Like Clockwork Read Online Free PDF Page A

made it impossible to either charge or fire Faizal. His maverick justice had made him a community hero, so the best they could do was to shunt him sideways. He was posted to Sea Point, given a desk job and a pile of papers to shuffle. It was designed to make him fail – and he had. Shazia had begged him to leave the force but he refused. She then approached the Canadian embassy, filled in the form, and was gone. Just before the plane swallowed them, Yasmin had turned to wave at where she guessed he would be watching. A small, dark girl with a pink bag and memories Canadian children would not understand. He thought of calling Yasmin, but she would be asleep in Toronto. Her mother – still his wife, damn it – would fumble for her alarm clock, smoothingher long twist of black hair on top of her head. Unless she had since cut it, of course.
    Riedwaan took a sip of his coffee. It was cold and bitter. He turned his attention back to the manila folder in front of him. He spread out the photographs that Riaan had taken at the crime scene. His stomach knotted. He couldn’t save this girl, but he was going to make sure that whoever had done this to her paid in full. Then he thumbed a different number into his phone, imagining the rings slicing through the silence. Clare picked up her phone. She was startled, he could tell – she’d have been busy working, and had obviously forgotten to switch the phone off.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, annoyed with herself for answering.
    ‘Clare, it’s Riedwaan.’ He paused, listening to her silence. His image of her was vivid – at her desk, papers, books, notes spread around her, laptop open, thick hair snaking between her sharp shoulder blades. Wing bones, she called them.
    ‘Hello,’ she said. What else was there to say?
    ‘I have the preliminary report on that girl you called me about. I thought you might like to have a look.’ Riedwaan waited.
    ‘Okay,’ Clare said. She wanted to ask why, but didn’t. That would come later. ‘New York Bagel, at six.’ She hung up and took a deep breath. Thinking of him made her throat tighten. Talking to him made the skin around her nipples taut. If she ignored the feeling, she told herself, it would go away. She would meet him for coffee. He would slip her the autopsy report, some phone numbers, and that would be it. Yes, she told herself. That is what would happen. She would gather up the papers, do some interviews, send him the transcripts, give her opinion on who had committed the murder, Riedwaan would catch the killer, and that would be that. Clare reactivated her sleeping laptop. She needed a few more hoursbefore her trafficking proposal would be ready to send. She would fit Riedwaan into the interstices of her busy working days as she did sleeping and running. This time, though, she would keep a proper perspective.
    It was much later when her eyes drifted from her screen, her ears tuning out the hiss of her computer finding an Internet connection. Drifts of street rubbish eddied upwards, and dropped again. Her email sent, she shut down her computer. She decided to walk. It would give her time to compose herself before she saw him. She walked briskly to keep warm, the sky turning bleak as the sun set.

6
     
    The restaurant Clare had chosen was a determined outpost in a creeping strip of hostess bars, peepshows and poolrooms. Muscled men leaned on barstools at the entrances of the strip clubs and adult entertainment centres with their blackened windows. Furtive, part-time street prostitutes, full-time junkies, loitered inside doorways, smoking, waiting. Riedwaan watched through the window. He saw a girl he did not recognise dart towards a potential customer. She looked fifteen under her amateur make-up. He knew there would be track marks creeping from the fold inside the elbow towards her wrist. The girl recoiled when the man spat at her. Riedwaan looked at his watch. Six o’clock. Clare was always on time. He looked down Main Road and