Like Clockwork

32

Clare went into the kitchen after Julie and Marcus had left. She rinsed the coffee cups with Fritz winding in and around her ankles, delighted to have Clare to herself again. She was tidying the cushions when the doorbell went.

Clare pressed the button immediately. ‘Julie! Your pashmina’s here. You didn’t need to come up. I would have dropped it off for you.’

But there was no answering, guilty laugh, just the hush of an empty pavement. The hairs on the nape of Clare’s neck rose. She went into the hallway. The knock on her door was insistent, unfamiliar. The wood looked very flimsy. Her hand sidled towards the panic button.

‘Who is it?’

‘It is me, Giscard.’

Clare had seen Giscard earlier, guarding cars in his usual spot. Clare opened the door as far as the security chain allowed. It embarrassed her to have to speak to him through the small gap.

She dropped her hand but she didn’t open the door. ‘What are you doing here? Are you all right?’

‘I know it is late, Madame Clare, but I must tell you something about the girl in the newspaper. The one who is gone.’

Clare closed the door, then slid back the chain to open it. ‘Come in,’ she said. He followed her into the kitchen. ‘What is it?’

‘The girl everyone is looking for. India King,’ he struggled with the unfamiliar name. ‘I think I know where she is.’

Clare felt the strength drain from her legs. She sat down.

‘How do you know? Where is she?’

‘Somebody, a friend, told me he sees her there near the beach. At the Japanese restaurant past the lighthouse.’

She went cold. ‘Sushi-Zen?’

‘Yes, yes – that is the one. The man who saw her, my friend, he works there.’

‘What do you mean, “saw her”, Giscard? Where did he see her?’ Giscard shifted in his chair.

‘He saw her there on the grass. The moon is shining too bright. He sees her there. He think she is sleeping. But when he goes to her he sees she is dead.’

Questions skittered through Clare’s mind as she reached for the phone and dialled the police station. ‘Put me through to Riedwaan Faizal.’ She had asked him to join her this evening, trying to make peace. To their mutual relief, though, he was on duty. The phone buzzed in her ear. She was about to put it down, try his cell number, when he picked up. ‘Riedwaan. Someone has found India King.’ She could hear him exhale.

‘Where?’ he asked. ‘Who found her? When?’

‘On the beach outside Sushi-Zen at about midnight. There is a bus stop there, two palm trees. She’s there.’ Clare could hear him scribbling it down. ‘Giscard told me. It was his friend who found her – he works there.’

‘I’ll send Rita with a car to fetch Giscard. We will also have to find this friend of his.’ He put down the phone.

Clare stood up. ‘I’ll make us some coffee. The police are on their way.’

Giscard looked longingly at the door.

‘Giscard, you knew you would have to speak to them if you came to me.’ She poured his coffee, handed him the sugar. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘Xavier, my friend, he stays with me because he is also from DRC. He came home tonight and he was very, very strange. He was talking about the dead girl, the dead girl. He keep saying he touch her. That it is wrong that he touch her because she is dead. But he say he did not know she is dead.’ He stirred more sugar into the coffee, as if trying to make sense of Xavier’s incoherence.

‘What else?’ asked Clare. She took the spoon from him. The sound of it scraping on the bottom of the cup was grating her nerves raw.

‘He have blood on his new Nikes. I asked him how it got there but he say to me he did nothing. Just that he found her. He saw her when he was waiting for the bus.’ He looked up at Clare. ‘Please help me, Clare. I must come to you because he came on the bus. Maybe the driver sees the blood and tells the police. I say to him: come with me to the police. You must tell the truth or they will find you. I tell him that the police in South Africa will find you. It is not like DRC. They will want to find who killed this white girl. But he won’t come. He is too afraid.’

‘He won’t be deported if he has his papers.’

Giscard stared at her. ‘He is not afraid of them. He is afraid of her. Her body is warm when he touch her, like she is alive.’

They drank their coffee and waited for the car. Clare craved a cigarette as desperately as if she had given up yesterday, rather than five years before.

‘The police will want to question Xavier,’ said Clare. ‘Is he at home now?’

‘Is that necessary?’ asked Giscard. ‘I come to you already.’

Clare put her hand on his shoulder. ‘He will have to make a statement. They will want to question him, find out what he was doing there. They will want to know what he knows of the other girls.’

‘Why? He is innocent. He just found her there.’

The doorbell went and Clare buzzed in Rita Mkhize and a uniformed officer. ‘They will take you to pick up Xavier,’ said Clare.

Giscard stood up to follow the officers to the car, his shoulders slumped in defeat. ‘I wish I not tell you this, Madame. Not good for me to do good thing.’

Clare had no comfort for him. She locked up, wondered how long it would be before he was deported. Then she drove down to join Riedwaan.