Water Music (3 page)

Yes, I am, in fact. A child that was found down the valley this morning. Clare fished out her ID and handed it to him. Clare Hart. This road is public access.

Im sorry. Joburg accent. But Mr Savic has security
issues.

Did you see anyone last night?

No, said the guard, not too quick, not too slow. Just the helicopter this morning. The cars. The dogs and you, Miss Hope, he said, handing back her ID.

Hart, said Clare.

Miss Hart, he said. Can I open for you? Drive you through?

Thanks. Thatll save me time.

And effort. The terrain is rough here. The guard unlocked the gate. There was a spiders web
of scars at the back of his neck, the skin puckered and pink in places. He turned his collar up. After you.

The track looped up towards the back of the castle. Two women were walking through the trees. With the forbidding turrets against the heavy sky, they looked medieval. Perhaps it was the long coats, the capes pulled up against the rain.

A gate appeared, opening at the touch of a button.
They drove along a road that had been freshly graded, alongside the electric fence.

Theres your colleague, said the guard.

Thanks, said Clare.

Clare scrambled down the hill to where Mandla Njobe and Gypsy were waiting. She could feel the mans eyes on her, between her shoulder blades. It was a relief to hear the Jeeps engine start up.

There was somebody here. Njobe squatted down. A chocolate
wrapper glinted in a nearby bush. You got some gloves?

Clare handed him a pair, her size, but he got them on. He picked up the cigarette butts and examined them Someone who sat here for a while. Two people, maybe. And not too long ago.

Could be anyone, said Clare. Hikers, walkers.

The view down to the bridle path was clear. They could see Ina Britz and the others moving purposefully round the
crime scene. Mandla Njobe stood up and flicked mud from his trousers.

Hikers dont smoke ten Stuyvesants, Doc.

The beggar weaving in front of Clare at the red light was wearing a cap. He held his handmade sign aloft
No work. No Fingers. Plees help
his stumps pointing to a rough drawing of a fishing net shearing off all eight fingers.

Next time, said Clare, holding up her palms to show that she had no change. Sharp eyes in a ravaged face. Memorising her features, her meagre promise. Ill be watching
for you, lady.

Her phone beeped. Riedwaan. Her stomach knotted around her indecision and unexpected delight at the thought of cells splitting, folding themselves into life.

She opened the message.
Sorry 4 silence. Delayed. Will explain. My mother is bad. Back tonight. Will find U. xx R

What would she say? Once shed told Riedwaan, the decision about this baby or not-baby would no longer be
hers alone.

The lights turned green. The taxi behind her hooted and she lurched across the intersection.

She turned into the parking lot outside the 28s offices, three converted shipping containers. In front of her, three expensive government cars. The bureaucrats wanting her report profiling crimes against children, against the women who cared for them. Wanting her to make her data tell a different
story. One of success, rather than social failure. To her left, a couple of old cars: the few remaining journalists jalopies. The Community Consultation Forum. She should gather her wits, gather the sparse facts she had, and be there already.

Yet Clare didnt move. Instead, she sat in the car and stared unseeing at the clouds writhing above Chapmans Peak, her phone in her hand.

She had to talk
to him. She had to tell him. She had to set the future in motion, but she was unable to do so.

She knew what Riedwaan would want; shed seen him cradling Yasmin, his only daughter, in his arms. Seen, too, the acrimony between him and his ex-wife. She didnt know if thats what she wanted to be part of that.

Mother, father, child. It messed with her head; she couldnt think straight. And she had
to, she had to. She had to decide. She had to tell him what shed decided. That was the courtesy a woman owed her lover. It was the least she could do, but fuck it. She couldnt. Not now, not with the job ahead of her, and the child abandoned on the icy mountainside.

She put her phone away and grabbed her bag, got out of the car, and strode across the muddy parking lot to her office.

Ina Britz
had a sea of paper in front of her, her glasses slipping down a nose that was dished like that of a prizefighter.

Those are the missing persons files? asked Clare.

Ive pulled up all the missing little girls I can find.

Ina Britz laid out the photographs of the lost girls, their eyes fixed for ever in the grimace of a pre-school portrait or happily snapped birthday party. Cake, crown, a proud
mothers lap.

Its none of them, said Clare, flicking through them. She knew each face intimately. They lived in her now, folded into the other faces that populated her dreams. What about the international cases?

Heres what Ive got from FindKidz and Interpol. The same eyes, the same poses, the same routine of childhood interrupted.

Wheres the mother? asked Clare. Thats what I want to know.

Ive got nothing that shows a woman and a child missing together, said Ina. Were looking up some that could match, but so far nothing.

Clares gaze moved from one womans face to the next. Looking for something that might trigger recognition. Pale skin, dark hair, widows peak. She picked up one or two photographs, but there was nothing. She put them down again.

Ive never dealt with a child that
was never reported missing, Clare said.

Look at these. The Mountain Men incident reports. Ina Brtiz handed Clare a list of incidents that the security company had dealt with. Barking dogs, vagrants, break-ins, smashed car windows, a domestic, alarms activated. Lists of phone numbers of the houses that had called in. No sightings of untoward movement in the valley.

Whoever put the child here
knew the mountain well, said Clare, studying the report. Theres nothing here.

Clare closed her office door behind her. She threw the rest of the coffee out of the window, swallowed the wave of nausea and opened her laptop, found the database of missing children. Abandoned babies, wiry kids, teenagers. On the cusp of adulthood, their photographs had the posed stiffness of the school portrait or
the graininess of a cheap cellphone shot. Most of them were South African.

With the sparse details she had, she sent out the standard alert.

She dialled Dr Anwar Jacobs, closing her eyes against the headache building in the base of her skull. The momentary darkness was a relief but not an escape. When he answered she could hear the electronic beeps, the clink of metal, the muted voices of nurses,
other doctors. The comforting orderliness of the Intensive Care Unit.

Hows she doing? asked Clare.

The staff have named her Engeltjie. The little angels alive, shes fighting, said Anwar. But I need the mother to come forward. I need to know what her history is, so that I can work out how to treat her.

Ive got a press conference right now, said Clare. I need some detail.

I have so little, he
said. Clare could hear exhaustion in his voice, he sounded close to defeat.

Give me what you have, said Clare. Theyd worked on many cases together. Clare admired his thoroughness, his astuteness, and his compassion for his helpless little patients.

Shes alive, but shes not going to be conscious any time soon. Ive induced a coma because her vital signs are so fragile. She has hypothermia and
long-term malnutrition.

How old is she? asked Clare.

By weight, two or three, but if I look at her teeth, bad as they are, then I think shes five, even six. Her growth is stunted in a way Ive never seen before. And the pallor, its as if shes never been in the sun.

Sexual assault? asked Clare.

Nothing visible.

The rain running down the windows blurred the world outside.

Have you got any idea
yet who she might be? the doctor asked.

Nothing, said Clare. Youve got to give me something else, Anwar.

But Ive never seen anything like this, he said. Im thinking maybe shes been poisoned. Ive sent off for every test you can imagine.

I need those results as soon as you get them, said Clare.

I should have them this afternoon, said Anwar Jacobs.

The door opened. Ina Britz was standing there.
She had taken her beanie off in deference to the formality of the occasion.

You ready, Clare? she asked. To be thrown like a Christian to the lions?

You shouldnt speak of my former colleagues like that.

Clare closed her laptop, put on red lipstick, brushed her hair, and changed into a dress and a pair of heels.

Standing on tiptoes helps you concentrate? asked Ina.

Cant think otherwise, said
Clare.

The press pack is sniffing the bones of a story that could run for weeks, said Ina Britz. Everythings upside down missing child, no reports, half-dead kid, no weeping mother or suspect stepfather. They think were hiding something.

I wish we were, said Clare. Theres so little to go on and I dont like the feel of what there is. A wave of nausea washed over her again, nausea and a fatigue
so deep, so in her bone marrow, that she wanted to lie down and sleep right where she was.

You go on, Ina, she said, heading for the bathroom. Ill be there in a minute.

Ina Britz raised an eyebrow, and left. Clare ducked into the bathroom and retched, but there was nothing. She had to eat, but the very thought of it made her want to be sick again. She drank some more water instead. When she
looked out of the window a battered blue bakkie was turning in. A man at the wheel a dog beside him gesticulating to the security guard at the gate.

Jakes Cwele was out of his 4x4. He blocked her path, a lifes worth of anger in his tensed shoulders.

Clare had to stop herself from stepping backwards. He was too close, right inside her space.

What can I do for you?

Im here to help you. He smiled. Its a big thing, this press conference.

We dont need your help, said Clare.

Cape Town is my command now. A blaze of anger in Cweles eyes. But
it would be much better if you would cooperate with me while we get this province to focus on the things that matter if you want law and order. Its tough for you. Youre a civilian. Youre a woman. Youre out of your depth. You just tell me when you need advice. About being a cop. I hear that Faizal gives you advice about how to be a woman.

Rumour mill, the police, said Clare. Some of us prefer
facts and evidence, now get out of my way. I have a job to do.

Dr Hart, Cwele put his hand lightly on her arm. By Monday your captains going to be gone. Then theres no one watching out for you. This is not a place for a lady, and youre not a cop.

Im not a lady either, said Clare. So that balances things out.

A taxi boomed kwaito music. It throbbed, then turned a corner, leaving silence in its
wake. Clare stepped past Cwele, and then she was in the cramped conference room, corralled behind the podium, no water in the jug. Microphones and flashbulbs and cameras and people saying her name Dr Hart, Clare, Dr Hart. She scanned the crowd. In front of her were bemused Neighbourhood Watch members and others who had tried to stitch connections between the economic gulfs that divided Hout Bay.
In front, a group of mothers who campaigned for the right-of-way for horse riders, and at the back three women whose children had vanished in the dunes above Hangberg.

She knew the journalists; some shed seen that morning. Jakes Cwele came in too, flanked by a trio in sharply tailored suits. There were a couple of other cops too. Allies. Colonel Edgar Phiri, Riedwaans Gang Unit boss, raised a
hand in greeting. Clare was glad to see him there.

At the back of the room sat an old man in a black suit. Holding a hat on his knees, he did not take his eyes off Clare, not for a second. His unblinking gaze unsettled her, the still point in the heaving tide of journalists around her. In the front row was a woman who had tackled Clare on a previous occasion.

Dr Hart, she stood up before anyone
could stop her. The 28s? Why are you called after a prison gang?

Section 28. Its a clause in the Constitution that guarantees children their rights.

What does it promise them, pray tell?

A name, a nationality, safety, security. Love, too, said Clare.

All the things that the United Nations likes, she sneered. Ironic, dont you think, that the 28s is also the name of a prison gang? This fact
seems to have bypassed the minister completely. Her voice was rising, she was just getting started. Let me tell you what these children get. They get a bullet in the back. But what can you expect from a government like this?

Ina Britz moved over to the woman.

Weve been over this before, Mrs Sheridan, said Clare. We know how you feel, but we need to move on.

The woman sat down, but Ina remained
close, one black, beady eye on her.

Clare gathered her notes. No lynch mob ever wanted facts, but she was going to give them some. She listed the few that she had and then the questions machine-gunned.

Is it true its a white child? Is that why there was a helicopter?

Is this to do with drugs?

Is it true that the mother was an addict?

Is this about drugs?

Gangs?

Paedophiles?

Was the child
sodomised?

Bewitched?

Is our community safe?

Whos next?

Youve got no clue, have you? A reporter writing down his own question.

Clare could picture tomorrows tabloid headlines that would whip readers into a profitable frenzy. Nothing sells a paper better than a missing child. The old man slipped out, his black-suited back a column. There was a concentration to him that caught Clares attention.
She watched him go across the parking lot towards her office.

Any arrests yet?

The question repeated brought her attention back to the room. No, no arrests yet. No suspects yet. Priority being the childs welfare.