Blood Rose

five

‘Hello?’ Clare’s phone was ringing as she opened her front door, laden with shopping bags.

‘Dr Hart? Please hold for Superintendent Phiri.’

‘Okay, I’m holding.’ She put down her bags, wondering if she had heard wrong.

‘Dr Hart?’ She hadn’t. The clipped formality could belong to only one man. ‘This is Phiri here. How are you?’

‘I’m well.’ Clare buried her surprise in pleasantries. ‘How nice to hear from you. How are you?’

‘Very busy, but well.’ Phiri took his cue from her. ‘I hope I haven’t got you at a bad time?’

‘Not at all.’ Clare could no longer ignore the growing knot of anxiety. ‘Has something happened to Riedwaan?’ she asked.

Phiri laughed. The low, melodious sound didn’t fit with Clare’s picture of him: precise moustache, stiff and exact in his uniform. ‘He’s fine,’ Phiri said. ‘Looks as if someone’s been looking after him.’

Clare blushed. She was glad there was no one except Fritz to see.

‘I have a situation that needs… lateral thinking. And tact – something I couldn’t get from Faizal for love or money. He suggested that I speak to you.’

Clare was taken aback. Phiri had always been reluctant to use her services as a profiler. He had a policeman’s distrust of civilians and a man’s scepticism about giving a woman authority.

‘How can I help you?’

‘I’d like to discuss it with you in person. In an hour. My office at twelve.’

Clare put down the receiver, took her shopping to the kitchen and packed it away.

Two weeks ago, Riedwaan had stayed the whole night with her, slipping into domesticity as if it were a second skin. It was not so easy for Clare. Doubling her shopping seemed easier than talking about boundaries and space and her secret pleasure at being held in the morning, but Phiri’s call warranted a few questions.

Riedwaan picked up on the fourth ring.

‘I’m meant to be going on holiday,’ said Clare. ‘Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’

‘I’m coming to the meeting, too. I’ll meet you outside the nut house.’

At five to twelve, Riedwaan pulled up outside the newly built Psychological Crimes Unit. It had been dubbed the nut house before the first brick was laid, and the name had stuck, much to Phiri’s chagrin.

Clare wrinkled her nose. ‘You smell horrible.’

Riedwaan ground his cigarette under his heel. ‘That’s a nice way to greet someone who just got you a job,’ he said, reaching his hand under her thick hair. Clare arched her neck. ‘Are your hackles always raised?’ he asked.

‘Only when I’m suspicious,’ Clare laughed. ‘Explain. Phiri’s my new best friend?’

‘Let’s just say he sees you as a way out of a tricky political corner.’ Riedwaan followed her up the marble stairs of the unit.

‘Since when was I the answer to someone’s political problems? Or you for that matter?’

‘Captain Tamar Damases,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Who called this morning?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘I don’t trust you, Riedwaan. There’s something going on that you’re not telling me.’

‘She called. Out of the blue. She was looking for you, not me.’ Riedwaan knocked on Phiri’s door before Clare could interrogate him further.

The senior superintendent gave the impression of a man in uniform, despite his civilian clothes. Phiri was lean to the point of thinness. He moved with the agility of the champion athlete he had been as a young man, desperate to escape the legacy of grinding poverty that illegitimacy had bequeathed him.

‘Thank you for coming, Dr Hart, Faizal. Can I offer you some coffee?’

Clare declined. Phiri’s coffee was notoriously strong and he only ever served it as he drank it – with three sugars and powdered milk.

‘You’ll have some, Faizal.’ It was not a question. It had taken Riedwaan twenty years with the police to learn which battles were worth fighting. This was not one of them and he accepted the cup without demur.

Phiri opened the Manila folder in front of him. ‘I have an unusual request to make, Dr Hart,’ he said, steepling his fingers over the single page of spidery notes, the careful handwriting of a man who had started school at twelve.

‘You know about the policing cross-border cooperation agreement signed between the South African government and some of our neighbours?’

‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘It was signed in April as I remember.’

‘Correct,’ said Phiri. ‘Extremely tricky negotiations, as you can imagine. Very often what South Africa offers regionally is seen as interference, domination even, rather than cooperation.’ Phiri looked pained at the thought.

‘The agreement focuses on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and car hijacking syndicates, doesn’t it?’ asked Clare.

‘That and the upsurge of armed gangs. We know that increasing numbers of soldiers from our… how shall I put it… less affluent neighbours are moonlighting as hired guns in South Africa for cash-in-transit heists and armed bank robberies. So the South African Police Service is providing expert assistance to our neighbours’ developing police forces.’

Clare looked from Phiri to Riedwaan. Riedwaan had just ventured his first sip of coffee and had a stricken look on his face. He was not going to be of any help.

‘That’s not my field of expertise at all,’ she said. ‘I specialise in head cases: psychological crimes, sexual murders in particular.’

‘I know,’ said Phiri, impatient at having his presentation speeded up. ‘That’s why I’ve called on you. One of the subclauses – 6.6 of the agreement if you want to read it – deals with unusual violent crimes. The current terminology for predatory sex crimes, serial rape or murder and unusual crimes against children.’

‘It excludes the more usual murders or assaults of children,’ Riedwaan added, ‘committed by their very own loving parents, teachers, relatives and-’

Phiri cleared his throat. ‘Thank you, Faizal. It was the best that could be produced in a short period. At least we’ve something to work with.’

‘I do apologise, sir,’ said Riedwaan with just sufficient sincerity to pacify his boss.

‘As I was saying, Dr Hart,’ said Phiri, turning back to Clare, ‘section 6.6 deals with unusual violent crimes. As you know, few of our neighbours have either the manpower or the scientific expertise to investigate crimes such as these. We’ve had our first request for assistance of this nature. I’m very keen that we’re successful with this particular case. It’ll go some way in showing that the agreement’s worth something and that we can provide a service beyond our borders.’

‘So what happened where?’ asked Clare. ‘And why me?’

‘We’ve had a request from the Namibian police, from Captain Tamar Damases of their Sexual Violence and Murder Unit. Faizal said she was keen that we ask you.’

‘Ask me what exactly?’ asked Clare.

‘That you go up to assist with an investigation. She thinks they need a profiler.’ Phiri picked up his rose-speckled cup and sipped and put it back on its saucer. The clatter was loud in the silence. He was the only policeman Clare knew who drank from a cup and saucer. His mother had given the set to him when he had been made a senior superintendent. She did not think it fitting that her only son should drink from the chipped assortment of mugs the rest of the force used.

‘I’m flattered that you asked me,’ Clare said into the silence that stretched between them. ‘But surely it’d be easier if someone employed by the police went up. Captain Faizal, for example.’ She looked at Riedwaan. He pretended to drink his coffee and avoided her gaze.

‘Dr Hart, the protocol is new, the bureaucracy not quite in place and the Namibians are territorial. What Captain Faizal suggested was that you go and work with the investigation. We send him up next week when we have all the formalities sorted out.’

‘Where would I be based?’ asked Clare.

‘Walvis Bay,’ Faizal interrupted Phiri’s answer. There was a note of apology in his voice. As there should be. Clare had spent two godforsaken months there working on a documentary. The hot desert wind had whipped red sand off the dunes and ruined her camera.

‘Faizal tells me that you know the place,’ said Phiri.

Clare wondered what else Riedwaan had told the superintendent. ‘I know it a bit,’ she said.

‘Will you consider it?’

Clare shifted in her seat, repressing an uninvited flash of memory: stars hanging low as lamps in the sky, the desert’s nocturnal creatures calling, and her yielding to a man who had taken measure of her loneliness and her desire. She had given herself to him for a week, then flown home, edited her film and ignored his phone calls until they stopped.

‘Tell me more about the case,’ she said.

‘A dead child. Bizarre killing. The body displayed in a schoolyard. Bullet to the head, but ritual marks and other peculiarities on the corpse. Reminiscent of at least one other. Maybe more. Interested?’

Clare was intrigued and Phiri could see it. He knew how to play her and she wondered how much of that was thanks to Riedwaan. ‘I am,’ she confessed, despite her misgivings at being the subject of discussion. ‘But I need some more detail.’

‘Faizal has all the notes. He’ll brief you,’ said Phiri with a tone of finality. ‘There are the crime-scene photographs. No autopsy yet. They’re holding that up until you get there. A few preliminary interviews. She’s smart, this Damases. Organised.’ He picked up Riedwaan’s abandoned cup and put it on the tray on the counter behind him. He closed the file in front of him and stood up. The meeting was over.

Clare stood too. ‘Thank you, Superintendent Phiri.’

‘I watched you work the last time, Dr Hart. You were very… effective. Let me know what you decide and what you need. You’ll be working under Faizal.’ He straightened the immaculately arrayed files on his desk. ‘Not a position I’d have chosen. But not everyone has the same taste I suppose.’

No secrets in the force, thought Clare. Everyone knew that Phiri, at fifty, still lived with his mother and that she made his lunch every day.

So, no reason that they wouldn’t know that Riedwaan had been staying with her, although the breach in her hard-won privacy – secrecy, her sisters call it – rankled.

She followed Riedwaan to what he called his office. More a corner of chaos which his colleagues avoided like a domestic incident on a Saturday night.

‘You’ve got some explaining to do, Riedwaan,’ she said, closing the door. ‘I don’t for one minute imagine that Phiri thought this little scheme up by himself.’

‘It’s nearly lunch time. I need something to eat before we discuss this.’ Riedwaan picked up a file with Tamar Damases’s notes. ‘You going to feed me?’