More importantly, each of the attacks had obliged the house’s defenders to use up ammunition. De Lancey had warned him that Mbogo had as fine an armoury as any man in Kenya. But even he was not equipped to fight a full-scale battle. In any case, Mbogo was either dying or dead. The white herd had lost their bull. Now they would be frightened cattle.

Kabaya ordered half the men standing with him by the flame tree copse to go round the back of the house and reinforce the attacks on the kitchen.

Then the man standing next to him suddenly pitched face forward onto the earth. As he lay there, screaming, Kabaya saw the hole that had been punched in the small of his back. He heard the reverberation of a rifle shot, to his left. A single gun, one shooter. Not enough to alter the course of the fight.

Unless the next shot hits me.

‘Run!’ shouted Kabaya. ‘On me! Move, move, move!’

Benjamin swore under his breath. Another man had stepped into his line of fire at the very last second and taken the bullet intended for the leader, who was now running down the copse and onto the drive towards the house, surrounded by his men and getting further from Benjamin with every stride.

Time to find a new shooting position.

Kabaya was used to coming within a whisker of death. In the course of countless firefights, men had fallen all around him, yet he had always emerged unscathed, like a man who can walk through raging flames yet never get burned. He was not alarmed by the experience, but exhilarated.

So there was a grin on Kabaya’s face as he ran along the drive to the front door. He imagined what it must be like to own a house such as this, with so much land around it. One day, men like him would have property like this. But for that day to come, the old order had to be torn down and a new one take its place.

This fight would bring Kenya one step closer to that day.

It was time to land the killer blow.

He marched through the front door and into the house that was about to be his. He would kill the white people inside, and their servants. All of them. Every man, woman and child.

To Benjamin, the logic was indisputable: if the copse had been the best spot for the Mau Mau leader to direct the battle, then it would be the best spot for him to observe it. From there he could decide where next to move. There was no point him running pell-mell into the battle by himself. He would simply die without achieving a thing. But the principle of one target, one rifle, still held good. If he could get another shot at the leader, and kill him this time, he might yet change everything.