Nobody had called her that for years, not since their Soweto days when Josiah and his fellow activists would sit round her kitchen table demanding more of her stews. He must think I am simple, Priscilla thought. Just by evoking the familiarity of my old nickname he thinks I am going to give him everything he wants.

‘Why should he contact me? He doesn’t know me.’

‘Ah, no, we, the police, think he was trying to befriend Lesedi. Did Lesedi speak to you before – before he … Did he say anything about meeting someone?’

‘No, no. He used to tell me about all his friends but I don’t remember him mentioning anyone new. Okay, Jerry, I have to go. Let’s talk again when Josiah is back.’

Priscilla was glad she’d made the call. She knew she had to reach Kagiso before Mhlanga and his people did.

20

Kagiso woke up with a start. He must have fallen asleep almost as soon as the taxi pulled out of the rank in Nelspruit. They were crossing Crocodile River, the wheels of the minibus hurdling the ramps where the tarmac met the bridge. He was on his own. He prayed that Lindi was in a taxi ahead of him. Kagiso was sitting in the front of the cab and instinctively checked that he still had the bag that Ma Khethiwe had given him. The driver had insisted he take the seat next to him, not with the ‘smelly’ Mozambicans crammed into the benches at the back.

The lush, irrigated plantations around Nelspruit were mostly behind them. Ahead, the landscape opened up: untamed scrubland framed by a line of hills, their contours masked by a diaphanous haze. Dotted here and there were the bare-branched umsinsi trees, though Kagiso always preferred their colloquial label, lucky bean tree. He was no naturalist, and what little he did know about the flora and fauna in this part of the country came from the hand-me-down knowledge of the night watchman at Soil of Africa.

Tobias had never left Mpumalanga and his only foray into Nelspruit, to work as a janitor in an office block in his twenties, had left him with a lifelong revulsion for the city. He was now in his sixties, that was what he said, though Kagiso suspected he might be quite a bit older. One of Kagiso’s favourite rituals was to sit with Tobias on the veranda once he’d locked up the office for the day. They’d share a cigarette; it was the only time Kagiso ever smoked. He remembered Tobias telling him that the appearance of the flame-like flowers of the umsinsi in early spring was always a sign to begin planting the crops. Tobias used to say that as children they would hear the pods on the trees bursting and rush to collect the beans, which were supposed to bring good luck. Kagiso thought he could do with some of that now.