The prisoner’s lips parted. ‘Your wife is a
lekker vet boeremeisie
.’ His slim hips snapped forwards. And back again. A practised gesture of domination.
‘You’ll die in here, Khan.’ Trying to conceal his unease, Hoffman wiped his stethoscope and folded it away.
‘Inside, outside. It’s the same to me.’ As the gangster spoke, his
lips curled and the 27 above his jugular pulsed.
‘Then why are you here?’
‘To make sure that my work gets done, Doc. To make sure you’re giving me what I need.’
‘You have your pills,’ said Hoffman.
‘You’ll know, Doc.’ Khan’s orange shirt was back on. ‘You’d better know. For the sake of your loved ones.’
‘You, general or not, mean fuck-all outside of these walls,’ said Hoffman
as the man turned his back. ‘You Number gangsters, you’re losing the war.’
‘I don’t need the war, Doc, I just need the battles.’ The prisoner turned around and held up a photograph, waving it at Hoffman. The doctor’s hand went instinctively to his empty pocket.
‘
Gee dit vir my, jou vuil hond
.’ His voice was hoarse as he snatched at the image of his family imprisoned between the gangster’s
tattooed fingers.
Khan laughed.‘I took this out of your pocket with you standing right next to me, watching me. You didn’t know a thing. Would have been as easy for me, a 27, to slip a knife between your ribs, like what happens all the time to the little
franse.
A quick lesson at 32 Flamingo Crescent?’
‘How do you know where I live?’ whispered Hoffman.
Khan ran his tongue lightly over
his lips. ‘Your wife’s there now? Katinka and Ciara, your daughters? Who do you think decides how long your wife lives, those unripe little girls. What are they? Four? Five? Tight as little green figs.’ He rubbed the photograph. ‘Who decides how they live before they die?’
Hoffman lunged at him, but the prisoner flicked the photo away. The doctor picked it up, the image of his wife holding
his happy daughters on her comfortable lap. Hoffman slammed the door on Khan’s laughter. He pulled out the pile of folders sent by the morgue – a heap of perfunctory autopsy reports he needed to sign. For an hour or more he worked his way through the forms, the routine calming him. The last file recorded the most recent prison death.
The form had been filled in correctly, the body documented,
and the cause of death noted by an intern whose name was indecipherable. Heart attack caused by overdose. Natural. As natural as anything could be, in this place. Except for the tiny tears on the inside of the mouth, and the marks on the lids that looked like miniature galaxies. A pillow over the head, held down until the man had stopped struggling – if he had ever started. Hoffman pulled out
the pictures, checking to see whether the man’s thinness was the result of addiction rather than just a spare diet and fear.
Hoffman checked the name again. Graveyard de Wet. He noticed the dead man’s skin. No tattoos. A
frans,
given a gangster’s name in death.
He remembered, now, where he’d seen Rafiek Khan before. He’d had to examine him and Graveyard de Wet – it was just before they’d
begun serving their triple life sentences. For the disembowelling of a nine-year-old, her mother and her grandmother. Hoffman uncapped his pen. Rafiek Khan had made it clear what the consequences would be if he didn’t sign the form.
Hoffman looked at the blank space waiting for his signature, the routine mark that would bury this forever. The room was silent, but beyond was a cacophony of
clanging, shouts, and the dull roar of three thousand men behind bars.
He signed.
Then he headed for his car. If he drove at top speed he’d be home in forty-five minutes. He was halfway there, when he thought of a person who should know that Graveyard de Wet was out. He’d come looking for her. The woman whose testimony had put him and Khan away.
He should tell her. He would tell her.
But later.
He had to get home first. Had to make sure they were there, safe and happy. So that he could hold them again, their bodies warm against his. The needle hit a hundred and sixty. Still, he put his foot flat.
‘Faizal. Leave a message.’
His bloody voicemail again.
Clare called Rita. ‘Has Riedwaan phoned?’ she asked, negotiating a corner with the phone clamped to her ear.
‘Nothing,’ said Rita. ‘I called him a couple of times. Just said out of range. Where was he going?’
‘He said he wanted to find Voëltjie Ahrend,’ said Clare. ‘See what he knew.’
‘Daniel into the lion’s den.’
‘So, what now?’
‘Give it a while,’ said Rita. ‘He knows what he’s doing. Most of the time, anyway. He may have switched it off so the signal can’t be tracked.’
‘He’s being followed?’
‘It’s best to presume so,’ said Rita. ‘With Special Director Ndlovu on his case.’
‘Okay,’ said Clare. ‘There’s something I have to check.’
Clare tossed her phone back into her bag, her unease
turning into dread. Driving along the wide avenue that skirts Cape Town, she turned up one of the steep streets of the old Malay Quarter, the Bo-Kaap, with its jewel-bright houses stacked around Signal Hill. She took two wrong turns before she found Signal Street, its cobbled surface perilously steep.
Clare knocked. The sound ricocheted in the silence behind Riedwaan’s front door.
She
pushed open the letter box and listened. A footfall, perhaps an old house settling at the end of the day. It was so faint it was almost inaudible.
She rang the landline, cutting the call when she heard the answering machine. She tried his cell. Silence inside the house. She stabbed at the red button, cutting off his voicemail in her ear.
Again, she pushed the flap open and listened. The
sound again.
‘Riedwaan?’ she said.
In the periphery of her vision, a shadow.
‘Yasmin?’
No movement.
No sound.
Clare stood back, surveying the shuttered cottage. To the left of the front door was a garage door, slightly askew. She ran her hand over the runners, finding the place where it was sticking. She rifled through the tools in her boot, pulling out a screwdriver and
wedging it between the door and the runners.
Nothing.
It took two whacks with a brick to pop the door off its runner. She pulled it up. A metre or so, enough for her to wriggle under.
She found herself in an enclosed courtyard.
‘Hello?’
Nothing, just her breathing.
Opposite her was a door. The kitchen. Going inside, she noticed a painting stuck to the fridge: a girl in
a tutu, flying above the earth, with stars daubed in yellow across the blue sky
.
Five dirty cups in the sink. Clare put her hand on the kettle. Cold. A full cup of coffee on the counter. Cold. On a shelf above the counter were unopened treats for a child. Coco Pops, hot chocolate, chips.
In the living room there was a single armchair with an empty glass next to it, and a pizza box on a table.
On the mantelpiece, a portrait of a little boy standing between a beetle-browed woman and a handsome man. The boy’s shock of black hair was distinctive, still, in the man she had recently met.
A telephone stood on a table in the hall, the red eye of the answering machine steadily winking.
There were two doors off the living room. One was open, revealing a bare mattress and the kit for
a bunk bed strewn on the floor. There was a thin film of dust over everything. Clare opened the music box on the bedside table. A little dancer popped up and twirled on her rotating base. Clare lifted out the photograph folded into the tray. Yasmin aged about four, arms around her parents’ necks, pulling them in to kiss her round cheeks, her eyes sparkling at the photographer.
Clare tried
the other door. A double bed, the duvet pushed back. A bedside light, a pen, a dog-eared thriller. Elmore Leonard. She stepped back when she opened the cupboard, the smell of Riedwaan’s clothes too intimate. Jeans, shoes, shirts, a formal suit. That was it. She closed the doors again.
The bathroom was in a small annexe off the kitchen. Razor and soap on the bathroom sink, an unopened pack
of sleeping tablets on the shelf next to it. A large white geyser at eye-level. Below it, a large suitcase.
Space enough for a little girl to hide. Or be hidden. She pulled at the heavy case and it fell over, nearly toppling her. She popped it open, relief making her smile when she saw what it contained. A full set of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, the 1976 edition. She opened the first volume.
The inscription: To Riedwaan, from your father on your seventh birthday. June 16th 1976. The year Clare was born.
She closed the book when she heard the phone ring, and stepped back into the living room.
‘Faizal.’ His voice startled her. ‘Leave a message.’
Clare listened. Nothing. She stepped back into the living room.
She flicked back through the messages. Her own, from outside
on the street. A marketing call from a timeshare company. Still the machine winked its mechanical eye at her. She rewound it to the beginning, and the child’s voice tumbled into the room.
‘Yasmin,’ Riedwaan’s daughter whispered. ‘It’s me, Yasmin. Daddy, please, please find me, Daddy. I’m so cold, Daddy, so cold. The man says you must find me, Daddy.’
The child’s voice again, flat with
terror.
‘I heard him. He said you know what they want. He said you know what to do. That if you lose me it’s because you don’t love—’. The child’s sobs, dammed by fear, give way.
‘Where are you, Daddy? It’s very dark…’ A crash, a whimper.
Then silence.
Clare played the message again, listening for something in the hollow silence that might reveal where the child was.
She called
Riedwaan again. Voicemail. She rewound the cassette and listened once more to the child’s disembodied voice, her sobs. The crashing sound, and her frightened cry.
Rita picked up her phone after a single ring.
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘At Riedwaan’s.’
‘You looking for traces of Yasmin there?’
‘I came here to look for him because he wasn’t answering his phone. I heard something
in the house.’
Rita was silent.
‘I found nothing,’ said Clare.
‘Of course not. I told you.’
‘A call came through to him, on the answering machine,’ said Clare. ‘From Yasmin.’
‘She’s alive!’
‘She was when she made the call. Can you get me a trace on the number?’
‘I’m on it,’ said Rita. ‘I’ll call you as soon as I have something.’
‘Still nothing from him?’
‘You’re
the first person he’s going to call,
sisi
,’ said Rita.
‘The other places,’ Clare tested. ‘The fishing shack near Slangkop where he took Yasmin the last time she disappeared. The other places Ndlovu had on her list, where Riedwaan might go to ground. You know them?’
‘I’ve checked them,’ said Rita.
‘Yourself?’
‘Of course,’ said Rita. ‘You going home now?’
‘I’ll go crazy just
waiting.’ Clare saw her face reflected in the dead television screen and turned away.
The answering machine’s red eye was steady in the dark. She ejected the tape and put it in her pocket. Then she took an extra tape from a jar filled with koki pens, and slotted it into the machine.
The front door had a Yale lock, so Clare let herself out that way. The street was empty. The only sign of
life was the blue television flickers visible between the gaps in the curtains.
A vehicle was angled across the narrow street, blocking Clare’s way. The passenger window opened.
‘You’re connected with Riedwaan Faizal?’ The woman’s voice matched her perfectly tailored jacket.
‘You could put it like that. I’m Clare Hart.’
‘I’m Special Director Salome Ndlovu,’ said the woman. ‘Dr
Hart, you should be more careful about who you associate with, a civilian like you.’
‘I’m very selective,’ replied Clare. ‘Is there a reason why you’re wedging me against the wall?’
The driver stared straight ahead.
‘We have some things to discuss with Captain Faizal,’ said Salome Ndlovu. ‘I suggest that you inform me of his whereabouts.’
‘I have no idea where he is.’
Salome
Ndlovu opened the folder on her lap. She flipped through the transcripts, the surveillance reports, and the intercepted phone calls. The ones they had managed to trace. ‘You’re adept at making yourself invisible, Dr Hart,’ she said. ‘Rather like Captain Faizal.’
‘Shall I tell him you’re looking for him, if I do see him?’ Clare asked.
‘No need, my dear. We’ll have him soon. And when we
find him we’ll return the child to the mother.’
‘You’re that sure that he has her?’
‘Motive leads you to your suspect,’ she replied.
‘What motive would that be, Special Director?’
‘Revenge on the mother for asserting her independence. It’s always the same. With your expertise, you should know that, Doctor. Even if the man in question is as attractive as Captain Faizal.’ She reached
out an elegant hand and the window glided up again, reflecting Clare’s face back at her for a disconcerting moment before the black BMW purred down the hill.
Clare nosed her way into the thickening traffic heading towards town. Long Street was busy. It was too early for the clubbers, but the area was packed with tourists looking for dinner, and drug dealers looking for tourists. There was still parking on Flower Street, though. Clare pressed the buzzer, slipping in as soon as the door unlatched. The studio was quiet and dark, and the only sound
was the distant thump of Long Street waking up for a Saturday night.
‘Up here.’
Light spilling onto the mezzanine landing; Danny Roman standing in the doorway. Faded black T-shirt, black jeans, spiked hair greying – his was a nocturnal face. ‘Look at you. So sleek and professional.’
‘Thanks,’ said Clare, kissing his cheek. ‘
If
that was a compliment.’
‘If you need a compliment,
then take it as such,’ he smiled. ‘It’s good to see you. I only ever see you on TV these days.’ Danny closed the studio door, shrouding them in silence. ‘I’m guessing you want something more than my company?’