The New Girl (Downside) (18 page)

‘“You’ve got a deal”,’ she repeats, smiles a lopsided grin and returns a stiff, point-fingered shake. As Mother leads him into the house, Ryan can’t believe
how suddenly his luck has turned. He’s got what must be a couple of grand in his back pocket, a place to hide, and – what pleases him most of all – he’s living on the same
property as the girl. He’s going to be able to get to know her, find out what she needs. This time, he’s not going to be stupid like he was with Tess. This time he can let things take
their course.

The room Mother opens for him is in the new wing, a blocky modern construction that seems to have been built up against the large old house at a jaunty angle. It’s still vacant and dank
and all unpainted plaster. The dust-coated alabaster floor tiles make the room feel like a hallway or stripped bathroom more than a bedroom, but the weather is still warm and the sense of closeted
safety – nobody from his past life will find him here – makes him feel more relaxed, he realises, than he has felt for ages. The knowledge that he will never have to go back to that
school and work for those petty tyrants, have to be nice all the time, comes to him as an overwhelming relief. He hadn’t appreciated just how much working in that environment stressed and
prickled him. A quiet domestic job for this odd but genial woman is just what he needs. Behind these grotesque walls, he might as well be in a different country, a different world.

But he has one more engagement with the outside world to wrap up before he can slink away and gather himself. Duvenhage. Ryan will make him pay whatever he thinks his silence is worth; it will
be interesting to know just how badly Duvenhage wants to hide his perversity from the public gaze.

Mother watches him put down his bag and test the mattress on the basic cot. It’s new and comfortable – it still smells of the polythene wrapping in which it was delivered.

‘Mister?’

‘Yes? My name’s Ryan, by the way. Do you mind if I start work this afternoon? I have an errand I must run this morning.’

‘Please find me when you have completed your errand.’

Although it’s above ground, this room, he notices, has no windows. The walls and the ceiling seem to push in on him. It’s like a bunker in here. But where better than a bunker to
hide?

‘Please regard the notices,’ the woman continues. ‘Feel free to ramble throughout the house and grounds, but do not transgress on the first floor. There are clearly demarcated
notices. Those quarters are for the family only.’

‘Okay,’ Ryan says, not quite understanding what she means, but if the notices are clear he’s not likely to run into any trouble. ‘I’ll do that. No
problem.’

‘Primo!’ She smiles. ‘We will converse when your errand is complete.’

When Mother has left, he washes up and puts on a clean T-shirt. The bathroom next door has a sink and a shower and a pile of painters’ drop cloths in one corner. There’s no toilet.
He lifts the cloths but there are just more tiles. In the end, he pisses into the basin. He’ll have to explore the house more later, but for now he’s in a hurry.

He shrugs on his backpack, aware of the lightness now that he has only one bottle left in it. But now with the cash he’s just been paid, he’ll be able to stock up on supplies. He
mustn’t forget food – there’s no guarantee he’ll be fed here.

He heads straight down the corridor the way he came in, into the recesses of the parking garage and across the sandy driveway, and pushes through the gold gate, scalding his hand in the process
– it’s already been super-heated by the morning sun and is obviously not designed for manual use. He turns west on Excelsior Avenue, back towards the tiny suburban shopping centre
halfway towards the Key West strip mall: it’s just a corner shop, a cheap draper’s, a print shop cum internet cafe and a bottle store.

When he gets there, the little shopping centre feels like part of the compound, an extension of the foreign enclave of his own city. He feels anonymous, like he’s travelling some far
corner of the world where nobody knows him. By avoiding the busy thoroughfares of Bedford Centre or Eastgate, he can keep the illusion alive that he’s far away and untouchable.

He orders a coffee and a danish at the internet cafe and sits at the old computer, registers a new webmail address: ‘[email protected]’, a dramatic little touch. Then he inserts
his flash drive and scans through the copied thumbnails, careful that nobody’s able to look over his shoulder, before selecting a moderately disturbing one, a naked girl laid out, with blue
skin, and marked up like meat at a butcher’s. He sends it to Duvenhage without a message, reads a news site and waits. It’s Friday morning – Ryan checks his watch, nine-thirty,
after assembly – and Duvenhage is quite likely to be idling complacently behind his desk.

Two minutes later, a reply.

‘Who are you? What do you want?’

Ryan replies with a picture of a naked pubescent boy, similarly cold and scrawled on. ‘I have them all.’

A sip of coffee. ‘What do you want?’

‘I have uploaded the pictures to a secure server.’ That sounds right, doesn’t it? ‘You will receive ftp credentials in exchange for R100,000 in cash.’

This time Ryan has time to finish his coffee, scan two articles without reading them. Damn, has he overplayed it? Is he sure that nobody can trace this address? No, he’s not sure. He
doesn’t know about any of this spy-tech shit. This is his only play.

Then, from a new address, [email protected]: ‘You’re being absurd. I don’t have that money.’

Ryan has to take a flyer. He scans through the drive for the letter, for some detail to make his threat sound authentic. ‘Do you want me to ask the Ministry?’ It’s a long shot,
but Ryan’s gut tells him it’s the right move.

It is. ‘Where? How? EFT?’

EFT? He’s going to get blackmail money transferred into a registered bank account? He’s not that stupid.

‘Leave it in the dustbin next to Post Office Box 2190 at Garden-view post office. Noon. One minute late, the files go to the Child Protection Unit. If I get the money, I send you the login
and I’m gone.’

‘How can I trust you? You won’t just take the money?’

‘You’ll have to take my word, won’t you?’

‘I know this is you, Ryan Devlin.’

Oh, fuck. How do blackmailers do it? They always seem to get away with it in the movies, but there are a thousand fucking pitfalls in this process. He should just cut and run. But Duvenhage
doesn’t know where he is, and even if he’s got some way of tracing the email to this print shop, he’ll be long gone. He’s got to try. This could make his life a lot
easier.

‘Noon,’ he types. If he were Duvenhage, he’d have the place crawling with friends who’d come and kill him the moment he picked up the money. What the hell is he going to
do? Can he get someone to pick it up instead of him? No, they’ll just as easily take that person. This shit doesn’t work. ‘You don’t know who I am. If the money does not get
back to me safely, the address goes to the Child Protection Unit. Don’t fuck with me.’ Backspace backspace. ‘Don’t play with us.’ That sounds better.

Another too-long delay. ‘Noon,’ Duvenhage responds. Ryan checks his watch. He’s got two hours. He doesn’t even have someone he can call to do the pickup. Nobody would
help him. He’s got to do it himself. He knows Duvenhage will be watching, and will see that it’s him, but he’ll have to bluff his way out of it somehow. Duvenhage knows he’s
got the pictures, so he’s still got some high cards in his hand. How about if he holds his phone up, finger on the button, as if he’ll press send if anyone comes near? That’d
work. Duvenhage wouldn’t know his phone’s so kak that it doesn’t have internet access.

Yes, that should work.

The house is quiet.
Too
quiet. She’s not used to it being so peaceful at the weekend. Martin usually spends most of Saturday and Sunday attached to his Xbox,
killing zombies or aliens or whatever with one of his vile friends. But since he arrived home after Encounters last night, he hasn’t ventured out of his room. In any other child, such a
sudden change in behaviour would be a sign of abuse, but she’s learnt her lesson on that score, as Duvenhage has not so subtly pointed out. Stephen is off playing golf with his gang of lawyer
buddies – ‘networking’ – but she’s relieved that he’s not here. Lately she’s finding his company increasingly odious. If it wasn’t for Baby Tommy she
doesn’t know how she would have got through yesterday evening. She’d felt intensely uneasy after her meeting with Duvenhage; unwelcome memories from those last few weeks at Raymond
Scheider had come flooding back.

‘Martin,’ she calls up the stairs. ‘Do you want something to eat?’

No answer. She’ll take him some ice cream. That’ll do.

The kitchen smells rank, the counter tops littered with grease-spotted pizza boxes and take-out Thai food containers sitting in sticky puddles of leaked soy sauce. A line of black ants marches
around the edge of the sink and down towards the overflowing bin. No one’s emptied the dishwasher and the week’s breakfast bowls and coffee mugs are piled up in the sink. Tara knows she
should really clean it up, especially as Olivia will be here later. She can just imagine the sneer on Olivia’s face when she sees the smear of dried ketchup on the fridge door, the blackened
pot that’s still sitting on top of the dishwasher.

She digs in the freezer, unearths a tub of soft serve. It’s crystallised, but what the hell. She hacks it into a bowl, chucks the tub on top of the crusty bowls in the sink and heads up to
his room.

She knocks on the door, nudges it open. It’s gloomy inside; he’s pulled the curtains. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Brought you some ice cream.’

He shifts under his duvet. ‘Thanks.’

She places the bowl on his side table, sits down on the edge of his bed. ‘Your father’s really worried about you, Martin.’

‘I know.’

‘
I’m
really worried about you.’

He shrugs.

‘If there’s anything you want to tell me, you know I can keep a secret.’

He shakes his head. ‘I’m cool.’

‘Are you?’ She reaches out to stroke his brow, is surprised when he doesn’t flinch away from her touch. His skin feels clammy, but she doesn’t think he has a
temperature.

‘Are you sure all you saw at the house was a snake?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. I saw... something else.’

‘You did? Why didn’t you want to tell your father?’

He sighs, sounding way older than his years. ‘He wouldn’t understand.’

‘Can you tell me what it was?’

He shakes his head.

‘Could you draw it?’

He blinks at her in surprise. ‘I... I guess.’

Tara scrabbles in his desk, finds a piece of paper and a pencil, places it on the side table next to the ice cream. ‘Here.’

‘I’m tired. Can I do it in a bit?’

‘Sure,’ Tara says. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

‘Tara? You didn’t say anything to Dad about me...’ He points towards the washing basket.

‘No. Of course not.’

He sighs again, this time in relief and sits up and reaches over for the ice cream. She spies something on his upper arm, just below the edge of his T-shirt’s sleeve. A smeared black line.
‘Hey. What’s that?’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘You been drawing on yourself?’

He shrugs.

Oh well, she thinks. At least he’s not cutting himself or taking meth or whatever the latest drug fad is. She decides not to push him further – after all, Baby Tommy is calling.

Tara skips downstairs to the kitchen, Baby Tommy’s head cradled in her arms. She’s worked straight through the afternoon, and after she’s set this layer of
paint, all she has to do is root the few strands of his hair, a job she’s looking forward to, attach his limbs to his body and then tackle the part she’s not so sure about: applying the
thread to his mouth and eyes. But to be honest, for some reason she’s not dreading this as much as she thought she would. She’s become so used to Baby Tommy’s photograph that she
actually can’t imagine him without this gruesome feature. Humming to herself, she digs out a baking tray, presses a piece of greaseproof paper on its base and gently places the head on top of
it. Careful not to smudge the paint, she tenderly kisses his forehead and slides the tray into the oven.

Tara knows she’ll have to prepare herself to let Baby Tommy go. If she really can’t bear it, worst-case scenario she can always give the money back, can’t she? She hasn’t
actually spent any of it. There’s no law that says she has to hand Baby Tommy over, is there?

Buoyed by this thought, she digs out the vacuum cleaner and skips into the lounge. While she waits for the paint to set, she’ll have time to clear the place up a bit. If she hustles, she
might even have time for a shower before Olivia arrives.

The front door clicks open, and Tara hears Stephen calling her name. She checks the time. Five thirty. He’s back early. She heads out into the hallway, pauses when she sees the strained
expression on his face.

‘What is it?’

‘Olivia’s here,’ he says.

‘What? Already? I thought you said she was coming later this evening?’

‘She caught an earlier flight. I picked her up from the airport.’

‘Why didn’t you call me?’

Before he can answer, Olivia steps into the house, dragging her Louis Vuitton case behind her. Tara has to admit that she looks good – better than good. Her hair is squeezed into a bun at
her neck; her charcoal suit looks freshly dry-cleaned. Tara reckons she could easily fit in with the Mother Tribe these days. She’s lost the dowdy, harassed air she had when Tara first met
her. (Probably because she palms Martin off on Stephen as often as she can.) Tara riffles her hands through her hair, realises that her T-shirt is spattered with paint, sees Stephen looking at her
with faint distaste.

She tries to catch his eye. The least he could do is
try
to show a united front to Olivia, but his gaze slinks away from hers.

Olivia peers into the lounge. ‘Where’s Martin?’