Like Clockwork (3 page)

Riedwaan stood close by, listening to Mouton. He was a fussy, shy man and he muttered away to himself while he worked a crime scene. Riedwaan had long since learned to stick close and glean everything he could.

‘Look here.’ Mouton swabbed a streak on her stomach, ‘Could be semen.’ There was some of the same substance on the skirt too. He collected and labelled it.

Mouton was satisfied that he had enough photographs now. He told Riaan, and the photographer packed his bags and was circling Rita Mkhize before Mouton could close his clipboard.

‘She wasn’t killed here, Riedwaan. I’ll check during the postmortem but I would say she was killed somewhere else and dumped here.’

‘How long has she been dead, Doc?’

Mouton put his head on one side. The girl was cold and stiff. ‘Hard to say until I do the temp with a body probe. But at a guess I’d say between eight and thirty-six hours. I don’t think more than that. Once I start with the post-mortem, I’ll also be able to give you a better idea about when she was moved.’

Mouton picked up the girl’s hand and took a scrape from under her fingernails. He did a vaginal swab, too, bagging both of these and handing them to Riedwaan.

‘Did you have to do that here, Doc?’

Mouton pulled the girl’s short skirt down. ‘Man, you are getting soft. It’s hard to argue with evidence that’s gathered
before the body has been moved. Whoever did this to her took her dignity with her life. Don’t you lose those, you fucker. You take that straight to the lab at Delft. And make them sign for it in their own blood.’

Riedwaan did not answer. He had seen enough rapists laugh into their victim’s faces as they walked free. It just took one break in the chain of evidence – be it specimen or statement – and a clever defence lawyer would have a paedophile waiting for his little girl of choice by tea break. There was no way that this evidence would be out of his sight for one second.

Mouton leaned in close and looked at the slash across her throat. ‘This is very high up,’ he said. ‘It’s like he was trying to cut out her tongue. Like he wanted to do a Colombian Necktie, but didn’t have the strength. Very sharp blade that he used, very sharp. Maybe a scalpel.’

‘Look at her eyes, Doc. Surely she hasn’t been dead long enough for that to happen,’ said Riedwaan. The girl’s eyes had sunken in. Mouton reached over and lifted an eyelid.

‘
Ja
,’ he said, ‘he cut her.’ He pointed to the incisions that formed a cross on the cornea. ‘The eyeball is just a ball of gel. Make a hole in it like this guy did, and the eyeball will collapse.’

‘When was she mutilated?’

‘The hand while she was alive. You can see it from the crusted blood. Her throat – that was done after she died. Look here, there is no blood to speak of.’

‘The eyes?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Just before she died. Maybe as he killed her.’

Riedwaan shivered. ‘I hate to imagine what she saw that needed to be removed so viciously.’

The mortuary van arrived. The mortuary technicians brought their stretcher around to pick her up. ‘You ready, Doc?’ asked the driver. Mouton nodded. The assistant was
hardly older than the murdered girl. The boy struggled to stop his hands from shaking as he lifted her body. Mouton looked at the place where she had lain, but it had not been there long enough for any fluids to seep out.

‘You coming to the post-mortem?’ asked Mouton.

‘You’re doing it right now?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘
Ja
,’ said Mouton. ‘I’ve got a feeling this is going to get hot.’ He looked back at the van. ‘I don’t think she’s going to be your last either. I worked on the PMs when they were looking for that killer who was into bondage in KwaZulu-Natal. That girl didn’t look like a once-off to me.’

‘Don’t jump to conclusions, Doc. They can lead you astray.’

The pathologist gave him a withering look. ‘Are you coming or not?’

‘
Ja
, I’ll be there. I’ve just got to drop this stuff off at the lab. I’ll be with you in an hour.’ Riedwaan walked with Mouton to his car. ‘Can I bring someone?’

‘Who?’ asked Mouton.

‘Clare Hart. I’m thinking of getting her to do the profile for me. If you’re right then we’ll need one. She’s worked with me before.’

Mouton put his hand on Riedwaan’s shoulder. ‘That’s a strange way to pull women, Riedwaan, even for you. But if she’s not in the police force, no way. You can tell her everything later. You can show her all the pictures if you can persuade her to go to dinner with you. But nobody who doesn’t need to be there gets to watch my show.’ Mouton opened his car and wedged his stomach behind the wheel. ‘Jesus, man, I’ve got to lose some weight.’

‘I’ll see you back at the station,’ Riedwaan called to Frikkie Bester, who pretended not to hear. Riedwaan shrugged. Not much he could do about trampled egos even if he had wanted to. He climbed into his own car, putting the swabs and samples
down as if they were Ming porcelain. It was a pity Clare couldn’t be at the PM but there was no way he would get Mouton to change his mind. He headed for the lab in Delft and handed over the samples. He was glad it was Anna Scheepers who took the case. She was meticulous about her evidence and brilliant in court. Riedwaan had seen her impale enough lawyers, lulled into complacency by the volume of her hair and the length of her legs, with her expertise in the arcane science of DNA testing.

On the way there he called Clare. She didn’t answer, but he left a message asking if she would profile for him. She was the best there was. And he knew that he wanted an excuse to see her. Maybe this time he would fuck up less badly.

By the time Riedwaan headed for the northern suburbs hospital where Mouton presided like Orpheus in his basement laboratory, the last of the morning traffic had dribbled off the highways and his way was clear, delivering him to his destination sooner than he would have wished.

Riedwaan was not looking forward to the rest of the morning. Mouton supervised swarms of students, and they would be in full swing on the other trolleys while Mouton dissected ‘his’ girl. Mouton had phoned the ballistics experts and two of them were standing around discussing blades and angles, waiting for Mouton to get to the neck vertebrae to see what the marks on those delicate bones would tell them.

Riedwaan arrived back at the station late in the morning. He was about to sit down when Rita Mkhize put her head around the door.

‘Superintendent Phiri wants to see you, Captain Faizal. He’s in his office.’

‘Thanks, Rita,’ said Riedwaan. He felt her eyes on his back as he walked down the corridor towards Phiri’s office. He was wondering why he was being summoned. He knocked on the door.

‘Enter!’ His commanding officer’s affected military air never failed to irritate him. Phiri’s desk was compulsively tidy. Riedwaan thought of his own warren of papers, files and dirty cups and was relieved that Phiri had not sought him out there.

‘You wanted to see me, sir?’ asked Riedwaan.

Phiri pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down, Faizal.’ Riedwaan sat and waited, the autopsy report clutched to his chest. ‘How did it go with Frikkie Bester?’ he asked.

‘Thanks for phoning him, sir,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I don’t think that he is too happy about me taking over. But he was okay. He didn’t
klap
me, at least.’

Phiri put his arms on his desk and leaned towards Riedwaan. ‘We go back a long way, don’t we, Faizal?’ Riedwaan nodded.
‘I’m giving you a second chance here, so don’t fuck it up. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Riedwaan. Phiri eyed him. Riedwaan thought he was going to say something more, but he didn’t. Instead he held his hand out for the preliminary autopsy report. Riedwaan handed it over, summarising Piet Mouton’s preliminary findings. ‘The scene was too carefully arranged for it to be a random killing. It doesn’t look as if she was raped, or even that she’d had intercourse recently. No boyfriend, as far as we know. She was missing since Friday but Piet is pretty sure she died on Monday night – about twelve or so hours before she was found. We know she wasn’t killed there. Someone took a big risk leaving her where he did.’

Phiri nodded, listening as he went through the report. ‘I got a message that you wanted Clare Hart on your team?’ Phiri closed the report and handed it back to Riedwaan. ‘Why?’

‘She’s the best, sir,’ Riedwaan replied.

‘What makes you think you’ve got a serial killer here, Faizal? All you have is one body. Could be a once-off. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘With respect, sir, I don’t think so.’ Riedwaan chose his words. He knew what Phiri was afraid of. One whiff of another serial killer and the press would be circling like vultures.

‘You think there’ll be another one?’ asked Phiri.

‘Let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t be surprised if there is another one. Or if there have been other girls killed like this that we haven’t heard about . . . yet.’

Phiri rubbed his eyes. It was two o’clock and he felt worn out. ‘So why Clare?’ he persisted.

‘This is her area, sir. Femicide and sex crimes.’ Riedwaan pointed to the bookshelf behind Phiri’s desk. ‘There’s her doctorate.’
Crimes against Women in Post-Apartheid South Africa
was on the top shelf, its pages dog-eared and its margins filled
with question marks and comments in Phiri’s precise hand.

‘It’s very good, meticulously researched,’ conceded Phiri. ‘But I’m not sure I agree that because we averted a civil war in South Africa that the “unspent violence was sublimated into a war against women. A war in which there are no rules and no limits”, as she argues whenever she gets the chance.’

‘It’s not her fault, sir, that brutality against women and children is intensifying while conviction rates are falling.’ Phiri was amused at how awkward the jargon sounded coming from Riedwaan Faizal, who went on to argue, ‘She’s profiled for the police since 1994, and she’s been very successful.’

‘She pisses off everybody she works with,’ Phiri argued.

‘Maybe because she’s a woman and she’s good.’

‘Bullshit, Faizal. It’s because she’s a loner and she does what she wants.’ Phiri looked at Riedwaan, then he laughed. ‘That’s why you like her, I suppose.’

Riedwaan smiled. ‘Whatever her faults, you know she’s the best, sir.’

‘I’m going to get shit about that last case you two worked on.’

Riedwaan felt the old anger again. He and Clare had worked on a series of abductions. They had built an excellent case against a gangster who abducted homeless girls of between eight and thirteen for his brothels. But two witnesses had been murdered and the others withdrew their statements. DNA evidence was contaminated, and then a whole docket disappeared. The case collapsed, taking their tentative investigation with it.

‘That wasn’t her fault,’ he said, the anger filtering through into his voice. ‘That was because of someone inside. Dockets don’t just walk.’

‘Some people say a docket can get lost if the person
looking after it drinks too much. And when he doesn’t sleep at home.’

Riedwaan suppressed his anger. ‘What is the decision, sir?’

‘Like I said, Riedwaan. Last chance.’

Riedwaan looked at Phiri. ‘Last chance with Clare, too?’

Phiri nodded. ‘Last chance, Faizal, all round.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Riedwaan stood up to leave, the autopsy report in his hands.

He was about to open the door when Phiri spoke again. ‘You catch him, Riedwaan. Not a word to the press yet. They will be on to this one like a ton of bricks.’

Riedwaan turned and looked at him. He didn’t want journalists hounding him again either. ‘Yes, sir.’ Riedwaan pulled the door shut behind him.

Phiri stared after him. If Riedwaan needed Clare Hart’s assistance, then good luck to him. And Phiri hoped that the killer, whoever he was, would still be fit for trial after Riedwaan had caught him.

Riedwaan threw the autopsy report onto his desk, ignoring Rita Mkhize’s stare. He hadn’t shaved that morning and he didn’t look his best. The previous day, while Piet Mouton had taken blood, scraped fingernails and taken more swabs, he had waited and watched for any new bruises to bloom, but they hadn’t. Mouton carefully cut open the body to remove and weigh the dead girl’s organs, reading from them how she had lived while searching out the secrets of her death.

‘Who is she?’ asked Rita.

‘Charnay Swanepoel. She was seventeen years old and in her last year of school. She also had a family. One younger brother. Parents alive, but separated. Father an auto-parts salesman who watched rugby on Saturdays. The mother a yoga teacher, New Age seeker, spiritual guide.’ Riedwaan read from the file.

As mismatched as me and Shazia were, thought Riedwaan, sipping his coffee. Shazia was a nurse – and his wife. She had moved to Canada and taken their daughter, Yasmin, with her. Shazia was convinced that the distance, the safety, of Canada would erase the terror etched into their daughter during the endless hours she had been a hostage. Riedwaan had heard her voice. Her kidnappers had called the gang hotline Riedwaan had established for informers, recording Yasmin’s terrified six-year-old pleas to her daddy to find her,
for her mommy to come, for a drink of water, please, please. Riedwaan had not been able to prove it, but only Kelvin Landman had such a genius for cruelty. It had made him the Cape Flats’ ultimate hard man.

Riedwaan returned to his desk and opened the folder. The smiling school portrait that Charnay’s mother had given him in return for informing her of her daughter’s murder smiled up at him.

‘Here’s a piece of cake for you,’ said Rita.

‘Just what I needed. Thanks, Rita,’ he said, ‘it’s as sweet as you are.’

‘That gender sensitivity course you were sent on is doing wonders,’ laughed Rita.

She hovered next to his desk. ‘What you got, Riedwaan?’

‘I talked to her father yesterday. Chris Swanepoel. He sat the whole fucking Saturday watching rugby while his daughter was being murdered. You tell me how he did that?’

‘I don’t know, Riedwaan. But you know how people can panic. It freezes them. They just pretend nothing is happening and hope it will go away.’