Gallows Hill (34 page)

‘Lilith’s made one last piece,’ said Magda. ‘Very moving. She found it hard to talk about when I did the walkabout with her earlier. It’s that way.’

Clare burrowed through the crush of people. She stopped in a doorway and scanned the jostling, air-kissing crowd. On the door to the left was a sign that said The End – Lilith’s secret piece. She was at the far side of
the room, surrounded by several men, wealthy and assured.

Lilith turned and looked straight at Clare. It was like a moment from the past. She was wearing a replica of her mother’s green dress, the nipped waist, thin shoulder straps. Clasped around her throat was a rough silver necklace. Her hair was in a chignon, like her mother’s in the photographs. The turn of her head, the angle of her
arm, were an echo of the snapshots Clare had of Suzanne. It was unnerving, the recreation of a woman so long dead.

Two tipsy girls bumped into Clare. When she looked up again, Lilith was talking to Sykes, her hand against his chest. Clare escaped into a corridor, away from the crowds.

A fire escape led upwards, and on the landing a door stood ajar. Opposite was a makeshift exhibition space.
Clare pushed open the curtain. The silence, the solitude, was a relief. She waited as her eyes adjusted to the dimness.

There were images on the far wall. Photographs, still-frames from a video. A child staring at a white plate on a blue table. A bear, a book, a black stone. A landscape painting. A diminutive figure in a nightdress, blood or mud streaking her bare feet. A pool of black water.

Next to these, a video. Pale white skin, fractured by slow-movingimages. Clare recoiled – the patterns on her skin were projections of the autopsy photographs of Suzanne’s skeleton.

‘Yes, Dr Hart. She did indeed die.’

Startled, Clare whipped round.

Merle Osman stood in the doorway, the Afghans at her heels, their coats gleaming.

‘Lilith’s exit piece,’ said Merle. ‘Transforming
herself into her dead mother. It’s as macabre as it is intriguing. She certainly has the ability to unsettle one. Just like her mother.’

Clare smiled a greeting, disguising her discomfort.

‘Ah, Ms Osman. Have you come here to tell me more about Suzanne?’

Merle Osman spread her elegant hands.

‘Well, she was beautiful. But that you already know. She was also promiscuous. She had
a penchant for danger, for dangerous men. One does not like to imagine –’

‘I do, in fact’ said Clare.

‘That’s your job, Dr Hart. To speculate about what’s past.’

Clare pointed to the painting at the centre of the installation. ‘That is not one of Lilith’s works.’ The painting showed a dry white plain, a military vehicle. On the back of it, young men in uniform. Muscular. Their faces
hard.

‘No, indeed. Lovely, lost Suzanne painted that. I don’t know where Lilith found it. This was from her mother’s first show.’

She swung round to face Clare.

‘You really want to know more about Suzanne? Well, Dr Hart, nobody could resist her, her wildness. She thrived on sexual license.’

‘Did she and your brother have an affair?’

‘Not really.’

‘And Jacques Basson? Do
you know what it was about her politics that made him so fixated on her?’

‘Her politics.’ said Merle Osman. ‘I’m not sure it was her politics. People used her.’

‘What for?’

‘Money, a place to stay. Somewhere to keep things. Suzanne skated very close to the edge, as does her daughter. But unlike Lilith, Suzanne was naive.’

‘Do you remember anything specific?’

‘I was her dealer,
not her confidante,’ said Merle Osman. ‘So I can’t really give you details of her personal life.’

‘What was her work like, its reception?’ asked Clare

‘She had an instinct for the erotic. She exposed people. Strange, that, considering where she came from. Small Karoo town, and all.

‘Like you and your brother,’ said Clare.

‘Quite. You couldn’t get further from the art world than
Carnarvon.’

‘Suzanne’s paintings appear in some unusual places,’ said Clare. ‘I was intrigued that Jacques Basson has one. A nude.’

‘You met him?’ asked Merle Osman, a plucked eyebrow arching.

‘I did,’ said Clare. ‘He was the security policeman who came to arrest her the night she disappeared. I find it interesting that a security policeman would collect art.’

‘So do I. A memento,
perhaps. Beauty and cruelty go well together.’

‘You didn’t sell it to him?’ asked Clare.

‘No,’ said Merle. ‘But her work is valuable. Re-sales happen. Though we have no connection to that, as the primary dealers.’

‘You’re not in touch with him?’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Merle Osman. ‘Why would we be?’

‘The past gets a grip on the present, sometimes,’ said Clare. ‘It can be hard
to shake.’

‘I really must get going now, Dr Hart.’

‘Just one more thing about Suzanne,’ said Clare. ‘What was her interest in South African art – our old masters, I suppose you could call them – Pierneef, Villa, Laubser?’

‘As far as I know, she wasn’t interested in them at all,’ said Merle Osman. ‘The only thing I remember her saying about them is that they were part of an old order
that had failed us all. But as I’ve told you, I didn’t know Suzanne that well. You’d have to ask Gilles.’

‘Is he around this evening?’

‘There’s such a crowd.’ Merle Osman’s smile tight, her lips lifting to expose crowded teeth in a narrow jaw. ‘But Gilles will be here somewhere. Now I must go and find Lilith. She’s the star tonight, and I have some private buyers who want to meet her.’

She turned to leave, then stopped and faced Clare one last time.

‘You haven’t done her any favours, you know, dredging this all up, Dr Hart. It has brought her nothing but pain.’

The curtain swung closed behind her. Clare turned back to the installation; the detail that she and Lilith had salvaged from memory was all there. The empty bed, the food, the toy. Some objects of her mother’s,
too. Long-playing records, a dress draped across a chair, sketchbooks, and Suzanne’s painting that had held Clare’s eye.

She closed her eyes. Focused again, inwards this time. The white veld. The army vehicle. The handsome faces of young conscripts.

She’d seen this image before.

A sweat, cold as a killer’s eyes, ran down her back.

Clare turned and went down the stairs towards the
main gallery. Even more people had crowded into the exhibition space. Too much alcohol, too many bodies pressed too close. The urgent pump of club music filled every available space. Clare went from room to room.

Damien Sykes and his wife were there – but no sign of Lilith.

‘Where’s Lilith?’ she asked.

‘I thought she went to the bathroom,’ said Saskia Sykes. ‘She didn’t look well.’

Clare checked. Lilith wasn’t in the bathroom.

She worked her way back to the foyer, where she glimpsed Magda and Pedro, heads inclined towards each other, laughing at some anecdote.

They waved her over, but she said, ‘I’ve got to find Lilith.’

Clare hurried to the reception desk.

‘Have you seen Lilith?’ she asked the gallery girl.

‘She wanted a taxi,’ she said.

‘Did
she say where she was going?’

‘She wanted a taxi because she was going to meet you,’ said the girl, giving Clare an odd look. ‘She thought you’d already left.’

Clare fought her way out and ran for her car. She did a U-turn and drove towards town, red tail-lights glowing in the empty street.

The house on Carreg Crescent stood silent in the moonlight. There was no answer when Clare knocked,
and no lights were on. She went round to the back of the house. An owl took off, its shadow passing over her as the bird banked and headed for the treed slopes of Signal Hill.

The wind seemed irritable, hurling itself at the old house, and then, without warning, retreating.

Clare slipped the key into the kitchen door, but it was already unlocked. She tensed as she stepped inside. A tea
cup with a red crescent of lipstick on the sink, an ashtray, an upturned chair. Suzanne’s sketchbooks, her paperwork, Clare’s notes were missing.

She went into the dim passageway. She pushed Lilith’s bedroom door open. Anxiety, like a metronome, marked the seconds as her eyes adjusted to the gloom.

Next to Lilith’s bed, a box of sleeping pills, a copy of
The Bell Jar
. Sylvia Plath looking
out at Clare. In the drawer of the bedside table was a small sketch of Clare, her hair tumbled across a pillow. Tissues, cigarettes, lip balm.

No Lilith. No documents either.

Clare went up to the studio, pressing against the wall so that the stairs did not creak. Light filtered in, illuminating the long table in the centre of the room. A series of photographs was arranged precisely along
the middle. All were close-ups of Lilith’s face, her eyes as large and dark as bruises. In each eye there was a white slit, the pupil excised.

Clare gripped the Browning as she heard a sound. A branch knocking against a window pane. She breathed out, surrendering to her other senses.

There was a faint odour in the air. Not just turpentine, or charcoal, or the light perfume that Lilith
wore. Something darker, heavier, coming from the curtained alcove at the end of the studio.

Blood.

Clare pushed the curtains aside and recoiled at the form sprawled on the floor, pale as marble. Lilith. Her lovely head turned away from the door where Clare had entered the room. Clare’s eyes were led from the delicate shoulders, rib by rib, to the angle of her hip, the gentle slope of her
thighs. The knees. The feet still in heels.

Almost the pose of a reclining nude.

Her limbs were small and compact, the hips flaring from a narrow waist, her breasts exposed.

Above the gash of red lipstick, her face was wan, her hair matted.

Blood pooled around her.

Both wrists were slashed, with long deep cuts to the bone. The bloodied blade of a scriber rested in the folds
of her green dress.

Clare sank down beside her, felt her moth-breath.

She was alive. Just.

‘Don’t die, Lily, don’t die.’ Clare stripped off her jacket and bandaged a sleeve around Lilith’s wrist. Grabbing a paint-stained cloth, she wrapped it tightly around the other wrist.

She yanked down a curtain and folded it under Lilith’s head. She was losing body heat. Too quickly. A pile
of sacks lay in a corner of the studio. Clare took some and spread them over the dying girl.

‘I’m here,’ said Clare. ‘You’re going to be okay. Just keep breathing.’

There.

Clare listened.

Silence concentrated around her. That absorption that comes as a creature – predator or prey – watches and waits and listens. Waiting to make a move, to advance, to retreat. She reached into the
darkness, trying to hear beyond the sound of her own breath, her blood.

The click of a door opening.

Clare lifted her head.

Footsteps on the wooden floor downstairs.

She inched her hand towards the bloody scriber, the blade a comfort in her hand.

She stood up, moved towards the shadows.

Listened.

A sound so faint, it slipped below the shush of the wind.

Clare’s
mouth was dry, but her head was clear.

The sound again.

Clare heard clearly, now. One considered step at a time. Pausing, avoiding the creaks. Feet familiar with the stairs.

She moved towards the shadows and crouched behind a table.

For three seconds there was no sound at all, just the throb of blood in her ears.

Riedwaan had half a chance, and he knew it. He climbed out of the boot as ordered, holding in place the rope around his wrists. Ignatius Dlamini kept the gun trained on Riedwaan, but he took a single step backwards. Just the space Riedwaan needed, if that was all he was going to get. He lunged for Dlamini, going for the eyes, plunging the screwdriver deep into the left socket. The man’s
scream hovered in the air.

Riedwaan wiped his hands and phoned De Lange.

‘Faizal, you’re alive.’

‘Wasn’t meant to be me,’ said Riedwaan.

‘So, who isn’t alive?’ asked De Lange.

‘Dlamini,’ said Riedwaan.

De Lange was silent.

‘And Basson?’

‘Alive and well, last time I saw him,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Clare was looking for you, Faizal. Go find her.’

‘There’s a bit
of a mess here,’ said Riedwaan, looking at the body lying in the sand. A single blowfly, the first one, was buzzing above the bloodied face.

‘Tell me where,’ said De Lange. ‘I’ll get someone over.’

‘De Lange,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You remember Raheema Patel?’

‘Missing Persons Task Force?’

‘That’s the one,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Phone her. Tell her from me that there’s a grave in Mpumalanga.
A place called Rietfontein. Headstone’s engraved with the name Suzanne le Roux. It’s a grave that Jacques Basson took far too much care over. Tell her she’ll want to exhume whoever’s buried there.’

‘Any ideas whose grave it is?’

‘Not yet,’ said Riedwaan. ‘But the one thing at a funeral that’s free is the corpse. So, question is, who did Basson bury there? He had more than enough bodies
to get rid of. Might be nothing. But Patel worked on his case. And there were a couple of kids from Crossroads just disappeared. It could just be someone she’s been looking for all these years.’

‘That’ll make her cold little forensic heart sing,’ said De Lange.

‘Not for me,’ said Riedwaan. ‘But maybe it’ll sing for you.’

‘Jislaaik, Faizal, I’ve got an ex-wife. That’s already enough
womantrouble. Give me this forensic vrou’s number.’

‘You’re a fucking cop, man,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Look it up in the phone book.’

As he reversed the Toyota down the rutted track, Riedwaan dialled Clare. The phone buzzed. Ten times. Fifteen. Voicemail.

He curled his fist around the Nokia.

Pedro da Silva.

He would know where she was. Riedwaan had lifted Da Silva’s number from Clare’s
phone. He knew he’d need it sometime. Hadn’t anticipated this situation, though. He dialled.