Birdseye Page 21

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Franco, supper was amazing,’ I said in a rush. I bent next to her chair and kissed her cheek. She patted my hand.

  ‘A pleasure, Bird, always a pleasure to feed you.’ Her laugh was as rich as her bolognese sauce. ‘Any time, you hear me? Don’t wait to be asked.’

  The same words she said whenever I ate there. As I had done ever since Rafi and I had sealed our friendship with a crumpled tissue and that smile in the mirror. ‘Two big pots and they’re always full of good food.’

  Paolo was waiting for me at the door. He swept it open and bowed. ‘After you, Miss Bird.’

  I scurried past. My mouth was dry.

  ‘Here she is,’ Paolo said. He stepped forward and ran his hands over the sleek red body of his bike.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ I said, gazing at the gleaming chrome and glossy paint-work. Anything not to have to look Paolo in the face, because if I did, I’d blush again, as red as his beloved new bike.

  ‘You need to put this on.’ Paolo handed me a helmet, black with a hooded cobra spitting on its side. ‘Here,’ he said, as I fumbled with the straps under my chin, ‘let me.’ I raised my face and let him adjust the straps so that the helmet fitted snugly. And still I hadn’t said a word.

  Paolo straddled the bike and I slipped on behind him, tucking my school skirt under my bum.

  ‘Must I do anything?’ I finally managed to mumble into his back.

  ‘Just lean when I do,’ Paolo said, then yelled as the bike roared alive, ‘and hang on.’

  So there I was, Bird, flying fast and true, my skirt lifted by the wind, a furious gladness in my heart. I was free to lean into the taut pliancy of his back, move as his bike did, from left to right, curling around corners, fast on the straight. Too fast, because we arrived at Marchbanks within minutes. Paolo stopped the bike and waited for me to clamber off. I unclipped the helmet, worried that that my hair was a mess, only too aware of my blue skirt and plain white blouse, untucked now at the waist, my short ankle socks and childish school shoes, my rucksack with the babyish badges pinned to the straps.

  ‘Good night,’ I said.

  ‘Good night, little Bird,’ said Paolo.

  ‘Thank you for the ride.’ My heart was still racing from the speed and the wind on my face, and the firm closeness of his body.

  And then, as I turned to open the gate and walk up the path, he called, ‘Wait.’

  I stopped.

  ‘What is your name?’ he asked. ‘I’ve only ever known you as Bird. You do have a real name?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Of course I do. It’s Amelia.’

  ‘Amelia.’ I watched the shape his mouth made as it said my name. ‘Am-elia,’ he rolled the word off his tongue again. ‘Such a pretty name … How did it turn into Bird?’

  ‘It’s a family name,’ I said. ‘It just sort of followed me to school.’

  ‘And you don’t mind?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t have much choice. It’s hard to change a nickname … Besides which,’ I added in an awkward rush, ‘I’ve got used to being called Bird. My mom says it was because I cheeped like a baby bird. Never caused any trouble. My dad calls me Bird too, but he’s always reminding me I have a strong real name. He chose it to make my grandfather happy. He’s mad on aviation – my grandfather I mean. I was named after Amelia Earhart. She was an aviatrix, a woman aviator. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. And then she disappeared …’

  I stopped. Why was I always doing this? Gabbling on and on. And about my stupid nickname of all things. I could have kicked myself. There was nothing I could do to show him how fascinating I was, not just his little sister’s dumb geeky friend.

  He was as close to me as we had been on his bike, only this time we were chest to chest, face to face. ‘Sweet little Bird,’ he said, and his face was moving down to mine and his eyes were closing and his head came down and his lips were on mine. Lip to lip, and mouth to open mouth, and then his tongue, soft, gentle and not all slobbery, or squishy and revolting, and no problem with the noses either. Just a perfect, perfect kiss.

  I didn’t want to open my eyes. I wanted to stand there in that moment for ever.

  Paolo stepped away with a smile. ‘Goodnight, Amelia.’ He fitted his helmet on his head, swung his leg over his bike, and left me staring after him as he gathered speed, rode down the hill and vanished from sight.

  Only my hand on the wooden gate felt real. I had to open it, and walk up the path and open the door, back into the life I led every day. And I did, but I didn’t walk. I soared.

  I didn’t see the curtain above me twitch back into place, and I didn’t see Ma Bess settle back in her chair with a grim smile, but that’s what must have happened because, as always, she could never allow something good to happen without injecting it with her special brand of poison.

  46

  So much for freedom, I scribbled the words as fast as I could, scoring the paper in my anger and haste. The rest of South Africa might be free but we’re sure as shit not.

  There were days when the only thing that made me feel better was running to the back garden where my tree stood waiting. I’d swarm up the ladder and climb to the highest branch and scream and scream and scream. That’s when I was glad that we lived in Harbiton where the southeaster whipped through the treetops and tore the words from my mouth and pulled them howling into its noise and bother. But this time, even being at the top of my tall tree couldn’t whip the anger out of me.

  The day after Paolo kissed me, I started my holiday job at the pharmacy. I’d already been given a Saturday morning job there, and Mr Barnes, the owner, had asked me if I’d also like to help out over the June holidays.

  Two days after that, I delivered Ma Bess’s lunch to her, a light snack. I put the tray down on the table next to her chair, and as I did, I saw that her curtains were open, wider than usual. Her chair was angled towards the window. I looked again and saw that she was looking over the path, and further, to the low garden gate.

  ‘You started your job then, girl?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I started yesterday.’

  ‘And you’ll be there the whole of the school holidays?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Not full time though. Only when Mr Barnes needs me.’ I passed her napkin. She took it, shook it out over her lap and reached for the Caesar salad.

  ‘You won’t have too much free time, I hope,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to have to watch you rubbing yourself up against boys down there. Like a cat on heat.’

  I hate her. I hate her! I screamed onto the page that night. I hate her!

  But I didn’t have too much time to dwell upon how much I hated my grandmother, because the next day Detective Ace arrived at the house.

  IV

  1

  The night Detective Ace came to tell us about you was an ordinary one. There were no dark clouds in the sky, no ominous rumbles of thunder. The wind didn’t howl; the sea, as I walked along it that day, was placid.

  But however normal the details of that day, I’ll always remember them. What I ate for breakfast (a hurried bowl of cornflakes because I was late for work), what I was wearing (old comfortable clothes, because Mr Barnes had asked me to help do a stocktake at the pharmacy), walking along the beach during my lunch hour and crunching on an early winter apple. I remember how dirty my hands were at the end of the day, how tired we all were after shifting stock and repacking shelves.

  We all called good night to each other and Mr Barnes gave me a lift home like he always does when we work late. So you see, I remember it all, as clearly as the day you first went missing. I even remember what I said to Mr Barnes as he drove up Hill Road.

  ‘That’s funny,’ I said, ‘there’s not usually this much traffic along here.’

  We were in the middle of a stream of minivans and cars crawling up the mountainside and I watched as they jousted for space on the narrow road, hooters barping furiously as they tried to overtake. As we drew closer, I saw
a police car parked outside Marchbanks. The blue lights weren’t flashing, but two people were waiting in the road near the gate, and one of them was Detective Ace. A large blue van with the name of a local television station emblazoned on its side tried to pull in, but he put up his hand to stop it and waved Mr Barnes into the space he had been keeping. Groups of reporters, microphones in hand, clustered on the pavement, trying to get as close to Marchbanks as possible.

  I knew then. Of course, I knew. But I didn’t want to yank out the frail shoot of hope that had lived in my heart for all those years. Because, while ‘missing’ may be a hard word, it is nothing like as hard as ‘dead’.

  Oh, I know that people talk about closure, that it’s better to know than not to know, but take it from me, the not-knowing still allows space for glimmers of possibility. Maybe they were snatched by someone who wanted children – someone who loved them, in a warped way … Maybe they ran away from their captor after they had been spirited across the seas … Maybe they were suffering from amnesia and one day they would remember who they were … Maybe … Maybe … Maybe … A decade’s worth of Maybes all ending in the unspoken yearning words: Maybe one day they will come home, too big for the boy-shaped gaps that have been waiting for them all these years.

  But now, as I stared through the car window at Detective Ace, the hard-slogging determined man who had never given up, who had followed every lead, no matter how slim or how improbable, I knew what he was coming to tell us. He was accompanied by a young black woman, neatly buttoned into her uniform. Her face was apprehensive, her eyes flicking from side to side. Detective Ace patted her on the shoulder and I knew then that she was new to all this – that this was probably the first time she’d had to break this kind of news.

  Mr Barnes knew too. There weren’t many people in Harbiton who weren’t familiar with the story of Oscar and Oliver, the Little Boys who never came back.

  ‘Are you all right, Amelia?’ he asked. ‘Would you like me to—’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. I just—’

  I opened the door of the car and scrambled out, a stupid thing to do, because one of the journalists called to another, ‘That’s her!’ and they surged towards me so that I had to step back, my thighs pressed against the car. Mr Barnes moved quickly for a man approaching seventy. He was out of his car in a flash.

  ‘Give the young lady some space, please,’ he called and moved rapidly to where I stood. He took an elbow and, as he did, I felt a hand on my other elbow – Detective Ace also knew how to move fast, ponderous though his body may have grown over the years.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Bird,’ he said. ‘I tried to get here before these vultures – but someone leaked it.’ He elbowed an eager journalist out of the way. ‘Get back, please stand back.’

  ‘Miss Little, Miss Little, over here please.’

  ‘Is it true—?’

  ‘We’ve heard their skulls—’

  Those words roared through my ears and crashed into my mind. And then, as though someone had placed a filter between me and the world, every thing became fuzzy and white.

  My legs moved to the front door, and it was only when I got there and felt both men trying to pry my hands free, that I realised I had them in a death grip.

  ‘Okay, Miss Bird?’ asked Detective Ace.

  I think I nodded.

  He lifted his hand to knock on the door.

  ‘A key. I have a key.’ My lips moved, and I heard the words come out in a slow slur.

  But before Detective Ace could knock, and before I could fumble in the pocket of my jeans for a key, Thelma was opening the door, and Annie was behind her, saying, ‘What’s going on, Thelma? What’s all this noise?’

  But then they looked at my face and they knew. We all did.

  Oscar and Oliver, our beloved boys, were dead.

  Annie stepped back, hand to her throat. Thelma covered her eyes. Light bulbs flashed behind us, and the next day the stricken faces of the two women made the front page of most of the national newspapers. But we didn’t see those for quite some time – we stayed in the house, emerging painfully from the cocoon of hope that had cushioned us for so long.

  Mr Barnes squeezed my hand and said good night. I turned and watched him walk down the path. More lights flashed, so my face also made it to a few front pages. All I could think of, as Mr Barnes walked away, was that he looked so normal. It had been such a normal day, how could it be ending like this? The young policewoman materialised at my side – Detective Ace called her Constable Radebe – and then he was talking to Annie and Thelma and we were all inside and Annie was screaming for Orville and he was thundering in from the darkroom, the colour sucked from his face. His mouth was wide open, but I couldn’t hear any words. We were all jammed up against each other in the hallway, Thelma and Detective Ace and his sidekick and Annie and Orville and me.

  I remember standing there, surrounded by bodies, held up by warmth and sound, thinking, I don’t want to move.

  2

  You were found in a cave in the mountains that embrace Harbiton. So close to us, all this time. Your murderer was no one we knew: a businessman who had come down from Joburg. His name was Dirk Stone. Normally he abducted children and killed them in the basement under his house.

  When Annie heard his name, she stepped back and covered her eyes. Orville just gripped her arm and pulled her down onto the sofa, slowly. The Freezer Killer? But what was he doing here? Orville sounded shattered, as if someone had told him something so terrible he couldn’t believe it could possibly, ever, be true.

  You had been tied to a tooth of rock that protruded from the cave wall. A rope had been flung around the rock once, and then twice. The police think the free end was wrapped around one small waist, tied in a complicated knot, and then wrapped around another.

  I have learned a great deal about serial killers since then, and most of what you read about them in crime novels is true. They do like to follow the same procedure, they do like to take trophies from their kills, or perform rituals with them, and the time that elapses between one kill and the next does get shorter and shorter. They like to taunt the police if they feel their handiwork is not being appreciated. Your killer hadn’t reached the last stage, though. He was caught mid-stride, before he had completed his life’s work. They found the remains of several small children, girls and boys, under his house. Stored in an industrial refrigeration unit, a large boxlike chest that ran at ultracold temperatures.

  It was because of the freezer that they found him. It was installed in his basement, a room he had extended underground. Do you know how many small bodies can be stacked into one industrial storage unit? The answer is several. Especially if they are under the age of twelve – Mr Stone didn’t like them any older than that – and are carefully stacked, head to toe.

  Do you know how easy it is to find children, pick them up, and bring them home? You can find them on the streets, hungry and cold, late at night. You can find them playing in parks, while the au pairs who are supposed to be looking after them are busy talking to each other. You can find them in the restrooms of cinemas, on large school outings to the museum. Or you can find them on a mountain slope. A place they may very well have been forbidden to go up to alone.

  3

  We learned so much. And each revelation drove home the horror. Detective Ace told us how Dirk Stone had confessed, from prison, to two additional murders. He had never been a suspect in your disappearance. But we can’t blame anyone for that. His other kills were local, the children snatched from within a fifty-kilometre radius of his home. And Cape Town is a long, long way from Johannesburg.

  Detective Ace looked older, more tired, and I realised with a shock that it had been years since we’d last seen him. Years since there’d been a lead, a whiff of hope that Oz and Ollie might still be alive. His voice was still deep and his eyes as kind.

  ‘Do you remember Jacob de Kok, Miss Bird?’ he asked.

  I nodded. Of cours
e I did, the handsome one who had put Ma Bess at the end of the list.

  ‘He transferred to Joburg shortly after the boys went missing. And then, ironically as it turns out, he was first on the scene when they were called in to Stone’s house. He made the arrest. He rose up the ranks very quickly after that. He’s Captain de Kok now and he’s back on the case up there. I spoke to him before I came here, got all the information I could for you. About Dirk Stone, more than anything. According to De Kok, Stone is obsessed by numbers.’

  ‘What you mean, numbers?’ Annie asked.

  Detective Ace was reluctant to speak. ‘He can’t bear the thought of not being credited for Oscar and Oliver,’ he said finally. ‘That, more than anything, is eating him up. He’d killed thirty-four, you see, by the time he was caught.’

  The room filled with a horrified silence.

  ‘And Oz and Ollie—’ I said.

  ‘Yes, they make thirty-six. There’s more to tell you, but we can leave it here if you want to.’

  ‘I think it’s best we hear everything,’ Orville said. He turned to Annie. ‘We can listen to what Marius has to say and then it’s over, darling.’

  ‘All right.’ Annie gripped his hand.

  ‘Miss Bird?’ Detective Ace looked at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, before Annie or Orville could say otherwise.

  ‘Okay then.’ He drew two deep breaths and puffed them out, like a boxer warming up for a fight. ‘The best way to look at Stone is on the timeline of his activities. We know most of what he did and when, so I’ll be able to let you know how Oliver and Oscar fitted in. Will that be okay?’

  I nodded and he continued. ‘This is what I can tell you. We now know that Stone killed the boys in 1985, but he only confessed to their murders ten years later, four years after he was arrested for his other crimes. He’s talked, a bit, but he won’t say why he waited so long to tell us about them. His first kill was 1971, so by the time he was arrested he’d been active for twenty years. The boys’ deaths happened fourteen years into what he calls his “Life Work”.’