‘You had a run-in with the Coghlan girls, I gather,’ her mother said as she motioned towards two chairs in her comfortable but overcrowded living room where years of her life had been deposited after Cornelius Findlay had eventually separated from her.

‘Yes. Awful little things, aren’t they?’ Saskia said.

‘Just confused by the changing world around them, I think,’ the Chief Inspector said diplomatically.

Saskia looked at her mother intently, trying to telegraph the danger she was currently in, but her mother seemed to think nothing of the presence of a black man she had never seen before in her home. She offered him a cup of tea as though he were a family friend and not the most dangerous man in their lives.

‘This is Chief Inspector Spokes Moloi,’ Saskia said, hoping that her mother would get the hint and be on her guard.

‘I didn’t know the BSAP promoted Africans to such high ranks,’ Mrs Findlay said as she poured tea into two cups.

‘It is a recent occurrence,’ the Chief Inspector said good-naturedly. ‘And it might help that I am with the CID.’

Mrs Findlay brought the cups of tea and offered them to her visitors. Saskia took hers, wondering if her mother thought that she had brought the Chief Inspector. Was that why she was so calm? Saskia looked pointedly at her mother again, trying to communicate that she should not say anything to the Chief Inspector. Her mother smiled at her, and Saskia was not sure what the smile meant.

The cup and saucer were still in her mother’s hands, and Saskia looked over at the Chief Inspector, wondering why he had not taken them from her mother. He did not even notice he was being offered a cup of tea. He did not even notice because at that very moment, something else had caught his eye – the array of paintings on her mother’s mantelpiece of Emil Coetzee during his Selous School for Boys days. Even though it was already too late, Saskia’s first instinct was to remove the paintings. She jumped up, forgetting about the cup of tea on her lap and sending it sploshing to the floor.

‘Oh Sassie, look at the mess you’ve made,’ her mother said.

‘The mess I’ve made?’ Saskia said, fear making her almost scream as she went down on her hands and knees and rubbed at the stain with the hem of her dress.

‘Sassie!’ her mother admonished. ‘What is wrong with you? Remember to blot, not wipe. I’ll fetch a cloth.’

Her mother was obviously oblivious of the danger she was in. She smiled at the Chief Inspector, who had, at some point, taken the cup of tea from her hands. ‘Would either of you like some biscuits?’ she asked, making her way to the kitchen.