Blood Rose

forty

The yacht club bar was still crowded at eight-thirty when Clare arrived. The after-work crowd had gone home, but the professional drinkers had settled in for the night. A fug of smoke had settled over the bar.

‘Give the lady a drink,’ ordered a belligerent drunk. ‘She looks like she could do with it.’

‘No, thank you.’ Clare raised a deflecting hand at the whisky sloshed into a shot glass. She ordered wine and went to sit in one of the booths. Calvin Goagab’s press conference had been worse than she imagined, with Goagab and Van Wyk posturing before the cameras, and Clare expressing doubt in spite of all the evidence.

‘I said: give the lady a fucking drink.’ The drunk’s voice rose a threatening notch.

‘Tell him, thank you, but no.’ Clare fixed her blue eyes on the barman.

‘Frigid bitch,’ muttered the heavy-set man on the other side of the bar. ‘Just a bit of hospitality.’

‘She’s not interested.’ A woman’s voice. ‘She’s not going to get interested either, so why don’t you leave her alone?’ Clare was surprised to see that her defender was Gretchen von Trotha, seated a few seats away from the drunken men.

‘Thanks,’ she mouthed, raising her glass in salute.

‘You stay out of this, Gretchen,’ said the man.

Gretchen did not bother to reply, turning her attention instead to the lean man beside her. Clare recognised him from Der Blaue Engel: the man who had pulled Gretchen from the icy Atlantic. It looked as though he was still cashing in on her debt to him. Gretchen certainly looked adoring.

‘Sorry I’m late.’ Riedwaan slid into the opposite side of the booth, distracting Clare.

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘You look cleaner and calmer.’ ‘You need a drink?’ he asked. ‘I need a double after that. More like a lynching than a press conference.’

‘I’m fine.’ She tapped her full wine glass and scanned the bar. Gretchen had vanished, so had the man she’d been with.

Riedwaan came back with his whisky and a new pack of cigarettes. ‘I have to eat,’ he said, taking the menus from a plump waitress. ‘I’m starved. Steak and chips for me,’ he said.

‘Steak? At the sea? Order the fish.’ There was no arguing with that.

‘What do you think about Spyt?’ Clare asked when the waitress had left with their orders.

Riedwaan buttered some bread and took a bite. ‘I don’t think it was him. But the local politicians want the Topnaars out of the way. This is all a convenient way of getting this land claim business to disappear. But Nampol have to work that out themselves. Let’s just hope they do it before someone else dies.’

‘I feel it’ll be my fault if anything happens to Spyt. I don’t like the thought of Van Wyk and his cronies hunting him like a dog.’

‘I don’t think they’ll catch him that easily.’ Riedwaan said. ‘What’s happened with Tertius Myburgh, by the way?’ he asked, shaking a cigarette from his pack.

‘I’m still waiting for his pollen analysis,’ said Clare. ‘I’d love one of those. I need it after this afternoon.’

‘Have one.’ Riedwaan lit one for her and placed it between her lips.

‘Smoking’s like sex,’ said Clare, inhaling deeply. ‘It seems such a good idea at night. Not so brilliant when you wake up in the morning.’

‘You can give that back to me then,’ said Riedwaan.

‘No, let me smoke it,’ she said. ‘Just so that I can remember what a stupid idea it is.’

‘The smoking or the sex?’ said Riedwaan.

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ said Clare, tension coiled in her belly. ‘I feel so stupid, that I set myself up. Van Wyk and Goagab had me checkmated at that press conference. All that bullshit about Cain and Abel, nomads being vagrants. Just an excuse to persecute people whose land you want.’ Clare took a deep drag of the cigarette. ‘Yes, it was my idea. Yes, I went out there. Yes, there was evidence that the bodies were in Spyt’s cave at some stage. And me like an idiot, saying he didn’t kill them.’ Clare put out her half-smoked cigarette when the waitress brought their food. ‘While Goagab and his goons are flattening the desert in their 4x4s, there’s a killer sitting eating dinner and planning Number 6.’

‘There’s nothing more we can do tonight,’ Riedwaan pointed out.

‘What’re we going to be able to do tomorrow?’ snapped Clare. ‘Van Wyk has pushed Tamar into a bureaucratic corner and me and you are supposed to be off the case.’

‘Not quite,’ said Riedwaan. ‘But let’s leave that for tomorrow.’ He put his hand on hers. ‘Right now the moon is nearly full. I’m here, you’re here, so why don’t we talk about something else?’ ‘Okay,’ said Clare. She took her hand away and fussed with her table mat. ‘Suggest something.’

‘Smoking maybe,’ said Riedwaan.

Clare didn’t laugh.

‘Me? You?’

‘Me and you?’ Clare toyed with the idea of asking him about Yasmin, or of telling him she was sorry that she hadn’t listened to him earlier, but she couldn’t find a way to start. She gave up and pushed her food around her plate. She looked at Riedwaan, looked away.

‘Talking about something other than work take away your appetite?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just that my stomach’s in a knot.’

‘Does your having dinner with me mean I’m forgiven?’

‘Don’t rush me.’ Clare picked up her wine glass. ‘I’m deciding.’

‘I’m useless on parole,’ Riedwaan warned. ‘It brings out the worst in me.’

‘You’re not-’

Clare’s phone rang. She looked at the screen. ‘I’ve got to take this,’ she said. ‘It’s Constance.’

Riedwaan shook his head at her, irritated, but Clare had already taken the call. He waited for a second, but all her attention was focused on the identical twin murmuring into her ear, drawing her away from him and into a place he could never follow.

He picked up his cigarettes and went to the bar.

The barman poured him a sympathetic double whisky.