“Following on the battle of the Modder River, they were sent off with a small company of men—a total of six—as a penetrative unit with reconnaissance and stealth attack potential to take control of and survey damage to the railway line north to Kimberley in the middle of Boer-held terrain. ‘Hold position until relieved’ was the instruction. In other words, a suicide squad.”

“Poor souls,” Redfyre murmured.

“They survived. I can’t say ‘against all expectations’ because there were, you can bet, no expectations at all. No, the men survived thanks, I’m judging, to the extraordinary leadership and boldness of our tramp, Dickie Dunne. After relief by engineering elements of the Ninth—about a month later—he marched them back into base, now under the command of Lord Roberts—with my General Whitcliffe at his side. So I had an eyewitness account just now of the unit’s procession into camp with their well-gotten gains!”

“Sorry, sir—gains?”

“The buggers! They’d somehow killed off the Boers who were holed up in the place they were to occupy and relieved them of a cargo of gold ingots they’d intercepted. Gold on its way down to—we presume—Cape Town and shipment on to Blighty. They handed the whole lot over to Bobs—Lord Roberts, freshly in charge of the British forces. Along with the horse that had been carrying them. Plus a lot of valuable survey information, which helped get the rail and wireless communications going again in double-quick time. It was quite a feat for a bunch of raw recruits with a fortnight’s fighting under their belts. The general was impressed and took an interest in their future careers. Luckily for them, as it transpired. Whitcliffe is a doughty advocate. A man you’d want in your corner. The six were all decorated, given a special medal for constancy or initiative or something. The Queen’s Own Award for Duty Done.”

“Gold? Kimberley? Smuggling? Why does that make my whiskers twitch?” Redfyre said.

“Because you’ve been reading The Boy’s Own Paper, too?” suggested Thoday. “The latest adventure, ‘To Kimberley with Captain “Duty” Dunne?’”

“Mmm . . . well, no work of fiction ever had a conclusion as painful as the one that overtook our boys. That early chapter of derring-do ended all too soon for them. In crime, betrayal, disgrace and imprisonment. A four-year sentence of hard labour breaking rocks and laying track under a blistering South African sun.” MacFarlane sighed. “And when I tell you the end of the tale, you’ll wonder, as I do, why on earth the six men who all survived and made it back eventually into good old civvy street, lived on peaceably for another twenty years, each thriving in his own way, many miles apart, before suddenly rediscovering one another and fighting like ferrets in a sack. Why? What was the trigger? What really happened to them all in South Africa? We’ve got the KOYLI dates and listings coming down to us. We’ll know what medals they won, the dates of their trial, imprisonment and release, but we won’t know their story. If we can’t shake the truth out of the survivors, we shall have to get hold of their nearest and dearest and”—he paused and considered—“ask them to confide. Find that trigger, the change in circumstances. A sudden revelation and we’ve got the motive for two, possibly three murders. And I don’t intend to stand by and arrest the last man standing!”