The Lazarus Effect (13 page)

‘Where do we start?’ Chlöe asked as she and Vee climbed into her VW Polo.

Vee scratched her nose. Two strike-outs at Venter’s Auto: neither of the eponymous owners was present to give her the time of day. She’d let it slide for now. Ashwin Venter would surface eventually, and when he did she would be there to roast his slippery behind. It was Friday – no harm in switching to go-slow mode for the rest of the day. Chlöe was aglow after her first interview with Daniels and chomping at the bit to tackle Serena Fourie on her own. Vee wanted to ease her in; best not to push it.

‘You know what, let’s handle your errands first, whatever they are. I doubt Serena is on campus right now, and if she is she’s probably in a lecture.’

Chlöe twitched and fidgeted. ‘Forget I mentioned that. My stuff’s not urgent at all. Let’s try to catch her now before she disappears for an early weekend. You know what students are like.’ She started the engine. The radio blasted on, staccato rhymes backed by a crunk beat rattling the doors. She fiddled the dial to low.

‘Lil Wayne?’ Vee turned the CD case over several times and squinted at Chlöe. ‘You look more like a Taylor Swift typa gal.’

‘White people can’t love hip-hop, ha ha.’ Shaking her head, Chlöe tucked a curl behind an ear and backed out of the underground lot. ‘How prejudiced of you, bosslady. I’m shocked.’

‘Just drive,’ Vee chuckled, reclining the seat.
Bosslady
. It brought to mind a buxom authority figure dressed in colourful
lappa
, multitasking like an octopus and beating people’s ears with wooden spoons when they dared to idle in her presence. Had a nice ring to it. She ought to act more like it, now that she had her own personal slave.

‘What now?’ Vee swirled her tongue around the Steers vanilla cone and stared down the street. There was no ‘what now’ that she could think of.

They were on University of Cape Town’s Lower Campus, Tugwell residence. On the other side of the road, déjà vu to the scene outside Rosie’s school. Another group of girls, older this time, less awkward, or better at pretending not to be. Far brighter feathers on these birds; the confines of school uniform were buried in their nightmares.

‘Pink tights in the twenty-first century. Booty hanging out of ripped jeans. Ugh, it’s like the sidewalk threw up a fruit salad,’ Chlöe drawled. ‘Can’t believe I was ever that duh. What d’you call a display of youth and hotness that no one cares to see?’

‘Unrepentant foxismonitism.’

Chlöe looked at Vee long and hard. ‘Rhetorical question, but okay. Show-off.’

Vee shrugged and turned her attention back across the street. The foxes shared a laugh as they waited for the campus shuttle service, passing a one-litre Coke between them. One of them was trying too hard to come off casual and upbeat. Serena Fourie was a poor actress and looked visibly shaken.

‘She won’t talk to us,’ Chlöe said.

‘She will. Give it a minute,’ Vee replied. ‘It’s been, what,’ she checked her watch, ‘fifteen minutes since I tried to corner her and she blew me off. She’s rattled
and
she has no idea I’m still around. Let it soak in.’

‘Then what? You planning to make me wait in the car again while you go over there and snatch her out of the group, or hang around till she comes back from wherever she’s going now and ambush her outside her room? I mean, we can’t just faff around here all day.’

‘Shhh.’ Vee waved Chlöe quiet.

Earlier, when she’d walked up to Serena as she came out of her residence hall and tried to massage her into answering a few questions, two things were clear during their brief exchange. One, that Serena had been genuinely caught off guard. Nothing in her manner suggested that Rosie had breathed a word to her about Vee and their encounter. Two, that Serena’s body language ran several shades deeper than skittish – she was frightened, and not just a little. Serena was prissy and cautious: her ponytail was too severe, she was dressed for the rare burst of sunshine yet still had a cardigan in case the weather flipped again; she wiped
the mouth of the Coke bottle with a tissue every time it came around to her for a swig. Serena Fourie was the type to consider all surprises a slap in the face. She was thinking, and thinking fast. If she had anything to defend – or hide, for that matter – they had to act before she regrouped.

‘Hide.’

Chlöe scrunched her nose. ‘What?’

‘Hide, or hiding, is what I’m going to do. Not you – you stay put,’ Vee said, dropping to a crouch behind the Polo’s bonnet. ‘She never saw us together so it’s perfect. Now, look over there and tell me what you see.’

‘Uhhh. Four girls … terrible fashion sense, very troubled hair. They’ve got satchels and books, they’re laughing, pretending they’re not checking out those guys standing–’

‘Not what’s in front of you, what you
see
. What kind of girls are you looking at? What stands out about the picture?’

‘I don’t get it,’ Chlöe said, after a long pause.

‘Four girls, yes, but what flavour? Three vanillas, one …?’

‘Café latte?’

Vee flipped a thumbs-up. Maybe Adele’s snide observations had some weight to them.
Ian thinks he’s better than his upbringing … those kids were raised to respect only one side of their background
. Meaning, by heavy inference, the side that wasn’t coloured. Every friend Vee had seen Rosie with was white. Coincidence, maybe, but her high school had a diverse profile. Why then, didn’t she hang out with a more mixed group of people? Watching Serena with her posse made Vee wonder if she’d found a nugget to mine.

‘No offence, bosslady, but either you’re mentally unstable or
really
racist,’ Chlöe said, leaning over the hood to talk to Vee. ‘Having white friends doesn’t mean she’s any more likely to open up to me than to you. That’s ridiculous. This is the new Mzansi, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Then hustle over there and prove me wrong. I bet you a hundred rand you can get her to meet us … you … somewhere we can talk.’

‘What angle could I
possibly
deploy that you haven’t already?’

‘You’re a smart girl, Bishop. Surprise me. Hundred bucks.’ Vee pulled up her trouser legs and got comfortable with her ice cream on the pavement.

‘I take it you’re both feeling terribly clever and pleased with yourselves right now?’ Serena glared.

Chlöe shifted in her seat and muttered an apology under her breath. Across the table, Vee’s smugness was in high beam. The trio took up a booth in a campus bistro, slow on an afternoon that opened onto a Friday night.

Vee gloated in silence. Serena had followed the rap-loving redhead like a lamb, giving Vee the opportunity to sidle up minutes later and ‘bump into them’.

Other than winning the bet, there was little to rejoice over, for Serena was proving the antithesis of her awkward younger sister. After five minutes of empty talk and stonewalling, it was clear she was the spokesperson for the Fourie offspring. If Serena wasn’t already using her abilities of deflecting, obfuscating and
flat-out lying to her advantage in her law studies, then she wouldn’t be worth her salt as an attorney in years to come. Because lying she was. She kept an eerily cool head for a girl so young but there was a lie in the mix, and she wasn’t giving away specifics to trip herself up.

‘None of what I, or any member of my family, have to say has any relevance whatsoever to what happened to Jacqui. If at all something has happened to her, which you or the police have no proof of.’

‘Relax, Serena. We’re having a normal conversation.’ Vee shook her head like she was appalled.

‘You have absolutely no right to harass us this way.’

‘This isn’t harassment. We simply need information, backstory, a quote or two. The family’s always the best source to approach. Why not help us out?’ Chlöe said.

Now for bad cop. ‘Just information,’ Vee reiterated, hardening her eyes. ‘How can we be fair and objective if we go to print without the family’s viewpoint, without allowing them to tell their side of the story? This is your chance to make sure that happens.’

‘I don’t give a damn what you write.’

‘Ah, then, I guess you don’t give a damn about what became of your sister.’

Serena’s eyes lit.
Fuck off
.

Vee waited for her to hurl the insult in her face and nothing came. Serena’s eyes screamed it and her mouth twisted furiously with a desperate need to do the same, but she couldn’t bring
herself to surrender. Vee didn’t blame her. It would be a travesty hearing expletives come out of a mouth that pretty.

‘I do give a damn! I
loved
Jacqui. We all did!’ Chin trembling, Serena glared at the wall and absently swept her hair over one shoulder. It had likely taken ages to blow-dry to a silky fall of burnt umber, and the ends wisped into sweet curls. Vee felt sorry for poor, gauche Rosie. Next to her sister, she probably resembled her father in a bad weave.

‘Then?’ Vee shrugged like it was a no-brainer. ‘We’re here to respect whatever you can share with us, and it’ll go a long way.’

Serena’s throat worked, her eyelids flickering at the appeal a less stressful option held. It was easy to guess what the thoughts whizzing inside her brain were: the press were relentless and vicious, and once a stench got up their nose, they’d follow at a snarl until they dug up an entire cemetery looking for buried bodies. On the other hand, willingness to cooperate had its merits.

Serena mulled it over and shook her head. ‘No. Sorry. Have nothing to add to what you already know, and I doubt anyone else in my family can.’ Serena grabbed her tote and got up. The only time her cool slipped was when she turned and added: ‘If you have another story, follow that and let this go. Please.’

‘
This
was your secret errand?’ Vee gaped. The only word befitting the house in front of her was ‘mansion’. The Cape Dutch-style home was concealed from view by a tidy cluster of oak trees, their new spring leaves popping in. The skirts of the lawn were plush and verdant. A cobbled spine of a walkway snaked up to
a veranda creeping with vine and rustic appeal. Vee resisted the urge to press her nose through the wrought-iron bars of the gate and beg the residents within for a crust of bread and a farthing.

‘
This
is your house?’ she spluttered. ‘Why the hell are you doing this job if you live like this? You’re out of your mind.’

‘How do you know I don’t need it?’

Vee jabbed a finger at the house. ‘Bish, please.’

Chlöe groaned long and loud. ‘I’m not trying to prove anything, all right? This is not my home any more. Trust me, it’s a really long story. Just picking up a few things and we’ll be out of here.’ Chlöe went back to pressing the intercom buzzer over and over.

‘And who’s that?’ Vee asked. A tall, light-haired man strolled down the drive towards them.

‘My older brother, Jasper.’

Vee snorted.

‘Yes, yes, I know, Jasper Cole … Chlöe Jasmine … we’re rich and white. Sue me.’ Chlöe put a hand on her hip and pulled a pout Vee would come to know with great affection. ‘This isn’t as simple as it looks. Please,
please
, can you wait in the car? I won’t be longer than ten minutes, promise.’

Vee put her hands up and kicked rocks. Drama download for the work week was over. Bring on the weekend.

The teenager’s skull smashed into the metal grate. The impact caused the foci of cracks in the bone to splay into hairline fractures. As sewer water emptied out of the underground pipe, dead weight stayed behind: garbage, driftwood, the carcasses of pigeons and one unfortunate cat. On a cement level close to the Black River and the N2 highway, the battered skeleton finally came to rest. Hours passed in a silence broken only by the chatter of vermin. Once again, the surface of the remains began to dry.

Skeletonisation, the decomposition of soft tissue that leaves behind only bone material, is a sure and steady process dependent on temperature, moisture and the action of micro-organisms. If a dead body is left undisturbed. The traveller in the drainpipe was up against much more than structural damage. Its early stages of putrefaction, the process in which the body disintegrates on a molecular and physical level, had begun in a very dry, aerated setting. Due to the constant blast of air rushing past it for several months, the usual destruction caused by bacteria had been impeded. Instead, mummification had begun. Skin and muscle that should have rotted away desiccated into a leathery parchment that hugged the bones. After being submerged for
days, the remains were somewhat rehydrated, and the hitchhiking microbes on its surface resumed their busy task.

A rat wandered close for a nibble, flinched and pushed off, disgusted by the tough flesh and layer of dark slime covering the corpse. Some things even rats won’t do.

Years killed love.

No one ever imagined it happening to their relationship, yet it happened far too often. Maybe time annihilated objectivity, too, for surely not all or even half of married couples were always unhappy. Carina Fourie couldn’t care less. If the years had turned her into a graceless bitch, then so be it. She was willing to admit to her part in the saga. If she was a hag, then she had a fine accomplice in her spouse. Ian had a heavy hand when it came to bludgeoning their marriage, but again, she was also responsible. When had she stopped being a supple, fresh-faced young woman who took on life with zest, career with resolve and men with a wanton sparkle in her eye? At forty-seven she was no spring chicken, but by no definition was she washed-up. So when, exactly, had the apathy set in? When had the naked body of a man, her own man, in good shape and appealing to any red-blooded woman, become the pathetic shape of another human being, unalluring?

Since I lost my son. Since
we
lost
our
son and this man I call my husband refused to look me in my face and tell me anything but lies
.

‘What’re you thinking, Carina?’ Ian moved around the bedroom with the easy prowl of a man in comforting, familiar surroundings.
Comfort he had dedicated intellect and sweat to providing for them, but familiarity he was drifting farther away from on a daily basis.

‘You know how much I hate that question.’

A three-piece suit lay on the bed next to her jade silk gown. He leaned over and peeled away the white starched shirt, not bothering as the towel gradually loosened around his waist. Ian had hardly bothered to cover his nakedness in the fresher days of their union. It used to titillate her senseless the way he used to emerge from a shower, tall, brown and glistening. Spread himself along the mattress to air-dry, waiting with a knowing smile for his European temptress to lust him up. To moisten her lips and lashes and face with the droplets on his skin–

That woman was dead. Carina put her powder brush down, deciding to forgo any make-up tonight. Another thing she needn’t feel obliged to care about – being sexy, licking dew off horny husbands, or anything else that fell inside that wide circle. She wasn’t worried that there might be another pair of willing lips seeing to Ian’s dermis outside the confines of their bedroom. There could be one; there might be many; there may be none. There had been Adele, and that was all that would ever matter.

His hair was still wet from the shower, curling and releasing trickles of water down his neck.
Kroes hare
. Kinky hair. Enough black in it to point firmly at his bloodline. The blood her elder daughter secretly wanted out of her as much as those kinks she spent hours blowing and flattening out. The same hair her son had inherited, that all her children had. No nods to her influence.

Her son. It used to be her
sons
; now it was singular. The dead must give way to the living. Her mind was betraying her more often over the years, as it was doing again now, scrambling for reason in fluff. Her eyes met her husband’s in the dresser mirror and held them until she broke the moment in cowardice.

‘I don’t know where to start with you any more, Carina. I don’t know what more to say.’

‘Then go with your instinct and say nothing,’ she snapped. She dropped the hairbrush with trembling fingers. ‘Isn’t that what we
as a family
have agreed to: silence?’

He flinched slightly, no more than that. The sting behind her oft-repeated accusation that Ian
was
the family, that they only functioned as a successful unit as long as all were in service to him, didn’t affect him any longer.

Ian rubbed the bone close to his eyebrows, a sign he was struggling to control his irritation. ‘We can’t talk to that journalist. We can’t live through this again. You know that.’

Who’s we?!
Carina wanted to scream. Instead, she swept into their en suite bathroom and slammed the door.

Bitterness. Bitterness killed love, and she’d embraced it. Flushed with shame and a giddy sense of triumph, Carina said to herself,
I am bitterness, and rage and regret, and I’ve killed the love in more ways than one
. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the reflection in the mirror as the thought warped through her mind again and again.

I killed the love and happiness in my home
. She forced a tiny smile. Well, then, there was nothing like vengeance to light a flame under a rotting carcass.