Free Blood Rose by Margie Orford Page A

unless there’s a complaint,’ said Tamar. ‘I’ve checked with the regulars. Nobody saw anything.’
    ‘You think that’s the truth?’
    ‘That I can’t say.’ Tamar stopped when the playground came into sight.
    The houses had their backs to the alley. In the yards, dogs barked, chained to wires staked into the ground. Damp clothes hung on sagging lines. In the yard opposite the flapping strip of crime-scene tape, a faded-looking woman hung up her last item of washing and hitched the empty basket to her hip. A pudgy toddler tried to push his scooter through the sand.
    ‘Hello,’ greeted Clare, stopping at the fence.
    ‘What you want?’ The woman’s tone was belligerent.
    ‘These dogs always bark like this?’ Clare asked.
    ‘Only for strangers.’ The woman fished out a cigarette from her pocket.
    ‘Did you hear anything on Sunday night, Monday morning very early?’
    ‘She asked me already.’ The woman jerked her cigarette towards Tamar. ‘I was watching TV.’ She blew a smoke ring. ‘Then I was asleep.’
    ‘It’s important, anything unusual,’ said Clare. ‘A boy was murdered.’
    ‘Ja, the third one. You tell the police to do their job, so that our kids are safe instead of bothering innocent people.’ With that, the woman turned and went indoors, yelling at her child to follow her.
    ‘Who uses this alley?’ Clare asked Tamar.
    ‘People taking a short cut to the school,’ answered Tamar. ‘The rag-and-bone men used to come through here with their donkey carts.’
    ‘Not any more?’
    ‘Not as much,’ said Tamar. ‘Most of the recycling is done at the municipal site. The Topnaar carts were banned from coming into town. Hygiene reasons apparently, according to our CEO of cleansing. But they still come from time to time.’
    ‘My friend Goagab?’ asked Clare.
    ‘The very one.’
    The playground stood at the top of a gentle incline. A new wooden fence sequestered the youngest children’s area. It had been decorated with a garish mural, the laughing Disney characters mocking in the childless silence.
    ‘That’s the swing?’ Clare pointed to the last tyre hanging from the yellow frame.
    Tamar nodded. ‘And this is the gap in the fence where he got in.’
    They walked together through the desolate playground. The bright-yellow paint had flaked off the links of the chain from which the seat was suspended. Clare sat down on the inverted tyre. The smell of the rubber, the metal sharp against the back of her legs, tipped her down a tunnel of memory again. It took her breath away, the immediacy of it. Herself a solemn six-year-old, swinging in the hot school playground, bare legs pushing time behind her, brown arms bending into the future. Willing herself older so that she could get away. Watched by Constance, her twin, whose face mirrored hers except in what it concealed,watching her, willing her to stay. Constance, a thought fox sniffing out Clare’s most secret desires to be the only one, whole in and of herself.
    Clare stopped, aware that Tamar was looking at her. She steadied the swing and hopped off.
    ‘It’s got the best view,’ said Tamar. ‘That swing.’
    ‘You tried it?’ asked Clare, looking out at the expanse of sand circled by the dark arm of the Kuiseb River to the south.
    ‘I wanted to get a sense of him. Of his death. To see if there was anything left of the violence of it.’
    ‘And was there?’
    Tamar blushed and shook her head. ‘There were some indentations in the sand, though,’ she remembered. ‘Like someone had poked it with a thin stick. Maybe a cane.’
    Clare nodded and went over to the classroom block. A single window overlooked the playground. She peered into the dim classroom. The rows of miniature red desks and cheery yellow chairs were empty. A pile of marking lay abandoned on the teacher’s desk. The writing on the board caught her eye: Mrs Ruyters, Grade 1, Monday’s date.
    ‘Ruyters,’ said Clare. ‘That rings a bell.’
    ‘She’s on