Gallows Hill (11 page)

‘I’m here to see Mr and Mrs Sykes,’ Clare told the security guard. ‘Tell them I’m here about the properties at Gallows Hill.’ He went back into his booth, his eyes fixed on Clare as he spoke
into the telephone. He opened the boom for her and she drove up the winding driveway. The house was painted a blinding white. A gardener was tending a sunken rose garden, where ruby red blooms hung on the bushes.

A slender woman eased herself out of the pool, wrapped herself in a white sarong and crossed the lawn, a russet spaniel at her heels. From a distance, she had looked like an expensive
forty. Clare guessed she was closer to sixty.

‘Mrs Sykes,’ said Clare. ‘I’m Dr Hart.’

‘The guard said you were here about the Gallows Hill properties.’ Mrs Sykes stroked the spaniel’s head.

‘Some people were murdered there, as you probably know,’ said Clare.

‘Of course. But that was all so long ago. Why are you raking up the past?’

‘Another body has just been found, and I’m
trying to piece together what happened,’ said Clare.

Saskia Sykes wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s all so unpleasant. Those two men shot there long ago. It’s as if the place is cursed. We should never have got involved in it.’

‘Are you saying that the development wasn’t a success?’ asked Clare.

‘For that, you’ll need to talk to my husband. It was his venture,’ she said. ‘Trying to make something
of my father’s money. Not his forte, unfortunately.’

‘Is he in?’ asked Clare.

‘Damien’s in the barn,’ she said. ‘Come this way,’ and she led Clare up some stairs.

Damien Sykes, wearing last night’s shirt, opened the door. Barn was not the right word for the light-filled structure. The roof soared upwards, pooling light on the yellowwood floor. Behind Sykes stood a monumental sculpture
of a reclining nude. The bed in the far corner was rumpled.

‘Darling,’ he said. ‘This is a surprise. A conjugal visit.’

‘Clare Hart,’ said his wife, ignoring him. ‘She’s here to see you about the warehouse in Green Point.’ Mrs Sykes snapped her fingers and the spaniel came to heel. Then mistress and dog disappeared down the garden.

‘Her true love, that bloody dog. It hates me,’ said
Damien Sykes. ‘Now, Doctor, what can I do for you? I don’t imagine you have the sort of medicine I need.’

‘I think not,’ said Clare.

She walked past him and stopped in front of a triptych of paintings. LOVE I, LOVE II, LOVE III. Red, white and blue. Bruises, cuts, an alabaster skin.

‘Mr Sykes,’ said Clare. ‘May I ask you a few questions? Did you perhaps own some buildings in town?’

‘Yes, several,’ said Sykes, bemused. ‘Import, export. Storage. But what has this to do with anything?’

‘Was one of them perhaps a warehouse off Ebenezer Road?’

‘Gallows Hill. Yes. I’ve heard about all the trouble there,’ said Sykes. ‘But I didn’t own that building. I had a long lease from the government that was cancelled some years ago. Rumour I’ve heard is that an architectural abomination
called the Onyx is going up there. Luxury parliamentary housing. Smelt fishy.’

‘When did you give up the lease?’

‘When the state cancelled it. Two, three years ago.’ Suddenly irritated, he said, ‘Please, what has this got to do with anything? I have nothing to do with this new development. Look, we knew those old skeletons were there. We dug them up and covered them quickly again. It was
a mistake, of course.’

He knocked back the whiskey he was drinking.

‘We lost money there, and I paid the price. That place never took off.’

He poured himself another drink, without offering one to Clare.

‘I can tell you that this new one won’t either. It has a curse on it, that place.’

‘It is a skeleton I’m interested in,’ said Clare. ‘A particular skeleton.’

‘They were
all 200 years old,’ said Sykes. ‘Bodies left to hang on the gibbets until they dropped. Wouldn’t be such a bad idea today, crime being what it is.’

‘The skeleton I’m interested in is more recent,’ said Clare. ‘A young mother was buried under the slab of your warehouse, Mr Sykes.’

Surprise registered in his eyes.

‘The builder, Tony Gonzalez, has given me the date. It would’ve happened
the last weekend of February in 1988. I was told that you dealt with the detail of what the tenants required,’ said Clare. ‘And that you had access to the site, and could enter at will. It sounds like it was your special project.’

He got up, stood at the French windows. ‘I’ll check with Saskia,’ he said. ‘She keeps track of everything. Rainfall, holidays, shopping lists, her shoes. She’ll
have our diaries in the study.’

Clare went with him to the main house.

A Tchaikovsky symphony drifted through the still air. The house smelt of old money, of decades of furniture polish, and freshly picked roses. Crimson petals dripped across gleaming wooden surfaces.

‘Darling,’ Sykes’s voice was hesitant.

‘Here. In the study.’

‘Dr Hart needs to know a date. I was wondering,
do you have all your diaries still?’

Saskia Sykes got up and opened a cupboard. It was obsessively tidy.

‘What year, Dr Hart?’ she asked. ‘My diaries only date back to 1975, I’m afraid.’

‘The last weekend of February 1988,’ said Clare.

Saskia Sykes ran her fingers across the embossed spines of the diaries. She selected one, paged through it.

‘A rather busy weekend, that,’ she
said. ‘Friday dinner with my parents at the Alphen. Saturday shopping and
Fatal Attraction
at Cavendish. An exhibition opening at the Osman’s. Dinner at the Mount Nelson with the Piggotts. Sunday we went to Hermanus. Stayed there until Tuesday, it looks like.’

‘Twenty-three years, and nothing’s changed,’ said her husband.

‘Except, now I do it all on my own, don’t I, darling?’ said Mrs
Sykes. ‘Please be a good boy, won’t you, and see Dr Hart out. It sounds like my yoga teacher has just arrived.’

It was too late for breakfast, too early for lunch when Riedwaan got back from the press conference. His desk was a jumble of mugs and piles of paper. He cleared a space and put down a mug of coffee. Then handed one to Rita Mkhize, who was at her desk, documents arranged around her laptop.

‘How did the press conference go?’ asked Rita, pulling out her iPod earphones.

‘The whole
fucking thing’s going to blow,’ said Riedwaan. ‘And Clare’s right there in the firing line.’

‘Clare?’ said Rita. ‘Why?’

‘Some fucker from
Die Son
’s decided that the best angle is to go for Clare.’ Riedwaan handed the tabloid to Rita. ‘Says her filming there is disturbing the sacred rest of the ancestors.’

‘Hey. There’s nothing sacred about getting your head bashed in. Or having cement
poured over a box they’ve thrown your body into,’ said Rita.

‘Nothing sacred about giving state land to your cronies, either,’ said Riedwaan.

He picked up a photograph that Rita had just printed out. A well-fed man in a dark suit. A blue cummerbund around his belly, two girls on his arm, each in a dress about the size of a cummerbund.

‘Aaron Mtimbe,’ said Riedwaan. ‘He’s even greasier
in the flesh.’

‘The man who makes things happen. The king of the Young Lions. Greased his way up the ranks of the Youth League,’ said Rita.

‘Looks more like Garfield than the Lion King,’ Riedwaan said. ‘And that voice of his. Must be why he chose business instead of politics.’

Rita pointed to the wedding ring on the lion’s left hand. ‘Mrs Mtimbe will love this. Hell hath no fury –’

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Mkhize, maybe it’s time for a visit.’

He picked up the keys of the Unit’s Toyota bakkie and held them out to Rita. ‘You want to drive?’

‘What do you think?’ Rita snatched them from him and hopped up into the front seat.

‘Can you see okay?’ asked Riedwaan, getting into the other seat. ‘You sure you don’t want a cushion?’

‘Fuck you,’ said Rita.

‘Is that the way you speak to your commanding officer?’

‘Sorry.’ Rita made the engine roar. ‘Fuck you, sir.’

‘That’s better,’ said Riedwaan.

‘How’s Clare?’ asked Rita.

‘Complicated.’

Riedwaan looked out of his window at the car showrooms, glass temples filled with overpriced cars. Then a bleak industrial wasteland flashed by, with littered lots, until Century City loomed
ahead, a cheap mishmash of European architectural styles.

Rita grinned. ‘You like complicated women.’

She took the N7. Namibia one way, Goodwood the other.

‘I like you, Mkhize,’ said Riedwaan. ‘And you’re about as straightforward as they come.’

‘You’re not making a pass at me, are you, Captain?’

‘Should I be?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Nah,’ said Rita, ‘you’re not my type.’

‘What is your type, Mkhize?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘We’re here,’ said Rita, drawing up at the entrance to Acacia Park. The guards at the parliamentary village waved past a bloated BMW.

‘Let me speak to these guys,’ said Rita. ‘Protection Unit. I like them because I can check my hair in their mirror shades.’

Riedwaan watched her as she sauntered over to them. Head at an angle, hip cocked,
giving her curves she didn’t have. She greeted the two officers in Xhosa, had them smiling in a second, pointing out directions in two.

She winked at Riedwaan as she sauntered back.

‘We’re in.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘If you want to know more, learn Xhosa.’

‘I will,’ said Riedwaan.

‘When?’

‘When I get the time,’ said Riedwaan. ‘In the meantime, I have you. My personal
translator.’

‘Serious,’ said Rita. ‘You should learn Xhosa. Maybe you’ll get my jokes then.’

Rita drove under the boom and into the neglected gardens of the parliamentary village. It was littered with BMWs and Mercedes Benzes, but there were no cars outside number 27 and all the curtains were closed. The sound of a TV came from inside the house. A curtain lifted on the second floor when
Rita knocked.

The muscles in Riedwaan’s belly tightened. His hand went for his gun. Rested there. Habit, more than anything else.

A voluptuous young woman opened the door.

She’d recently been all over the social pages, her short skirts and precarious breasts titillating readers. She’d finally snared the husband she’d been aiming at. The wedding – Christian and traditional – was splashed
all over
Top Billing
and the
Sunday Times
. Lobola had been paid in gold Nguni figurines instead of real cattle.

Rita noticed the disappointment that had settled at the corners of the woman’s mouth. She’d be an easy ally.

‘Mrs Siphokazi Mtimbe?’ asked Rita.

‘That’s me,’ she said. ‘But my father-in-law’s not here.’

‘We’re looking for your husband,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Not here either,’
said Siphokazi. Staying awake all night, waiting – the lot of the trophy wife. There are only so many nights you can leave a young bride at home. Red eyes and an angry heart. Riedwaan calculated the odds.

‘Business?’ he asked.

‘Always business.’ She looked away. ‘You know what business means. Long meetings.’

The unhappy wail of a baby came from the bedroom down the corridor.

‘That’s
what we’d like to discuss.’ Riedwaan switched off his phone, deciding that undivided attention was what this woman needed. ‘Your husband’s business.’

The baby wailed again.

‘And you at home, it must be hard, especially if you don’t know Cape Town.’

The baby launched into a full-throttle roar, a battle cry for attention, for sustenance. Annoyance flickered across the young woman’s face.

‘I must get the baby,’ she said.

‘We can wait.’ And with that, they were both inside.

The hallway was decorated with the portrait of a grinning Jacob Zuma. Below the president, junk mail lay on a table together with a heap of business cards. Riedwaan riffled through them. Expensive restaurants, the Cape Town office of a Jo’burg lawyer whose name Riedwaan recognised. An art dealer’s
card, a cell-phone number on the back, flyers for strip clubs, Nefertiti’s among them. No wonder the young wife was pissed off. Amid the junk mail was an unopened MTN bill. Addressed to A Mtimbe. Riedwaan slipped it into his pocket. Simpler in the short run, more complicated in the long run, but he’d go with that.

Rita was busy with the kettle, clearing a space on the grubby kitchen table.
Preparing a bottle. Packing dishes into the dishwasher. Opening the windows to clear the smell of sour milk and beer.

The young woman appeared just as the kettle boiled. Her baby bellowed in her arms. She held the infant awkwardly, an unwelcome burden.

‘Shall I take him for you?’

The woman handed her son to Rita. Shudders, the after-shock of his tantrum, moved through his little body.

‘How many sugars?’ asked Rita.

‘Three, please.’

Rita spooned the sugar into a mug of Five Roses and pushed the tea across the table.

The woman looked around the kitchen. ‘Thanks,’ she said, noting the dent that Rita had made in the mess.

Rita tested the milk on her inside wrist and settled the baby against her body. A tiny mouth opened, as clean and pink as a cat’s. Rita inserted
the teat and the child sucked greedily.

‘So,’ said Rita, woman to woman. ‘You’re new to Cape Town and your husband has been working late. Eish. It can be hard.’

Siphokazi nodded.

‘Ja. Men.’ Rita shook her head. She had the baby settled now, his head on her shoulder. ‘So, you don’t know when Mr Mtimbe will be home?’

Siphokazi shook her head.

‘No, I don’t.’

Rita gave a sympathetic
smile.

‘His business must be important if it keeps him away from you like this.’

‘Construction,’ said Siphokazi. ‘Development.’ Her voice stronger now, the tea reviving her. ‘That’s new, it used to be mining, now it’s building.’

‘You work with him?’

‘Not any more. I did before the baby. It’s how we met.’

Rita clicked her tongue. ‘Some men, they lose interest for a while after
the baby. But it comes back, doesn’t it, Captain?’