“I have not got five hundred pula,” she said. “Why not steal the gun? You’ve got contacts. Get one of your boys to do it.” She paused before continuing. “Remember that I helped you. That was not easy for me.”

He studied her carefully. “You really want this?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s really important to me.”

He stubbed his cigarette out and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll get you a gun. But remember that if anything goes wrong, you didn’t get the gun from me.”

“I shall say I found it,” said Florence. “I shall say that it was lying in the bush over near the prison. Maybe it was something to do with the prisoners.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Philemon. “When do you want it?”

“As soon as you can get it,” she replied.

“I can get you one tonight,” he said. “As it happens, I have a spare one. You can have that.”

She sat up and touched the back of his neck gently. “You are a very kind man. You can come and see me anytime, you know. Anytime. I am always happy to see you and make you happy.”

“You are a very fine girl,” he said, laughing. “Very bad. Very wicked. Very clever.”

HE DELIVERED the gun, as he had promised, wrapped in a wax-proof parcel, which he put at the bottom of a voluminous OK Bazaars plastic bag, underneath a cluster of old copies of Ebony magazine. She unwrapped it in his presence and he started to explain how the safety catch operated, but she cut him short.

“I’m not interested in that,” she said. “All I’m interested in is this gun, and these bullets.”

He had handed her, separately, nine rounds of stubby, heavy ammunition. The bullets shone, as if each had been polished for its task, and she found herself attracted to their feel. They would make a fine necklace, she thought, if drilled through the base and threaded through with nylon string or perhaps a silver chain.

Philemon showed her how to load bullets into the magazine and how to wipe the gun afterwards, to remove fingerprints. Then he gave her a brief caress, planted a kiss on her cheek, and left. The smell of his hair oil, an exotic rum-like smell, lingered in the air, as it always did when he visited her, and she felt a stab of regret for their languid afternoon and its pleasures. If she went to his house and shot his wife, would he marry her? Would he see her as his liberator, or the slayer of the mother of his children? It was difficult to tell.