‘The war is over, Chief Inspector. I am just a man like any other. All I want to do is make my way to my family. I have a little girl … beautiful and golden … born while I was fighting. I would like more than anything to see her.’

Spokes nodded, trying to see the daughter that Golide Gumede spoke of instead of the amateurish GOLIDEGUM that the Secret Intelligence boys had left painted on Emil Coetzee’s den wall. ‘I think you are the only man who can help me. Lukha here says that he met you before, and you struck him as a man who would do the right thing. I trust Lukha with my life. He served us well as a medic. Saved my life more than once.’

Lukha was embarrassed by the praise, and, not knowing what else to do, threw the empty bottle of Canada Dry in a perfect arc through the air.

Spokes finally knew what to think, say and do. ‘It is Saturday afternoon and my wife is making her famous scones,’ he said as he let go of Golide Gumede’s hand.

The two men looked at him and each other, confused.

‘I take it you are hungry? I am inviting you to my home for tea, gentlemen,’ Spokes said before he continued walking his Raleigh.

It was during this journey homeward that Spokes made a promise to Golide Gumede: a promise he would keep.

Part II Cleave

PART II

CLEAVE

March 1980

MARCH 1980

The Lovely Loveness

THE LOVELY LOVENESS

In all the twenty-seven years of her long-loving marriage, nothing had threatened the privileged position Loveness had in Spokes’s heart and life. Well, that was not entirely true. There had been one adversary: Pelé. Pelé who could butt a header from midfield; Pelé who could somersault through the air and kick a ball straight into the back of the net; Pelé who could dribble a ball from one end of the field to the other – and, of course, score a goal; Pelé who was too quick, too clever, too creative for any other man on the soccer field. Pelé! Pelé! Pelé! What was it that Pelé could not do? There had been periods of their marriage that coincided with the years Pelé had won the World Cup for Brazil – 1958, 1962 and 1970 to be precise – when Loveness had been almost certain that if she asked her husband, as he sat in their sitting room with his ear only an alarming inch away from the wireless, who made the best chicken and dumplings, the answer would too readily and easily have been: Pelé.

Pelé, her old nemesis, had thankfully and, in her decided opinion, belatedly retired in 1977, leaving her husband in peace. But now, just as Loveness was beginning once again to feel completely unrivalled, and just as the promise of retiring to Krum’s Place was becoming a reality, here was Daisy not allowing Spokes to see things clearly. Loveness would have none of it.