‘I can’t say that for certain,’ Hardy said. ‘But we haven’t been notified that anyone is missing in this area, and the location fits the route he might have taken that night. It’s logical to assume that he worked his way down from the ridge, going over the rocks and then skirting the edge of the plains until he came to a section of the forest that would make a good hiding place.’

‘How – how did he die?’ Hannah could barely find her voice to ask the question.

‘Looks like hyenas. There seems to have been a pack of them. He must have put up a good fight, because the ground around the site was pretty churned up. There’s evidence that he killed a couple of the pack before the rest got him. My theory is that he had been running since he left here, and he was exhausted. He probably killed a young buck for meat, and got careless while he was skinning it to put on the fire. The hyena pack could have been following his scent – he must have been covered in blood himself.’

He saw Hannah place her hand over her mouth, biting down on her knuckles.

‘I’m sorry I can’t give you anything more definite,’ Hardy went on, ‘but the trackers who found the bones say that the kill could have been made around the time of Piet’s death. From the condition of the bones themselves, and the surrounding ground. It fits, my dear, although we may never be able to say it with complete certainty. But I am as sure as I can be that the remains are Simon Githiri’s. A grim ending, but he got his just deserts. We have removed all the bones for forensic examination, but there’s not a lot else we’ll be able to learn from them, I’m afraid.’

Hannah looked up at him, her face ashen. ‘Then it’s over?’ Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. She put her hand up to touch Lars’s fingers, as though she needed physical support, no matter how slight.

‘I hope I can say it’s over, yes,’ Hardy met her gaze. ‘But if these are Simon’s remains, then we will never know the reasons for what he did here. It may be that Langani was the first of other properties that he planned to attack. There are a number of young hotheads who feel they’ve been cheated. By the white men who took their land, and then by their own politicians who promised them everything after Independence, and delivered nothing.’

‘I wanted him to die,’ Hannah said, her eyes bleak. ‘But I wanted him to have to face what he had done, to explain, and then be made to pay for it.’