Free Daddy's Girl by Margie Orford Page B

fantasies,my thoughts about love, about death.’
    ‘What did you tell her?’
    ‘I asked her how you told love and death apart. She made me another appointment. I didn’t pitch, so that flagged me in some Swedish computer programme that measures mental health, gender attitudes and compliance with authority. I was marked as a man to watch, a man with secrets. A man made dangerous by love, according to thereport. Or was it by death? I can’t remember now.’
    ‘And if I find her for you?’ asked Clare. ‘Then what?’
    ‘I didn’t say I wanted to kill them,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I’m telling you what gets into my head if I sleep. I’m telling you what I saw when we were called to a house in Goodwood. A whole street of policemen. A crescent. That house at the end. A guy I knew who was in the riot squad. Hecame home one day and shot his family. Then he called us and waited – with his service pistol in his mouth. He pulled the trigger when we opened the door – we went through and found them all. Wife. Two sons. Baby daughter. Bullet in the forehead. Each of them. I’m telling you why I moved out.’
    Riedwaan stopped speaking.
    ‘Okay.’ Clare held up her hands. ‘I’ll accept what you’re saying forthe moment. You’ve looked at all the places she might have gone to? Granny, cousins, friends, hiding at school somewhere?’
    ‘What do you think I’ve been doing while you’ve been watching ballet? She’s nowhere.’ Riedwaan pulled out his cellphone and pushed it across the table.
    ‘Check that. Not one message, not one missed call. Except…’
    ‘Except what?’ asked Clare.
    ‘A missed call whileI was at a crime scene. It was the call box at her ballet school.’
    ‘What time was that?’
    ‘Five-thirty-two. Her class should have finished at six-thirty. I didn’t know and neither did Shazia, but they finished early today.’
    ‘Who knew?’
    ‘I checked with her teacher. Everybody, it seems.’ Riedwaan lit another cigarette. ‘Except me and Shazia, because she won’t…’ He stopped himself.‘Because we are unable to speak to each other, we seem to have missed that crucial little detail.’
    He looked out of the window. Clare watched his reflection, wishing she still smoked.
    ‘It’s as if she vanished. No sign, no demands, no…’ He couldn’t say body, but both of them thought it, saw it. Saw her in the cold, eyes open, seeing nothing.
    ‘Help me look for her.’ He faced her again.‘View the CCTV footage at least. Cyclops Centre tomorrow morning. On the Foreshore.’
    A siren blared in the distance. Riedwaan flicked his cigarette into his coffee cup.
    ‘It’s midnight.’ The waitress had her coat on. ‘We’re closed. That’s twenty rand.’
    Clare and Riedwaan crossed the road together and stopped outside at her door.
    ‘A deal?’
    Clare put her hands on his arms, heldhim for a moment, her face against his. She hadn’t meant to, but he looked so stricken.
    ‘I’ll see what the cameras have to say.’
    She pulled her door closed behind her, leaned against it, listened to his footsteps recede. The smell of him lay on her skin. Fear, loneliness, cardamom.

14
    The light on Clare’s desk was a golden splash in the darkness. The Promenade was empty; even the homeless were tucked away in doorways and bus shelters, out of the wind. A taxi stopped opposite the mini-golf course, which was closed for the winter. A single passenger alighted, a thin man wearing a mismatched suit jacket and pants. He walked towards the copse of trees that surrounded theovergrown labyrinth. Plenty of place to sleep there, but unpleasant in the cold. He turned once and looked back, seeming to stare straight up at Clare’s window before disappearing into the darkness. Clare, chilled, took the white shawl from the back of her chair and wrapped it around her shoulders.
    Her Apple laptop bleeped, signalling that the pages she wanted had been downloaded. She turnedher attention to the internet search