“It had been removed, hadn’t it? Deliberately. Someone standing around the grave at the funeral ceremony had had plenty of time to learn the coordinates by eye. Had lined it up, triangulated it, I’d guess, with the Kop and the cabin and the river. Oh, there were plenty of points you could use for reference later.”

“But meantime, the thief would much rather no one else was aware of Louis’s last resting place, if that rich earth ‘a richer dust concealed.’ Someone might think of digging up the body and taking it back to Kimberley. Couldn’t risk that, so, as one of the last things he did—in the night perhaps—who was on duty for that last patrol?—he knocked down the marker of a cross and pulled it away from the site of the grave. Dismantled, it was reduced to two meaningless bits of firewood. In one season of dust storms, bush fires, animal interference, without that cross, all trace would have vanished. There’d be only one man who could and would ever think of finding it again.”

“A man who had patience. Was prepared to wait. Had the wit to work out that nobody was going to get out of there carrying a bag of diamonds in his pack or up his jacksy.” Dunne spoke almost in admiration. “All that searching and we were never going to find them on him! He had them in his hand for less than five minutes!”