Like Clockwork

15

Apart from a long run on Saturday afternoon and a hastily eaten bowl of pasta at Giovanni’s, Clare worked on the documentary all Saturday. She was up and working again on Sunday morning, tiredness banished by coffee. She emailed Riedwaan, asking him to check the logs of the private yachts at the Waterfront marina. She wanted to know who owned them and who had skippered them during the time Charnay had been missing. Clare had arranged to see the old man who had found Charnay. He lived five blocks from her flat so she walked, the sun warm on her back. She scanned the name tags that accompanied the buzzers outside the San Souci apartment block. There he was, Harry Rabinowitz: 8 A. She pressed. A voice crackled. ‘Dr Hart?’

‘Yes, it’s me.’

The door buzzed and she pushed it open. The foyer had that deserted feeling holiday flats have out of season. Post was piled in lopsided heaps on top of full letterboxes. The yellowed indoor plant was forlorn in its dry pot, choked by a ruff of discarded cigarette ends. The lift was clean, though, and had recently been serviced – Clare checked this before pressing the button for the eighth floor. She tamped down the small flicker of panic that came with the uprush of the steel box.

The doors opened, Harry Rabinowitz was waiting for her. He was older than she had imagined. His wiry, athletic body belied the whiteness of his hair. He had been wearing a cap when she had seen him cover the dead girl.

‘Welcome, Dr Hart.’ His handshake was firm, his warm skin paper dry. He shepherded her towards his flat at the end of the dark corridor. He opened the door and sunlight splashed over them. The view was breathtaking, the expanse of ocean cradled by the crescent of land that curved north. The sturdy weight of Robben Island gave the view focus. It contrasted with the red and blue cargo ships heading towards the harbour. A tray was laid with delicate china, silver sugar tongs. The aroma of fresh coffee was strong.

‘Do sit down, Dr Hart.’ He pointed to a red leather chair and waited until she sat down. ‘Can I offer you some coffee? Some cake?’

Clare wanted neither, but accepted both. ‘It’s very kind of you to see me.’

‘Not at all. The pleasure is mine.’ Clare looked around the flat. It had been tidied in preparation for her visit. Loneliness had trans formed a stranger coming to ask questions into a rare social occasion. There were amateurish swipes in the dust on the dark tables that cluttered the space between the chairs. She set her cup down and got up to look at the framed photographs on the crowded bookshelf.

‘Your children?’ she asked, turning to him, holding the first picture that came to hand. It was of a man with his arm around a too-thin woman whose smile failed to mask her irritation. Seated in front of them were three children in the unattractive dress of a formal photograph. The boys were suety, sullen. The girl, about sixteen, was arresting: a sculpted face surrounded by a shock of curls. Winged brows framed her black eyes.

‘What a beautiful girl,’ said Clare.

‘My Rachel. My son’s daughter. They live in New York.’ He stared at the photograph, perhaps musing on the girl who was now moving into a complex American adolescence that he could not comprehend. A beloved stranger to him.

‘The other girl.’ He hesitated, unsure how to go on. ‘The one I found – would she be the same age?’ Clare nodded. She did not point out how similar the two looked. Perhaps that was something that Mr Rabinowitz would prefer not to see.

‘Would you take a walk with me?’ she asked. ‘Back along the promenade? Perhaps you could tell me what you saw.’ He looked anxious. ‘I know it will be painful, but maybe you will remember something else. Something more than you told the police.’

He weighed that up. ‘All right, my dear, all right.’ He walked back to the hallway and picked up his coat. A woman’s coat hung next to it, some ten years out of date. It had not been moved for a long time. The creases formed on the hook had faded. The fabric would eventually disintegrate. Clare still had her coat on, so she picked up her bag and stepped ahead of him through the front door. She held the lift while he locked and relocked the security doors that kept him safe. They were silent in the lift – both watching the winking light that indicated the progress of their journey back to street level.

They crossed Beach Road, taking a short cut through the park where a couple of children played, watched by their bored nannies. The vagrants had stirred to life and were drifting into the cold day. Mr Rabinowitz greeted some of the older ones. The younger men – less battered, more bitter – he did not seem to know.

A woman was selling flowers. ‘The flowers,’ Mr Rabinowitz said more to himself than to Clare. ‘At least there was something lovely with her.’ The old man stopped. ‘Which would be best for a young girl, Mavis?’ he asked.

‘Those irises. Just thirty rand a bunch. I’ll give you two for fifty,’ she said. Harry handed her the money and the flower seller wrapped the flowers.

‘She’s mos a pretty girl. Lucky,’ the flower seller said, winking at Clare.

‘I usually walk every day, my dear, but this is the first time I have been out since I found her.’ He fell into step with Clare on the curve of the promenade. The sea wall obscured the ocean, but every now and then the hidden waves tossed up arcs of spray that pirouetted then splashed at their feet. They were approaching Three Anchor Bay, where Charnay Swanepoel’s broken young body had been found.

‘I was out earlier than usual that morning. I had a meeting with my accountant and I didn’t want to be late.’ Clare already knew this, as she had read Riedwaan’s interview transcripts. Xavier Ndoro, the security guard, had not seen him leave. According to his interview, he had been making coffee, and usually no one left before six in the morning. So Mr Rabinowitz must have let himself out.

‘Tell me what happened,’ said Clare. ‘Everything. Each detail. As if you were replaying a movie. Tell me details that might seem unimportant, out of focus.’ Harry pointed to a bench and they sat down. The wind had shifted around and was coming hard off the sea. There was ice on its breath.

‘I came out of my building as usual. It was dark. No one about. The homeless were all huddled together around those ablution blocks there.’ Clare looked at them, five hundred metres from where they sat, from where the girl had been found. She was glad she was too far away to smell the foetid air they exuded. ‘It was misty. I remember hearing the foghorn as I stepped onto the promenade.’

‘When did you notice her?’ asked Clare.

‘It was as I rounded this corner where we’re sitting now. See those tamarisks?’ He pointed to the wind-crippled trees. ‘They’re small, but they obscure your view of this little bay here. As I came round here, I saw her near those steps.’ He dabbed at his watery eyes. ‘I thought it was a dead dog. Or a heap of rubbish. I was nearly on top of her before I realised it was a girl.’ Harry Rabinowitz leaned forward and rubbed his foot. ‘She was very beautiful.’

‘Have you hurt yourself?’ asked Clare, looking down as he rubbed.

‘I stubbed my foot against something that morning. Maybe one of those manhole covers. The council is so hopeless with maintenance these days that people are always hurting themselves.’

They got up to walk to the place where Charnay had lain. The flowers people had left for her had been whipped away by the wind or scavenged by vagrants and sold for a few rand. Enough to buy cheap wine or a bottle of methylated spirits.

The old man took off his hat and closed his eyes. Clare looked up from where the body had lain, towards the sea. There was a flight of stairs fifty metres away, which led down to the jagged rocks that were exposed only at low tide. High tide had been at five forty-five the morning the body was found. It had been full moon, so the water would have been deep. At spring tide the rocks were submerged, so a small craft could have reached the bottom of the steps.

She turned her back to the sea. The car park was close enough for her to make out what takeaways people were eating. Whoever had dumped Charnay could as easily have parked there. It would have taken ten seconds to carry the girl – she had only weighed fifty kilograms – and place her here for Harry to find, posed as carefully as a model for a shoot.

Clare pulled her coat closed and walked back. The large manhole cover was set into its frame. Either this was not the one that had injured Harry’s foot or the council had fixed it. Harry, she noticed, had replaced his hat. She sat down next to him.

‘It was so quiet that morning,’ he said. ‘You know how the fog sometimes absorbs sound back into itself?’ Clare nodded. ‘There was no traffic either, but I thought that just after I found her I heard a car engine. I looked up because I was hoping for help. But there were no lights, no movement. Just the sound, but as if it was coming from below. The fog distorts things, disorientates you. And then someone came. That group of lady walkers. Some time afterwards, the police. They were quick. The station is right there behind the garage.’ Harry did not know that Clare had also been there, that she had seen him looking at the dead girl, his face suffused with yearning and anger.

‘Anything else you remember, Mr Rabinowitz?’ Clare asked into the long silence

‘You know, Dr Hart, I did hear that car again after I found her. It sounded as if it idled for a bit. Maybe waiting for the lights to change.’ Clare checked the road. There were no traffic lights. ‘Do you know what kind of car it was?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I did look up, but the driver must have just accelerated because all I registered was a flash of something low, dark.’

‘Was it black?’ Clare asked.

Harry sifted through the fragmented memories of that morning. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I think it was blue. A dark blue. Powerful engine, too.’

He turned from her and took the irises out from the shelter of his coat. He separated the most perfect one from the bunch and put it where the girl’s body had lain on the gum-pocked pavement. The rest he took to the water’s edge. He flung the violet blooms into the air and the wind lifted them, carrying them for a few seconds before discarding them to the churning waves below. Harry put his hands back in his pockets and headed back home. Clare watched the flowers, glad that the old man did not see them being dashed against the rocks till they blended with the snared rubbish.

She caught up with him and they walked in silence till they reached her car. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘I’ll head for home from here.’

‘Well, good luck, my dear.’ He was disappointed she wasn’t coming up for a second coffee. Harry watched her until her car turned the corner, then he went upstairs to his flat. Once inside, he heated a cup of coffee in the microwave and went to sit at his computer. No one would phone him today so it didn’t matter how long he spent on the Internet. He wrote a long email to his son in America. He knew he wouldn’t get more than a two-line reply. Mr Rabinowitz wondered if his boy even read them. Later he would email Rachel, glad she was far away from here. She, at least, would answer.