"To photograph a body that coincides with another email."
The ruby acrylic fingernail I recovered from Kotze Street lies on the dashboard. The thread that leads away from it is black and withered, but still traceable, if a vision dream of yellow sand dunes gives you a hint about where to start.
"You got a killer sending you emails? Do you know him personally? Some kind of gloating thing? They do that, right? Serial killers?"
"I don't know who the killer is. I think it's his victims sending me messages."
"But they're dead?"
"Exactly."
"Okay, whatever." Dave slumps back into his seat, fiddling with his camera.
I drive out south to where the last of the mine dumps are sulphur-coloured artificial hills, laid waste by the ravages of weather and reprocessing, shored up with scrubby grass and eucalyptus trees. Ugly valleys have been gouged out and trucked away by the ton to sift out the last scraps of gold the mining companies missed the first time round. Maybe it's appropriate that eGoli eGoli, place of gold, should be self-cannibalising.
I pull off onto a dirt road lined with straggly trees and drive for exactly 3.8 kays. I measured the distance on my way back. As we get out of the car, a vicious little wind kicks up gritty yellow dust and stirs the trees to a disquieting susurrus. I haul the heavy blanket off the back seat and throw it over the barbed-wire fence. This time, I've come prepared, after shredding my jeans on my earlier foray. It was only after I got home that I noticed the gash in my pants, the dried blood on my leg.
"This is trespassing," Dave says as I lift Sloth over the fence.
"Don't worry. I was here earlier. It doesn't count as trespassing the second time round." I hold the ruby fingernail gently cupped in my hand. The thread is thicker now. We're close.
We scramble up the slope of the dump, the fine sand swallowing our feet to the ankle with every step. Away from the shelter of the trees, the wind is even more capricious. Eddies of dust whip and spiral around us, sandblasting exposed skin. I pull my hoodie up over Sloth, but it offers only scant protection. He ducks his head behind my neck and squeezes his eyes shut.
"Shit," Dave says. "I don't have the right lens protection for this."
"Here." I was hoping it wouldn't feel as bad the second time round. But the same mix of nausea and dread rises in the back of my throat. Dave raises his camera automatically and then lowers it again without taking a shot. "How did you find this?"
"It sort of found me."
The Sparrow boy/girl is sprawled akimbo on the sand, looking blankly up at the sky. There is dust embedded in every hollow and fold of her body, in the scooped palm of her hand, banked up against her lower eyelids like unshed tears, encrusted in the bloody gashes over her arms and legs and stomach and head. Her nails are broken, as if she'd tried to defend herself. Acrylic. Ruby-red with sequins. They must have matched her shoes.
Dave opens his mouth and closes it again. There's nothing to say. He takes cover behind the lens. The wounds are approximately three inches long, gaping like red mouths. It's hard work to hack someone to death. Ask the Hutu. Whoever did this had a lot of enthusiasm for the job.
"Notice anything missing?" I say as he stops to switch to a new memory card.
"I No. I don't know. Is Is there something missing? Wait. There's not much blood. Which might mean she was killed somewhere else." there something missing? Wait. There's not much blood. Which might mean she was killed somewhere else."
"And her animal isn't here."
"How do you know she had an animal?"
"She worked my street. It was a Sparrow."
"A Sparrow? That's tiny. You could miss that easily."
"Trust me. It's not here." I know this because I have searched this dune sideways and backwards for the corpse of a small brown bird with matchstick legs clenched up under its breast. But also because I can feel it. "It's lost."
When the cops finally rock up, only an hour and a half after I call them, they are pissy. It's the dust and the wind and the dead boy/girl staring up into the sky as if she's cloud-watching. It's the paperwork. The evidence. It's the fact that I'm involved at all.
They send me up to the interrogation room for another two-hour session with the good Inspector Tshabalala. This time she cuts straight to the chase.
"How did you know where to find the body?"
"It's in my file. My shavi shavi"
"Your shavi shavi is finding lost things." is finding lost things."
"And I found found her body." her body."
"How?" she presses.
"I followed a connection."
"How did you know the victim?"
"I didn't. I'd seen her on the street. She is, was, lekgosha lekgosha. A sex-worker. But I don't think it was a client who did this."
"You don't think think? Were you involved with the killing?"
"No."
"Where were you on the morning of Tuesday 22nd March?"
"Isn't that a different interrogation?"
"You tell me. Where were you?"
"As I said before, at the time Mrs Luditsky was stabbed
to death, I was at home in my flat. Apartment 611, Elysium Heights, Zoo City, Hillbrow. Postal code 2038. With my boyfriend Benoit Bocanga, who I believe has made a statement corroborating such."
"Benoit Bocanga. We've been reviewing his papers."
"Which are in order."
"But his refugee status application is due for renewal."
"If you want to blackmail someone, blackmail me. I'm sure you can dig up something."
"Indeed." She changes tack. "Ms December. You and your magical shavi shavi have been peripherally involved in two murders in the last week. How would you explain that?" have been peripherally involved in two murders in the last week. How would you explain that?"
"Phenomenally bad luck, Inspector."
"Do you own any knives?"
"I have a kitchen. It's small and dirty, but it does come equipped with assorted cutlery."
"Can we search your domicile?"
"You'll need a warrant."