Blood Rose

six

‘What has Captain Damases got so far?’ asked Clare, carrying a tray of fresh bread, carpaccio and a salad onto her balcony.

‘Three dead boys. All in and around Walvis Bay. This boy, they found this morning.’ Riedwaan turned over the top page of the faxed docket. ‘And two others: Nicanor Jones and Fritz Woestyn. All found about a week apart.’

Clare stroked her cat, winding in and out between her ankles. ‘And?’

‘Same age, same cause of death. Vulnerable kids, easy targets. No one to report them missing. All the weird stuff with the binding, the risky display on the swing. It just said serial to her. She thought, rightly I imagine, that if she gets someone up there now there’s a better chance of cracking it before another body washes up.’

‘Sounds like a textbook case,’ said Clare. She rolled a piece of paper-thin fillet between her fingers and ate it. ‘What’s the new boy’s name?’

‘Waiting for a positive ID, but they have him as Kaiser Apollis. Looks fourteen, could be sixteen. Been living on the street like the other two victims. Aids orphan, apparently. There’s a sister around somewhere, but no interview yet. That’s scheduled for the day after tomorrow. With you,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Here, have a look at Captain Damases’s photographs.’

He pushed away their plates and spread out the pictures on the table. His phone rang. Not his usual ring tone, but one a little girl had recorded before she left for Canada with her mother. The child’s voice, sweet and plaintive, called him: ‘Daddy, Daddy, it’s me.’

‘Yasmin?’ asked Clare.

‘Yup.’ Riedwaan looked at his watch. ‘My biweekly father-hood ration.’ He stood up, phone already to his ear. ‘Hello, baby girl. How’s Canada?’ Clare heard him say as he closed the door so that he could speak privately to the seven-year-old daughter he had not seen for almost a year.

Clare turned her attention to the images in front of her. They were eerie; the body huddled like any child escaping on the finite flight of a swing. The image nudged a buried memory. The tug of that weightless second at the top of the arc before the free fall of return; the solemn face of Clare’s twin sister, watching her swing up higher, higher, higher. Away from her. Until Constance could stand it no longer and caught the swing, tumbling Clare out, dissolving Clare’s rage with tears. Their father had removed the swing after that. To keep Clare safe, is how he had explained it. Clare and her older sister Julia had seethed, knowing that the real reason was to keep Constance calm. Clare felt for the forgotten scar on her elbow. The smooth ridge of skin was still there.

‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ Clare had not heard Riedwaan return. He put his hand on her arm, drawing her back into the present.

‘This tyre swing. We had one when we were children. I loved it. It made me feel free.’ She turned to face him. ‘How are things with Yasmin?’

‘Fine,’ said Riedwaan. ‘She’s fine.’

‘Shazia?’

A shadow crossed Riedwaan’s face at the mention of his estranged wife. He shrugged and did not meet Clare’s gaze. ‘The same.’ He picked up the crime-scene pictures. ‘What do you think of this?’

‘So spiteful to kill a child on a swing,’ said Clare, leaving the painful subject of Riedwaan’s broken family.

‘It looks like he was killed elsewhere; no blood in situ.’ Riedwaan’s attention was focused back on the soluble problem in front of him. ‘He was dead a good couple of days before he was dumped at the school. Maybe kept out beyond the fog belt, in the heat. The body was starting to smell bad,’ said Riedwaan, scanning through the faxed notes.

‘Why in a playground?’ mused Clare.

‘That’s the thing with nuts. It makes no sense unless you get inside their heads. Why put him on show a couple of days after he’s dead? What were they doing together all that time?’

‘The other two, were they also found near schools?’

‘No. Tamar has linked them because they were all head-shot wounds, same calibre gun. Intermediate range and similar victim profile. Ligatures or remnants of ligatures. And the timing, too – looks to her like there’s a pattern. A killing, then a cooling-off period.’

‘You think you have me stitched up then?’ Clare asked. The image of the dead boy had sapped the tentative spring sun of warmth, but she could not be sure that he was the source of her unease. She packed away the photographs and ushered Riedwaan to the front door.

‘Come on, Clare. You’re not going to say no. I’ll be there next week, when Phiri gets the paperwork done.’ Riedwaan, as usual, was reluctant to leave.

‘I must phone Constance first,’ said Clare, distracted. On the far side of the bay was a ribbon of white beach and beyond that the mountains, softened by distance. Clare imagined the road she would have taken up to Namaqualand, to see her twin. She felt the old tug deep within her. ‘Tell her I’m not coming.’

‘You and your twin,’ Riedwaan sighed. ‘I watch you, but don’t ask me how your minds work.’

‘It’s one mind,’ said Clare, ‘divided in two.’

She closed the front door behind him and walked through her apartment, picking up clothes, CDs and books that Riedwaan had discarded. Before she realised what she was doing, she had bundled his things into a bag. She dropped it at the front door, feeling lighter. The thought of a working journey felt good, right; this holiday idea, going to stay in the middle of nowhere with Constance, had not. Two birds with one stone, you could say. Clare took a deep breath, releasing the tension in her neck, and went to phone her twin.

As she dialled she pictured Constance as if she were with her. The hip-length curtain of dark hair; the shoulder blades and angular hips jutting against the seamless white she always wore over her scarred body. Clare let the phone ring three times. She put it down. Redialled. Another three rings. She hated these subterfuges, this pandering to a neurosis so deep it had worked into the marrow of her sister’s existence. And her own, she thought, irritation and hopeless love welling up together.

‘Constance,’ said Clare, envisaging her twin in the dim farmhouse of their childhood.

‘Are you all right?’ Her twin’s voice had the same soughing as wind in pine trees. You had to lean in to her to hear her. Which meant that when she spoke, which was rarely, everyone stopped, leaned in close, listened.

‘I’m fine,’ said Clare.

‘You aren’t coming.’ Constance laughed, a silvery peal. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to call.’

‘I’m sorry, Constance. Something came up. A work thing. I have to go.’

‘The dead boys.’ Constance said it simply, a statement of fact.

‘How did you know?’ Clare’s skin crawled.

‘Television. We pick up the Namibian broadcasts here sometimes. I saw a snippet about a boy on a swing in a school in a desert. I thought, she’ll go to him, instead of coming here to me.’ The mocking, musical laugh again. ‘I thought, he’s waiting there for Clare.’