Free Blood Rose by Margie Orford

nervously in the direction of the car. ‘I’ll be in trouble if someone sees me with you. We go to jail if we bother the tourists.’ He looked down at his scuffed shoes. ‘Mr Goagab said so.’
    ‘Okay,’ said Clare. She checked instinctively for her keys and her phone. They were both still in her pocket. Clare looked Lazarus in the eye. ‘Was there anything specific you wanted to tell me?’
    His gaze slid away. He shook his head.
    ‘Okay,’ said Clare again. ‘But you find me if you hear anything. Just don’t knock me down again.’
    ‘There are people who won’t like you if you help us. Be careful, Miss.’
    ‘Who won’t like it?’ asked Clare. She looked at Lazarus, but it was too dark to read his expression.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘There are so many people who think we’re just trouble.’
    ‘Is that what happened with Kaiser?’ Clare asked a second time. Another car turned in to the parking lot. Clare put her hand up to shield her eyes. When she turned to Lazarus for an explanation, he had blended into the darkness cascading in from the desert. Like a ghost. The thought made her shiver.
    She was glad she had left the lights on in her room; the yellow light made it seem like a haven amidst the unlit cottages. She let herself in, locking the door behind her before taking a shower.
    When she was dry and dressed, she poured herself a glass of wine and made toast. Then she fanned the dockets around her on the bed and set to work. Monday’s Child: Kaiser Apollis. Nicanor Jones: Wednesday’s Child. Fritz Woestyn: Saturday’s Child. She was becoming accustomed to the unfamiliar names, but she had to reach behind the violence of their deaths to conjure an image of what they had been alive. She picked up a news clipping about the homeless soccer team. The key to the dead was in the living. To find their killer, Clare would have to resuscitate, if only for a moment, the laughing boys they had been, taking a shot at the goal posts at the end of a dusty soccer pitch.

twelve
    It took Clare three cups of coffee to get going the following morning. Tamar arrived early to take her to the school. The streets were still empty, and wide – wide enough for an ox-wagon to turn. A hundred years ago, they would have been the only form of transport into the waterless interior. The dusty streets would have been the only way inland for the ingredients of civilisation – tea, coffee, sugar, alcohol, and later guns – and the route out for colonial spoils – copper, uranium, gold and diamonds. The only reason anyone would live here, Clare thought, is to take a cut of whatever passes through.
    It was five past seven when Tamar stopped before the school’s locked gate. The caretaker eyed them warily, but waved when he recognised Tamar.
    ‘Herman Shipanga,’ Tamar said to Clare. ‘He found the body.’
    ‘When will the school re-open?’ Clare asked.
    ‘Maybe Thursday; otherwise next week. The headmaster Erasmus took it badly. I was surprised. He was such a tough guy when he was in the army.’
    ‘South African?’
    ‘Ja, he took Namibian citizenship and stayed on after they pulled out in ’94.’
    ‘Did many people do that?’
    ‘A few. Some said they loved this place. For others it was a good way of avoiding Bishop Tutu and his Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Us up north of the Orange River, we decided to just brush our little atrocities under the carpet.’
    Tamar parked beneath a wind-ravaged palm tree. ‘Come this way. A path runs behind the school. This is how the boy got in.’
    ‘You think he was alive then?’
    ‘No, sorry. I’m sure not,’ said Tamar. ‘I meant the body, which Helena Kotze will confirm during the autopsy later.’
    Clare picked her way down the path. It was strewn with chip packets and empty bottles. In places, used condoms had been snagged by the barbed-wire fences.
    ‘Prostitutes bring their clients here?’ she asked.
    ‘They do, but we don’t do anything