‘Quite right,’ agreed Smed. ‘Anything that’s above ground you can see from here anyway. Below ground, there’s nothing but niggers, darkness and dust.’

I thought I might be in luck having a different driver take me back to Windhoek, but I wasn’t. He was a different driver, but there was no difference in the way he drove.

Shortly after we hit the main road, we passed a pull-in bar called the Beerstop, and I made a mental note of it.

We made it to Windhoek without being wiped out, and I thanked the driver out aloud, and God under my breath, and got out. It was three o’clock, and I had some business to do. I went first to hire a car; a slightly dented, but fairly recent model Datsun was all Avis had, and it suited me fine. I next went to a shop-fitters, and bought a male shop-window dummy, which I put in the boot of the car. From there I went to a hardware store, and bought a ball of twine, a packet of absorbent cloths and some long nails. Then I went to a chemist and bought a pack of disposable hypodermic syringes and some Elastoplast. Then I went to the public library, and asked to see some articles on Ogomo; never having seen him before, I wanted to look at some photographs of him so I would know what he looked like.

He was short, and quite fat, with goldfish eyes, a dimple in each cheek, and an inane smile. My first impression of the photographs were that they had been taken while he was stoned out of his mind. It was the same for everyone who saw him for the first time – everyone, that is, who didn’t know that the dimple on the left cheek had been caused by a 2mm soft-nose bullet entering his mouth, and the dimple on the right cheek by the same 2mm soft-nose bullet leaving his mouth, courtesy the anonymous sniper, for whom no one had claimed responsibility, who had failed to test his new image-intensifier telescopic sight before firing, a test which would have revealed to him that, at a range of two hundred and fifty yards, the rifle was firing four inches too low.

The bullet had severed an important muscle in each cheek, the result of which being that Ogomo was left with a permanent grin on his face.

At a quarter to five I went to a call box and dialled the number of the SWAPO headquarters in Windhoek. A girl answered.

‘May I speak to Lukas Ogomo – it is very urgent.’

‘Hold a minute, please.’

I breathed a sigh of relief – at least she hadn’t said he was out, or, worse still, abroad. Another woman’s voice came on the phone.

‘Who are you please?’