Daddy's Girl by Margie Orford

Author:Margie Orford [Orford, Margie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: RSA
ISBN: 9781781857809
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd.
Published: 2009-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

35

The photographs of the place where Yasmin had waited lay where Clare had left them. They were far too dark; there hadn’t been enough light when she’d taken them. At the time, what she’d been reaching for wasn’t an idea yet, just a feeling, a ray of hope. Not at all scientific. Clare picked up her clothes, shoved them into the machine, washed the dishes in the sink, letting her thoughts follow their own path, undirected.

Yasmin Faizal had waited outside this gate.

She had called at five-thirty-two.

She had returned to wait in this leafy niche.

At five-forty she had stepped off the pavement, out of the CCTV image, and disappeared.

Yesterday morning there had been darkness everywhere.

Just one light gleamed.

The detail that had been nagging at Clare.

Fritz jumped off the window sill, flicking her tail from side to side.

The sound wrong for Sunday: the clack of the letterbox. Clare was downstairs in seconds. An envelope lay at the front door, her name on it in plump, unfamiliar letters.

Inside, a single sheet of paper torn from a school exercise book, with three bulleted numbers, one below the other. Clare’s heart lurched when she took out the loop of worn elastic.

She scanned the boulevard. To the south, a woman roller-blading. To the north, a shadow moving along the buildings where the road curved out of sight. Clare took the bend at a sprint. She was gaining on the shadow, though it kept ahead of her, cutting across the lawn as it headed for the taxi coming down Beach Road. A hand out, slowing the taxi, a tattooed arm sliding the door shut. Sorry mom, sorry dad. The prison-gangster tattoo was blazoned on the back window of the taxi, pulling away.

Clare got into her car and went after it. She knew the route, but the taxi eluded her. No commuters, so no stops this early Sunday morning. When she arrived at the taxi rank above Cape Town Station, she pulled up next to the driver and asked him about his last passenger.

‘Got on at Beach Road, né?’ He called his conductor, a skinny boy who’d had his front teeth pulled.

‘Ja,’ he said. ‘Got on there. Gave me the right change. Sat in the back. Got out before we turned into the rank.’

‘You seen him before?’ asked Clare.

‘You know how many people we drive, lady?’ asked the driver.

‘But it wasn’t a he,’ said the conductor. ‘It was a girl.’

‘Oh?’ said Clare.

‘Sat in the back. Said nothing, but you can always tell with the hands, mos. Women have small hands.’

‘You see where she went?’ asked Clare.

‘Took off towards Woodstock. I mos told my friend someone would be after her,’ said a stout woman, pointing towards the Victorian slums on the other side of the dilapidated Civic Centre. ‘I was right, but you’re not going to find anyone in there that doesn’t want you to.’

Clare pulled out her phone. One ring, and Riedwaan answered. ‘Just a moment.’ Noise in the background and Phiri’s deep tones. Hope flared in Riedwaan’s voice.

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