Siphokazi looked at Riedwaan as if she had forgotten about his existence.
‘Mrs Mtimbe,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you can help us. We want to speak to your husband about a building project. It’s in town.’
‘I think I know the one you mean. In Green Point. The one with all the trouble.’
‘That’s it,’ said Riedwaan. ‘But we’ve had problems
trying to get hold of your husband.’
‘Yes. I can imagine.’ Siphokazi’s eyes flashed. Her hand went to her cheek, a bruise just visible on her dark skin. ‘And now, with all this trouble it means more stress for Aaron.’
She twisted the gold wedding band round her finger.
‘It’s been going for a while, this development?’ Riedwaan said.
‘Oh, no,’ said Siphokazi. ‘Just two months ago
the deal came through. The money was there, so Aaron had to come down. I said I wanted to visit Cape Town, and it was Christmas, so I came too.’
Not her best decision. That much clear in her voice.
‘Nobody knows me here, nobody invites me. Just the wives of MPs, and all they do is eat cake and complain about their servants. And I can’t get out because the wind blows all the time.’ She
broke off for a moment. ‘You can’t see the wind in the photographs of Cape Town.’
‘And this parliamentary village, it’s not exactly the One & Only, is it?’
‘Is that where he’s been staying?’ she asked. ‘He said next time we stayed in Cape Town that’s where we’d stay.’ She got up and fetched a brochure from a desk. ‘Look here – this is what the development looks like, it’s near the One
& Only.’
Rita shifted the sleeping infant a little as she looked through the brochure. Black plate glass, white marble, a Jacuzzi in every room: predictable and vulgar.
‘Are the units sold already?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Siphokazi. ‘They’re meant for the MPs to stay in. Government in the heart of Cape Town. That was the sales pitch.’
Riedwaan took the brochure that Rita handed to him,
and whistled. ‘Must have been a long time in the planning?’
‘No. It all happened just before Christmas. My husband’s always worked in Jozi. Then this thing came up. Their lawyer put him onto it, I think.’
‘Do you know the people involved?’ asked Rita.
‘No,’ said Siphokazi. ‘Anyway, that’s why they have been so busy. Then all these old bones were found, it’s such a pity.’
‘Cape
Town is full of old bones and history,’ said Riedwaan.
‘Anyway, it’s a pity, I think. Aaron says it’s his time to make money.’
‘Mrs Mtimbe.’ Riedwaan leaned forward and repeated his question. ‘Where is your husband, where is he right now?’
‘I have no idea.’ Tears welled in her eyes. Humiliation and rage and impotence.
‘He’s a foolish man,’ said Riedwaan. He gestured towards the
baby, but his gaze lingered on her. She preened a little. A man’s attention – what had sustained her since she was 14 years old.
‘Well, is there anything else that can I tell you?’ She tossed her hair extensions over a shoulder.
‘We’re interested in his business associates.’
Riedwaan took an envelope from his jacket pocket and held out a few photographs.
‘Him I know.’ She pointed.
‘He comes to our house in Jo’burg.’
‘Waleed Williams.’ Riedwaan read her body language. ‘Are you afraid of him?’
‘He gives me a bad feeling,’ said Siphokazi.
‘Who are his other friends?’
‘Aaron mainly has business friends.’ She glanced through the rest of the pictures. ‘These others are just drinking friends.’
Rita had played her perfectly, tea, sympathy and female solidarity.
It was Riedwaan’s turn now. He put his card on the table and Siphokazi picked it up, turned it over.
‘Tell your husband we’d like to talk to him,’ said Riedwaan.
‘Is there anybody else you think we should talk to?’ Rita followed up.
Siphokazi looked up at Rita, then at Riedwaan, and decided.
‘There’s one other person he sees sometimes. He came on New Year’s Eve,’ she said. ‘He
was here yesterday.’
‘A business associate?’ asked Riedwaan
‘A white man,’ she said. ‘They play golf sometimes. And hunt, on the man’s farm. It’s far away from here. In Mpumalanga.’
Her voice, her expression, expressed distaste as she said, ‘My husband is from a village.’ She sipped her tea, but it was already finished. ‘When all this bones stuff happened, my husband phoned him.’
‘Do you know what they talked about?’
‘He tells me nothing,’ she said.
‘But didn’t you hear anything?’ Rita looked around. ‘This is not a big house.’
‘He said something about everything being in place, organised. My husband was very angry.’ Mrs Mtimbe put the card in her pocket. ‘Then he said he’d go up.’
‘Where?’
‘Jo’burg, I suppose.’
‘Do you know who he is, this person?’
asked Riedwaan
‘A white man, I told you, pale blue eyes. About fifty. A banker, maybe, or a lawyer. Those are the only white people my husband knows.’
Rita handed the baby over to the young woman.
‘Just put him there,’ she pointed to the pram in the corner, ‘let him sleep.’
Rita settled the child, then followed Riedwaan out.
He got into the car and lit a cigarette.
‘Can’t
you read?’ asked Rita. ‘The sign there says no smoking. You think I want to die from passive smoking?’
‘You’re in the police, Mkhize. You’ll be lucky to live long enough to get cancer.’
He opened the window, but the wind blew the smoke straight back into the car.
‘You want to go and check this out, Mkhize?’
‘Jo’burg?’ she said. ‘Sure.’
‘Go talk to the lawyers up there,’ he
said. ‘The secretaries. Wives and secretaries. They keep secrets, just as long as there’s payback.’
‘I know what to do, boss,’ she said. She was pleased, though, he could see it.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Go pack.’
Clare picked Pedro da Silva up. There was no way he’d have been allowed onto the Gallows Hill site without her.
‘We need a new schedule, especially after the discoveries at Gallows Hill,’ she said. ‘This city grew out slavery, but there’s the murder case, too. I’ll be tied up with that. With Captain Faizal.’
‘Call him Riedwaan,’ said Pedro. ‘No need to pretend, Clare.’
‘Here’s
a list of shots we need.’ Side-stepping his remark, Clare handed Pedro a sheet from her notebook,
‘Not a control freak, are you,’ he said, reading the minutely detailed list.
‘Just thorough,’ said Clare. ‘D’you have something against that?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘How did the press conference go?’
‘I wasn’t there,’ said Clare. ‘But there should be something about it on the news,’
she said, switching on Cape Talk.
KFM. Cape Talk. Heart. Radio Qibla. All the stations full of talk about Gallows Hill. Then Riedwaan’s voice came on air, a rerun of sound bites from the morning press conference. Talking about process and investigations and doing things right. Talking to everyone, talking to her. Intimate.
‘That him?’ asked Pedro. ‘Your personal cop?’
‘My boss, at
the moment.’
‘Good luck to him,’ said Pedro, his eyes on Clare.
On Cape Talk, Leonie from Green Point told a story about Old Eva and her dog.
‘Everybody knew them,’ said Leonie. ‘Old Eva swearing when she had the DTs. But she always asked for something for that old dog of hers. If you gave Eva a sandwich, she split it – half for her, half for Ou Jennie. Sometimes Eva smelt so bad,
but other times she was fine. She’d sit and have a cup of tea, pinkie just so high.’
Another caller. Winston from Athlone.
‘Why is that skeleton, jus’ mos a heap of old bones from 20 years ago, why is that more important than our ancestors who were murdered and buried there? Why is there no enquiry there? How are they going to be commemorated, tell me that?’
‘The developer’s representative
is down from Johannesburg to deal with this crisis,’ said the anchor. ‘His name’s Mr Williams, here he is.’
‘Everything will be done to see that the memory of the dead is honoured,’ said Williams. ‘At the same time, this is an important development in the middle of a recession. Our people need work.’ Traces of Williams’s Cape Flats accent slipped through at just the right moments. ‘Cape Town
hasn’t changed; business hasn’t changed here for 300 years. How far are we into the new South Africa, and what do we have to show for it?’
‘But there are rumours, Mr Williams, about the purchase of the land –’
‘Business practices in Cape Town have to change,’ said Williams. ‘Always hurts in the beginning, but this development is important. It will change the heart of the city. Right now
it’s a –’
Clare stabbed the radio button with her index finger.
‘I met Williams yesterday,’ she said. ‘Removing the tattoos of a gangster does not restore his heart.’
The crowd gathered around Gallows Hill had spilled into the road. Traffic was backing up and again, tempers were flaring in the heat. Clare’s car was waved through. There was a surge of protest as the uniformed officer
closed the entrance behind them.
‘Listening to that,’ said Pedro, ‘I’d say we’re going to be shooting news, not documentary footage.’
He set his camera up beside the trench and filmed it. The archaeologists had measured and taped off the area that had been bulldozed, and yesterday’s jumble of bones had been removed.
The crime-scene tape flapped in the breeze, and there was a jagged
hole where the box had been dug out of the soil.
‘That’s where your woman was buried,’ said Pedro, panning slowly across the site.
‘Yes,’ said Clare, her attention on the remaining walls of the warehouse. Then she said to Pedro, ‘Over there. It looks like old signage. It must’ve fallen off, but you can still make it out. The sun angle just caught it. I didn’t see it before.’
Pedro
zoomed in on the two surviving walls of the warehouse. He increased the contrast.
‘It’s a list of names. Tavern of the Seas, Cape to Cairo Trading,’ he said.
‘This one,’ said Clare, stepping closer. ‘Carnarvon something. Why do I know that name?’
‘It’s a village in the Karoo,’ said Pedro.
‘These must be some of the original tenants,’ said Clare, jotting down the names. ‘Interesting.’
‘Yes, it is all very interesting.’ Tim Stone emerged from behind a hoarding the police had erected for the diggers. ‘Too interesting, maybe. The press conference seems to have made things worse – that’s if the radio is anything to go by. One of my Americans was injured this morning. He went out on his own and someone threw a brick at him. Missed his head, but he has a nasty bruise on his shoulder.’
‘Have you listened to any of the talk shows?’ asked Clare.
Stone did not look happy. ‘Yes, and grave robber was by far the least insulting name we were called. Faizal really has managed to kick the proverbial hornet’s nest this time.’
‘Actually, this is one mess he didn’t start,’ said Clare.
‘Whether he did or didn’t, it’s his mess now,’ said Stone. ‘And I’m hoping he knows how
to clean it up. There’s a group of construction workers there. They’re furious. Ten years without jobs, then they get stopped because we find some old bones. And by the way, I’m sure I saw those Johannesburg security people talking to them.’
‘Waleed Williams?’ asked Clare. ‘I saw the Hummer here earlier when I drove past.’
‘Yes,’ said Stone. ‘With that vicious dog of his in tow. I’d prefer
to know where exactly he is right now.’
‘What have you done with the remains that were unearthed during the excavations?’ asked Pedro. ‘It’d be good to get some shots of them.’
‘We can’t move anything off-site because of the protest,’ said Stone. ‘We moved the bones exposed by the bulldozer to that old shed over there,’ he said, pointing. ‘It’s cool inside. And for the moment, we’re going
through the stuff we’ve found. We’ll carry on until someone makes a decision about what to do with the remains.’
‘No more exhumations?’ asked Clare, as they walked towards the shed.
‘Not yet. We’ve collected together the bits we found in the aggregate, as well as the complete skeletons that the workmen had exposed. Here, I’ll show you,’ he said, pushing open the doors of the shed.
It was dim inside. The stone walls muffled the shouts from the crowd in Ebenezer Road.
The bones had been laid out. Here, long bones – femurs, arm bones, fibulas and tibias. Bones that would reveal the age of the dead. There, a stack of more solid bones – pelvises, a heap of skulls, bones that would reveal the person’s sex, and sometimes origin. Asia, Europe, East or West Africa, or the south-western
tip of the continent.
In the middle of the shed were the more complete sets. Two male skeletons were arranged on a tray, both with leg irons fused to the ankle bones. As if for a macabre anatomy lesson.
Clare walked to a table nearby and rested her hand on a tiny skull. It fitted into her palm, touching her heart line, her life line, with its three jagged notches that a palm reader said
predicted the number of children she would bear. It fitted perfectly, the white bone warming in her palm.
‘We’ve come across 22 of those, so far,’ said Stone. ‘Skulls, that is. So there must be at least that number of individuals, maybe more, in this section alone.’
Clare picked up another skull, a slightly larger one.
‘Whoever that was, he died in agony.’
Clare had not heard Raheema
Patel arrive. She turned round and faced the anthropologist, who pointed to a corroded section in the upper jaw bone.
‘See that? Looks like it was caused by an infection that ate into the bone while he was alive. A rotten tooth, maybe.’ She replaced the skull. ‘It’s probably what killed him. The pain would have been indescribable.’
‘About when did he die?’ asked Clare.
‘I’d say early
1800s. About two hundred years ago.’
‘And everything else you’ve looked at is old?’ asked Clare.
‘Yes, so far.’
‘We worked all night,’ said Stone. ‘Captain Faizal warned us that we might not have much time, but so far, everything we’ve looked at is of historical interest. Unless we analyse the DNA, study the bones to see what they ate, where the person was born, how long they lived,
we’ll never know anything about them. Not who they were when they lived, or why they died.’