Last Train to Retreat (21 page)

Curly had washed up at Miller’s Point but he could have drowned kilometres away given the currents. With Lavender Hill 30 km to the north, Curly most likely came by car but there’d been no reports of unclaimed vehicles parked along the coastline.
That is if Curly came alone.
The problem for Philander was that if Curly had been in a car with others they could have gone to any number of spots. The fact that Miller’s Point fell outside the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve meant nothing – Curly could have drowned
inside
the reserve, anywhere up Cape Point. Philander knew that the Benguela current pushed around the Point into False Bay, and because the water ran deep so close to the rocks the tow was strong.
So it was more likely that Curly drowned south of Miller’s Point than north of it.
South of Miller’s there were three spots
before
the reserve’s boundary and one
on
the boundary. Two of those, Partridge Point and Smitswinkel Bay, were inaccessible to cars. But once inside the reserve there were parking facilities for Venus Pool, Bordjiesrif, Rooikrans, and others.
Curly could have driven, or been driven, to any one of these inside the reserve.
People enjoyed many activities there, all of them requiring equipment of some kind except for walking. But none had been found, and the likes of Curly wouldn’t come all this way just to walk. Lastly, there was the ghost cotton in his pants that pointed to fishing.

As he approached the entrance to the reserve Philander wondered again if Curly’s death had been accidental or planned. Many an angler had misjudged the deep water rising up and slamming against the rocks and ledges. Curly’s mates, assuming they were fellow gangsters, would have wanted it to look like an accident. But if so, they would have left
something
behind. If he had been murdered there would have been a motive – not difficult with gangsters.

Philander was feeling depressed. There were many more questions than answers. He had hoped something new would emerge from his trip but it now seemed unlikely. All it had done was to make him realise the enormity of his undertaking. A wild, windswept place like this would cling to its secrets like barnacle to rock. He would drive back with only his
snoek
from Kalk Bay, and there’d be no Bella.

As Philander pulled up at the gate to the reserve he thought of how Bella had stepped into his arms and into his life, changing it forever – a single act conveying a thousand words. He thought of his workload – 150 dockets on his desk at various stages of investigation, all active until closed, and that he had no help. Bella often wondered how he coped. Philander had only 48 hours to lay a charge failing which he had to release suspects, there were inspection dates for each docket so he couldn’t neglect any one of them, he had to attend long court sessions, fetch suspects who’d been out on bail, and there was the relentless paperwork. Did he really need a case that was not his officially? But he thought of Bettie, the terror she must have felt even before the car was set alight with her in it. Did she pray, plead, scream, or was she silent, unable to grasp the horror of what was happening?

Philander parked to the side of the gate and beckoned the attendant. It was quiet this weekday. The man came out – middle-aged, overweight from sitting so much yet seemingly reluctant at the prospect of motion. He had a pained look on his beaten face. ‘
Ja, meneer
, what is it you want?’

Philander took out his police ID and held it up for him. The man’s manner became instantly more respectful. ‘
Ja,
Sarge
,
is there anything I can do?’ his weary look gone.

Philander smiled inwardly. Coloureds referred to cops as ‘sarge’ regardless of rank. It was done mostly in ignorance but amongst gangsters the purpose was to demean, bring cops down. Constables didn’t mind it, captains and colonels did.

‘As a matter of fact, you can. Not many cars come through here during the week this time of year, is that right?’

‘That’s right, Sarge. Soon they will, though.’

‘Were you on duty the week before last?’

‘Hmm, let’s see …
ja
, I was.’

‘Okay, think hard … what’s your name by the way?’

‘It’s Cyrus … Cy to my
choms
, Sarge.’

Philander shook his hand. ‘Call me Quentin. Now, Cy,
think
… do you remember any guys coming through that week, not tourist types you understand, but
okes
like us?’ Curly’s body had been found on a Saturday, and he’d been dead no more than a few days.

Cyrus’s face squeezed together. It was black-brown and dried-up like the husk of washed-up redbait. ‘I’m thinking Sarge … gimme a minute.’ Baboons barked nearby, always on the lookout for tourists who didn’t bother to read the warning notices. An eagle floated above Philander. ‘Not many come through here …’

‘That’s the point, Cy, if there’re not many then is there nothing you can recall
–
faces, conversation, cars,
anything
?’

‘
Minute,
Sarge, you say cars? There were some guys, looked like
ouens vannie Toun
…’

‘From the Flats, how many?’

‘Two, I’m not sure. As I was saying, Sarge, this car … it had
woelage
wheels, a sound system that
klopped mal,
and a
dinges
on the back.
Ja,
I remember now, it was like the wings of an angel.’

Philander suddenly became aware of the south-easterly tugging at the
fynbos
, at his shirt, at the entire desolate hill he was standing on. ‘
Nuh,
Cy, and how many came back in it?’

‘Ah, Sarge, I was too
vedala
to remember … long day, you see.’

On the way back Philander could feel the heat of the midday sun through the roof of the car – it had no air-conditioning. It did nothing to melt the arctic blue of his eyes as he followed the winding road.

S
arai stood in line with the other girls waiting for the man to pick one of them. The top of his head was bald and grey like a boulder. Lower down, above his ears, the remaining hair had formed a half wreath, his flushed face – Viagra? – filling in the missing half. He trembled as he scrutinised the women. A depressing sight, Sarai thought, probably his first time in a brothel. But she could no longer afford to be fussy – the johns were increasingly choosing other girls, forcing Sarai to say yes to handcuffs, blindfolds, whips, video cameras, drugs, sex without condoms, and her worst, anal sex.

The large lounge and dining area was filled with couches and soft chairs for girls to drape themselves over – an arousing sight to any man walking in. A flat-screen TV was permanently on the Series channel. When the girls weren’t having sex they watched soapies and reality shows. In the kitchen they made tea and coffee, and those who lived in like Sarai prepared basic meals for themselves – at their cost. High walls, a steel gate on the street with a wooden door behind it and a video camera above it kept what went on inside private, and to a degree, safe. It was men’s wallets that opened the gate. Once inside, the release of pent-up lust often came with violence – Sarai had been hit, choked, and raped, had knives put to her throat. Rough sex was the least of it. The pimps offered some protection but inside the bedrooms a lot could happen before help came. Fines were a different kind of harassment – the girls were fined regularly for being drunk or cheeky, fighting amongst themselves, not cleaning rooms after sex, and falling asleep in working hours. One of the girls was fined R5 000 for staying away because of a cyst in her vagina, another for not pitching up after her father died. They were expected to work even when they had their periods. Those who lived in had to work seven days a week. Client fees ranged from R200 to R1 000 a shot, the charge for travel and a sleepover was anything from R1 000 to R3 000. The girls paid the brothel owner 50% but what the girls kept went on rent, toiletries, food, condoms, paying for ads in local newspapers, fines, and drugs. The drugs were what made them stay – on their own the women could not keep their habit going. With Sarai there was an additional reason – her passport had been taken away and she was in the country illegally.

The man’s green-brown eyes were now on Sarai. She stood in her high heels and short skirt, hands on hips, meeting his gaze hoping her hooded eyes would do the rest. He walked over to the head pimp, Tyrone Jones, and whispered in his ear. Tyrone had the appearance of a choir boy – innocent eyes, a face foreign to razors, hair flattened on his forehead. He wore ill-fitting jeans and a faded checked shirt that looked like someone’s hand-me-downs. Tyrone’s boyish appearance merely emphasised his brutality – he was gay and could mete out punishment while not in the slightest bit interested in them as sex objects. It made him feel nothing – the girls were there for the taking but he got others to do that while he watched. Instead of lashes he ordered gang rape depending on the transgression. He was worse even than Cupido, Sarai thought, if that were possible. To customers he was Tyrone, to the girls, Evil Boy.

Evil Boy called Sarai over and said quietly, ‘He says okay if you give him the schoolgirl treatment … you know, uniform, hat, and all that. But no condom, he wants the innocent virgin thing.’

She had a customer, and one who wanted fantasy! She looked at him hoping he’d prove to be impotent. Acting without fucking – it would give her a break, allow her mind to roam free while she played his games and imagined she was back on her island basking in the warmth of her family and her friends and the endless summer.

She smiled at him, nodded, and took him by the hand.

•

When you had to fuck for a living there was no such thing as private space or private parts. Sarai worked and slept in her room consisting of a double bed, a chair, towels, a box of condoms, and lubricating jelly. It wasn’t her own like her bedroom on Koh Samui – it was invaded by strangers every day who had sex with Sarai or, if she didn’t make it in the line up, with other girls using Sarai’s room. Evil Boy believed that a bedroom standing empty was as wasteful as a bus travelling empty. But it was the constant invasion of Sarai’s innermost spaces that was slowly killing her. It wasn’t from any disease that she was aware of – the girls were tested regularly – it was more a dying of the soul that made her body shrivel up like a flower without sun and rain and air. The mirror never lied. In less than six months her hair had lost its shine, her skin its glow, and her body its fullness. What stared back at her was a face sinking in below high cheek bones and around the mouth so that she looked forty not twenty. Even her teeth were going bad. The last time she felt beautiful was with Lena. Oh, how could she have given up those nights in bed with Lena in her little house! There she experienced togetherness of the kind men were incapable of giving, intense desire without the threat of violence. It was the closest thing to love Sarai had ever felt. She thought of going back but knew there would be no money or sympathy for her dangerous habits and that before long their little world would be filled with her screaming and her urge to destroy. She had nightmares about killing the one person she loved apart from her family.

She was trapped here, between the line-ups, the bed and the bathroom. In the beginning Evil Boy had allowed her to go out accompanied by a pimp, as often as she wanted. He appeared to be kind and she was grateful but he had known too that she was fearful of the outside world and soon would not want to go out, too afraid of being caught and sent to prison where she’d have no drugs and go mad and never see her family again.

She felt like a bird in a cage with the door open but incapable of flying out.

•

It was in the morning that the stranger walked in, when the girls were still blow-drying their hair, putting on their make-up, and watching TV squashed up on the couches. He was the kind they’d consider going to bed with for no fee, the kind that probably had never needed to pay for sex. He wasn’t cute or overly handsome. It was more the touch of animal about him. Through the haze of smoke they stared at him, their unsaid words hanging in the air, ‘What’s someone like you doing here, at this hour of the day?’ Sarai was the only one who ignored him – six months earlier she would have had the confidence to engage him, now she had no hope.

The stranger gave them a cool, appraising look, smiled dazzlingly then turned to Evil Boy. They talked for a while. Evil Boy nodded and the man threw them a little wave as he walked out. The girls watched him like lionesses that had failed to bring down their prey.

Another work day was beginning, or so it seemed to the world. To Sarai it was another day continuing from the one before and moving onto the next, with no beginning or end, a shallow stream of consciousness where sleep and wakefulness seemingly ran into one – except when she smoked the white pipe.

•

In the early evening Evil Boy said to her quietly, ‘Someone has asked for you. He’s coming at eleven. Keep yourself free for two hours before that. Shower, make yourself beautiful and have a rest. Oh, and wear your sarong, and cover those lines with make-up, okay? He’s paying double. I want him here again.’

Sarai couldn’t understand it but she felt happy. Someone wanted her,
preferred
her. But Evil Boy’s whisper, meant for her ears only, soon got out. Nothing could be kept secret in the house. A fight broke out between Helena and Sarai, with Helena starting it and the girls shouting for her. Evil Boy had to get help to pull them apart. He was incensed about a scratch on Sarai’s face but dared not cancel her appointment.

At eleven there was a knock on Sarai’s door. She had her make-up on, she smelled of flowers, her hair tumbled down on one side, and her sarong swished as she walked to open it. She lost her breath momentarily – in the dim passage light stood the stranger with his now familiar smile. ‘Hello, Sarai,’ he said.

‘Oh, oh, it’s you.’ She put her hands together and gave a slight bow of the head. ‘Please come in.’