“‘Hang on!’ I told him, guessing what it contained. ‘Best decant it carefully.’ I went to the dresser and found a Delft-patterned blue-and-white sugar basin. I dislodged a crust of dead flies and emptied the stained and caked sugar lurking in the bottom into a bucket. I gave the basin a wipe with the flap of my jacket, there being nothing cleaner in the room. Abel cut the fastening of the bag with his pocketknife and with a very steady hand poured the contents into the basin. You have never seen anything less impressive than the gunge that slithered out!

“Abel was certainly not impressed! ‘What the hell’s this?’ he asked. ‘Could it be opium? This is what it’s supposed to look like in its raw state, isn’t it? I’m not going to volunteer to try it!’

“‘It looks to me more like a scoopful of muck from the veldt. A pile of dark, gingery earth interspersed with bits of what looks very like gravel.’

“‘Bloody hell! No! Oh! Argh! This is someone’s ashes! Have you ever seen ashes? I saw my aunty Mavis’s when they scattered them on the rosebushes at the crematorium. They looked pretty much like this. Is someone smuggling Cecil the Almighty’s ashes out of town for burial? Hadn’t heard he was dead, had we?’

“‘Not ashes. I know what this is! The crumbly bits of earth are just that! From a few miles north of here. But the larger crystal bits are what it’s all about.’ I poked at them with a pencil. ‘Ranging from black in colour, through dark purple and reddish brown. Good Lord! Some of these are quite large. Abel, these are diamonds. Rough, untreated ones. Cleaned up and polished by a jeweller, they must be worth . . . Oh, I have no idea! A king’s ransom? Whatever that’s worth these days.’

“‘No kings in these benighted parts to consult—or kidnap,’ Abel muttered. ‘But there are one or two demigods of business and industry who might pay for something nefarious on the quiet by transporting this stuff out of Kimberley. Payment? Bribe? Nest egg? Who’s it meant for? Where’s it going? You know, Dickie, it might have been better for us if they had been ashes.’ Abel was always quick to see two moves ahead. He looked again at the corpse. ‘I wonder if those turds found out who he was?’