She saw a car turn off the main road. Its lights caught the trees and cast shadows on the walls of the stoep. As it dipped and swerved to avoid the ruts in the gravelled lane, the shadows came together, then drifted apart, like dancers at a ball. A man got out of the vehicle. At first she didn’t recognise Father Petro without his cassock.

‘You’ve come in disguise, I see,’ she said, walking up to him.

‘Like they say, God works in mysterious ways. Did you get some rest? You’ve had a hell of a day.’

‘I had a bit of a nap out here a while ago. Actually, I feel pretty good.’ Lindi smiled, climbing into the passenger seat as Father Petro got back into the car. Inside it smelt of fuel. ‘I’m no mechanic but do you have a leak?’

‘A leak? Ah, no, that’s just some spare gas I’ve got in the boot. Apparently none of the tankers got through today. Do you mind if I smoke?’

Lindi was about to say that might not be such a good idea but decided against it. In any case, by the look of the ashtray the question was purely rhetorical. ‘So what’s the plan, Father Petro?’

‘Oh, just call me Petro. Everybody else does, except the bishop. He’s a bit old-school – is that how you say it?’

‘I’d say that just about sums him up, yes. I didn’t like the way he started off this afternoon by asking why they had sent a woman to do a man’s work.’

‘I think he feels you may not be ready for this.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, I am so let’s go. And, anyway, what do you mean “ready for this”? What’s the “this”? That’s what I want to know.’

Father Petro steered the car with his left knee, nudging the wheel this way and that, while he used both hands to shield the lighted match. He barely checked the main road before he turned left, back towards Nelspruit.

‘Lindi, I don’t have the answer you’re looking for. But I know these people. I have faith in them and when they tell me that it’s impossible Lesedi was killed by one of them, I believe them,’ he said, the cigarette flicking up and down between his lips as if it had a life of its own.

‘But there must be tens of thousands of Mozambican farm labourers here, many of them illegal. You can’t vouch for all of them.’

‘No, I can’t. That is true. But look at it this way,’ he said, as he swung the car out into the middle of the road to overtake a tractor pulling a trailer loaded with sugarcane stalks but only just avoiding a vehicle coming the other way. ‘Bit late for them to be carrying the cane around. Now what was I saying?’