Like Clockwork

5

Riedwaan threw the autopsy report onto his desk, ignoring Rita Mkhize’s stare. He hadn’t shaved that morning and he didn’t look his best. The previous day, while Piet Mouton had taken blood, scraped fingernails and taken more swabs, he had waited and watched for any new bruises to bloom, but they hadn’t. Mouton carefully cut open the body to remove and weigh the dead girl’s organs, reading from them how she had lived while searching out the secrets of her death.

‘Who is she?’ asked Rita.

‘Charnay Swanepoel. She was seventeen years old and in her last year of school. She also had a family. One younger brother. Parents alive, but separated. Father an auto-parts salesman who watched rugby on Saturdays. The mother a yoga teacher, New Age seeker, spiritual guide.’ Riedwaan read from the file.

As mismatched as me and Shazia were, thought Riedwaan, sipping his coffee. Shazia was a nurse – and his wife. She had moved to Canada and taken their daughter, Yasmin, with her. Shazia was convinced that the distance, the safety, of Canada would erase the terror etched into their daughter during the endless hours she had been a hostage. Riedwaan had heard her voice. Her kidnappers had called the gang hotline Riedwaan had established for informers, recording Yasmin’s terrified six-year-old pleas to her daddy to find her, for her mommy to come, for a drink of water, please, please. Riedwaan had not been able to prove it, but only Kelvin Landman had such a genius for cruelty. It had made him the Cape Flats’ ultimate hard man.

Riedwaan returned to his desk and opened the folder. The smiling school portrait that Charnay’s mother had given him in return for informing her of her daughter’s murder smiled up at him.

‘Here’s a piece of cake for you,’ said Rita.

‘Just what I needed. Thanks, Rita,’ he said, ‘it’s as sweet as you are.’

‘That gender sensitivity course you were sent on is doing wonders,’ laughed Rita.

She hovered next to his desk. ‘What you got, Riedwaan?’

‘I talked to her father yesterday. Chris Swanepoel. He sat the whole fucking Saturday watching rugby while his daughter was being murdered. You tell me how he did that?’

‘I don’t know, Riedwaan. But you know how people can panic. It freezes them. They just pretend nothing is happening and hope it will go away.’

‘He told me he didn’t want to make a mistake and report her missing to the police, and then she comes home with a babalaas or something.’

‘Eish,’ murmured Rita. ‘When did they report her missing?’

‘On Sunday. He says that when she wasn’t home by lunchtime he started to look for her. Looked for her everywhere. That’s when they reported her missing. Three days later.’

‘Poor man,’ said Rita. ‘He must feel so terrible.’

‘Your heart’s too soft, Rita. You should have been a social worker, not in the police. I’m going to check out every move he made.’ For Riedwaan, fathers – like boyfriends – were always suspects.

‘What more could he have done, Riedwaan?’

‘Found her. Alive. Reported it earlier.’

Rita looked at him and shook her head. ‘You’re a hard man, Riedwaan.’ She went out, leaving him to his thoughts.

How could Swanepoel have failed to find his own daughter? Riedwaan had traced Yasmin to an abandoned warehouse by the faint signal emitted by the cellphone of the gangsters holding her, terrified that his discovery would be relayed through the metastasising web of gang informers and corrupt policemen. So he had gone in alone, and executed Yasmin’s kidnappers as they dozed undisturbed by the little girl’s desperate whimpering. Riedwaan had wiped his hysterical child clean of the blood spattered over her. But Yasmin still woke from her nightmares convinced that she was bathed in it. Riedwaan had found Yasmin, but as Shazia began telling him more and more frequently, that did not mean he had succeeded. There had been an investigation. The specialised and ruthless anti-gang squad he had established was dissolved. But community outrage at the rising number of child corpses in the latest bout of gang warfare had made it impossible to either charge or fire Faizal. His maverick justice had made him a community hero, so the best they could do was to shunt him sideways. He was posted to Sea Point, given a desk job and a pile of papers to shuffle. It was designed to make him fail – and he had. Shazia had begged him to leave the force but he refused. She then approached the Canadian embassy, filled in the form, and was gone. Just before the plane swallowed them, Yasmin had turned to wave at where she guessed he would be watching. A small, dark girl with a pink bag and memories Canadian children would not understand. He thought of calling Yasmin, but she would be asleep in Toronto. Her mother – still his wife, damn it – would fumble for her alarm clock, smoothing her long twist of black hair on top of her head. Unless she had since cut it, of course.

Riedwaan took a sip of his coffee. It was cold and bitter. He turned his attention back to the manila folder in front of him. He spread out the photographs that Riaan had taken at the crime scene. His stomach knotted. He couldn’t save this girl, but he was going to make sure that whoever had done this to her paid in full. Then he thumbed a different number into his phone, imagining the rings slicing through the silence. Clare picked up her phone. She was startled, he could tell – she’d have been busy working, and had obviously forgotten to switch the phone off.

‘Yes,’ she said, annoyed with herself for answering.

‘Clare, it’s Riedwaan.’ He paused, listening to her silence. His image of her was vivid – at her desk, papers, books, notes spread around her, laptop open, thick hair snaking between her sharp shoulder blades. Wing bones, she called them.

‘Hello,’ she said. What else was there to say?

‘I have the preliminary report on that girl you called me about. I thought you might like to have a look.’ Riedwaan waited.

‘Okay,’ Clare said. She wanted to ask why, but didn’t. That would come later. ‘New York Bagel, at six.’ She hung up and took a deep breath. Thinking of him made her throat tighten. Talking to him made the skin around her nipples taut. If she ignored the feeling, she told herself, it would go away. She would meet him for coffee. He would slip her the autopsy report, some phone numbers, and that would be it. Yes, she told herself. That is what would happen. She would gather up the papers, do some interviews, send him the transcripts, give her opinion on who had committed the murder, Riedwaan would catch the killer, and that would be that. Clare reactivated her sleeping laptop. She needed a few more hours before her trafficking proposal would be ready to send. She would fit Riedwaan into the interstices of her busy working days as she did sleeping and running. This time, though, she would keep a proper perspective.

It was much later when her eyes drifted from her screen, her ears tuning out the hiss of her computer finding an Internet connection. Drifts of street rubbish eddied upwards, and dropped again. Her email sent, she shut down her computer. She decided to walk. It would give her time to compose herself before she saw him. She walked briskly to keep warm, the sky turning bleak as the sun set.