‘Emil Coetzee was probably the best friend I ever had,’ Clement Rutherford said. Spokes felt it was the most honest thing he had said in the entire exchange. ‘So I definitely did not arrive at this decision lightly, you understand. It seems to us that his was definitely death by misadventure. But, of course, we cannot have that be publicly known.’

‘It would not be good for morale … for politics … for the country. As a nation, we need to congregate against a common enemy,’ Joseth Maraire said matter-of-factly. ‘We are just galvanising the people towards that end.’

Spokes looked at the writing on the wall: GOLIDEGUM. ‘I see,’ he said slowly, aware that he had to play his next several moves very carefully.

‘We are glad that you do,’ Clement Rutherford said. ‘We have always found that it helps tremendously when the BSAP and CID see eye to eye with the SIU.’

‘What about the beige bakkie in the bush and the people who reported missing the man who was driving it, the man they were very sure was Emil Coetzee?’

‘We have ways of making people unknow what they think they know,’ Joseth Maraire said with confidence and pride.

‘If the war we have just been through has taught us anything, it is that the truth, Chief Inspector, is a very malleable thing,’ Clement Rutherford said, showing off how intelligent he thought he was.

Spokes understood that the men from the Secret Intelligence Unit had their job to do. He also understood that he had a job to do. His job was to find out the truth, the unmalleable truth, about what had happened to Emil Coetzee. The men from the Secret Intelligence Unit did not need to know this. Nor did they need to know that he and Emil Coetzee had been irrevocably connected by what had happened to Daisy. It was best for them to continue thinking in terms of malleable truths.

Saskia

SASKIA

Saskia had to admit that everything about the Selous School for Boys was impressive – the grandiose grounds, the beautiful buildings, the hallowed halls. There was nothing that did not mark it as the best school in the entire country.

‘Not often that we see women in these parts,’ the headmaster, Mr Stuardts, said as he opened one of the many trophy cases in the Great Hall. He did not have to say it; Saskia had known from the way his eyes had appreciatively travelled up and down her body when he had come to greet her in the parking berth earlier that it had been quite some time since he had seen a woman – and probably even longer since he had seen one who looked as good as she did.

‘So you have no women on staff at all?’ she asked as she perused the trophies, looking for Emil Coetzee’s name. His name appeared on many trophies between the years 1940 and 1945.

‘No. No women on staff, unfortunately,’ Mr Stuardts said.