Blood Rose (2 page)

The child’s knees were drawn close to his chest. He was leaning, with adolescent nonchalance, against the chain looped around the yellow swing.

‘What are you doing?’ Shipanga called.

The boy did not answer. These swaggering older boys always taunted Shipanga, mimicking with pen marks on their own pocked cheeks the ritual scars on his face. The triple verticals were the last trace of the home Shipanga had left to seek his fortune in this sunless port.

A cat’s paw of wind buffeted the swing, but still the boy remained silent. Anger welled hot and painful in Shipanga’s chest. He grabbed the chain, turning the boy to face him.

The startled insects paused only for a moment before returning to their busy feasting. Where the forehead should have been, a third eye leered.

Shipanga’s rage gave way to horror. He backed away, his eyes riveted by the swing’s cargo. When he reached the gate, he turned and ran towards a pair of lights raking over the parking lot.

‘Mr Erasmus,’ he gasped, his chest raw with exertion and shock.

‘What?’ The headmaster was unlocking the boot of his car. He did not bother to look up.

‘Someone’s there.’ Shipanga put his calloused hand on the man’s arm. ‘On the swings.’

‘Speak to Darlene Ruyters. She’ll deal with it.’ Erasmus took his briefcase out of the boot.

‘It’s a child, sir.’ Shipanga blocked the man’s path, anger returning. ‘Another boy.’

‘The same as the others?’ asked Erasmus, looking at the caretaker now.

Shipanga nodded. Erasmus walked towards the enclosed play area, opening the gate to reveal the figure twisting on the bright-yellow swing.

‘Who brought him here?’ Sweat beaded Erasmus’s forehead.

‘I don’t know.’

‘The first one in town,’ Erasmus said, flicking open his cellphone. Calling an ambulance sustained the illusion of hope. ‘Go and wait for the police, Herman. I’ll watch him. And don’t let anybody through the gates.’

Shipanga walked towards the gate, the corpse’s staring eyes prickling his back with dread. The leaden sky was silvering the truck approaching the gate. George Meyer, always first, rolled down his window. ‘What is it?’ asked Meyer.

‘An accident,’ Shipanga explained. ‘In the playground. We’re waiting to see what the police say, Mr Meyer.’

‘Thank you,’ said Meyer. He shot a sidelong glance at the small red-haired boy sitting next to him. Oscar was craning his neck forward to see what was wrong. Mrs Ruyters was Oscar’s teacher. Her car was there. That part was right. Herman Shipanga stopping them at the gate wasn’t, even though his familiar smile was a comforting white flash in his face.

A shiny new Mercedes Benz skidded to a halt behind them.
Herman Shipanga stepped forward as a man hurled himself from the driver’s seat and planted his hand on the caretaker’s chest. Shipanga cracked his knuckles and stood his ground. Twenty years on fishing trawlers gave him the edge over a manicured man who spent his days in a heated office.

‘Why is this car blocking my path?’ demanded the man.

‘No school today, Mr Goagab,’ Shipanga said. ‘You must wait here, please. There was an accident at the—’

‘I must speak to Mr Erasmus.’ Goagab pulled out his phone. Before he could dial, Erasmus appeared, attracted by the noise.

‘Explain this, Erasmus,’ Goagab shouted. ‘Why can’t I drop off my sons? I demand an explanation.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Goagab, but you’ll have to wait. Everyone will have to wait. The police are on their way. They’ll decide.’

Erasmus was relieved to see a blue light glowing in the distant mist. A pair of cars pulled up. Two men got out of a white 4x4. Elias Karamata was dark, shaven-headed and compact, just the hint of a beer belly pushing at his crisp khaki shirt. Kevin van Wyk was lithe and precise. In the right light, he could pass for a movie star.

‘Who’s in command?’ asked Erasmus, looking from one to the other.

A woman heaved herself out of the other car, a clapped-out bakkie. ‘I am,’ she said. ‘Captain Tamar Damases.’

Erasmus suppressed a sigh and took her hand. It was smooth to the touch. ‘Thank you for being so quick. You know Mr Goagab?’ he asked.

‘I do. Good morning, Calvin.’

‘What about my meeting? I’ve got to get to the mayor,’ bellowed Goagab.

Tamar Damases’s jaw set hard under her soft skin. ‘You’ll wait here. Either in your car or outside. You choose.’

‘I’ll report you to Mayor D’Almeida, Captain Damases,’ said Goagab.

‘Would you?’ she said. ‘I’m sure that he’ll appreciate the time to tell the media that we’ve a third dead child to bury within the same number of weeks.’

Goagab looked apoplectic, but when Karamata folded his muscular arms and stepped forward, he retreated, his sons scrabbling after him into his car.

‘Now,’ said Captain Damases, turning to Erasmus, ‘where’s the body?’

The headmaster opened the gate to the kindergarten playground. The high wooden paling shielded only three sides of the area. The fourth side was an open stretch of sand that sloped down to the barbed-wire perimeter fence. A red jungle gym, blue roundabout, a wall painted with rabbits and squirrels in aprons and hats. The yellow swings. A gust of wind twisted the body. The chain creaked, dismembering the silence.

‘Oh.’ Tamar Damases’s voice was soft with pain.

‘Strange fruit,’ murmured Van Wyk. Tamar looked at him, surprised. She would not have marked him as a jazz man.

‘Shall I send the scene-of-crime officers here when they come, Captain Damases?’ asked Erasmus.

‘You’ve been watching too much American TV,’ said Tamar with the ghost of a smile. ‘This is Walvis Bay. Scene-of-crime officer? That’s me. Police photographer? That’s me. Forensics? That’s me. Ballistics? That’s me, too.’

Erasmus stared at her blankly and she softened her tone: ‘Would you call the mortuary and see which pathologist is on postmortem duty? It should be Dr Kotze. Get her to send a van round.’

‘I’ll leave you to it then.’ Erasmus hurried off, relieved to have a task.

‘Get some crime-scene tape, would you, Sergeant van Wyk?’ Authority crackled in Tamar Damases’s voice. ‘Cordon off the area. I want to limit access to the crime scene. Both the previous investigations were compromised because everyone was everywhere.’

‘Pity you weren’t here to take charge, Captain.’ Van Wyk didn’t bother to hide the sarcasm in his tone. ‘Must be difficult to do a good job’ – he ran his eyes over her full belly – ‘the state you’re in.’

Tamar watched him go, relieved to be alone with the body. The wind was picking up now from the south, chilly and mean. She zipped her jacket up to her chin and turned to examine the dead boy. Looking at him on the swing, his back to her, he could be just another child carrying on some game for that moment too long. If he could climb out of the swing, if they could stand back to back, she and the boy, as growing children love to do, they would have been evenly matched.

When she moved towards the swing, marking her path, the boy’s eyes seemed to follow her progress like one of those trick portraits, beckoning her towards him. Tamar obeyed, her feet as small as a child’s, picking through the stony litter, recording each detail on her camera. The sand at the base of the swing was slightly disturbed, punctuated by a series of neat, tapered holes. She inserted an index finger into one. It was about two inches deep.

The swing that cradled the body faced due north. It was the only one at an angle. It was also the highest off the ground, the most difficult to reach. If Tamar had to hazard a guess, she would say it had been chosen for the view, but the sullen fog had its back hunched low and she could see nothing of the desert. She turned her attention and her camera to record the macabre display before walking down to the edge of the playground.

There were several gaps in the fence. She bent down, her camera steadied by her elbows on her knees. Tamar was comfortable squatting like this. She had learned to do this alongside her grandmother; the old lady explaining to the sharp-eyed child how to read the hidden signs that told if an animal had moved through an area, if a person had stopped to think or eat, or if a woman had been there to do her secret business. Hurrying. Ambling. Hunting. Hiding. There were signs for all actions if you knew how to look.

The jungle gym was livid against the fingers of grey mist. The fog flattened everything, bleaching detail from the landscape. Tamar straightened up, waiting for the fog to thin and for an anaemic sun to cast its short-lived shadows. When it did so, she could just make out the marks. They were so faint as to be almost absent: blades of grass broken and angled in the same direction, an impression on the salt-encrusted sand as faint as a palm print on glass. She increased the contrast reading on her camera and snapped pictures until the sun withdrew. She unclipped the loop of yellow tape from her belt, fingering the service pistol nestled below her rounded belly en route. She stepped backwards into her own footsteps and taped off the area, finishing as her phone rang.

‘Helena,’ she answered. There was no need to check the caller identity.

‘What is it?’ asked Helena Kotze. ‘Another weekend stabbing?’ Working in a port had hardened the young doctor’s heart and sharpened her eye.

‘I almost wish it was,’ said Tamar. ‘It’s another dead boy.’

‘Same as the others?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Tamar, her voice catching. ‘A boy again. Young. Maybe fourteen. This time in a swing at the school in 11th Street. Looks like a bullet that’s punctured the forehead. Ligatures on both wrists. Wrapped in a dirty sheet.’

‘Was he killed there?’ asked Helena.

‘No. No blood to speak of. Nothing on the ground. Smells as if he’s been dead a couple of days, too.’

‘I’m in the middle of surgery. I can’t come for another hour or so. Can you do the preliminaries?’

‘I’m about to,’ said Tamar. ‘Your guys are here. I’ll speak to you later.’

Tamar looked up at the two mortuary technicians skulking at the gate. The two Willems, she liked to call them. ‘How are you, boys?’ she greeted them.

‘Cool. You?’ mumbled the taller Willem. His skin was raw from a rushed shave.

‘I’m okay,’ said Tamar. She shook out two evidence bags.

‘Who’s that?’ asked the other Willem.

‘Don’t know yet,’ said Tamar. ‘We’ll only get an ID later.’

The two Willems stuck their hands in their pockets, hunching their shoulders like a pair of bedraggled crows. ‘Why so sad?’ asked Tamar.

They shrugged. The taller Willem lit a cigarette. Tamar knew their disconsolateness wasn’t for the dead boy. The pair moonlighted for Human & Pitt, the most enterprising of the flourishing undertaking franchises in Walvis Bay. The funeral director paid them one hundred upfront for the first call to a fresh body, provided it brought in business. A three-day-dead body that nobody had reported missing was not worth getting into a suit for first thing on a Monday morning.

They watched listlessly as Tamar walked back to the boy and steadied the swing between the uprights and her knee. The stench of decay haloed the body. Another day and it would have been unbearable. Tamar took a deep breath and bagged the hands bound with nylon rope. The boy’s shoes were covered with fine sand. She bagged those too. She looked at the wound
in the middle of his forehead. It was seething with larvae. Two, maybe three, days in the life cycle of the blowfly, Tamar guessed.

Trusses held his arms locked around his knees, but the shroud had loosened. There was a large area of bloodied flesh where the boy’s oversized shirt gaped. Tamar probed the writhing mass of feeding larvae, her nausea dissipating as she worked. She checked the boy’s pockets. She did not trust the pair at the gate. If there was anything of worth on the body, it would be gone by the time the corpse got to a hospital gurney.

One trouser pocket held nothing but a black pebble. Tamar held it in her hand. She could see why the boy would have picked it up. It was symmetrical, smooth. There was some change in the other pocket and a greasy till slip for twenty-four Namibian dollars. This she dropped into a separate bag. In the other pocket was a pencil stub. There was an initial, looked like a K, inked into one ridge of the pencil. Could be his initials; could be something he picked out of a rubbish bin.

Tamar stood up and signalled to the two men. Like acolytes, they stepped forward with the stretcher, placed the frail body on it and covered it with a sheet. Tamar opened the wooden gate and walked with them as they carried their small burden to the van where Karamata and Van Wyk were keeping the curious at bay. The two Willems put the stretcher down to open the doors.

‘The same thing?’ asked Karamata.

‘Looks like it to me,’ said Tamar. ‘Have a look. See what you think.’

Karamata knelt down beside the dead boy and pulled the sheet back. He pushed the grimy shroud aside and traced the boy’s decaying cheek.

‘You know the boy?’ asked Tamar, prompted by the burly man’s tenderness.

‘He played soccer with my sons.’ There was a sheen in Karamata’s
dark eyes when he stood up. ‘Be careful with him,’ he said as the two technicians picked the body up. The taller Willem sneered, but his swagger stopped at the hips and he picked up the boy without jolting him.

‘His name?’ Tamar asked.

‘Everyone called him Kaiser,’ Karamata replied.

Tamar nodded. The pencil with the K was his then.

The bang of the mortuary van’s doors seemed to release the crowd of onlookers. They pulled out cellphones to tell those who had been unlucky enough to miss the excitement what had happened: that there was another body; another boy was dead, another of those street children who wheedled money at every traffic light these days.

‘His surname?’ asked Tamar.

‘Apollis,’ said Van Wyk. ‘He has a sister. Sylvia. A whore, like he was. That’ll be why he’s in the van.’

‘You knew him too?’ asked Tamar.

Van Wyk spat out the match he had been using to clean his teeth. ‘It’s a small town, Captain.’

Captain Tamar Damases watched the vehicle bump down the road. Twice before this had happened and she had been unable to do a thing. Boys caught, killed, displayed, buried.