Anton had been up half the night – at least, that was what it felt like. Once he’d heard the news about Lesedi Motlantshe’s murder, he’d been on the phone to old contacts in South Africa. None of them had any answers to his enquiries about Lesedi’s murder and, like Lindi, warned him against rushing to conclusions by linking the killing to land sales. But Anton had eventually slumped into a fitful sleep, convinced he was onto something. When a journalist called first thing in the morning, he found himself giving voice to his suspicions. It was the clip Clive Missenden had heard, prompting his early-morning call to Lindi.

Now nursing a hangover and gulping his second espresso, Anton was determined to find something, anything that might give credence to his overnight hunch. He scrolled through numerous news sites, followed threads on his Facebook and Twitter accounts. A campaigner at heart, he wanted his news unadulterated and he made sure he was plugged into what activists on the ground were saying – in this case in South Africa. He gave short shrift to the speeches given by the apparatchiks in the ruling party, the silver-tongued revolutionaries in their Canali suits, with a penchant for the finer things in life. He knew some, and if he didn’t know them personally, he knew their type. And he largely ignored the international newspapers and their websites. ‘What the hell do those parachute journalists know about anything?’ he would say to whoever would listen.

As far as Anton Chetty was concerned, from whichever quarter the editorial judgements came, they had a common refrain: ‘Here we go again,’ they implied, as if the prospect of yet another African country throwing it all away was as inevitable as the summer rains over Johannesburg. If there was one thing he despised it was the way Western journalists expected so little from Africa, and the self-satisfaction that seeped from their journalism when they thought they had been proved right in their prejudice.

In the years that he’d been in charge, Anton had steered the Trust away from getting involved in South Africa, despite his strong personal interest in his erstwhile homeland. He knew too many of the people who now ran the country and, perhaps more to the point, they knew him. He came with baggage; excess baggage, they would say. When old comrades, now ministers and advisers in government, came to London they would give Anton a wide berth. They had become masters of pragmatism, and found it irritating that he was still talking about ideals. He was rarely, if ever, invited to functions at the Trafalgar Square High Commission. The feeling, it had to be said, was mutual.