I telephoned the bursar’s office at Balliol College, Oxford. The woman who answered was polite and helpful. I told her I was from The Times, preparing an article for the next Educational Supplement, on overseas students at Britain’s universities, and asked her what she could tell me about Ben Tsenong. She confirmed that a Ben Tsenong was registered. He was studying nuclear physics, in his third year; he came from Namibia, and was on a United Nations scholarship. She suggested that if I wanted more information, I should write to him.

Not having any great conviction that becoming a pen pal with Tsenong would provide me with the sort of information I was after, I decided to go and pay his room a visit. Two hours later, I was in my Jag, negotiating the double hazard of driving rain and a thick wadge of cyclists pedalling with their eyes shut against it. Oxford didn’t look its best in the November rain; it wasn’t the sort of day for whipping out the Instamatic and snapping the sights. The windscreen had decided it was going to fog up and stay fogged up, and no amount of persuasion from either the de-mister or a duster could make it change its mind.

There was a parking bay in the centre of the street past the Sheldonian Theatre, and I pulled in there. I shoved three coins in the parking ticket dispenser and lost them all. I banged the machine with my fist, then walked across to Balliol and into the porter’s lodge. A list of students was pinned up on the wall; Tsenong’s name and room number was on it, and I was relieved that he was staying in college, and I didn’t have to go traipsing around Oxford looking for his lodgings.

On the wall behind the porter’s desk was a plaque which read: Ezra Hancock d. 1911 A better friend no man had. I hoped the same applied to his replacement. ‘Can you tell me where 11/7 is, please?’

Ezra Hancock’s replacement turned out to be a chip off the old block. I got the directions to Tsenong’s room, and I got the names of all his immediate neighbours. Other than knowing he was black, the porter couldn’t give me much information about Tsenong. I thanked him and went out. I stopped in the shelter of the arch outside the lodge door, checked to make sure no one was looking, then pulled a cap from my pocket and pulled it over my head; I also put on a large pair of dark glasses, pulled my coat collar right up, then took a scarf from my pocket and wrapped it around my neck several times. It would have taken someone with X-ray eyes to know it was me inside that lot.