As he walked away from the table, his conscience fought with his need to make money. He knew customer confidentiality was an important part of his trade, but these were desperate times; cunning and opportunism were needed to survive. Finally he told himself, This is just a little thing. It will cause no harm to anyone. And I did give them a meal for free. Making sure no one was watching him, he ducked into his office and dialled the number of a regular customer, who happened to be a reporter on the Evening Standard, one of London’s two main local newspapers.

‘Come quickly!’ he whispered. ‘Odette herself is here with a table of her old comrades. And my waiter heard one of them saying she had just come from Buckingham Palace.’

The reporter had a word with his picture editor. They agreed that this was a story that might interest Londoners on their way home from work. And so, when Saffron, Gerhard, Odette and the others emerged from the bistro they were met with the dazzling burst of a camera flash, and a quick-fire series of questions from the reporter.

Odette took the intrusion in her stride, having become accustomed to being a public figure. Gerhard was baffled and a little uneasy at the questioning. It brought back memories of previous interrogations that he would rather have kept buried. But Saffron laughed it off.

‘It reminds me of being a deb, back in the thirties. I was forever being photographed at parties with young men who were supposedly about to marry me.’

Gerhard looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

‘Oh, don’t worry. None of them were remotely interesting. They were either hopelessly shy or ragingly oversexed. You know, wandering hands and all that. Believe me, darling, you were a complete revelation.’

She lowered her voice so that no one else could overhear.

‘You always knew exactly what to do with your hands.’

Kabaya had made sure that the bodies of Joseph and Mary were buried on the night they died. He was back in Nairobi by the time dawn broke the following morning. But for the next several days, he brooded.

The squatters had been warned that anyone who said a word of what had happened to the authorities, be it their farm boss or the police, would be punished in ways that would make the deaths they had witnessed seem merciful. Even so, there was a danger someone might find it impossible to keep their mouth shut. If they talked, the buried bodies might be discovered.

Something had to be done. Ten days after the killings, Kabaya and his men returned to the farm, late at night. He commanded the squatters who had sworn the oath to demonstrate their loyalty to the cause by rounding up every squatter on the property, including women, children and old folk who had not been at the oathing ceremony. They were ordered to bring digging implements.