Like Clockwork

2

Last night’s chill seeped from the floor into Clare’s bare feet despite the sunlight filtering through the window. But she was too lazy to go and fetch her slippers. The muted rush and retreat of the waves against the sea wall was comforting after the chaos of the storm that had spent itself an hour before dawn. As Fritz wound herself around Clare’s legs, she tipped a heap of crumbles into the purring cat’s bowl. The morning routine anchored her. She waited, watching the steam snaking up, her hand braced on the coffee plunger. The grounds formed a satisfying resistance to her hand as she pressed down firmly.

Clare poured the coffee and sat down at the table. Fritz leapt into her lap and purred, kneading her thighs rhythmically. The pain was pleasant. Clare stroked her and straightened the newspaper. She read the surfing report. She drank more coffee and read the weather forecast. It would be fine weather for the next few days.

It wasn’t working, but Clare had learnt not to panic if she failed to keep herself in the present. She tried a different tack.

Shopping. She would go shopping. There was nothing to eat in her flat and she needed new towels. Clare picked up a pencil and started to make a list.

Sugar.

More coffee.

Loo paper.

Whiskey.

Fruit.

Soap.

Cat food.

Stockings.

Clare leaned forward so that the sun warmed her back. Surely she needed other things. She had been living out of a suitcase for so long that she had forgotten what was needed to run an orderly home. Milk, she added after a while. She couldn’t think of anything else, so it was a relief when the phone rang. Clare picked it up, spilling the cat.

‘Hi, Julie.’

‘How do you always know it’s me?’ asked her sister.

‘You’re the only person who phones me so early.’ Julie’s voice filled the silence, its warmth chasing Clare’s shadows back into their corners.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m making a shopping list.’

‘You are being domestic,’ said Julie.

‘I’m trying,’ said Clare. ‘I felt so out of whack from being away from home for such a long time. Fritz is only just starting to speak to me again.’

‘We saw your documentary last night,’ Julie remarked. ‘Have you seen the review in this morning’s paper?’

‘I haven’t,’ Clare replied, turning to the arts pages. ‘“Clare Hart”,’ she read aloud, ‘“award-winning journalist, investigates the implosion of the eastern Congo.” Blah, blah.’

‘Come on, Clare, don’t be like that. At least you got it out there.’

Clare scanned the article. ‘Look at it, Julie. It doesn’t even mention that the peacekeepers there are exchanging food aid for sex. That is not even a blip on the scandal radar.’

‘I know, but at least you’re putting the war into the public eye again.’

‘I don’t think people can tell the difference between a documentary and reality television any more,’ said Clare. ‘What makes me ashamed is how intense the pleasure to be had from power is. And when you have a camera you have power, pure and simple.’

‘It’s your work, Clare, it’s what you do,’ said Julie. ‘I’m not going to try and persuade you that you’re the best again. So tell me something else. How was your surfing lesson?’

‘Brilliant,’ said Clare. ‘Absolutely terrifying, but brilliant. I stood up for at least ten seconds. I’ve booked again for this weekend. You must let me take Imogen with me. How is she, by the way?’

‘She’s fine, I think. Quiet, but fine. Hard to tell with sixteen-year-olds,’ said Julie. Clare was close to her niece, but Julie did not always think that she was the best chaperone.

‘How’s Beatrice doing?’ Clare heard an enraged bellow. ‘Right on cue,’ she laughed. Beatrice was four, and steadfastly refused to compromise.

‘Oh, God, here we go,’ said Julie. ‘She’ll only wear purple at the moment and everything purple is wet. Poor Marcus is trying to persuade her that pink is as good as purple.’

‘Judging by the noise, he’s failing miserably,’ Clare laughed.

‘Utterly,’ said Julie. She closed her kitchen door and the noise was suddenly muffled. ‘Tell me about this new project of yours.’

‘The story about human trafficking?’ asked Clare.

‘That’s the one,’ said Julie. ‘Did you get the go-ahead?’

‘Not yet. I did get a scrap of research money so I’m ferreting anyway,’ said Clare.

‘Be careful, Clare,’ Julie warned. ‘Investigating those guys is like poking a wasp’s nest.’

‘I am careful,’ said Clare. There was a crash and Beatrice was shouting at her mother. She sounded apoplectic. ‘Jules, I can hardly hear you.’

‘That’s because I didn’t say anything,’ said Julie. ‘What you heard was a disbelieving silence.’

‘I’m going for a run now, Julie. Can I call you later?’

‘Ja, I want to see you,’ said Julie. ‘I want to hear more.’

The phone was dead before Clare could say goodbye. Clare stepped out onto her balcony to stretch. It was cold despite the sunshine so she pulled on her sweatshirt. A decade of running had earned her a lean, supple fitness that still surprised her.

The summons of her doorbell was intrusive. She went inside. ‘Yes?’ she asked, irritated. The intercom stuttered. Clare could not make out what was being said. ‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way out.’ She picked up her keys and cellphone and locked up. Two leaps took her to the bottom of her stairs but there was no longer anyone outside her door. It must have been an early-morning beggar. She was about to break into an easy lope when an old woman called to her from an eddy of people on the promenade along Beach Road.

‘Over here, Dr Hart. Help!’ It was Ruby Cohen. Clare’s heart sank. Clare’s single status offended Ruby’s sense of order, as did her refusal to join the Neighbourhood Watch.

‘Morning, Ruby,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘Dr Hart. It’s terrible. Come see. That poor girl is dead.’

Clare saw the body lying on the promenade. A dead body was not that unusual in Cape Town. Ports discard human flotsam, and last night had certainly been cold enough to take a vagrant off before receding with the morning sun. The crowd pressed together, as if to reassure each other that they were alive. Clare went over, wondering if it was one of the homeless who sheltered nearby.

The dead girl froze the blood in Clare’s veins. A lock of the girl’s black hair lifted briefly in the wind, then settled onto a thin brown shoulder. Clare was slipping back into her nightmare. It took an immense exercise of will to bring herself back to the present. To this body. Here. Today. Then her mind made the switch to trained observer, and all emotion was gone. She scanned the placement of the body, logging each detail with forensic precision.

She noted the faint marks on the bare arms, bruises that had not had time to bloom. The girl’s right hand was bound, transformed into a bizarre fetish. It had been placed coquettishly on her hip. Something protruded from the girl’s hand, glinting in the low-angled sunlight. Her boots were so high that she would have struggled to walk. But she was not going anywhere: not with her slender throat severed.

Clare instinctively switched on the camera of her cellphone and snapped a rapid series of pictures, ignoring the indignant whispers around her. She zoomed in on the girl’s hands, but an old man stepped forward and covered the girl before Clare could stop him, separating the whispering living from the dead. The message encrypted in the broken, displayed body was obscured.

Clare stepped away, flicked open her cellphone and dialled. She willed him to answer. ‘Riedwaan,’ she said, ‘you’ve heard about the body found in Sea Point?’

‘We just had the call,’ he answered, his voice neutral. ‘There is a patrol car coming with the ambulance.’

‘You should come, Riedwaan.’ She could sense his reluctance. She hadn’t called him since she had been back and here she was phoning him because someone had been murdered. ‘There is nothing straightforward here.’

‘What?’ he asked. Clare looked back at the small coat-covered mound. The sight of the slim, lifeless legs made her voice catch in her throat. ‘It’s too neat, Riedwaan, too arranged. And there’s no blood. It doesn’t look to me like an argument over price that went wrong.’

‘Okay, I’ll be there,’ said Riedwaan. He trusted Clare’s instincts. Her work as a profiler was hard to fault, despite her unorthodox methods. His voice softened. ‘How are you, Clare? We’ve missed you.’

Clare heard, but she did not reply. She snuffed the emotion that flared in her heart and snapped her phone closed. The morning felt even colder.

There was nothing more she could do. Clare forced herself to run. She had no need to hover and see what would happen to the girl’s body. She already knew. Clare ran for three kilometres before the rhythm of her feet on the paving dislodged the image of the dead girl from her mind.

She tried to lose herself in the noise of the pounding surf. Clare didn’t want to think of the dead girl on her pavement, but her thoughts returned to her, like a tongue probing an aching tooth. Half an hour later she looped back home along the promenade. Riedwaan’s car was parked next to the taped-off area around the girl’s body. The body was in good hands now.

Inspector Riedwaan Faizal’s taste for vengeance had given him a nose for the killers of young girls. Clare resisted the pull to go up to Riedwaan. And he had not seen her on the edge of the crowd, so she went home. Once inside her flat, Clare showered then grabbed a top, trousers, a jacket and scarf with the swift certainty of a woman who owns good clothes and knows how to dress. The local radio station was already carrying the first reports of this morning’s gruesome offering. By this afternoon, headlines about the murder would be plastered all over the city’s lamp posts.

Clare switched off the newsreader’s voice and sat down at her desk. She looked out of the window. The view of the sea restored her equilibrium, and after a while she was able to turn her attention to her own work. Clare pulled a bulging file towards herself. She had scrawled ‘Human Trafficking in Cape Town’ in gold down its spine. She had found that women lured from South Africa’s troubled northern neighbours were being pimped along Main Road, Cape Town’s endless red light district bisecting the affluent suburbs huddled at the base of the Table Mountain. The women also stocked the brothels and the plethora of gentlemen’s clubs. The trade was increasingly organised. Clare was preparing herself for an interview that had required delicate negotiation to arrange. Natalie Mwanga had been trafficked from the Congo and she was risking a great deal by speaking to Clare.

Clare’s investigation was not making her any new friends. She had had to persuade her producer far away in safe London to let her ‘feature’ a trafficker in the documentary. It was a risky proposition and she needed more time. Clare had put out feelers before she had gone to the Congo two months earlier. On her return she had heard that Kelvin Landman might talk to her. He had been pimping since he was fifteen. Clare could not verify the rumour that it had started with his ten-year-old sister. Landman, one of her police sources had told her, had moved rapidly up the ranks of a street gang. He was a man with vision, though, and the porousness of South Africa’s post-democracy borders had been a licence for Landman to print money. His name had become synonymous with trafficking for the sex industry. And Landman ruthlessly punished any transgression of his rules.

Clare had once asked a young street prostitute how Landman worked. The girl pointed to two long, light scars across her soft belly. Punishment for a careless pregnancy. She then told Clare that the baby had been aborted and she had been working again the next day. She’d laughed when Clare asked for an interview, and then wandered away. Clare had not seen her again.

She looked out at the sea again. Mist was rolling in, blotting out the morning’s early promise.

Trafficking was risk free for the trafficker, that was clear enough, and it generated a lot of cash. Lately, Landman had become notorious for insinuating himself into the highest echelons of business and politics. He had even been profiled as a ‘man about town’ by a respectable Sunday paper. Clare pulled out a clean sheet of notepaper and jotted down her questions.

Where did the cash go?

How was it made legitimate?

If Landman was selling, who was buying?

What were they buying?

She would find out. But the dead girl on the promenade surfaced unbidden in her thoughts. Clare stood up abruptly. She needed to get out, to be with people. She picked up her shopping list and headed for the Waterfront. As she drove, she thought she might add a few things to the list she’d made earlier.

Smoked salmon.

Wine.

Maybe some washing-up liquid.