There was a long pause before she said, ‘Yes.’

‘Before Golide Gumede ransacked the house and wrote his name on the den wall.’

This time there was no pause before she said, ‘Yes, yes – I remember you.’ She no longer sounded tired.

That’s more like it, Spokes thought. ‘Do we understand each other?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I understand you perfectly.’

‘Good. I have information that I think will interest you greatly.’

‘Information? What kind of information?’ she asked, sounding slightly hesitant.

‘Information about a hat … Emil Coetzee’s Stetson.’

‘Emil Coetzee’s Stetson?’

‘Yes. Found in the bush where he parked his bakkie the day after the ceasefire.’

‘Bush? Bakkie? Ceasefire? Found by whom?’

‘Two gentlemen who work for Secret Intelligence.’

‘In the bush?’

‘Yes.’

‘The day after the ceasefire?’ Saskia Hargrave said, her voice little more than a whisper.

‘Yes. I thought you would want to know,’ Spokes said.

‘I do. Thank you for telling me.’

As Spokes hung up the phone, he was certain he had made the right decision. Saskia Hargrave, with her desperate need to be the first to tell the true story, was the perfect person to help him get to the bottom of what had happened to Emil Coetzee. She would do everything in her power to ensure that the truth about Emil Coetzee came to light.

Just then his phone rang.

‘There is something that I just remembered,’ Marion Hartley said on the other end of the line, after they had briefly exchanged their hellos. ‘It is probably not important, but when Emil drove off that morning, there was another car there. A Renault 5, light in colour. It had a design on its side. An elongated Z. I cannot be completely certain, but I think a woman was driving the car. She drove off before I could get a good look at her.’

A Renault 5 with an elongated Z. Spokes had also seen that car – the night he had met Saskia Hargrave at Emil Coetzee’s home.

Spokes looked at the grainy black-and-white picture that accompanied the obituary piece. Many images could have been chosen – Emil Coetzee giving a speech, Emil Coetzee shaking the hand of the Prime Minister, Tom Fortenoy on the floor of Emil Coetzee’s den, GOLIDEGUM – but none of those images had been chosen. Instead, Spokes found himself looking at an ordinary picture of a father and his son out fishing, holding a Kariba bream triumphantly between them, both of them smiling and happy. It seemed a rather odd choice but Spokes understood instantly why it had been made. Both father, Emil Coetzee, and son, Everleigh Coetzee, had tragically and violently been taken too soon. It was the kind of picture that filled readers with many emotions, and, therefore, filled the paper’s condolences section, which meant good business for the paper. Evidently, Saskia Hargrave was not above manipulating a situation in order to benefit from it.