Wolf Trap by Consuelo Roland

Author:Consuelo Roland [Roland, Consuelo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781431426010
Publisher: Jacana Media
Published: 2017-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Knappman agreed to meet us in his office although we’d ruined a rugby game he was watching on TV. When I said he could record it, he grunted that he wanted to watch it live. The inexperienced detective who’d once driven me home from Valkenberg and played classical music in his car to soothe my shattered nerves had reminded me of a young carthorse visiting the city. This more experienced Klaus had lost that innate farm-boy belief that the rain would come soon; his eyebrows remained in place yet his mouth betrayed a certain cynicism. But he took Georgie’s story seriously. A policewoman came and took Georgie away to another office so she could make a signed, written statement.

Klaus said we were laying one baksteen at a time, and baksteen by baksteen we would furrow these people out.

‘It’s ferret, not furrow,’ I pointed out. ‘We’ll ferret these people out brick by brick. That’s what you mean.’ I just couldn’t help myself. ‘You have to let Detective Olmi know.’

He glared at me, but then he shook his head and laughed.

‘Ja, that. Exactly that. We’ll ferret them out. Olmi’s team will be notified.’

Georgie’s statement was something, and yet it was nothing. There was no proof of anything. My daughter’s life was sand running through this man’s fingers. For him, she was one of many; for me she was a small girl with her hand in an unknown woman’s bigger hand, a schoolgirl in a photograph whose gaze wrenched my heart apart, a girl who a few hours ago had made herself burnt toast for breakfast in the apartment she shared with me. Her child’s feet were bigger than mine; only I cared about this small irrelevant detail.

‘What is going on, Klaus? What do those people have to do with Simone? Can’t you pick them up for loitering and bring them in for questioning?’

‘Ek weet nie, Paola. I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t take anyone into custody based on her story, you know that. Maybe it was an actor, or a singer in a rock band, or someone on their way to a fancy dress party. Mrs Vermaak must have seen those people on the corner like you did. It probably worked on her imagination, with her husband gone and now her daughter missing.’

His words hit me with the force of a rock thrown at my chest. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ I said. ‘I mean, that she would have seen them too.’ I was furious with myself. What happened to logic?

‘She says not, that she drives another way, but I’m not convinced. We are meaning-makers, and the mind reaches its own conclusions.’ He sounded absent-minded, as if his own mind was somewhere else.

‘Klaus, can I ask you something?’

He swung round to look at me. ‘Wat?’

‘When you brought Elijah’s boxes to the apartment, did you bring Simone’s music box from the house? Shouldn’t something like that be with the other stuff, as evidence?’

‘Van wat praat jy?’ Klaus sounded genuinely puzzled.

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