Like Clockwork

38

It was already very dark when Clare got home. She dispelled the feeling of neglect in the flat by switching on lights and closing curtains. She took the dead flowers from the hall and dumped them in the bin. She was expecting Riedwaan at eight. They’d be going through the case again – they were still missing something vital. She looked into the fridge: a lone cauliflower, which had bloomed black fungus. Mister Delivery would be bringing dinner. Clare made a pot of tea and took it through into the lounge. Then she took the cassette she had taken from Brian King’s study and pushed it into the video machine. With Fritz on her lap, she curled up on her couch and pressed ‘play’. The television screen flickered into life.

The opening shot was a close-up of a woman driving. Then the camera pulled back, revealing an oak-lined drive. It had clearly been shot from inside the house – every now and then the hand-held camera wobbled, inadvertently including curtains and the side of a window. The camera’s hidden eye swept down again when the woman parked. It did not bother with her face; rather it zoomed in obscenely on her breasts, then her buttocks, as she leaned into her boot to pick up her shopping. The woman’s obliviousness imbued the ordinary scene with menace. The camera panned as she turned. Clare sat bolt upright, spilling scalding tea onto an incensed Fritz. The house and garden that came into view was the one she had been in that afternoon.

The screen went dark, then flooded with light as the woman opened the door and was briefly silhouetted against the sun, keys in hand. She set her bags down and closed the door behind her. Then strangely, suddenly, she was looking directly at the camera, her face frozen in horror. She was uncannily like India. The woman’s body sank down, as if the weight of what she saw crushed her. A man stepped into the screen. He was hooded, but the wedding band on his hand was unmistakable. It was Brian King. He took the woman’s wrist and twisted a piece of blue rope around it, viciously tightening it. Clare watched, waiting for the woman – it could only be Mrs King – to struggle, to protest. But she did neither. She held up her other hand, cowering like a dog that hopes its punishment will soon be over.

Her husband twisted the rope round her hand, forcing her to her knees. He ordered her to strip, but she shook her head mutely. Stupidly. King jerked her to her feet and dragged her down the passage towards the study where Clare had sat that very afternoon. He pushed her towards a door behind his desk and made her open it. The camera followed her, then stopped to pan across the three men in the room. They all wore hoods. Cathy King’s knees buckled, and her husband kicked her over the threshold.

‘Now you are going to be useful, bitch.’

His voice hissed with revulsion towards the woman grovelling at his feet. He clicked his fingers and one of the men stepped forward. He raised the horsewhip in his hand and brought it down hard on her back. The thin fabric of her silk shirt parted immediately, revealing the tattoo – two vertical lines bisected with an X – and delicate red beads of blood.

Clare pressed ‘stop’. The film, for all its hand-held feel, had been professionally shot and edited. The shots were tight and the sound clear. It had a layered, Hitchcock feel. Kelvin Landman had said that you could make as much money out of celluloid girls as you could out of live ones. Apparently, Brian King shared the same idea.

Clare put down the remote and picked up her tea again. She would wait for Riedwaan before she watched the rest. She dug around in her bag, remembering that King had given her his business card. There it was, tucked into her wallet: King and De Lupo: Wolf Media, Director. Brian King would certainly know how to get a video shot and edited. Yet Clare knew that the police would do nothing unless Mrs King pressed charges. Somehow, Clare doubted that she would.

The phone rang, startling her. She picked it up.

‘Clare? It’s Riedwaan. I thought you’d forgotten. I’ve been ringing your doorbell for the past five minutes.’ He was irritated.

‘Sorry. It can’t be working.’ She buzzed him in and went to the front door to welcome him. He had two Woolworths bags – one with dinner, one with two bottles of wine. Under his arm were three folders. Charnay, Amore and India. Their three dinner companions. Clare’s appetite drained away, though she was glad of the wine that Riedwaan poured her.

They went back to the lounge and Clare lit the fire while Riedwaan cleared space for the three files. He put the photographs on the table and laid the final autopsy reports next to each one. The wood crackled, domesticating the room and drawing Fritz away from the couch and next to the fireplace.

Clare went through to her study and brought her own photographs and notes. She laid these down next to Riedwaan’s files. ‘This is the stuff I’ve been gathering for my film about trafficking. At the heart of it all is Kelvin Landman,’ said Clare. ‘I know you want to focus on the killer of the girls, but I’m convinced that the two things are linked. Landman’s tentacles spread everywhere. He’s like a cancer, corrupting everything he touches.’

‘You’ve been working hard.’ Riedwaan reached out, tentatively massaging Clare’s tense neck. The presence of the three dead girls neatly filed on her table seemed to cool the warmth of his hand. She didn’t relax – but she didn’t pull away, either. Over her shoulder, he read the profile she had been working on. ‘Looks like one person. Although he could have an accomplice. Targets his victims. They look similar, similar age. Out alone, hence vulnerable. Some indication that he set it up a rendezvous beforehand. Presume that the first two went willingly. Third one not. Has a car. Extreme need for control. Very precise planning needed for the fantasy to work.’

‘This describes Landman exactly, Clare. But he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. He’d have someone to work with him.’

‘It could also describe Brian King or that rent boy’s client, Da Cunha,’ she suggested.

‘We’ve got a DNA sample from India, a good one. There was semen on the body, and that’s been analysed. It matches the sample of that girl who was raped in Johannesburg. The suicide.’

‘God, Riedwaan, how did you get the lab galvanised? They usually don’t do anything unless the case is going to court.’

‘Let’s just say I had a favour or two to call in and somehow this got itself to the front of the queue.’

‘Have you been able to match it with anyone?’

‘Nothing. None of the fuckers we have on file.’

‘We have to keep on looking, then,’ said Clare. ‘Do you have any DNA for Landman?’

‘None. But the two different groups – that points to two men.’

‘We could bring King in for questioning. He could do some explaining,’ said Clare. ‘It could just as easily be one person – about twenty per cent of men are a different blood group to that indicated by their semen.’

‘But he was at the Isis – like he said he was,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I also checked up on the girl he spent the night with. I don’t like him, but so far there’s no chink in his alibi.’

‘I took a very nasty video from his house,’ Clare revealed. ‘A film of him orchestrating the gang rape of his wife.’

‘Did she lay charges?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘I doubt it,’ said Clare.

‘There’s not much to be done until she does.’ Clare reached for the remote. ‘Don’t show it to me,’ said Riedwaan. He pulled her away from the video machine. ‘I’ve had enough for today.’ He traced the underside of her jaw, down the soft curve of her neck. Clare leaned into the enclosure of his arms.

‘Are you going to stay?’ she asked

‘I am.’ Riedwaan pulled her to her feet. ‘For a while. Let’s go to bed. I’m too tired to eat.’

He was asleep by the time Clare was out of the bathroom. She slid in next to him, unused to moving so quietly in her own bedroom. He reached for her without waking. With someone breathing beside her, it was so much easier to relinquish her body to sleep.