Like Clockwork

19

Clare was extricating Jakes from a cluster of women when the text message came through. Her anxiety, always circling below the surface, surged at the jarring beep. She opened her phone – ‘Girl’s body. Graaff’s Pool.’ She froze. She checked the message details. ‘Private number’ came up on her screen.

‘What is it?’ asked Jakes, sensing her distress. She held her hand up and walked to the window facing the sea, dialling Riedwaan’s number.

The clouds lay low over the sea, but the rain had worn itself out. She could just make out Graaff’s Pool. There was no one there, no one walking, no one loitering. A cold drizzle had driven even the hardiest vagrants off the benches and under the construction sites along Main Road. She shivered as she imagined a body out there, beyond the night-blackened sea wall.

Riedwaan answered. ‘Did I wake you?’ Clare asked.

‘Ja,’ he yawned. ‘What is it?’

‘Someone’s found another body, Riedwaan. A girl.’

‘Where is it?’ Riedwaan was wide awake now. He was already out of bed and dressing, phone in hand. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at a party. Someone sent me a text message. I’ll explain later. Meet me at Graaff’s Pool. That’s where the SMS said the girl’s body was.’

‘I’ll be there now,’ he said.

Clare wanted to say more but the words stuck, sharp in her throat. She snapped her phone shut.

Otis Tohar was standing next to her. ‘A beautiful view, no?’ He pointed in the direction she had been looking. ‘One never knows what a night like this might bring, does one? Who were you calling?’

‘A friend,’ said Clare, surprised into answering his intimate question.

‘Someone to meet for a nightcap? How lovely for you.’

Clare did not correct him. Instead, she thanked him for the party and fetched Jakes. The lift sank to the basement with a sigh. Clare pictured Otis Tohar watching the blue flash of police lights, the red of the ambulance from his eyrie, and the fear she had repressed came rushing back.

‘What was the big rush?’ Jakes asked as they turned onto the wet street.

‘I need to go down to Graaff’s Pool,’ she told Jakes. ‘Drop me at home so I can fetch my car.’

‘Graaff’s Pool? That’s not a good place in the middle of the night. I’ll come with you, be your knight in shining armour.’

‘It’s fine, Jakes. Just take me home.’ But Jakes was weaving his car through the late-night taxis towards the beachfront. Clare was too tired to argue with him, and she did not really feel like waiting there alone. Jakes parked with the exaggerated accuracy of someone who has had too much to drink.

Riedwaan’s car was not there yet. It would take him twenty minutes to get there from the Bo-Kaap, where he rattled around alone in his too-large house. Clare was out of the car before Jakes had switched off the engine. She walked down the path, past the walls blocking the pool from public view, and the discarded condoms. Clare waited for her eyes to adjust to the flickering light as the clouds scudded along, hiding then revealing the moon. The tide was coming in. If there was a body here they would need to move it soon – before the water reclaimed it. The rocks were jagged black teeth against the night sky, the sand a grimy white. Clare surveyed the rocks. She could see nothing soft, nothing human. She ventured closer to the encroaching water’s edge, empty mussel shells crunching under her heels.

The slim body was wedged into a shallow crevice, the dark hair haloed around her face. Clare felt faint. She stepped back from the body and phoned Riedwaan. ‘Call Piet Mouton and your scene of crime officers,’ she said. ‘We have a serial killer on our hands.’

A wave rushed forward then pulled back with a sigh. The girl’s long boots with their spiked heels were flecked with foam. Clare switched her phone to camera and circled the body at a careful distance, taking photographs. The rising tide would soon obliterate any evidence. One breast was exposed, the other covered by the flimsy fabric of her top. There was a tear near the shoulder, as if someone had tried to cover her. Clare’s blood ran cold when she zoomed in on her hand – a bound, bloody pulp in which a dull metallic gleam was discernible. It would be a key, Clare was sure. The waves pulled back and Clare balanced herself over the rocks to photograph the girl’s feet. The girl’s head pointed south, towards Signal Hill, the rounded hillside that framed the tower block that Clare had just come from. The girl’s eyes were sunken, and the blood had dried into a mocking harlequin’s tear on her soft cheek.

Jakes gasped when he saw the body.

His camera would give them far better photographs than her cellphone. ‘Where’s your camera?’ Clare asked, ‘It could take a while before the police photographer gets to the scene.’

‘It’s in the boot,’ he replied. ‘I’ll get it.’ She walked back up with him, steadying herself on his arm. She felt him shake and held onto him more tightly.

‘How the hell did anyone get a body here without someone seeing him?’ asked Jakes.

‘Rent boys and their clients are not likely to rush to the nearest police station,’ said Clare.

‘I don’t know. It’s peculiar,’ said Jakes. ‘It’s quite a way from the road to the pool.’ Jakes opened his boot and was taking out his camera bag when Riedwaan pulled up. He got out of his car and looked from Jakes to Clare, noting the absence of Clare’s car. Riedwaan’s hostility was palpable when Clare introduced the men.

‘I took some pictures with my phone,’ said Clare as she led the way back down the path. ‘The tide is coming in so fast that I was worried any evidence might be obliterated. I’ve asked Jakes to take some more pictures with his camera. In case your guys take a while.’

‘How helpful,’ Riedwaan said. Jakes had gone ahead, camera at the ready. Riedwaan put both hands onto her shoulders. ‘How did you know about this, Clare?’ He could see the hesitation in her eyes. ‘You have to tell me. Otherwise we are both in shit.’

‘I told you, someone sent me an SMS.’

‘Who?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘It’s a private number,’ said Clare. ‘Do you think Rita could track it down?’

‘Ja,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I’ll get her on it ASAP.’

Riedwaan bent down to look at the dead girl. ‘Amore Hendricks,’ he said, his voice heavy with pain. He was going to have to tell her parents. His face would forever be the one that lurked in their nightmares of their daughter’s death.

Riedwaan turned to greet the scene of crime officers. Within minutes the area was taped off and lights had been set up. The police photographer was taking pictures of the body and the beach sand around it. A uniformed officer bent down and was checking every footprint in the vicinity. Another officer was collecting anything that could be collateral evidence; anything that might show how long the killer had spent with the body, what he had done here. Clare would add this to what she already knew to draw up a profile of the killer. The work of shifting from a single murder case to a special investigation would keep Riedwaan very busy. Clare envied him his preoccupation.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Riedwaan,’ she said

‘Okay. You can come and make your statement. I’ll give you the preliminary autopsy report then.’

Jakes was waiting at the car, smoking a bummed cigarette. He gave her the roll of film he had shot, opened the door for her and drove towards her flat without a word. Riedwaan watched the car until it merged with the late-night clubbing traffic. He turned back to the task at hand, attributing the tightness in his chest to the horror before him.

Riedwaan waited for Piet Mouton to arrive, which he did, ten minutes later. Mouton looked around. ‘The bloody tide is coming in fast, man. Not much to see here any more.’ He straightened up, wheezing at the effort. ‘You’re lucky you found her at all. If the tide had got her, you would have had fuck-all to compare with the last one.’ Mouton shook out a cigarette, and offered one to Riedwaan. The match hissed as it hit the water. ‘Who found her?’

‘Clare did. Somebody SMS’d her. Rita’s tracing the number.’

‘Jesus, Riedwaan, stay away from that woman. She’s a corpse magnet.’ Mouton put his pudgy hand on Riedwaan’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. ‘She’s a bit too clever for me and too skinny, also. Not my type.’ Piet didn’t have a type. He had Mrs Mouton. Soft, plump, could cook like an angel, allowed no mortuary jokes in her house. She would be waiting for Piet with a slice of cake and a pot of tea when he finished the autopsy.

‘Are we going to autopsy her tonight?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘You trying to show up the rest of the police force, man?’ Piet asked him. Riedwaan shrugged.

‘Okay,’ said Piet, looking at his watch. It was well after midnight. ‘The night is young and it doesn’t look as if the two of us have much else to do.’ A wave splashed his shoes. ‘There’s nothing I can do here with the tide rising so fast.’ Mouton made a series of quick sketches of the girl’s body and tested her limbs for rigor mortis.

‘How long has she been dead, Doc?’

‘Hard to say. It’s been bloody cold tonight, but I’d say pretty much the same as the other girl. Thirty-six hours max. I’d say he likes to keep them with him a while once they are nice and quiet.’

‘You going to do swabs here, Doc?’ asked the older of the two mortuary technicians. He was blowing on his hands to keep them warm. A freezing drizzle was drifting off the sea.

‘No,’ said Mouton. ‘You boys can pack her up. We’ll get her inside. I’ll do everything in the lab. That rain looks like it’s here for the night.’

The two men lifted the girl gently and settled her onto the stretcher. Mouton zipped up the body bag, covering her blinded face just as the rain began to come down in earnest.