The Shallows. Ingrid Winterbach
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which indeed was quite something from this height. In front of them all of Table Bay lay stretched out. Under different circumstances one could have admired the breathtaking view.
For a short while they sat in companionable silence. There was an uncomfortable prickling under Nick’s armpits. Not his idea of an afternoon’s entertainment. Alfresco with the mafia. Convivial. He took a deep breath, tried unsuccessfully to enjoy the view, and hoped for the fucking best.
Tarquin called over his shoulder and a girl came out. She didn’t look much older than fifteen. Tight jeans and big earrings. Tarquin signalled something with his head. She went back inside and re-emerged shortly afterwards with a tray, a bottle and four glasses. Pour, Tarquin indicated. Johnnie Walker Blue Label. Nick was on the point of suggesting that it was too early in the day for whisky, but he caught Marthinus’ eye and something in his glance told him you don’t turn down this drink. The girl poured briskly. Tarquin and Junius X knocked back theirs virtually in one gulp. Nick was scared that if he tried it he’d throw up. Not a good start to any negotiations.
‘What’s your problem?’ asked Tarquin.
Marthinus said, ‘My friend Nick’s lodger has been missing for several days now. We want to know if you know of any missing or abducted girls in the area.’
‘Stacks of ’em,’ said Tarquin. ‘So what’s so special ’bout this one?’
They all looked at Nick, who was sitting with the half a glass of whisky in his hand, and the sun blazing down on his head, and a fucking blank as big as a house suddenly hitting him.
‘She’s an epileptic,’ he said.
‘So?’ said Tarquin. ‘Stacks of ’em too. Ep’leptics and worse.’
‘She’s renting a room from me and I feel responsible for her safety,’ said Nick. (All of a sudden he felt like a big white bourgeois cunt. Ridiculous.)
‘What’s her name?’ asked Tarquin. ‘Anything to ID her with?’
What was she wearing the last time he saw her? What should he say: soft skin, slender brown wrists? They’d shit themselves laughing at him.
He cleared his throat: ‘Her name is Charelle Koopman,’ he said, ‘she’s a student at the art school in town,’ and he gestured in an indeterminate direction with his head. ‘She takes photos. She’s smallish with …’ he indicated with his hands, ‘dark hair, curly.’ (Prick, he thought, couldn’t he think – what coloured girl is going to have straight blonde hair?)
Tarquin’s face was expressionless behind the dark glasses. Over his shoulder he summoned the girl again. ‘You!’ he ordered. ‘You go call Blackie.’ Away she went, weaving fleet as a gazelle through the shelters.
Tarquin checked his cellphone. They sat. Nick drained his whisky. Jesus, the stuff scorched his stomach and had already gone to his head. Soon afterwards the girl emerged from among the tents with someone. An albino with snow-white dreadlocks.
Tarquin hardly looked up from his cellphone. ‘Any casualties this weekend,’ he said, ‘rapes and mutilations and abductions and so?’
A girl was raped down in Strand Street – first strangled with the hands and then with a wire hanger and thrown on a rubbish dump, the albino said in a flat, expressionless voice. The rest of his inventory was also delivered with no show of emotion. A girl’s decomposed body was found in the Liesbeek there where the road makes a bend near the highway. At Bellville station a girl was raped and robbed and left for dead. A student from the university was ambushed and robbed and raped and kicked. Two children were abducted there by the flats in Clarke Estate. The cops haven’t found anything yet. A man shot his girlfriend dead in Riverlea. A girl was gang-raped in Bishop Lavis. Two children were murdered in Lansdowne. Two high school girls have gone missing in Khayelitsha, the cops reckon it’s the satanists sitting behind it. One child was raped in Delft South and set on fire and another child was raped when she used the communal toilets nearby her house. A child was shot dead when he landed in the crossfire of two gangs. Three other laities from the one gang were shot dead by the other gang and one car was set on fire in Bishops and two houses in Delft South when some of the gang went to hide out there.
Nick wanted to hear no more. The fucking sun, the fucking whisky, and now this gruesome fucking list. Marthinus was regarding him sympathetically. A reply was probably expected from him. He didn’t know, he said, he couldn’t tell.
Audience over. Tarquin and associates would keep an eye open. Down again went Nick and Marthinus. Down the steep mountainside. Through the settlement or whatever it was called. Utopian experimental farm. Back to the coolness of Marthinus’ house.
‘Come watch a few DVDs with us tomorrow evening,’ Marthinus invited him. ‘It will distract you.’
Nick didn’t want to. He did not want to be distracted.
Ten
At four o’clock in the afternoon I report to the retirement village. (A luxury resort, it must cost a tidy sum to live here.) The iron gates swing open, I am admitted. The resort is on the edge of town, the surroundings are beautiful. The housekeeper-cum-secretary receives me. If, like most people, she is slightly wrong-footed by my appearance, she hides it well. I do, though, note that her gaze (like most people’s) lingers a fraction too long on my unsightly lip scar. She introduces herself as Miss De Jongh. So no first names. By no means a uniform and sensible shoes – a full-blown décolletage, with imposing breasts. Little low-necked black top, tight black jeans. (Would that meet with the professor’s approval – wouldn’t he prefer her in a demure uniform?) And a raving bottle blonde. Did you ever. If she’s a mite taken aback, so am I.
She conducts me to the stoep overlooking a lush fynbos garden. Professor Emeritus Olivier is seated in a wheelchair, with a rug over his knees. His back is turned to us. When he greets me, he shows no sign of recognition. And why would he, it was almost thirty years ago. His cranium is bonier than ever, without the softening effect of hair, of which he never had an abundance. I don’t want to stare too much and too unguardedly. He indicates with a broad, yellow-pale hand (affliction of the liver?) he wants to be wheeled down to the garden. It’s a fine day, bright, not too hot. The woman rearranges the rug. She pushes the wheelchair, I walk behind them. No chance now of any conversation. Down the winding pathway, through beds of fynbos and fragrant shrubs, up to a large pond. He indicates that he wants to stop here. We are standing on the paved edge of the pond, actually more of a dam. Big koi immediately come swimming up. One in particular remains floating near the edge, fairly close to the surface. Standing there, gazing at the fish, the professor and Miss De Jongh and I. What a bizarre apparition, seen at close quarters. Bright red, with two protrusions on either side of the mouth and something, I notice, like a blue membrane over the eyes. Could the fish be blind? The mouth, as it opens and shuts, has something obscenely sexual about it. Is it a coded message from the old father? An oblique reference to our sexual escapade almost thirty years ago?
‘Did the twins ever keep fish?’ I ask (to start somewhere).
‘No,’ says the old father (without turning his head in my direction), ‘no fish. Dogs, yes.’
‘What did they like playing with as children?’
Olivier waits a while before replying. He’s obviously not going to make it easy for me. Miss De Jongh kicks the brake firmly into place, sits down on a bench a short distance away, thrusts out her legs in front of her and lights a cigarette. Very cool and casual, and old father does not object.
‘Just what healthy, normal boys usually occupy themselves with,’ he says.
‘And that is?’ I ask.
‘They read, cycled around, climbed trees, played ball,’ he says (irritated?), ‘took part in sport. In fact, they were very gifted in that direction.’
‘Did they like reading comic strips?’
‘Within limits,’ he says. (These limits, I suspect, were of his paternal edict.)
‘I