Blood Rose

three

Riedwaan Faizal pushed back the covers and went to the window, wrapping a towel around his waist. After a couple of minutes, Clare appeared in the distance, taking the curve of the Sea Point Boulevard in her stride. At this distance, in the thin September sunlight, she was a stranger to him, despite his intimate knowledge of her, gleaned in secret and hoarded. He watched her until she had disappeared, then he pushed his hands back through his hair. It had caused him a lot of trouble at high school, the way it grew straight up. He was always being sent to the headmaster to prove that he hadn’t gelled it. That was long ago now. Two decades, give or take a year or so. Now it showed careless streaks of grey in places.

Riedwaan wandered through Clare’s flat, picking up her things, putting them down, running a finger along the alphabetically arranged spines of her books. Mainly hardbacks. Above the television were a couple of shelves of Clare’s documentaries, VHS copies of her broadcast investigative pieces, and an award for a film she’d done on human trafficking in the Congo. Putting the world to rights, that’s what her investigative work was about, her beliefs giving her the courage to go where there were no nets to catch her if she fell. It fitted with her profiling work, her conviction that she could find the source of evil and eliminate it. Riedwaan was less sure about that.

He rifled through the heap of classical and acoustic CDs. ‘How much Moby can one person listen to?’ he asked Fritz. The cat flattened her ears and hissed in reply.

In Clare’s bathroom, he opened one of the small pots of cream and held it to his nose. The jar carried the scent of her: tender, secret. Riedwaan put it down. He had done this so often in the homes of strangers. It had become second nature to look through the everyday artefacts of a woman’s life after her broken body had been found, searching for reasons why that woman stepped out for that minute and never returned to finish half-used jars of expensive cream or to serve the meal cooking in the oven.

Clare was tired – he knew it – wrung out by the last case they had worked on together, profiling a killer whose refinements of cruelty had turned the stomachs of men who considered themselves inured to depravity. She needed to visit her reclusive twin, Constance. She needed to be alone, away. But Riedwaan didn’t want her to leave him. He liked to live with the woman he slept with. The patterns of a long marriage like his, even if it was broken, ran deep.

He looked at himself in the mirror. He could get away without shaving. He showered and dressed, repressing the anxiety riffing down his spine. He fed Fritz. Clare would be back in half an hour. He went to watch for her. The sitting room was sparse, the way she liked it. The wooden floor a pale expanse that merged with the waves hurling themselves against the boulevard. He sat down on her sofa and picked up the pile of books she had been busy with before he had arrived the previous evening. There was a book on desert plants, the pollen of a forgotten cutting staining the index. A history of the Richtersveld, the harsh area around the Orange River. A novel about an early and murderous journey into that desert: Coetzee’s Dusklands. She had made notes in her guide to southern African seabirds. He snapped it shut, amused at the thought of Clare with binoculars around her neck, bird list in her hand.

In the kitchen, Fritz glared as Riedwaan waited for the kettle to boil. He took his coffee through to the spare room. Clare’s suitcase was open on the bed, half-packed. Clothes lay in methodical order, waiting to be placed in the suitcase. He picked up a dress, ran the silky black material through his hands and held it to his face. She must have worn it recently, because his touch released the feral tang of her sweat that lay just beneath the perfume she always wore. Jealousy surged through him. Who had she gone out with in that dress? Who had made her sweat?

He put it down and picked up a bra and a matching pair of panties – expensive, silky, low on the hip. Who were these for? Riedwaan could hear her mocking voice: for me is what she’d say. She was right, but her self-containment made him feel adolescent. He folded the dress again. He folded the bra and put it back. Her panties he slipped into his pocket. A memento for while she was away.

In the kitchen, Riedwaan put tomatoes on to grill and eggs to boil. He watched the last city lights go off. Cape Town in the light of the morning looked to him like a stripper past her prime. The lines were good, the breasts firm, but it was silicone and make-up that gave the nights their charge.

The front door opened. Riedwaan’s hand curled around the filleting knife on the sink. ‘Clare,’ he called.

‘You missed the best part of the day.’

Riedwaan looked at the knife in his hand in surprise. He passed a drying cloth over it and reached for a ripe melon.

Clare came in dripping, cheeks scarlet.

‘I’m not going to kiss you.’ She evaded him. ‘I’m sweaty and disgusting.’

‘Just how I like you.’ Riedwaan sliced the spanspek. He didn’t think much of fruit, but Clare loved it.

She picked up a slice and bit into it. ‘Perfect.’ She opened the window and put the skin on the sill for the birds waiting there. ‘Come and talk to me in the shower.’ She stripped, dropping her sweaty clothes into the washing machine.

‘In a minute,’ said Riedwaan, watching her disappear naked down the passage.

Clare stood under the shower. She loved the jet of water hot on her face, washing the sweat away. It took with it, though, the imprint of Riedwaan’s warm skin on hers. She was going to miss him, being away for a month. She massaged shampoo into her blonde hair, working it down to the ends that hung below her waist. Damn. She had meant to have it trimmed before she left.

‘You distract me with your clothes off.’ Clare had not heard Riedwaan come into the bathroom. ‘Especially when you look guilty like that. You thinking dirty thoughts?’

‘I’m not telling.’ Clare reached for the soap and scrubbed her shoulders.

‘I can do that for you.’ Riedwaan watched her deft hands lathering her body.

‘You’ve seen all this before.’

‘I’m not going to see it for weeks,’ he pleaded.

Clare rinsed her hair. It coiled over her shoulder like a snake, the water making it almost as dark as Riedwaan’s. She switched off the tap and stepped out of the shower.

‘I didn’t know you were interested in birds.’ Riedwaan did not take his eyes off her. Dripping wet, she was as easy with herself naked as she was clothed.

‘Well, I am. My father taught us. He would slam on the brakes in the middle of the highway, do a U-turn and hurtle back to identify some tiny ball of brown feathers. I decided that if I was going to die, at least I should know what I was dying for.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Riedwaan asked.

Clare caught the look on his face and laughed. ‘You never asked.’ She put on cream, smoothing out her arched brows. She reached for her red kimono and tied the cord tight, emphasising the curve of her hips.

‘I’ll come find you in Namaqualand. You can show a city boy what there is to like about all those flowers and birds.’

The thought of him at her sister’s farm bobbed bright as a lure, hiding the hook that lay beneath.

‘I’d love that.’ The need in her voice caught them both by surprise.

Riedwaan opened the door, letting in a blast of cold air. He reached for the words to tell her that things were more complicated than this morning routine. That Shazia was coming back. His wife. Instead, he pulled Clare towards him.

‘Not now,’ she said. ‘It’s freezing with the door open and I want my breakfast.’ She kissed him on the mouth and slipped out of his arms. ‘I’m going to get dressed.’