Like Clockwork

10

Clare did not recognise the address – Welgemoed was not an area she ever had reason to visit. She was glad of Riedwaan’s directions. A woman out of uniform might be easier for Charnay’s family to talk to. It was a champagne-crisp morning, the light shimmered above the leaves of the trees lining the street she turned into. Here stolid face-brick houses, products of the affluent sixties, stood at the ends of long driveways. After the roar of the highway, the suburb seemed quiet. The only movement – the only sound – was a gardener pushing a lawnmower. It was as easy to find number 27 as it would have been to find any other house.

The house was silent. Every window was closed, with a net curtain blinding it. She thought she saw someone pass an upstairs window, but it could have been a shadow from the tree that blocked the sunlight from the house. Deep inside, a melancholy chime responded to her finger on the doorbell. The door flew open. A boy looked at Clare sourly.

‘Wie is daar?’ a voice called to him.

‘It’s that woman. About Charnay,’ he replied, not taking his eyes off Clare. ‘My mother is in there,’ he said, standing aside. He pointed down the passage to an open door. From it, sunlight spilled into the gloom.

The dead girl’s mother sat in the centre of the room, hunched as if a knife was twisting low in her gut. Mrs Swanepoel looked up at Clare, her eyes emptied of all emotion except the knowledge that she was alive and her child was not.

‘Ek kan jou nie help nie,’ said Mrs Swanepoel. ‘I cannot help you.’ She remembered to repeat it in English. ‘I told the police everything I know.’

Clare bent low and knelt next to the woman. She knew better than to touch her. The formulaic gesture of comfort would flay the woman.

‘She was an angel,’ said the mother, reverting to the familiarity of Afrikaans. ‘That is why she was taken from me.’

Clare turned away from her, pinioned by loss on her suburban carpet. She did not need to talk to her, could not bear to ask her more questions to which she had no answers. She had read Riedwaan’s interview transcripts anyway.

‘Can I look through her room?’ Clare asked.

Mrs Swanepoel did not move. ‘J.P.,’ she whispered. ‘J.P., take Miss Hart to your sister’s room.’

‘Ja, Ma.’ The boy who had let Clare in reappeared. Clare followed him up the stairs. Here all the doors were closed. He led her to the end of the passage. ‘Friends Welcome, Family by Appointment’ said the hand-drawn sign on her door – a remnant from a very recent childhood.

The boy opened the door and stood back to let Clare enter. The room was an orgy of pink: walls, curtains, carpets, bed – in every shade of the colour. Anything that could be flounced had ruffles and bows and flowers on it. It was oppressive. Clare wondered if the feeling of absence had been there before Charnay went missing. Clare repressed an urge to throw open the windows.

J.P. did not come in. ‘I’ll come back for you,’ he said, closing the door before Clare could respond.

She was relieved when she did not hear the key turn. She stood in the centre of the room, at a loss, reaching for a sense of the absent presence of the girl. Every flat surface was covered in pictures cut from celebrity magazines. All of them were of Charlize Theron. Charnay seemed to have gathered every available image of the actress. On her desk was a scrapbook full of articles tracking the star’s ascent from obscurity to the zenith of Hollywood fame. Clare sat down and read the notes that Charnay had made alongside the articles. They read like an instruction manual rather than a fan’s obsession. The pictures might be of Charlize, but the focus was Charnay.

Clare settled herself, dislodging a small avalanche of cushions. She reached down to pick them up. There on the floor, revealed as she shifted the bedspread, lay a blue card. Clare picked it up and held it up to the light. A series of numbers had been pencilled there and then erased. There was a sound from the passage. Clare slipped the card into her pocket as J.P. opened the door.

‘Look in her cupboard,’ he instructed. Clare obeyed. It was stuffed with expensive, wispy clothes. A pile of high-heeled shoes tumbled out. She noticed the labels as she bent to put them back.

‘Expensive, hey?’ he sneered. ‘I bet you could never afford them.’ Clare did not correct him. ‘How do you think she paid for them?’ He stepped close to Clare. There was a sprinkle of pimples around his nose. His breath was rank. ‘Think about how she paid,’ he repeated. ‘My mother thinks it was from modelling. But she believed anything that little hoer told her.’

His hatred was palpable. It was all Clare could do to stop herself from stepping back from it. It would give him pleasure, she was sure, if he sensed that he had unnerved her. ‘Did she go to meet someone last Friday?’ asked Clare.

‘How must I know?’ he spat. ‘She never bothered to speak to me.’

‘Where did she go when she went out?’ asked Clare.

‘To the Waterfront,’ he said. ‘That’s where they always went.’

‘They?’ queried Clare. The boy shifted his weight, regretting his slip.

‘Cornelle,’ he said. ‘They did everything together.’

‘Did you tell Captain Faizal this?’ asked Clare.

‘Nobody asked me,’ he replied. ‘Anyway, she always told my ma that she was going to sleep at Cornelle’s. And Cornelle said she was coming to sleep here. They were friends for so long that everyone stopped checking.’

‘Except you,’ said Clare. The boy looked awkward. He pointed to a framed photograph on the bookshelf. ‘There’s Charnay. And that’s Cornelle.’ The two girls were dressed in porn-star chic – like all girls their age. Cornelle was blonde and very slim, squeezed into clothes a size too small. She contrasted with the darker beauty of Charnay. Clare wondered how they had paid for these clothes. It cost a lot of money to look that cheap. Clare held the picture closer. It was difficult to work out where it had been taken. The blurred background did not look like someone’s house.

‘They worked well together,’ said J.P. He was at the door, holding it open for her. Her time was up. She put the picture down.

‘Where is Cornelle now?’

‘At school,’ he answered. ‘She was in the same class as Charnay.’

Clare followed J.P. Swanepoel to the front door. ‘J.P.,’ she said, ‘what were you doing on Friday night?’ He was motionless except for the tic-tic-tic of a vein in his neck.

‘Why?’

‘I would like to know,’ said Clare. ‘Where were you?’

‘On rugby tour.’ His voice cracked a little. ‘We went to the Boland on Friday morning. You can ask my coach.’

‘I will,’ said Clare, ‘and you let me know if you think of anything else about Charnay.’

The dead girl’s brother looked sullen. ‘Like what?’

‘Any new friends she might have made,’ said Clare.

He laughed. ‘She made a new friend every hour.’ He closed the door behind her. He was still watching through the thick, ridged glass when she opened her car door. She waved at him, but he did not wave back. She drove around the block before calling Riedwaan.

‘How did it go?’ he asked.

‘Interesting,’ said Clare. ‘I’ll tell you when I see you. There was just one thing I wanted to check now.’

‘Ja,’ said Riedwaan. ‘What?’

‘J.P. Her brother,’ said Clare. ‘Did you talk to him?’

‘Rita Mkhize did,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Why?’

‘I just wanted to check on his alibi. Can I speak to Rita?’

‘Sure,’ said Riedwaan. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Rita,’ she heard him call. ‘Clare wants to speak to you.’ He took his hand away. ‘I’ll see you later?’

‘I’ll call you,’ she said. Riedwaan handed the phone to Rita.

‘Hi, Clare,’ Rita said. ‘What did you want to know?’

‘About J.P. Swanepoel. What did you think?’

‘Not my type,’ laughed Rita. ‘And I most certainly was not his type either. A little blast from the old South Africa past.’

‘What did he tell you about his weekend?’

‘He said he’d been on rugby tour,’ said Rita.

‘And?’

‘I checked it out. His coach told me they left early Friday and were only back on Sunday evening. And that J.P. was there all the time.’

‘Okay,’ said Clare.

‘There was one other thing,’ Rita added. ‘I’m not sure if it’s important.’

‘What?’ asked Clare. Her pulse quickened.

‘He was sent off twice. Once for punching an opponent, and once for kicking someone in the scrum.’

‘Charming,’ said Clare. ‘Thanks.’

‘Any time,’ said Rita. ‘Have a good weekend if I don’t see you.’

Clare looked at her watch. It was close to the end of the school day. A chat to Cornelle would be worth the wait. Clare found Welgemoed High easily. There was only one exit – the rule now at government schools after a spate of assaults. She parked opposite a cluster of mothers chatting next to their Jeeps and BMWs.