Gallows Hill (23 page)

‘Did she speak to you?’

‘No. She looked at me, those big black bambi eyes. I see them every time I fokken try to fall asleep.’

‘So how did you find me?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘You think I don’t watch TV?’ said Du Randt. ‘
CSI
. Makes me glad to see America’s as opgevok up as we are. Best fokken show.’

‘It is,’ said Riedwaan.

‘So then you know,’ said Du Randt.

‘You checked her
phone,’ guessed Riedwaan.

‘Last number,’ said Du Randt, ‘all I got time for. It said Office on the log. I took the number. Cape Town code, 424-something.’

‘My unit’s central number,’ said Riedwaan. ‘The secretary would have picked up.’

‘Ja,’ said Du Randt. ‘I found all that out later, I was going to call it, but then there was a flash of lights, on the hill behind me, same direction
as the girlie came from.’

The silence was filling with the sound of rain.

‘I just dropped the fokken phone. Something made me run back to my bakkie,’ said Du Randt. ‘It was behind the bush there, you couldn’t see it. Saved my fokken life that, I’m telling you. Oke got out of a BMW, black and shiny, no plates. Politician’s car, politician’s businessman’s car. Driver gets out, walks to the
ditch. Long pointy shoes that the politicians around here wear, these days.’

Du Randt tossed his stompie away. ‘He had his collar turned up. Expensive hat on, a fedora, like he’s some black Al Capone or something. Big shiny watch.’

‘You know the guy?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘I’ve seen him in the papers,’ said Du Randt. ‘In with all the politicians here. He makes things happen, you could say
that.’

‘Name?’

‘I can’t remember their fokken names, man,’ said Du Randt.

‘What did he do then?’

‘He walked over to the ditch. Your little friend, the steering column stuck right through her. The BMW guy waits. Not smoking, not moving, just watching her.’

Riedwaan tensed, his fists balling.

‘Then he sommer leaned in and pressed the central locking. He popped open the boot.
He scratched around a bit, opened all the doors too. Didn’t seem to find anything. He opened the driver’s door. By now she’s stopped moaning.’

The big man seemed to struggle to say the next words. ‘Then he searched her. Kicked her. I think he didn’t find what he was looking for. He was pissed off, shoved everything back into her bag. He made a call. The local cops were here in 20 minutes.
They wrote down what he told them.’

‘Did you see all this, did you wait until they left?’ said Riedwaan.

‘Ja. Then they went back to her hotel afterwards,’ said Du Randt.

‘You know which one?’

‘Leopard Lodge. I could hear them talk, you see. And my cousin works in reception there. So I asked her and she said they searched the room. All your friend’s stuff was there, and they took
it.’

It was dark. Twilight had long since been killed by the rain, the black clouds.

‘If you want to stay alive, you better find him before he finds you,’ said Du Randt. ‘You know what they were checking out?’

‘Not yet,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I’ll find out. Give those naaiers what they deserve.’

‘You’ve also got my number, Faizal. Just phone if you need help.’

The farmer walked to
his bakkie and drove up the rutted track, his tail lights vanishing into the bush.

Riedwaan sat in his car and watched the rain. It took him three cigarettes to come up with a plan.

Friday prayers. Men in crisp white robes and fezzes descending from the Bo-Kaap. The mosques were filling, slowing the traffic. Lilith was waiting on the crowded corner of Plein and Darling Street, hawkers, shoppers, men in suits eddying around her. Clare cut in front of a taxi and Lilith opened the car door. Her face was flushed with success.

‘I was right,’ she said. ‘She was on a
housing list. She’s had her name down since 1994, and has been in temporary housing for 20 years now. She’s part of a class action case that the Black Sash is doing, trying to force the City to define temporary.’

‘Temporary for government is indefinite if you’re poor,’ said Clare, taking the N2.

‘I got Sophie’s information from court records. Without cases like this going to court, there’s
no way to get these details.’

‘Makes Kafka look simple,’ said Clare. ‘Must we turn here?’

‘Next off-ramp,’ said Lilith.

‘Do you remember Damien Sykes?’ asked Clare.

‘He helped me out, once,’ said Lilith. ‘With money, stuff like that. He knew my mother. Why?’

‘Just curious,’ said Clare. ‘He’s got a few of her paintings.’

‘Some of mine too,’ said Lilith. ‘He’s of the horny-but-harmless
variety, I always thought.’

Clare turned off the highway. The sun blazed down on the shacks, the light flung back off the corrugated iron like an accusation. Old Crossroads. Cattle stood clustered in pungent kraals. The armoured cars and soldiers had been gone for two decades, but other than that it had not changed much. Some old eucalyptus trees had survived, too big to be chopped down, even
in the coldest winter. The spaza shop was still covered in hand-grenade mesh. Run by Somalis now, barely surviving the periodic rampages of local neighbours. Sometimes the police came, more often they didn’t.

The shop had a small slot where money was exchanged for 100g of soap powder, single cigarettes, 250ml bottles of milk, half a loaf of white bread. A can of Coke. Poor-people shopping.

But better than Mogadishu.

Clare stepped up to the window and asked the shopkeeper if he knew where Sophie Xaba lived. He whistled and two little boys appeared. No shoes, no shirts, ragged shorts, eyes button-bright.

‘Mama Xaba,’ he said. ‘Show the lady.’

The two little boys nodded, pointing.

‘You want to come with me?’ asked Clare.

They nodded in unison. She opened the
back door of her car for them, got in next to Lilith, and followed their directions. Down here, down there, right, left, left, right. Deeper and deeper into the maze of houses. A startled cow backed away in an alleyway. The boys bounced on the seat.

‘Here?’ asked Clare.

They nodded.

Clare got out, gave each of them a handful of coins. The house they pointed to stood stiff as a soldier
on its square of raked ground. It had been painted turquoise-green. The colour that, it was rumoured in Transkei, wards off a tornado. So far, it seemed to have withstood the bullying of the southeaster. The yard was immaculate, the litter of the streets jostling unsuccessfully at the chicken-wire fence. Clare knocked on the red door. A large woman wearing a white headscarf opened it. A star pinned
to her blouse. Zion Christian Church.

‘Mrs Xaba?’

‘Yes. Is me.’

‘I’m Clare Hart, and this,’ she said, turning towards Lilith, ‘is Lilith’

‘Lily.’ Sophie Xaba folded her arms around Lilith. ‘Miss Suzanne’slittle flower. Hello, come inside. You are a big girl now!’

The inside of the shack was stuffy. As tidy as only a place where there are no children can be. There was plastic
on the couches. The TV was on, but the sound was muted; Oprah circling with a microphone, overweight and overwrought American women mouthing away.

‘Mrs Xaba, I wanted to ask you about Suzanne le Roux,’ said Clare, when Lilith and Sophie had stopped hugging. ‘I’m here, really, because of her.’

‘We’re trying to find out what happened to my mother,’ said Lilith. She was sitting next to Sophie
Xaba.

‘So did I,’ said Sophie. ‘But nobody listened to me.’

‘Her remains were found, her skeleton,’ said Clare. ‘At Gallows Hill.’

A stillness came over Sophie Xaba. ‘I saw on TV. The skeletons, the men worried about their jobs, the people angry.’

‘There’s been no official announcement yet – but Suzanne le Roux was in fact murdered and buried in Cape Town in February 1988.’

‘There were so many stories then. But now you tell me this I know it is the only thing that could be true,’ said Sophie, taking Lilith’s hand. ‘I knew it then too, I just knew it.’

‘What did you know?’ asked Lilith.

‘Your mama would never have gone without you.’ Mrs Xaba twisted the button on her blouse. This way, that way. ‘If she did go, she would have sent for her Lily. I told them that.
Nobody would hear me.’

The button came off in her hand.

‘Who did you tell?’ asked Clare

‘The police. The family,’ she said. ‘The friends. They said no, they had this letter, official letter. Her father and her stepmother, I think they were happy she was gone. They didn’t like the things she do, the places she go, the things she say. For many years, they did not speak to their daughter.
It was easier for them when she was gone.’

‘And her friends?’ asked Clare.

‘They were not so many,’ said Sophie. ‘She wasn’t in Cape Town long. She had some friends, the men who bought her paintings. People like that, but no one else, really.’

‘And then, what happened to me?’ asked Lilith.

‘They chased me away,’ said Sophie. ‘You held onto me but they got you off. You bit your
grandmother, I remember. But they would not let me stay with you and they wouldn’t let you come with me.’

‘What happened that night?’ asked Clare.

Sophie Xaba closed her eyes. ‘It’s a long time ago.’

‘Take your time,’ said Clare. ‘The memory will come back.’

‘This thing happened on the same day my son disappeared. I can forget nothing. It goes round and round in my head. All the
time.’

‘Mrs Xaba, maybe you can try to tell us these things you see in your head?’

‘Eish, those were terrible days. The smoke in the townships. High up, all over the sky. It was black when the comrades wereburning tyres, if the police and the Witdoeke were burning houses. But that Saturday morning I went to work, I had to look after Lily. That day Miss Suzanne was having the exhibition,
the party. I took the little girl to her home. I gave her supper. Macaroni cheese, tomato sauce.’ She smiled at Lily. ‘You ate everything, Lily, just like always.’

‘It was only you two at the house?’ asked Clare.

‘Only us,’ said Sophie. ‘She was tired. Everyone was at the party for Miss Suzanne. Do you remember it, Lily?’

‘Just little pieces. Things from before – seeing my mother so
beautiful. Eating supper later at the blue table, being so tired, so, so tired. But after that, nothing.’ Lilith rubbed her temples. ‘Where did everything go?’

‘It’s the trauma, Lilith,’ said Clare. ‘It does things to your mind, blocks things that are too painful to see.’

‘But that never happened to me,’ said Sophie, quietly. She moved the button of her cardigan from one hand to the other.
‘I remember everything. Scipio, my son, he disappeared that weekend. My friend from church, she phoned to tell me. I needed to find him. That’s why I could not help you, my Lily. I had to get home.’

Tears glazed her eyes, but they did not fall.

‘What happened?’ said Clare.

‘Miss Suzanne, she came home. The little one was sleeping. The man who brought her home drove me to the township.
He could not go inside the township, but he dropped me there, nearby.’

‘Who was it?’ asked Clare. ‘Who dropped you?’

‘I don’t know his name,’ said Sophie. ‘He was Miss Suzanne’s friend. I didn’t think of him. I only thought of my son, just my son.’

She wiped her eyes, shook her head from side to side.

‘Eish, those Casspirs. The police shooting. The army also. Witdoeke with pangas
and kieries. Comrades running everywhere, everywhere. And my son was there. That’s where I lost him.’

Lilith leaned closer to Sophie Xaba.

‘My house was burnt down,’ said Mrs Xaba, ‘and all my neighbours’ houses.’

The door was ajar, and Clare glanced at the patch of lawn beyond the stoep, the marigolds. Above, a jet whined on its way to Cape Town International, splitting the silence
of the moment.

‘What else?’ prompted Clare. Her voice brought the shouts of that other time back into the room.

‘My son, Scipio, he did not come back. He was a good boy, a very clever boy, he loved school. It is because of him that I did not think of Miss Suzanne’s little girl and my job. That’s why I didn’t go back to the house the next day. When I went back, it was too late.’

‘Too
late for what?’ asked Clare.

‘For the little one. Because you see, I could not find my son anywhere. Our house was burnt. I phone, but no answer. I thought Miss Suzanne could help me find him. Someone told me they saw the soldiers shooting. And a boy with a yellow jersey. They put him in the van. Miss Suzanne would have helped me to find him. I phone, I phone again, but nobody answered again.
So I went back, to see if your mother could help me. But Miss Suzanne was not there. Just Lily and the social worker and the police. No Miss Suzanne. The whole house upside down.’

‘What do you think they were looking for?’ asked Clare.

‘For her,’ said Sophie. ‘For Miss Suzanne. They did those things, threw everything around. Break things. To frighten you. He – this policeman Basson – he
was asking the child over and over, where’s your mother, where’s your mother.’

‘What did Basson want with my mother?’ asked Lilith.

‘He hate Miss Suzanne.’ She looked from Lilith to Clare. ‘Just like a man who loves a woman too much hates her after.’

‘What do you mean, Mrs Xaba?’

‘There were lots of stories,’ said Sophie, ‘About them, about Basson and Lily’s mother.’

‘Were
they true?’

‘She met him, that is what she told me. She did not know what his work was.’ Sophie shrugged. ‘When she found out, she did not want him any more. He was not a man to hear no.’

‘Did she say anything to you that evening?’ asked Clare. ‘Before the exhibition?’

Sophie thought a moment. ‘She was very angry, crying a little bit, that evening, before she went to the exhibition.’

‘Did she tell you why?’ asked Clare.

‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘Miss Suzanne did not have time. Mr Osman came to fetch her. When she came back I had to go home. We did not talk. After that, you know…’

‘Was it Mr Osman who took you home again?’ asked Clare.

‘Not him. Another man, I don’t know him.’