No living person, at any rate.
The thought made her bite her lip with unease and she walked faster, bowing her shoulders into the wind as it gusted round the side of the house.
The place had a surprisingly Gothic feel to it. Perhaps it was the neglected garden with its overgrown privet and leggy conifers and Spanish moss. Perhaps it was the house itself, tall and narrow, its front aspect dominated by a black-painted wooden door flanked by two slit windows.
What kind of a person would choose to live here instead of opting for the more conventional matchbox cluster homes that were readily available in this area? Jade was beginning to form a picture of the woman in her mind. Unconventional, bohemian, unafraid.
Jade took a deep breath and turned the front-door handle. The door, at least, was locked, which gave her a small if unfounded twinge of relief. She hadn’t wanted to be able to push it open and then have to walk inside and come face to face what she feared would be there.
The paving continued around the house in a narrow buffer zone that separated its walls from the tangled overgrowth. She followed it, stepping carefully over loose bricks and tilting drain covers. The French doors connecting the sitting room with the garden were also locked. She cupped her hands and peered through the darkened panes but found that heavy curtains covered the entrance and all she could see was her own faint reflection.
She turned away, continuing her progress around the house, hoping to find a door or a window that would allow her to get inside. Even if the house was empty, Jade reasoned that it might still hold clues as to the current whereabouts of its occupant.
And then her heart stopped. Behind her, she heard a rattle in the lock of the French door she’d just tried. Then the door was flung open and a powerful torch beam was shone in her direction.
Jade flattened herself against the wall and froze, keeping her face turned away from the flashlight beam. Then as the beam swung further to the left, she took a chance and slowly looked round.
In the darkness, she couldn’t make out who was holding the torch, but she knew it was a man when an anxious-sounding male voice called out. ‘Zelda?’
She didn’t move. The beam wavered around the garden once more, lighting up dense pockets of foliage.
‘Zelda, is that you?’ the man called again, but softly, as if he’d realised
that it might not have been Zelda trying the door and that by opening it he might just have done a very foolish thing.
Whoever he was, Jade decided he didn’t look dangerous. And he seemed to be alone. She turned around and ran the few steps back to the open door and grabbed the torch from his unprotesting hand. As he gave a frightened, wordless shout, she bundled them both inside and slammed the door behind them.
Her arms bumped against soft flesh and when she shone the light on him, it revealed a pasty-looking middle-aged man carrying some extra weight but no weapon. Bad for him, good for her. No holster was strapped to the straining waistline of his grey chinos, either.
No threat.
The man flung up a hand to shield his eyes from the glare, breathing erratically, and she lowered the torch.
‘What the hell?’ He was blustering now, trying to conceal his fear and the fact he’d just been physically bested. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m looking for Zelda Meintjies. Who are you?’
‘I’m Ryan Harris. I’m a … a friend of Zelda’s.’
A friend who arrives at her house at half-past nine at night, carrying a Maglite?
‘What are you doing here?’ Jade demanded.
Harris drew himself up to his full height, which made him just a little taller than Jade.
‘The question is, who are you, and what gives you the right to be prowling around in her garden?’
‘My name’s Jade de Jong. I’m a private investigator.’
‘What the hell are you investigating here?’
‘I’m looking into the death of Zelda’s sister, Sonet.’
Even in the half-light, she saw the shock of her news register on his face.
‘Sonet’s dead?’
‘Did you know her?’
‘I never met her, no. But I knew about her, and I’m sure Zelda would have told me if anything had happened to her. Since I don’t know who you are and you’re on Zelda’s property without her permission, I don’t think I believe your story.’
Jade sighed. ‘Could we have this discussion in a better light, perhaps?’
She shone the torch across the walls – noticing the peeling and rather dingy paintwork – until she located a light switch.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Harris said.
‘Why?’
‘Power’s not working. I was here earlier on. That’s why I came back with a torch.’
‘The power in the area’s on.’ Jade had seen lights across the street when she arrived, and the nearest street light had been working too. That had been one of the reasons why this place had looked so forbidding; a house with darkened windows and no outside lights in an otherwise conventionally lit road. ‘Has the main fuse tripped?’
As Harris opened his mouth to answer, a loud banging from outside made them both jump. It was followed by a swishing, scraping sound that she realised she recognised: tree branches blowing against the steel patio awning. No need to panic. Not yet, at any rate.
‘No. The power switch is up. It’s in the kitchen. Here, if you’ll give me back the torch, I’ll show you.’
Jade handed it over and they followed the bobbing beam across what looked like a games room. At any rate, there was a large snooker table in its centre, piled high with mountains of books and papers, and an ancient dartboard on the wall, its surface peppered with multitudes of holes. Next to it was a calendar from 2009 with the page still turned to September.
Jade stared at it in puzzlement as Harris pushed open the door that led to an open-plan kitchen and a dining area where yet more papers and magazines were strewn over every available surface. The fuse board was in a small cupboard on the wall and all the switches were indeed up.
‘Did you trip the outside power meter?’ Harris asked her.
Jade couldn’t help but gape at him.
‘What? Why on earth would I …? Of course not.’
Jade was beginning to wonder if she’d accidentally stumbled into a parallel universe. A missing woman, a dark and empty house containing more piles of books and paper than she’d ever seen in one place, and a strange man whose behaviour was rapidly altering her definition of paranoid. None of it was making any sense.
Harris gave her a disbelieving look.
‘Let’s find the outside board, then,’ Jade said, although she thought
the exercise would be a waste of time. More probably the power had been disconnected due to non-payment.
Harris unlocked the front door from the inside and pocketed the key, which Jade saw was on a ring together with a remote control that was probably for the gate.
‘This is a spare,’ he explained. ‘She gave it to me.’
He didn’t say why, and Jade didn’t ask; just stumbled her way through the greenery and down the drive behind him.
‘Was the gate working when you arrived?’ she asked.
‘No. The motor was on manual. It must be broken.’
Jade found herself having to resist the urge to tell Harris she hadn’t done it.
They went out through the gate and after a short foray along the overgrown verge, Harris located the grey metal door of the main circuit box. He handed the torch to Jade, squatted down and pulled the door open.
The mains switch was indeed down, but that wasn’t all. Jade and Harris stared at the jutting ends of cable that curled out from underneath it, the colourful torn outer plastic insulation and the raw edges of the neatly cut copper wire.
The power hadn’t just been turned off … it had been sabotaged.
Harris twisted round and looked up at her, a frown creasing his wide forehead.
‘I don’t believe this,’ he said. ‘This isn’t what I thought …’
He didn’t complete his thought out loud. Instead, he closed the door of the grey metal box and, putting a hand on top of it for support, heaved himself to his feet. Behind them, on the road, a car drove past going too fast for Jade’s comfort. It didn’t slow down at all when it saw them, making Jade acutely aware of their vulnerability to the late-night traffic.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Jade said. ‘I’m sure Zelda must have candles somewhere.’
Ten minutes later, Jade and Harris were sitting side by side on the narrow sofa in Zelda’s living room, which was just about the only piece of furniture not covered with abandoned manuscripts, magazine cuttings, used shorthand notepads and books.
Jade had discovered three candles in the bathroom – one squat and yellow, one pyramid-shaped and mauve, and one crimson, holly decorated one that looked as if it had come from the centrepiece of a Christmas table. These were now lined up in front of them, resting on an ancient hardcover dedicated to
Natural Livestock-Keeping Practices
which, judging from the multiple wax stains on its jacket, was no stranger to this role. One of the candles was vanilla-scented and its sweet fragrance gradually freshened the room.
‘I was worried about her,’ Harris said. After they’d seen the sabotaged supply cable he seemed to have warmed towards her, if only slightly. ‘Zelda didn’t answer her cellphone when I called this evening. It was turned off.’
‘When’s the last time you saw her?’
‘A week ago. We attend meetings together.’
Noticing Jade’s enquiring look, he elaborated.
‘AA meetings, if you must know. Alcoholics Anonymous. She joined a year ago. I am her sponsor, actually.’
‘I understand,’ Jade said softly.
‘That’s why we have keys for each other’s house. That’s why I’m here now. We have a buddy system in place. If one of us doesn’t attend the Wednesday meeting, the other will call, and if there’s no answer, will come round and see if … if the other one is all right.’
Now Jade could hear the edge of worry in his voice. Outside, the wind was still gusting, blowing the tree branches back and forth, banging and scraping against the roof. It prevented her from hearing anything else and that made her uneasy.
‘Have you ever had to do this before?’
‘No. Never.’
While searching for candles, Jade had done a quick check of the house.
Although every room had been as messy as the next, there was no sign of forced entry, nor of a struggle. The double bed in the upstairs master bedroom was unmade, but in view of the general disorder everywhere else in the house, that didn’t mean much.
One interesting fact was that the guest bedroom looked to have been recently used. There were skirts and blouses hanging in the cupboard and a couple of books by the bedside table. One was
Man on Wire
– the biographical account of tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the Twin Towers.
Definitely the type of bedtime reading a thrill-seeker might enjoy.
Perhaps Sonet had moved in with her sister on a temporary basis after moving out of her old place.
Harris’s revelation had changed Jade’s impression of Zelda. She wasn’t a free-spirited, bohemian soul, she was a woman battling some serious inner demons. And who had, so far, appeared to be winning.
If it hadn’t been for the state of the electrics, Jade might have assumed that Sonet’s death had pushed Zelda over the edge; that she’d relapsed and gone on a drinking binge, ending up in the slums of Hillbrow, in hospital, or worse.
The damage to the mains supply, though, told a very different story.
‘Do you have ID on you?’ Harris asked.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘I’d like to see it.’
‘Sure. If I can see yours.’
‘Mine’s in my car, which is parked round the back of the house. I’m not going to go outside again just to get it for you.’
Jade took her driver’s licence out of her jacket pocket and handed it to him. She also gave him one of her business cards. It was white with black lettering and said simply ‘Jade de Jong’ followed by her cellphone number and email address.
‘It doesn’t say anything here about your being a private investigator.’
‘Discretion is the better part of valour in that regard, I’ve found.’
‘Look, Ms De Jong, if that’s who you are, what happened to Sonet?’
‘She was base jumping from the new skyscraper, Sandton Views, when her parachute malfunctioned. At the time, it looked like an accident. I was hired by her jumping partner, a man called Victor Theron, to investigate. He doesn’t think
her death was accidental, but at the same time he knows he’ll be the prime suspect if it isn’t.’
Harris breathed out hard, his gaze fixed on the flickering candle flames.
‘Mr Harris, you didn’t know about Sonet’s death until I told you. I think Zelda would have, if she’d had the chance. But clearly, she didn’t. Come with me. There’s something else I want to check.’
Jade got up from the sofa and walked back into the kitchen, Harris following at her heels. She pulled open the fridge door and wrinkled her nose at the unpleasant smell inside.
The contents of the fridge were modest. A half-full litre bottle of organic milk, now yellowed, separated and stinking. Some limp, leaking vegetables and an over-ripe cheese that looked to have come from a farmer’s market as it had a handwritten price label. The near-empty freezer had defrosted completely, although its vegetarian contents – a bag of garlic rolls, soy burgers and tubs of gourmet soup were far less offensive finds than a supply of rotting meat would have been.
A week’s worth of spoilage, give or take a day or so.
‘Looking in the fridge isn’t going to help bring her back,’ Harris snapped, just about elbowing her aside as he pushed the door closed. ‘I must ask you to leave now. I’m going to lock up here and go to the police station and report her missing.’
‘The power was cut off about a week ago,’ Jade said. ‘Round about the same time Sonet fell to her death. There was a week’s worth of unopened mail in the box. All this points to the fact that Zelda’s been gone for a while, Harris. And the longer a person is missing, the slimmer the chances are of finding them. The first twenty-four hours is the most critical period of all. That’s an industry statistic that all private investigators and the police are aware of, and that twenty-four-hour period is long gone.’