‘When you’re a policeman, a gift can be a bribe.’

‘Now why would I bribe you, Chief Inspector?’

‘I didn’t say you were,’ Spokes said as he placed the exact amount for the drink on the counter.

‘I just wanted to thank you for finally gracing our little establishment here with your presence, Chief Inspector,’ the shopkeeper said as he put the money in the till. ‘I have seen you and that beautiful wife of yours, Loveness, walk by many times over the years … but neither of you ever enters. She is also like you – often walks alone. But now here you are. Today must be a special day indeed.’

‘We prefer the hypermarket,’ Spokes said, before taking a few gulps of the ginger beer.

‘Ah, I see, Chief Inspector. You prefer to give your hard-earned money to the white man instead of to Silas Mthimkhulu.’

‘If that is how you choose to see it.’

‘I meant no disrespect, Chief Inspector.’

‘And none was perceived.’

‘I am genuinely happy to see you in the store, Chief Inspector.’

‘I am sure you are,’ Spokes said as he finished his drink and placed the empty bottle on the counter.

‘I don’t see why we can’t be friends, Chief Inspector.’

‘Neither can I,’ Spokes said before leaning over the counter and saying, ‘As long as next time you find my wife’s name in your mouth, you spit it out before I hear you say it. Understood?’

‘Yes, Chief Inspector,’ the shopkeeper said, his oiliness having suddenly dried up.

‘Good,’ Spokes said as he put on his fedora and left the store.

As expected, the two men had not walked past the store – or rather, one of them had not; he stood under an in-bloom acacia tree, opposite the store. Where was the other one – up ahead lying in wait? Spokes stepped off the dusty Idlazonke stoep and headed straight to the man under the tree. As Spokes approached him, the man looked trapped. He moved this way and that, and then stood very still, as though waiting for something truly terrible to befall him. The closer Spokes got to the man, the more he felt certain that he knew him … but not as a man … as nothing more than a boy: a boy in big muddy boots carrying an AK-47 that seemed heavier than him; a boy smashing windows and screaming into the night; a boy already haunted by a war that was going to get much worse: the harbinger.

‘You’re the one who was screaming about limbs and torsos in the Zambezi,’ Spokes said to the man.

The man who was a boy no longer looked at Spokes blankly. ‘Limbs? Torsos? Zambezi?’ he managed to say at last.

He had probably seen much worse since then. ‘Yes. Torsos with Y-dissections cut into them, floating in the Zambezi.’

‘Yes …’ the man said slowly, as though wanting to remember and not to remember at the same time.