Blood Rose Read Free

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 woundin 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