Like Clockwork

46

Clare retraced Theresa Angelo’s steps. She walked over to the security gate of the apartment complex. The guard was inside his hut, his radio blasting a soccer game at the road. He did not see her as she slipped under the boom. She looked back at the Film Fusion balcony. Sam had gone inside. Fifty metres down the road was a rank of municipal dustbins screened by some reeds. She looked up at the apartments. Not one window faced her way.

She walked towards the marina. At the other end of the service road there was a metal gate, with a hidden release mechanism Clare soon discovered on the inside. She pressed it, and the gate jumped open onto the small parking lot that served the yachting marina. Clare walked down the slipway, uneasy with the sense that Theresa had so recently walked this way. Then she made her way to The Blue Room. The barman was absorbed in the task of polishing a glass. It took him a few seconds to register Clare’s presence.

‘Can I help?’ His voice was clipped, neutral. ‘We aren’t open for another half an hour.’

‘Hello, Tyrone. I’m not here for a drink. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.’

He paled, recognising her. ‘What about? I wasn’t on duty last night. I can’t help you.’

‘So you know I’m looking for someone?’

‘I heard it on the news. That another girl is missing.’ He put the glass down. ‘And then I saw you, so I thought you’d be looking for her.’

‘Why did you think I would look here, Tyrone?’

He turned to pack away the clean glasses. ‘I can’t help you. I was at home last night.’

‘Who was here, then?’

He looked down at the glass in his hand and polished it again.

‘One girl is missing, Tyrone. Three are dead. Information is the only thing that will help us catch him.’ She put one of her cards on the bar counter. ‘You call me.’ He said nothing, did not pick up the card.

‘We’ll be checking your alibi,’ she said, turning as she reached the door. Her card had gone, she noticed. Then she walked out briskly and settled herself on a nearby bench to wait for Riedwaan.

Sam Napoli had said that Theresa had been wearing blue nail polish. He had noticed it, commented on it because it was out of character and it had looked odd. Clare opened her phone and pressed Piet Mouton’s cell number.

‘Ja?’

‘Piet? Clare here. Can you check a detail for me?’

‘Those girls?’ aksed Piet. ‘I hear you’ve got another one.’

‘Not yet, Piet. You keep yourself busy in your lab so long.’

‘So what do you want me to check?’

‘Did you note down if those girls had nail polish on?’ She waited as Mouton shuffled through the organised chaos that was his desk.

‘Okay, here they are. Charnay, yes. Amore, yes. India, yes.’ Clare imagined him running his fat sausage of a finger down his pages of minutely detailed notes. ‘Ja, they all were. India was wearing nail polish, but it was scratched. Like she had tried to get it off with something sharp. There were a few small cuts on the side of the nail bed. There were fragments under her nail, too. Why?’

‘Just checking, Piet. This Theresa Angelo who disappeared last night was wearing blue nail polish. The last person to see her commented on it because it didn’t fit with her.’

‘Theresa Angelo. A dead angel. Tabloid heaven.’

‘Thanks, Piet,’ she said wryly. Any of the other tests in yet?’

‘Not yet. I’ll let you know.’

‘Okay. bye, Piet.’ Clare watched the inky-black water lapping at the sheer stone sides of the marina. She remembered a bottle of blue nail polish in India’s immaculate bathroom that looked as if it had been used only once. She watched a seal waddle along a wooden jetty and dive in, gracefully transformed as soon as it hit the water. The phone’s shrill ring startled her out of her reverie. She was surprised to see the number.

‘Piet,’ said Clare.

‘I’ve just got one result in from the tests on the fibres we found on India. They were rope fibres. What is interesting is that there are traces of bird shit on it. I got my friend at the ornithology institute to run some tests. He said it’s from a seagull – one that scavenges on human waste. An urban seagull.’

‘Thanks, Piet.’

‘Another thing, Clare. You remember the marks we found on Charnay’s toes and fingers? Those were definitely gnaw marks. From rats. Your man keeps their bodies inside somewhere. We often find bodies that have been scavenged. But if those girls had been outside it would have been dogs, maybe cats. If it’s rats, then it must be inside somewhere, somewhere quiet.’

Clare was silent. She was trying not to see the malignant gleam of rat eyes in the dark, moving closer, closer. Then biting, gnawing.

‘You there?’ asked Piet.

‘Ja, I’m here.’

‘I thought maybe somewhere at the docks. Maybe a warehouse or something?’

‘Piet, are we looking for one man or two?’ asked Clare.

‘There were the two different blood groups on Charnay – one in the semen, one in the blood. But that’s not conclusive. Eighty per cent of people express their blood group in other body fluids. So you can have mucosa, semen that has a different DNA structure to the rest. It throws you. You can’t conclusively say you’re not looking for two men.’

‘But I’m so sure it is one man. It’s so obsessive. Those keys he puts in their hands. What are they for?’

‘A diversion?’ asked Piet.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Clare. She watched the raucous seagulls wheeling, diving, scavenging. Clare snapped her phone shut. Find her, find her, the gulls taunted. She watched one snatch food from the beak of another, smaller gull and then land on the mast of one of the yachts rocking in the tamed water.

She phoned Riedwaan and left him a message that she would be walking home, so not to worry to fetch her. Clare walked through the Waterfront and on to the newly built sea walls. Dwarfed by the massive chunks of granite that held the sea back, she let her thoughts go, willing them to find their way to where Theresa was. She was convinced Theresa had been taken by the same person, but that he had acted in a rush this time. Her thoughts wandered to Natalie, to Whitney, to their aching shame at being filmed. Were these girls being abducted to feed the growing snuff-movie market? It was rumoured that South African products were popular internationally. The only prosecution so far – in Johannesburg – had failed. All three accused had been acquitted.

Clare walked past the littered lawn in front of Sushi-Zen. There was a small white cross where India King’s body had lain. Clare read the inscription. It said, very simply, ‘With Love, Grade 12’.

The inscription made her think of India’s debauched stepfather. Clare leaned against the sea wall, thinking that a bit more detail about him would be useful. She also thought it was time to discuss the nasty King and nasty Landman’s nasty little home movie with its pathetic star, Cathy King. She tried the Kings’ home number. No reply. And Cathy King was not answering her cellphone, either. But Clare did manage to get Portia Qaba on her cellphone; she promised to tell Mrs King to call when she got back from her weekend off. Not ideal, but it would have to do for now. She and Riedwaan would then arrange to see Cathy King together.

Clare’s thoughts circled back to Landman. He was a killer, she felt sure, and absolutely ruthless. He was the type who would procure even child for a regular paying client. Clare did not doubt that he would torture and kill anyone for a fee, without compunction. Especially if there was a way of extending the profit. It should be him, but Landman, for all his absence of conscience, was now a businessman. He would kill only for a reason – for profit or expediency – and not simply for the pleasure of it. No, there was a different kind of zealot behind these murders. For now, though, there was nothing to be done except wait. Think and worry and wait.

Clare went to join Riedwaan later that afternoon. He was working alone in the caravan, grey with stress.

‘I spoke to Piet,’ she said, giving him the coffee she had picked up on the way.

‘And?’

‘Nothing new.’

‘Why is it not falling into place?’ Riedwaan slammed his fist onto the rickety desk, spilling coffee over his files. Clare handed him a grimy towel. He dabbed at the puddle of coffee. ‘Shit!’

‘Predatory criminals are the hardest to catch. Strangers with nothing to connect them with the victim. This one doesn’t want to be caught. He shows off, but he’s very careful. I think the body fluids on the first body were a mistake. He’d have seen the report in the press, so he’s rectified that little error. We’ve had no witnesses – or none who have come forward. Nothing to link anyone to the crime.’

‘We have to work it out. You have to work it out, Clare.’ He looked at her. ‘The chief is on my back. Phiri released that chef – his DNA doesn’t match, and he was in the holding cells when Theresa disappeared. The press are on Phiri’s back and the poor child’s mother is demented with worry.’

Clare went to her desk and picked up the files. ‘I think we should pull Brian King in for questioning.’

‘Do you want me to arrest him?’ snapped Riedwaan. ‘On what grounds?’

‘Just a feeling.’

Riedwaan didn’t respond.

‘I’m doing what I can. We’re doing what we can,’ said Clare. ‘I’m going home now. Call me.’

‘I’ll call you. And I’ll check up on King again. I did when we heard Theresa was missing. Good alibi – he was playing golf. With four other people.’

‘Okay, but let’s try him again. I’ll see you.’

Clare laid the files out on her kitchen table when she got home. She had been over them so often that the details, the specifics of each case, were blurring into the others. She poured herself a glass of wine and then searched for a cigarette. She found a stale pack on top of the fridge and smoked one, even though it made her feel sick. She drank one large glass of wine, and then another, falling asleep with her clothes on.