The memories of events never considered as relevant came flooding back and began to pour from him. “It was the day of the funeral. The grave was dug, I was preparing the body in the outhouse and he was helping me . . . I thought he’d volunteered to do that unpleasant job to avoid the manual labour of the grave-digging . . . I nipped out for a few minutes to check the depth of the hole and order Ratty to go down another foot . . . When my back was turned, he must have nipped back into the cabin, scooped the bigger lumps out of the bowl, replacing them with river gravel, artistically scattered a few flakes of diamond over the top and slid them straight back into the silk bag they came in. The bag! We didn’t realise it was missing. I would have assumed, even if I’d bothered to wonder, that it had been chucked out with all the other Boer detritus when we cleaned up the cabin. Perhaps he’d always had the idea of reusing it! And had hidden it away in preparation for this moment? Then, as you caught me saying, Redfyre, a good, effective design deserves to be reused! He went back to the body, unscrewed the heel of the Frenchman’s boot, reinserted the package, reassembled it and hauled it neatly back onto the corpse. Then stood back and admired his handiwork.” With a wry smile, he added: “I even complimented him on his dedication. The state the body was in . . . Well, it was not a pleasant task, you can imagine. Although, by that time, for us, one rotting corpse among thousands was hardly remarkable.” And, slowly, “We were all experts in dealing out and dealing with death.”

“Are you thinking it was this same shit who brought about the false charges in Pretoria? So that, with you lot out of the way and himself having cut a deal and being on the loose, he could, once demobbed and out of uniform, make his way back to Lemon Tree Lodge and retrieve his plunder at his leisure? Either then or even years later. It was perfectly safe where it was.”

“Yes. All that. I have to believe no one else was involved. Suspicion has always curdled our dealings with each other. I almost cut Oily’s throat the other day . . . and all the time it was ghastly little baby-faced Syd.”