Читать книгу Blood at Bay - Sue Rabie - Страница 10

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 wasn’t a colleague of Peter’s,” David told them carefully. “I only met him yesterday.”

The inspector watched him with unreadable eyes. “Really?” he said, then looked at Andrew Calder, who was now holding on to Kathy as if to steady himself.

“Yes,” David replied, “at the Umvoti Sugar Mill. He and Ms Barnett were auditing the mill’s books. I was delivering a load of machine parts.”

“So you’d recognise Peter Calder if you saw him?”

David tilted his head in question. “Yes.” He nodded. “I’d recognise him.”

Inspector Govender turned to his partner, a silent question behind his tired eyes. David saw the look and didn’t like where it was going, but he also knew he couldn’t let Andrew Calder identify his son’s body. It wouldn’t be right.

“You need the relative’s consent,” he told the policeman with a lowered voice. Inspector Govender’s eyebrows went up. He was surprised either because David had understood the relevance of his question so soon or because David knew they had to get permission from the next of kin. He knew Andrew Calder might not stand up to the grisly sight of his son’s body.

Govender turned to Andrew Calder. “Mr Calder?” he started gently. “With your permission, we would like Mr Roth to identify the body. If you don’t mind, sir?”

Andrew Calder blinked from Govender to stare at David. “You know … my son?” he asked shakily.

David nodded. “I did, Mr Calder,” he said. “I met him at work.” It was the truth, but David still saw the desperation in the man’s face. He imagined Andrew Calder’s need to see his son one last time, just to make sure, battling with the fear of facing reality, the fear of seeing his son’s gruesome remains, of living with that image.

David tried another tactic. “Could you take care of Kathy?” he asked calmly. “While I go with the police?”

Andrew Calder’s shoulders sagged. He nodded, slipping his arm around Kathy’s waist. “I will,” he said, his eyes moistening. He nodded. “Thank you.”

Govender motioned to his sergeant. “Sergeant, if you wouldn’t mind keeping Ms Barnett and Mr Calder company here?”

The sergeant nodded in reply. David steeled himself inwardly and then turned as Kathy put a hand on his arm. “It’s all right,” he told her. “I’ll just be gone a couple of minutes.”

Kathy nodded. She stood there anxiously, wiping her cheek with one hand. Her make-up was running. She looked gorgeous.

David walked off after Inspector Govender, Sergeant van Heerden staying behind with Kathy and Mr Calder, who were holding each other for support as they watched him leave.

Inspector Govender led David towards the house. The once neat home was now a smouldering wreckage in the soggy dirt that firemen were still dousing with water. The aftermath of the fire was thick in the back of David’s throat, a sweet cloying smell lingering there too. He recognised the smell. Burnt human remains. Inspector Govender made towards two men wearing hard hats and yellow fireproof coats who were packing unidentified charred items into plastic bags. They might have been arson inspectors, but when the inspector asked them for their hard hats, both men passed them over.

Govender returned, handing one to David “Wear this,” were the instructions.

David complied and followed the inspector, who made his way up the stairs and onto the veranda that had once wrapped around Peter’s house.

David ducked cautiously under the charred doorframe as he entered what had once been the hall. There was no roof, only blackened walls reaching up to where the ceiling had been, then bare skeletons of scorched roof bracings overhead. He was careful where he put his feet among the wet debris that had fallen onto the floor. There were ceiling boards, tiles, insulation and a hallway closet, partly charred and lying at an angle against the wall.

They walked past a section of the house that was so badly burnt that David couldn’t identify it. The next room must have been Peter’s office – a crumbled desk in a corner, the remains of bookshelves along a wall. They carried on, David following slowly and stepping around two firemen who were hacking with axes as they tried to get to smouldering embers beneath a heap of still smoking furniture and collapsed roof beams.

“Gentlemen?” Inspector Govender called across to a group of men standing at the furthermost section of the house. It was Peter’s bedroom, from what David could see, and the men were paramedics. “A moment please,” Govender requested.

They looked at David before filing silently out of the room.

“Doc, could you stay?”

A tall, elderly man in a white lab coat nodded and remained behind.

Govender walked across to the debris-cluttered room and its charred en suite bathroom. Peter’s bedroom had been badly ravaged. The king-sized double bed was barely intact; only the wrought-iron frame still stood. The bedside tables were destroyed, as was the flat-screen TV which had hung against the opposite wall, the plastic half-molten onto a burnt-out chest of drawers.

David followed Inspector Govender into the room and towards the bed. The iron bed frame had been screening it from the door, but as Govender led him around the bed David saw the body. It was encased in a black body bag, the zip of the upper section undone and Peter’s face uncovered.

“Is this Peter Calder, Mr Roth?” Inspector Govender asked.

It did not matter how much death David had seen, or how many bodies he had come across in his years of practising medicine, he still barely managed to hold it together as he looked at the remains.

They were almost unrecognisable; one side of Peter’s face now only glistening black and red meat. The flesh had fallen away from the left cheek, leaving a partial glimpse of teeth and jawbone along that side. David focused on the right side of the face, on the remains of the blond beard partly burnt away, on the single staring blue eye.

It was Peter Calder.

“Yes,” he managed to reply. “That’s Peter.”

Inspector Govender nodded at the tall doctor standing with them. The doctor wrote something down on his clipboard.

David kept staring at Peter’s face. He was remembering the last time he had seen the man. It had been in Dalton. At the Umvoti Sugar Mill. At another death.

And then David remembered the piece of paper.