves or other shelters.’

‘So you’d find them in the Kuiseb?’ asked Clare. The importance of what Myburgh was telling her banished her exhaustion.

‘Yes,’ said Myburgh, ‘but they’re rare. There’s not enough food to sustain more than a few colonies, and the curious thing about bats is that they keep returning to established feeding sites with their prey. Find that, then you know where these little mummies came from.’