She knew immediately that she would not go. Could not leave here. She did not even want to return to Langani for the time being. It was only in the harsh, uncompromising beauty of this remote place that she might eventually find some kind of reconciliation and peace. It was only here that she could learn to remember Piet, without dying inside each time she thought of him. Here she could try to come to terms with her loss, and regain her vision of him, whole and vital and happy. The other would destroy her. She did not want to be influenced by outside ideas as to how she should live now that he was gone. If she left the camp she would be subjected to a version of herself as seen through other people’s eyes – the object of compassion and pity. She would be smothered. Here she had a goal, something she could do that would make a difference, something that he would have been proud of. Sarah folded the letters carefully and placed them in the drawer of her desk. Then she made her way to the small office and sat down to decipher Dan’s notes. It was Lars’s radio call that brought her back to Langani. Jeremy Hardy had been to see them, he said. He described the policeman’s startling news.

‘There’s been no arrest,’ Hardy had said. ‘But there’s something that I have to tell you.’ He paced the room, his hands behind his back. ‘We had a report this morning, from one of the patrols in the area of dense woodland just beyond your eastern boundary. There’s a clearing in the forest where they found an abandoned, makeshift hut. More of a shelter, really. The type of things these illegal hunters use.’ He paused and turned to face Hannah. ‘On the ground was a pile of bones. Human remains.’

Lars heard Hannah’s gasping breath, and he put a hand on her shoulder. She sat very still, her gaze directed towards the ridge.

‘I went down there straight away,’ Hardy said. ‘I wanted to look for myself. There were the ashes of a fire, and a number of bones lying around the clearing. And we saw some Kikuyu ceremonial items littered about. Cowrie shells, a few strips of leather from arm or leg decorations, some copper wire and a panga. Most important, though, we found a feathered headdress caught in the bushes a few hundred yards away. Like the one Sarah described. It looks as though the wearer had stopped in the clearing to prepare some food. We believe the man who died was cooking a meal, because we also found the bones of a small antelope.’

‘He’s dead then.’ Hannah’s voice was flat and hard.