He got up, walked over to the window and opened it wider. The pungent air caught the back of his throat. He could see the Ponte building as he looked east, the windows of its lower façade intermittently reflecting the blue and red flashes from the emergency vehicles. From this distance it resembled a light show. Normally, you might hear the brassy beat of West African Hi-Life blaring out of one of the other apartments. Now there was nothing, except the shrill sound of sirens, the mechanical scream of a city in trouble. Across the street, each window framed a silhouette. Directly opposite him, he could make out a huddle of people. They, too, were looking east. What they saw was not a building but an uncertain future.

Kagiso imagined looking down on all this. He pictured one of those satellite images you could download. There he was, a tiny speck. Some distance away in Ponte City, its summit still advertising the good life on a huge screen, a family crouched in one room, faceless and dumb. Could there really be a connection between their predicament and the actions of the Collective? He remembered the game they used to play at Stellenbosch, trying to prove there were only six degrees of separation between any two people on the planet. The idea, then, was to make the link. Today he wanted to prove the theory wrong. He didn’t want any responsibility for what was happening outside and what had once been set in motion in this very room. Kagiso shut the window, as if that would absolve him of any blame for what was unfolding outside.

He glanced around the room, picked up the mugs, the plastic cups and the nearly empty bottle of Klipdrift and took them into the kitchen. He found the Pick ’n’ Pay bag that Two-Boy must have used to carry the liquor and emptied the soggy cigarette butts into it. He pulled the kettle plug from its socket. Across the narrow hallway he checked the single bedroom. As usual, the mattresses, discoloured and stained, were leaning against a wall. There were several holdalls on the floor. Ahmadu had always said they belonged to his tenants, though Kagiso had never seen any. There was one last thing to do before he left.

Kagiso found the ‘received calls’ list on his phone and selected the most recent one. Lindi answered almost immediately. ‘It’s Kagiso. I’m sorry about earlier,’ he said.

‘That’s all right. Typical of me to think you’d remember all these years later.’

‘No, no, you actually sound the same.’

‘I’m not sure how I should take that. Can we meet?’

‘I’m only in Jo’burg for a night. I live in Malelane these days – that’s in—’

‘I know where it is. Maude’s told me all about how you live in the bush now.’