Free Place of Bones by Larry Johns

Roodenpoort Road to the bus stop. And so back the flat in Jermain Street. Some evenings she spent at home. Others, she and several other girls would go out to one or other of the discos in town. The night before last she had gone out on a date with some pimply-faced South African, and there had been a kiss or two on the steps afterwards. All riveting stuff.
    Yesterday evening, she and her two flatmates had bussed over to Springs, where they had seen one of the “Terminator” films at the Odeon. This evening she was up there in the flat listening to Madonna tapes. (Walton had placed a bug up there, back in the halcyon days when he thought she might have been into something meaty)   Walton was never very strong on pop music; now he hated it to distraction - especially that blasted Madonna freak! Now, after the umpteenth time through the McCann girl’s most recent addition, he whiled away the long hours inventing filthy end-words to the lines of the songs as they came tinnily out of the receiver’s ‘speaker. All of which, Walton was convinced, was no way to spend the British taxpayer’s money.
    He sighed a deep and heartfelt sigh and checked his watch again, as “the voice” droned on in the background. It was now eight-thirty and Clancy, the night watchman, was late again.
    Bob Clancey, a thirty-seven year old South African, was an S.I.S. “occasional”, a “sleeper”. And he was Brown’s single concession to the McCann girl surveillance, it having been recognized that Walton had to sleep sometime. Clancey ran a smalltime, one-man detective agency in Johannesburg, and his motivation for accepting the odd back-up job for S.I.S, was money. Hence, his loyalty would always be questionable, and his brief minimal. Walton wondered if it was as minimal as his. He had also wondered why, if the girl was so all fire important to something or other, Brown had not seen fit to employ two or three front line S.I.S. field men for the job. His guess - correct, as it happened -  was that such a large scale operation would be akin to hanging a sign around all their necks that read: “Secret and highly important”  Clancey, obviously, was a last resort.
    Walton heard Karen McCann’s voice above the hi-fi. “Are you seeing Tony again tomorrow?”
    There was a clatter that sounded like plate on plate. So they were doing the washing up. Electrifying. Another voice said, “Well, he did ask...” Walton was not certain who this one belonged to. Both the girl’s flatmates had similar voices, and one of them had gone out somewhere. “But, are you going?” That was Karen again.
    “D’you think I should?”
    Walton allowed himself to slide limply down the seat. Jesus, he thought acidly, was there nothing else in these girl’s lives but boys, periods and allied pains, and bloody pop music! A man could go spare!
    “It’s up to you.”
          Walton hissed, “Of course it’s bloody-well up to her! Who the hell else is it up to?”
    Clatter, clatter, croon, croon. “What do you think of him?”
    “Oh, he’s all right, I suppose. Not my type.”
    The other voice, probably the girl Karen called Petch, sounded dubious. “Not sure he’s mine either.”  Clatter, clatter. “Tea?”
    “Please...You should go anyway. You never know.”
    Walton glared at the receiver. “Never know what?” Then he saw Clancey’s car pull up under a streetlamp a hundred yards up the street. He nodded appreciatively. Clancey never parked in the same place twice. “You’ll go far, my son,” he said, firing up his engine.
    With a sigh of sweet relief he switched his “bug” off.
     
    At 12-30pm the following day Walton was double-parked in the busy Alberton Street. It was Saturday and the shoppers were out in their droves. Crowds were always a problem. But, at least, Saturday meant a day without parking tickets. It meant something else for Walton, too. It meant that where it was hardly likely to be a riveting day, it might be a slightly