Gallows Hill (32 page)

‘Why use the same gun?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘Seems stupid.’

‘It happens,’ said De Lange. ‘These guys think, this is my lucky gun. This is what keeps me safe, like you said. They’ll do the hit, but everything must be right. Jirre, man,
you weren’t at the scene last night. That bag of tricks the bugger had with him – cable ties, blades. Packed with enough precision to make you piss with fear. He got careless, though. Left a couple of fingerprints.’

‘He’s one of Waleed Williams’s associates?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Nothing to do with Williams –’ said De Lange.

‘For fuck’s sake.’ Riedwaan cut him off. ‘I’ve got Williams in
a corner. He threatens Clare Hart. Then a psycho with cable ties and a filleting knife hijacks her. What the fuck must I think? What did you think?’

‘Yes, that’s where I was looking too,’ said De Lange. ‘The only reason I went somewhere else is we have a German intern. Very precise, very thorough, no idea about how things work in South Africa. She didn’t know where to look, so she didn’t only
look through the gang databases, she looked through all of them.’

‘She got a match?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Maybe not close enough for a judge,’ said De Lange. ‘But close enough for me. She even got the system to spit out an ID number.’

‘Is there a name?’

‘Ignatius Dlamini. Does it mean anything to you?’

‘Not yet. But it will soon,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Dlamini was associated with
political killings in the 80s and 90s. He’s part of something older.’

The implications of what De Lange was saying sliced through Riedwaan’s exhaustion and dislodged his certainty.

‘You still there, Faizal?’ asked De Lange.

‘I’m here,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I’m hearing you.’

‘About fucking time too,’ said De Lange.

‘It’s been a long couple of days,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Now tell me what
else you know about Dlamini.’

‘There was a notorious cop in the security police in Cape Town in the 80s. Everyone was afraid of him, even his own men were shit-scared of him. There were rumours about an askari who had turned, who cleaned up for him. No proof ever, no charges, no fire, but plenty of smoke for a time.’

‘Who was he?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Jacques Basson.’

Riedwaan rode
into the teeth of the wind. The apartment blocks in the Strand looked hazy in the sand whipped off the dunes by the southeaster. He found Sunset Vista. Went round to the service entrance. Two security guards were playing cards. Fifty bucks got him inside. Another fifty got him the emergency key to Basson’s flat. Yet another fifty was an investment in half an hour’s good will and two pairs of eyes
to watch his back.

He took the lift to the seventh floor. Flat number 707 was at the end of the corridor. He slipped the key into the well-oiled lock. It clicked open. He pushed a centimetre or so. The chain wasn’t on. The door opened silently.

Riedwaan hugged the picture-lined walls, his gun ready.

‘Captain Faizal, the renegade cop. I was wondering how long it would be before you
came to see me.’ Jacques Basson was waiting for him in the sitting room. ‘You’re all over the news.’

‘The Piano Man,’ said Riedwaan, gun cocked. ‘We got things to discuss.’

‘Dr Hart being one of them?’ asked Basson. He laid his hands – delicate musician’s hands – on his knees, and straightened the crisp crease of his khaki trousers.

‘We share a taste in women, I think. She is lovely.’

‘She’s alive,’ said Riedwaan, stepping closer.

‘So it would appear,’ said Basson. ‘Such a petite thing. Easy to underestimate her, I imagine.’

‘Not a good idea,’ said Riedwaan.

Basson snapped his fingers and a poodle shot to his side.

From the kitchen came a short sharp sound.

Riedwaan turned, and the blow that might have killed him glanced off the side of his head, the
full weight of it slamming into his injured shoulder. He fell heavily, slipping to the edge of consciousness, fighting his way back, struggling until the darkness no longer engulfed him.

‘
Maak hom vas
. Idiot. Thinks he can buy my security people.’

‘We must move him before we finish.’ Ignatius Dlamini’s words sibilant as his practised fingers twisted the rope.

Riedwaan kept his eyes
closed and his body still, concentrating on keeping some space between his wrists, his ankles. His only chance of survival would be those few extra millimetres.

The lift doors opened. In the deserted basement, a white Toyota Corolla was waiting. Ten thousand other vehicles like it on the road.

A spacious boot. Golf clubs, a toolbox, a swimming towel. More than enough space for a body too.
Basson and the other man tipped him in. His knees hit the toolbox, spilling the contents over his legs. His shoulder smashed against the jack, shooting pain through his body. Again, he hovered on the edge of consciousness, the lure of oblivion almost overwhelming him.

‘Finish it properly this time,’ said Basson. ‘I’ll finish the woman.’

The thought of Clare brought Riedwaan back from the
brink. With this, came the pain.

The sound of keys being thrown down. A door slamming, an engine starting.

He didn’t have much hope, but he had even less time. Riedwaan began to work at the rope around his wrists. The pain shooting up his shoulder was a distraction from thoughts of what might happen to Clare if he didn’t free himself.

The electric gates opened. Dlamini indicated and
turned right, away from the sea, towards the scrubby bush that stretched behind the sprawl of shacks on the dunes. Riedwaan rolled sideways in the boot, hoping for a few more minutes to free himself. The bush was the perfect dumping ground for a corpse – it was, after all, the place Clare’s assailant had been heading towards. Adrenalin rushed through Riedwaan’s body, easing the pain that shot through
his shoulder each time the vehicle turned. It also focused his mind.

He shifted his weight, bringing his arms up against the jack. He felt the car come to a halt. He held his breath, willing it to move again. He needed more time. The car moved after a minute or so, traffic-light time. He knew what Dlamini was doing, observing the speed limit, stopping at red lights, the tick of an indicator
as he turned. In any case, no traffic cop was likely to notice a white Toyota. It would slip past all the cameras. He would disappear without a trace.

Riedwaan moved his ankles. A fold of his trouser leg was caught in the tie, allowing precious room for movement. He moved his legs until he found an anchor – a piece of metal. A spanner, perhaps, that had become wedged. He hooked his legs and
pulled. Nothing. He tried again, this time using short, sharp jerks. The pain was excruciating.

The car turned, accelerated. An open road with few cars – cruising at 120, the speed limit. Riedwaan focused his strength and yanked. His knees hit the roof of the boot. He lay still for a moment, catching his breath, waiting to see if the driver had heard the noise. The vehicle continued, steady,
smooth.

Riedwaan shifted his weight off his shoulder. It was no lesspainful, but at least his legs were free. He got himself into position –the rope around his wrists up against the tool he’d used to free his leg. He gritted his teeth and worked his wrists against the edge. As he did so, blood gushed from the bullet wound in his shoulder. It seeped through the bandage, and the smell filled
the confines of the boot, an augur of his own fate.

The Toyota slowed, the indicator came on, the driver turned to the right. The car bumped over corrugations – a gravel road. It stopped, the engine idling. Dlamini got out. The squeak of a gate. Silence. Riedwaan worked harder at the rope, working at the knots with a patience he did not feel. A door slammed shut and they were through the gate.

One knot was loose.

Dlamini did not stop to close the gate. Planning a quick dispatch, no doubt. Small comfort that, but Riedwaan’s only one. The corrugations were rougher, and dust was seeping into the boot. A minute, maybe two. That was it. He blocked the thought from his mind and focused on the rope. Another knot came loose. The blood flowed back into his hands. It hurt, a welcome pain.

Two to go.

Riedwaan tested. Enough room to move his hands, now. He felt around behind him. Cold metal – a screwdriver, narrow enough to worm up his sleeve.

The car turned once more, came to a halt. The boot opened.

‘Captain.’ Dlamini’s dark shape loomed. ‘This is the end of the road.’

Dlamini placed the snout of a gun at Riedwaan’s temple. ‘Fifty paces. Same as a man takes to
the gallows.’

The sun was a white orb in the smoky sky above Signal Hill. Carreg Crescent was empty – everyone at the beach – when Clare drove up the street. Lilith opened the door, leaning against the doorway to let her enter. There was so much sadness in Lilith’s face, it drew Clare in.

‘I shouldn’t have taken you with me to Laingsburg – it was an error of judgment.’

‘No, no, Clare. I’m glad
I went.’ Lilith tapped the papers Clare put on the table. ‘Now, what?’

‘Reconstructing the weekend your mother disappeared,’ said Clare, plugging her phone in to charge. ‘From that Saturday night at her opening.’

‘Come, put it all out in my studio,’ said Lilith. ‘It’s the room my mother loved most. Maybe she’ll help me out, for once.’

‘Have you ever felt her presence?’

‘She left
me nothing,’ said Lilith. ‘Not even a ghost.’

‘She’s there in your memories,’ said Clare. ‘Every second you spent with her is there.’

‘You really believe that?’ Lilith pulled the ceiling-fan cord and the blades turned, cutting through the sluggish air.

‘I read once,’ said Clare, ‘that forgetting is the most complicatedof locks, but it is only a lock. Your mind picks up everything,
files it, classifies it, and keeps it all
.
The key to all of this lies in that night, Lilith. And you’re the one who has it.’

‘Well, pick the lock then,’ said Lilith. ‘I survived it once. I should survive it a second time.’

‘You want to try?’ asked Clare.

Lilith rolled a joint and lit it.

‘I’ll try.’

‘Here are the newspaper cuttings, the photographs of the opening.’

Clare
spread them out in sequence on the left end of the long, narrow studio table. ‘And these are the notes I have from when Wilma Smit found you. These,’ she said, her index finger on the notes, ‘these are from my meeting with Jacques Basson. There’s nothing there that doesn’t coincide with the official report. Uncanny how he can remember things so exactly.’

‘Maybe you can if it’s a lie,’ said
Lilith. ‘Because you just make it up and then you memorise it like a poem you perform at school. Once it’s there, it’s there for ever. Never changes. If it’s the truth, though, it alters. What you wished was there, what you desired, what you cannot bear, it all shifts the events until you don’t know what actually happened.’

‘There are two places where memory is stored, I suppose,’ said Clare.
‘In the head and the heart.’

‘Both are unreliable,’ said Lilith.

‘I don’t know about my heart,’ said Clare. ‘But my head holds things together – well, most of the time.’

‘Hang around with me a bit more, and we’ll see if that lasts,’ smiled Lilith.

A pair of starlings wheeled outside the window.

Clare rearranged her paperwork. ‘Let’s try again to see what you can remember. See
if there’s something you’ve missed.’

‘Clare, I was four. If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten.’ Lilith’s voice hardened. ‘I didn’t ask for my mother’s bones to be dug up. She’s been dead all these years. It makes no difference how she died. She’s dead. You work it out, for fuck’s sake. That’s your job.’

‘I can’t do it without you. Someone’s got away with her murder for 23 years,’ said Clare.
‘Somebody left a little girl without a mother, left you without a mother. That gets under my skin.’

‘Before, I’ve just buried things. It’s the way I survived.’ Lilith’s voice gave a little. ‘I’ve been afraid that if I disinterred the memories, saw any traces of what happened that night, I’d never be able to close it over again. When I’ve tried before it’s nearly killed me.’

‘It’ll be different
this time, Lilith,’ she said. ‘This will be the last time you need to do it because you’ll be chasing facts, not shadows.’

‘You really think they’re different, in neat little boxes, don’t you? Science, memory, guilt, punishment, happy endings. All that.’

‘Put yourself back there,’ said Clare. ‘It’ll come. First, the macaroni cheese.’

‘Sophie kept that memory for me,’ said Lilith. ‘And
I’m glad, but what does it help?’

The questions turning circles in her head made her heart beat against her ribs like a trapped bird. She lit a joint. The smell of the sweet smoke was soothing. The burn in her lungs when she inhaled was like a forgetting. Lilith exhaled. At some point you had to let it go.

‘You help me, Clare,’ she said. She felt unmoored, a vessel on uncharted seas.

‘Focus on the senses,’ said Clare. ‘The details. Smell, taste, texture – those are the details that anchor the bigger things. They are the tiny things that jog the involuntary memory.’

‘Proust’s madeleine cookie,’ said Lilith, ‘is my macaroni.’

She picked up the pastels lying in a tidy heap, pulled a sheet of paper towards her. Sketched rapidly. Colour and shape. Images returning from
the other side of time. A white circular plate, creamy macaroni, the blood-red splash of tomato sauce A beak-like fork spearing worm-shaped crescents of pasta. Large, square hands wrapped around a mug.

The only sound for a while was the swish of pastels on paper.

‘The radio was on,’ said Lilith, lifting her crayon. ‘The Xhosa station. Sophie was upset. Now I know why. Her son.’

‘Who
put you to bed?’ asked Clare.

‘Sophie.’ Lilith sketched again. A figure bending over a child’s body, the child’s hair a golden nimbus on the pillow. A teddy bear.

‘Boris,’ said Lilith, sketching again. ‘He had a hollow tummy, I’d tuck my hands into him at night. A whiff of Chanel – my mother’s smell. I pretended to be asleep. She tucked me in again.’