Gallows Hill (13 page)

The doors burst open.

‘Speak of the devil,’ muttered Stone.

Waleed Williams stood silhouetted against the light, three men took up position behind him, two on his right, one on his left. Prison-thick necks pushed against their shirts and ties. One loosened his collar. He was missing an index
finger, but wore rings on all his other fingers. He twirled the metal bar in his left hand.

Pedro da Silva hoisted his camera onto his shoulder in one fluid movement. There was tension in his taut shoulders, in the roped veins in his arms and hands around the camera – reminding Clare of what she had loved about him in Afghanistan and Liberia and the Congo. Focus. Fearlessness. Getting the
best shot whenever hostility broke through the surface of everyday life.

‘Mr Williams, this job is going to go ahead,’ said Clare. ‘No matter how much muscle you bring with you.’

‘I don’t think you know who you’re fucking with, girlie.’

‘I think I do,’ said Clare. ‘I think we all do.’

Williams lifted his left hand.

His man stepped forward, the sun glinting on the metal bar.

‘Those bones there – they’re ours,’ he said, his voice filled with quiet menace. ‘You archaeologists, you scientists, you’re abusing our dead. And you,’ he pointed his weapon at Pedro. ‘You with your camera, you’d better stop.’

‘You forget one thing.’ Clare stepped forward. ‘The building site is a crime scene. A woman was murdered here.’

The man turned on Clare.

‘Mind your own fucking
business.’

‘It’s just a lie, what you people say.’ Another man had pushed his way to the front. ‘The police do nothing about Ou Eva, but you, the scientists, the police, you move our people from place to place. Even after we die, there is no peace for us.’

More people had shoved in through the door.

‘We will stop all this omkrap with the bones of our dead.’ It was the man with the
rod. He shifted it from one hand to another, his meaning clear.

‘
Fok jou
.’ A heckler from the back of the crowd.

‘I don’t think our line of argument is going to work, Tim,’ murmured Clare. ‘We need some back-up.’

‘You take them into your laboratories,’ shouted a woman in a red doek. ‘You experiment on them as if they’re animals. You’ve got no respect.’

‘And what if we don’t do
our work?’ Tim Stone faced the mob. ‘It’ll all be lost, and the development will just go ahead. You’ll never know who the people were who died here. And you’ll never know how or why they died. You’ll know nothing about them.’

Waleed Williams caught Clare’s eye as he moved towards the back of the crowd, his bully boys drifting behind him. Their work done.

‘Ja, you mustn’t stop this job.’
A construction worker in blue overalls pushed the woman out of the way. ‘Where will we get other jobs? We must eat. Our children must eat.’

The men around him shouted out in agreement.

‘So it’s fine to throw all this history away, then,’ said Stone. ‘For money. How much do you think you’ll get?’

‘You know nothing.’ He stepped closer to Stone. ‘You know nothing about money, about kids
being hungry.’

‘Hey, this is not your Cape Town.’ The woman in the red doek shouted at the construction worker. ‘You’re not even from here, and you want to take our history. Make it nothing. You’re worse than him,’ she said, jabbing a finger at Stone.

A rock flew over the heads of the crowd. It landed at Clare’s feet. Behind the crowd, police in full riot gear were pouring out of an armoured
car.

‘Please, people. There are procedures.’ Stone’s voice rose a notch. He was used to dealing with bones. Not with an enraged, heat-addled crowd. ‘There will be the public hearing. It will be held here, on the site, as part of National Heritage procedures. I must ask you –’

The first half-brick struck the side of his head. Blood spurted from his temple.

‘That’s a first.’ His mild
eyes filled with surprise as a volley of bricks rained down around him.

‘You sure you want to make the trip?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Stop asking me,’ said Rita. ‘I’ve been doing this stuff for three years already.’

Riedwaan looked at her. She was tough, he knew that, but she was only 24. And she tipped the scales at 48 kilograms on a good day. He couldn’t say that to her, though. Couldn’t say either that he didn’t want her to go alone because she was a woman.
And that this was not a country that was kind to women, not her type, especially. There was no way to say any of it, so he swallowed his anxiety – his prejudice, Rita would’ve called it – and pushed across the file that he’d picked up from the number crunchers in the basement.

‘This is the unofficial report,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Mpumalanga Holdings,’ she read.

‘Octopus would be a better
name for it,’ he said. ‘Tentacles everywhere. Just look at this list. Comrades and socialists to a man – until they get near a tender allocation.’

‘We need to see what’s happening in Jo’burg,’ said Rita. ‘I’m packed. Ready to go. And you’re stuck here. I’ll do the groundwork. If I need you, I’ll call.’

Riedwaan watched a seagull hover in front of the mirrored window, calling to itself.

‘I’ve got wings to spread,’ said Rita.

‘Let’s go, then.’

Riedwaan peeled off the highway. Cape Town airport, all steel ribs and glass, gleamed in the late afternoon light.

He parked and helped Rita with her bag.

‘You travel light,’ he said.

‘I’ll only be gone 24 hours,’ she said. ‘How many white T-shirts can I wear in one day?’

She was dressed in her plainclothes uniform.
T-shirt, cargo pants, black high tops. A small gold St Christopher hung round her neck. Patron saint of travellers.

‘I’ll call you,’ she said, shouldering her bag. ‘As soon as I’ve got something. Lawyers today. Deeds Office again, secretaries, widows.’

Rita grinned at Riedwaan.

‘What’re you not telling me, Mkhize?’ he asked.

‘I thought I’d head out to Mpumalanga,’ said Rita. ‘Check
out the places that Siphokazi mentioned. The village, the game farm. You never know.’

‘Watch yourself,’ said Riedwaan. He handed her a piece of paper. ‘Here’s Goodman Langa’s number. He’s not in the police any more. But that might be an advantage.’

‘I’ll be fine, boss,’ smiled Rita. ‘It’s just paperwork I’m doing. I’ll bring it back and you can do the macho stuff.’

She disappeared
into the crowd catching the late afternoon flight to Jo’burg.

Riedwaan took a pull on his cigarette, but it didn’t dissipate the unease he felt. He drove back, past cattle grazing on the verge of the highway.

When he was half-way back to town, he switched his phone on. It rang immediately.

‘Clare,’ he said.

‘There’s chaos here, Riedwaan.’ He could barely hear her voice above the
noise in the background. ‘Get back here quickly. That press conference of Phiri’s blew the situation at Gallows Hill. I knew it would, and Waleed Williams has turned things round to his own advantage.’

Riedwaan pulled the blue lamp out from under the seat and clamped it onto the roof. The siren opened the traffic in front of him.

A tyre smouldered at the top end of Ebenezer Road. The tarmac
was littered with bricks. Uniformed police had formed a human shield around the site, and the ones in front held up shields. Journalists everywhere, an e.tv crew, two reporters from SABC News, Waleed Williams handing out cards, offering interviews. There was an explosion from Gallows Hill. The press pack turned as one towards the disturbance and the riot police moved the toyi-toyiing construction
workers off the site.

Waleed Williams headed nonchalantly for the Hummer idling on the pavement, his bodyguards on either side of him.

‘You scared to go out alone, Hond?’ asked Riedwaan, bringing the man up short. The pitbull snarled.

Williams took out a cigar, and the man to his left held up a lighter.

‘You check on that jars little doctor of yours. Looked to me like there was
something between her and that smooth cameraman, nè boys?’ Williams let out a cloud of smoke. ‘No ways I’d put with that, if it was my woman.’

‘This is between you and me, Hond,’ said Riedwaan.

‘I know where you grew up, Faizal,’ said Williams. ‘Same streets as me. Just your mother thought she was better than everyone. She never stopped your father bliksemming her on a Saturday night,
like everyone else.’

‘You leave my mother out of it.’

‘
Jou ma se poes
,’ Williams said softly.

‘You can take a Coloured out of the Flats,’ said Riedwaan, ‘But you can’t take the Flats out of the Coloured.’

‘That makes two of us then,’ said Williams. ‘So don’t give me your shit. I know where to press if I need to. But now I’ve got you, right here, seems like everything is just how
the doctor ordered. I’m a businessman. I don’t take unnecessary risks.’

Engel, the journalist from
Die Son
, appeared. ‘Captain Faizal fucking with you, Mr Williams?’ he asked.

‘I think Captain Faizal’s too worried about who’s fucking his cherrie to bother with me.’

‘I’ll get you, Hond,’ said Faizal. ‘You might have the muscle, but I’ve got the brains.’

‘Thanks, Captain,’ said Engel.
‘Will make a great headline, the SAPS response to the Gallows Hill unrest.’

‘Fuck you too, Engel,’ said Riedwaan before calling a metro cop over. ‘Officer, ticket this man for parking illegally.’ He pointed to the Hummer. ‘Now let me through.’

The nervous-looking metro cop let him onto the site. It looked like the West Bank on a bad day. Riedwaan picked his way through the debris to the
shed where the bones had been stored.

‘A tsunami of ignorance,’ Stone said, surveying the destruction. All around lay debris from the upended trestle tables, the neatly labelled boxes and precise notes in disarray. He’d been treated for concussion at nearby Somerset Hospital, and come back immediately, insisting on returning to restore order to the shed. Together with his students, he was
salvaging what he could from jumbled bones and smashed tools. In grim silence

‘Who’d have thought?’ said Clare. ‘A history documentary that turns into a war zone.’

‘That teargas took me right back to the 80s,’ said Pedro, his eye on the viewfinder. ‘Have a look at this. They’re quite spectacular, some of these shots. I’ll digitise as soon as I can.’

‘You need to get this seen to,’
she said, touching a cut in his cheek.

‘It looks worse than it is.’

Clare dropped her hand when she saw Riedwaan.

‘Riedwaan,’ she said as he approached. ‘This is my cameraman, Pedro da Silva. Pedro, Riedwaan Faizal.’

‘It took some time to get that under control, Captain.’

‘Yes, a complicated situation,’ said Riedwaan.

‘How many arrests?’ asked Clare.

‘Six,’ he said.
‘All public violence.’

‘Waleed Williams?’ asked Clare.

‘Not him,’ said Riedwaan. ‘He claims he tried to mediate in the face of police brutality. He’s giving interviews to anyone who’s asking. The Cape face of the Mpumalanga Holdings Corporation. And now they look like the heroes. The people’s champions. Providing jobs, offering a memorial park. Fuck knows what other pie in the sky.’

‘Tough job, being a cop,’ said Pedro. ‘Fifty years of being hated by most people in the country doesn’t suddenly disappear.’

‘Maybe. But having a camera to hide behind means never having to choose sides,’ said Riedwaan.

He turned to look at the public order cops unrolling razor wire on the perimeter of the site.

‘When’re you coming to see the footage?’ Pedro asked Clare. ‘We need to
get something rough out, if you’re going to keep your producers happy.’

‘Did they call you?’ asked Clare.

‘They did,’ said Pedro. ‘Said your phone was off.’

‘It was, for a while,’ said Clare. ‘I’ll call them later, put them off for another couple of days.’

‘You’re the boss,’ he said, shouldering his equipment.

Riedwaan watched Pedro stride across the site in the slanting afternoon
shadows.

‘I’ll walk you to your car,’ said Riedwaan, turning to Clare.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

A woman was leaning against her car while a paramedic attended to a gash across her brow. There was blood on the pavement and debris on the road, but the traffic was moving again.

‘What is Pedro da Silva?’ Riedwaan held the door open for her.

‘My cameraman,’ said Clare.

‘What is he
to you?’

‘What’s this about, Riedwaan?’ She clicked her seatbelt into place

‘You lived together,’ he said. ‘He’s so fucking smooth, you can’t get a grip on him.’

‘What’re you suggesting?’ There was a glint in Clare’s eyes.

‘I don’t want to lose you.’ Riedwaan lit a cigarette. ‘That’s all.’

‘Then don’t interrogate me.’

‘It’s hard to tell with you, sometimes.’

‘I’m a
simple girl, Riedwaan. If I’m sleeping with you, you’re the one I’m with.’

Clare started the car, her anger already dissipating. He was a jealous man, but he was also a perceptive one. And he read her better than she liked to think. She’d willed the chaos of the riot at Gallows Hill to recede and, after a while, it did. But Riedwaan’s anger, his jealousy, was not as easy to banish.

Her
phone rang as she got back onto Somerset Road. Katrin Goldfarb’s number was on the screen.

‘What one earth happened to you, my dear?’ Katrin Goldfarb put her hand on Clare’s arm as she let her in.

‘I was caught up in that riot at Gallows Hill,’ said Clare. ‘I just need a shower and a change of clothes and I’ll be myself again.’

‘I like fighters,’ she smiled, and led Clare through the garden.

Opening the door to her studio, Katrin Goldfarb gestured at the swaddled
bust on the worktable. ‘I worked through the night. And here she is. The lady in the green dress.’

She unwrapped the head, revealing a face with clean lines. A high forehead, brows a perfect sweep above wide-set eyes. The hair she had swept up and away from the forehead.

Clare turned the bust slightly. ‘She was very beautiful,’ she said, brushing the profile with her fingertips, unsettled
as much by the dull clay eyes as by the uncanny familiarity of the face. ‘The same age I am now. Childhood behind. Middle age ahead.’