Lindi pulled up the handle on her bag and headed towards the building the driver had shown her. Once inside she saw that the BBC office was on the third floor and waited for the lift, along with a dozen or so other people. When the doors slid open she expected the kind of Darwinian rush that sorted out the men from the boys back in London. One or two did stride into the compartment, like their life depended on it, but many more stood back to allow her into it. The lift was filled with a smell that combined takeaway breakfasts with the over-generous application of aftershave lotion. On the third floor Lindi saw the BBC’s logo on one side of the lobby and headed towards the glass doors next to it, mentally reminding herself of the office manager’s name. The receptionist, a young woman with perfectly manicured nails, was talking into a phone held awkwardly between her neck and shoulder while signing a receipt note for a delivery.

‘I’m looking for Comfort Ramphele,’ Lindi said, when the receptionist finally put down the phone.

‘Just head down the corridor and she should be at the first desk as you enter the big newsroom,’ she said.

Lindi walked into a large, open-plan office. There must have been a dozen desks, each cluttered with PC screens, TV monitors and headphones. On one wall a line of clocks showed the time locally and in Lagos, Nairobi, London, Washington and Beijing. Underneath them, as if surveying the newsroom, was a life-size cut-out image of a beaming Nelson Mandela, his right arm raised in an iconic closed-fist salute. The great man had signed the picture. Lindi saw that its wooden base was screwed to the floor, presumably because it was the kind of memento for which there was a lucrative market.

On another wall there was a row of screens, each tuned to a different channel – CNN, ENCA, BBC World and Al Jazeera. The six or seven people in the office had congregated under them. Like supplicants at an altar, they were staring at the screens. Lindi recognised one, even in profile. The woman, a British-Asian, had become something of a celebrity a few years earlier for her reports on the implosion of Iraq and Syria. They had been robust, partly to do with the economy of language but also because she delivered them in an unforgettable mockney that was at odds with the more conventional tones of other BBC correspondents. She was now based in Johannesburg.

Anton had taken an instant dislike to her. ‘Frontline bimbo,’ he’d called her. ‘All talk, no analysis.’ On the edge of the group stood a plump, older-looking woman. Lindi guessed she might be Comfort Ramphele, the office manager who’d been unable to meet her at the airport.

As Lindi began to move towards the huddle, the woman turned around. ‘I’m sorry, we were so busy following the news I didn’t see you coming in. I’m Comfort.’