Tom followed them to the living room, where Rutherford immediately started ordering the other men around. Everyone received an order save Joseph, who set off to do his own thing. Tom watched with great perplexity as windows were broken, furniture overturned, and a door forced open. Within minutes, they had created a rather convincing scene of a break-in, complete with a point of entry, various signs of tampering and evidence of struggle.

Their job done, the men seemed to be waiting only for praise. The Secret Intelligence Unit had spent decades perfecting the art of fabricating reality, and they had every reason to be proud of the job they were doing at the Coetzee home. Tom decided to go to the den to see what Joseph was up to. He found him writing something in red ink on the wall: G O L I D E G U M.

‘Sweet Jesus!’ one of the operatives screamed from another room in the house. His voice when he next said ‘Sir!’ was more subdued, although it was still obvious from its tone that something had gone terribly wrong with their plan. ‘His arms won’t move,’ the operative said.

‘And for a relatively thin man, he’s quite heavy,’ another operative said.

The two operatives entered the den carrying … Tom’s body.

Now for quite some time Tom had been aware that things were not quite what they seemed – the men had not only ignored him but treated him as though he were invisible. Many things had entered his mind suggesting themselves as reasons: perhaps he was still sleeping and this was but a dream; perhaps he was drunk and his mind was playing tricks on him; perhaps this was all a story he was making up – it seemed fantastical enough. But none of the things that had suggested themselves to Tom had made him think that perhaps he was dead. And the reason he did not think he was dead was because he did not remember having died. Surely, if he had died, he would remember his own death. Surely …

He tried to feel something but he could not feel anything. What was a man supposed to feel about his own death?

‘Rigor mortis has set in,’ one of the operatives said. ‘We cannot make it look like a fall.’

‘Trust a ham actor to mess up an entirely perfect plot,’ Rutherford said, disgust and disappointment plain in his voice.

After a long moment of silence, Joseph, rubbing the red paint off his hands, said, ‘Let it be messy. That old madala over at the Western Commonage wants to get his picture in the paper so very badly; perhaps we should give him what he wants. A mess. Let him come here and try to make sense of it all.’

Rutherford nodded slowly. ‘And let the delectable Saskia Hargrave come and find the story we give her to write,’ he said.