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now there’s a better chance of cracking it before another body washes up.’
    ‘Sounds like a textbook case,’ said Clare. She rolled a piece of paper-thin fillet between her fingers and ate it. ‘What’s the new boy’s name?’
    ‘Waiting for a positive ID, but they have him as Kaiser Apollis. Looks fourteen, could be sixteen. Been living on the street like the other two victims. Aids orphan, apparently. There’s a sister around somewhere, but no interview yet. That’s scheduled for the day after tomorrow. With you,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Here, have a look at Captain Damases’s photographs.’
    He pushed away their plates and spread out the pictures on the table. His phone rang. Not his usual ring tone, but one alittle girl had recorded before she left for Canada with her mother. The child’s voice, sweet and plaintive, called him: ‘Daddy, Daddy, it’s me.’
    ‘Yasmin?’ asked Clare.
    ‘Yup.’ Riedwaan looked at his watch. ‘My biweekly father-hood ration.’ He stood up, phone already to his ear. ‘Hello, baby girl. How’s Canada?’ Clare heard him say as he closed the door so that he could speak privately to the seven-year-old daughter he had not seen for almost a year.
    Clare turned her attention to the images in front of her. They were eerie; the body huddled like any child escaping on the finite flight of a swing. The image nudged a buried memory. The tug of that weightless second at the top of the arc before the free fall of return; the solemn face of Clare’s twin sister, watching her swing up higher, higher, higher. Away from her. Until Constance could stand it no longer and caught the swing, tumbling Clare out, dissolving Clare’s rage with tears. Their father had removed the swing after that. To keep Clare safe, is how he had explained it. Clare and her older sister Julia had seethed, knowing that the real reason was to keep Constance calm. Clare felt for the forgotten scar on her elbow. The smooth ridge of skin was still there.
    ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ Clare had not heard Riedwaan return. He put his hand on her arm, drawing her back into the present.
    ‘This tyre swing. We had one when we were children. I loved it. It made me feel free.’ She turned to face him. ‘How are things with Yasmin?’
    ‘Fine,’ said Riedwaan. ‘She’s fine.’
    ‘Shazia?’
    A shadow crossed Riedwaan’s face at the mention of his estranged wife. He shrugged and did not meet Clare’s gaze. ‘Thesame.’ He picked up the crime-scene pictures. ‘What do you think of this?’
    ‘So spiteful to kill a child on a swing,’ said Clare, leaving the painful subject of Riedwaan’s broken family.
    ‘It looks like he was killed elsewhere; no blood in situ.’ Riedwaan’s attention was focused back on the soluble problem in front of him. ‘He was dead a good couple of days before he was dumped at the school. Maybe kept out beyond the fog belt, in the heat. The body was starting to smell bad,’ said Riedwaan, scanning through the faxed notes.
    ‘Why in a playground?’ mused Clare.
    ‘That’s the thing with nuts. It makes no sense unless you get inside their heads. Why put him on show a couple of days after he’s dead? What were they doing together all that time?’
    ‘The other two, were they also found near schools?’
    ‘No. Tamar has linked them because they were all head-shot wounds, same calibre gun. Intermediate range and similar victim profile. Ligatures or remnants of ligatures. And the timing, too – looks to her like there’s a pattern. A killing, then a cooling-off period.’
    ‘You think you have me stitched up then?’ Clare asked. The image of the dead boy had sapped the tentative spring sun of warmth, but she could not be sure that he was the source of her unease. She packed away the photographs and ushered Riedwaan to the front door.
    ‘Come on, Clare. You’re not going to say no. I’ll be there next week, when Phiri gets the paperwork done.’ Riedwaan, as