“How long have you been working in Durban?” he asked.
She looked around his flat as she answered. “Oh, two years now. I work as a bookkeeper for De Croes and Whitman, auditors here in Musgrave, but I grew up in Howick.”
He nodded.
“You know it?” she asked.
“A little,” he told her. “I lived in Boston for a while.”
“Really?” she asked, glancing back at him. “Why did you leave?”
He didn’t know her well enough to answer and he was acutely aware of the photographs watching him from the bookshelf. One was of his daughter, Janey. The other was of May, his previous partner. She had been offered a chance in a lifetime to go back to Johannesburg and work for the Daily Sun as a sub-editor. She had asked him to go with her, but he couldn’t. Not back there. He had stayed in Boston for a while, struggling with his loneliness until his friends Anri and Mark had also left. Not long after he had rescued the couple, they had bought a farm in the Free State, deciding to move closer to one of their daughters, who was getting married. Inga had gone too, the taxi driver who had teamed up with David to save the town, expanding his taxi service to Richards Bay. Even Jones had left, Sergeant Jones now, promoted and transferred to Harrismith. It had taken David another two months to decide that Boston was too small for him. He had moved to Durban, bought the flat and started his transport company. But the loneliness was still there.
He looked across at Kathy. She was a very good-looking woman, and in hindsight he was grateful he hadn’t been able to find a driver to deliver the first consignment of machinery parts to the Umvoti Mill. He admired her long fawn-coloured hair, which hung straight and heavy to cup her face, and her full and slightly upturned lips.
“I apologise. I didn’t mean to pry,” Kathy said, looking away from his gaze.
He realised he had been staring and had taken too long to answer. “No,” he told her hurriedly. “It’s not that, it’s just—”
Her cellphone began ringing. “Sorry,” she said. “Do you mind if I take this?”
“Not at all,” David said. He turned away, relieved, and began pouring the hot water into the mugs, trying not to listen to her conversation.
“Hello?”
He dug in a drawer for a teaspoon.
“What?”
He gave the first coffee a stir and then started on the second.
“No!”
He turned, sensing something was out of place.
“That can’t be!” Kathy said.
David put the teaspoon down. Kathy had gone pale, and for a moment he thought she was going to faint again. But she held on to the phone, nodding now, as if taking instructions from someone on the other side.
“All right,” she whispered. “I will. I’ll be there now.”
He watched her as she disconnected, her hand dropping heavily to her side, the phone still in her grip.
“Is everything all right?” he asked her carefully.
Kathy just stared at him.
“Kathy?” he prompted.
“It’s Peter,” she eventually told him. “He’s dead.”
CHAPTER SIX
David didn’t feel right letting Kathy drive to Peter Calder’s house in the state she was in, so he took her in his Land Rover. Kathy directed him in monosyllables above the noisy engine and the creaking chassis. They had to slow as they approached the house, to avoid the police cars, fire trucks, an ambulance and a throng of people milling in the road.
David found a place to park, helped Kathy out of the car and then walked her towards Peter’s house. It stood in a quiet lane at the top of Ridge Road. The garden had been a mass of indigenous palms and ferns and the lawn was once smooth and smartly tended until the large fire engine had parked on it and sunk its wheels deep into the grass.
David could smell the fire or rather what was left of it. Peter’s house had literally been burnt to the ground. David had managed to get that much from Kathy as he drove, but he was unprepared for the destruction as they approached the police tape that cordoned off the front yard.
Lights had been erected around the property in the early-evening darkness, but they could still see the wisps of smoke and dust that hung lazily over the skeleton of the house. Firemen and police moved slowly among the ruins, and the sharp smell of scorched wreckage worsened as they approached.
They ducked under the police tape, Kathy looking for someone as they made their way across the soggy lawn.
“Kathy?” An elderly man standing with a pair of plain-clothes policemen had called out to her. The shorter of the two policemen, an older Indian man, gently held the man back as he tried to leave and come over. The policemen conferred briefly and then the taller officer, a man of about thirty-five in a dark-grey suit and black tie, walked towards them.
“Ms Barnett?”
Kathy took a breath and nodded. The policeman beckoned politely for her to advance. David started forward with her, only to be stopped.
“We’re together,” Kathy told the policeman.
“Really?” the officer said, lifting an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Kathy said, taking David’s elbow as a support. They walked ahead of the policeman to where the other officer waited with the older man. Kathy let go of David’s arm and wrapped her arms around the older man, crying into his shoulder. The police let her be, watching awkwardly.
David assumed the man was Peter Calder’s father. They looked similar; the man’s thin hair was still tinged with blond and he had a grey moustache that echoed Peter’s beard. He was shaking, his hands trembling as he held Kathy. From shock, David suspected. Or something else.
“Andrew,” Kathy whispered as she got herself under control. “I’m so sorry.”
Andrew Calder nodded, his chin quivering as he tried to manage his emotions. “They want me to identify the body,” he told her, a haunted look in his eyes. “I don’t think I can.”
It was something else, David realised; it was dread. He knew what the man was going through. On top of the anguish he must be feeling at the loss of a son, he now had to face the horror of how he had died, the knowledge that he would have to live with the image of his son’s final suffering. David had felt it all with his own daughter.
He felt sorry for the old man and glanced away to avoid his inconsolable expression. He found the shorter police officer watching him. The man held out his hand. “I’m Inspector Govender; this is my partner, Sergeant van Heerden.”
“David Roth,” came David’s automatic reply as he shook Govender’s hand.
Inspector Govender was wearing a light-brown suit and blue tie and was close to retirement age, his eyes old and weary from seeing it all. David was instantly cautious of him, of the man’s inner stillness that warned of a quick intelligence. Van Heerden, the younger officer, reminded David of a hungry guard dog whose bone had just been stolen. There was a restless energy there, an impatient desire to find the truth, no matter what.
“I understand you drove Ms Barnett here?” Inspector Govender broke in. “Thank you.”
David nodded.
“I’m glad you’ve come as well,” the inspector said. “We were hoping to talk to as many colleagues of Peter Calder’s as we could.”
“I