Like Clockwork Read Free

any new friends. She had had to persuade her producer far away in safe London to let her ‘feature’ a trafficker in the documentary. It was a risky proposition and she needed more time. Clare had put out feelers before she had gone to the Congo two months earlier. On her return she had heard that Kelvin Landman might talk to her. He had been pimping since he was fifteen. Clare could not verify the rumour that it had started with his ten-year-old sister. Landman, one of her police sources had told her, had moved rapidly up the ranks of a street gang. He was a man with vision, though, and the porousness of South Africa’s post-democracy borders had been a licence for Landman to print money. His name had become synonymous with trafficking for the sex industry. And Landman ruthlessly punished any transgression of his rules.
    Clare had once asked a young street prostitute how Landman worked. The girl pointed to two long, light scars across her soft belly. Punishment for a careless pregnancy. She then told Clare that the baby had been aborted and shehad been working again the next day. She’d laughed when Clare asked for an interview, and then wandered away. Clare had not seen her again.
    She looked out at the sea again. Mist was rolling in, blotting out the morning’s early promise.
    Trafficking was risk free for the trafficker, that was clear enough, and it generated a lot of cash. Lately, Landman had become notorious for insinuating himself into the highest echelons of business and politics. He had even been profiled as a ‘man about town’ by a respectable Sunday paper. Clare pulled out a clean sheet of notepaper and jotted down her questions.
    Where did the cash go?
    How was it made legitimate?
    If Landman was selling, who was buying?
    What were they buying?
    She would find out. But the dead girl on the promenade surfaced unbidden in her thoughts. Clare stood up abruptly. She needed to get out, to be with people. She picked up her shopping list and headed for the Waterfront. As she drove, she thought she might add a few things to the list she’d made earlier.
    Smoked salmon.
    Wine.
    Maybe some washing-up liquid.

3
     
    Riedwaan Faizal had stared straight ahead of him after Clare’s call, his phone open in his hand. He could picture her as clearly as if she were in front of him. She was brilliant and obsessive, but difficult to work with. She didn’t like teams, she didn’t trust anybody. Her relationship with the law was flexible, although right and wrong for Clare were absolutes. These were not things that bothered Riedwaan. It was Clare herself who got under his skin. He needed her, like a man needed water. He put his phone back in his pocket and stood up. Being with her was like being thirsty all the time and never knowing if you would get a drink. The minute you thought you had her, she slipped away. The one time she had reached out for him he had turned away. Nothing could change that, so he shrugged the thought away.
    Riedwaan turned his attention to the dead girl instead. She had not been ID’d yet, but he was sure it was the girl who had been reported missing since Friday. Today was Tuesday. He did not want to think about what had happened to her in the intervening four days. But he was going to have to. He finished his coffee and picked up his keys. This was going to be awkward. The case officer was Frikkie Bester simply because he had answered the call. He had already opened a docket and he was not going to be pleased to have RiedwaanFaizal on his turf. But the station commander, who was generally pissed off at having been landed with Riedwaan, had been very happy to assign him to the case. Riedwaan knew Phiri well enough by now: by giving Riedwaan the case there was at least a hope in hell that it would be solved. And if it wasn’t, then there was his record of insubordination and alcohol and violence to wheel out. At least Phiri had volunteered to call Bester himself.
    Riedwaan’s battered Mazda