‘Is he turning this place into a safari park, then?’ Baz asked.

‘No,’ Jakes replied. ‘He said it’s not going to be open to the public. It’s mainly for conservation.’

‘So what do you know about this van Steenis bloke?’

Jakes chuckled. ‘Quite a lot. I read about him. Born in Southern Rhodesia, as it was then, now Zimbabwe. He founded his own bunch of mercenaries and made friends with some dodgy dictators.’

‘That’s a good way to get rich.’

‘Yeah, but he doesn’t own this place. He just manages it. He used to be employed by Mobutu Sese Seko, the Zairean ruler, to eliminate his political enemies.’

‘Jesus!’

‘That was decades ago,’ Jakes said. ‘Having met van Steenis, I find it hard to believe. He really cares for animals, you can see that.’ He turned to look at Baz. ‘Back in the early Eighties, this used to be a preparatory school called St Thomas’s. I went here for a term when I was six. Awful place.’ He cringed as if in remembered pain. ‘The old swimming pool I tried to learn to swim in is going to be part of a covered enclosure for the Nile crocodiles.’

The plasterers worked hard without a break until early afternoon. Baz watched in admiration as Jakes strode about in his stilts, covering up the ceiling fibre-tape between the plasterboard prior to the main skim. Baz had never got on with stilts. He had tried the two-foot-high metal platforms, which are clipped to the boots and secured by retaining straps to the calf. They had made him feel clumsy. Still, seeing Jakes, he had to admit it was hard to beat for quick work on ceiling scrim. Baz, doing the main overhead skim, worked off a more laborious framework of inverted milk crates with planks on them. Jakes was a bit of a prodigy with the trowel, Baz had to admit. Just the right amount of pressure, just the right forearm movement. Barely a ripple disturbed the surface. From his apparently effortless rhythm, it was hard to guess that Jakes suffered from tennis elbow, caused by the relentless weight of the wet plaster on the rectangular hawk, held always in his left hand, ready to be scooped up and trowelled on.

It was gone two when Baz called a halt and burrowed into the plaster-spattered knapsack containing his packed lunch and flask. He went outside and lay on a patch of grass, soaking up the sun. Jakes, who never ate while working, wandered off, still wearing his earbuds. Baz had just finished the last of his coffee when he saw Jakes running back. He looked distressed, his gangly arms and legs disordered.

‘What is it, mate?’ Baz asked.

‘You’ve got to come and see this,’ Jakes said, clearly a little out of breath. ‘You’re not going to believe it.’

Chapter Thirteen