The Chief Inspector arrived less than an hour later, and in that short time, Mrs Loveness Moloi had fed a reluctant but ultimately grateful Lukha a bowl of oxtail stew with rice, and then offered him two warm scones slathered with butter and homemade strawberry jam and a mug of piping-hot condensed-milk tea. He had enjoyed the food even though he had had to eat with an audience – Dikeledi. She sat across from him at the five-piece Formica table with her hands bunched into fists and placed under her chin, silently daring him to make the slightest move she did not like.

‘My wife tells me you are here to report a murder,’ the Chief Inspector said, sitting down at the table at which Lukha and Dikeledi sat.

Lukha expected Dikeledi to excuse herself from the table, but she did not, and the only thing that made her presence slightly more bearable was the fact that Mrs Loveness Moloi joined them at the table, taking the last chair. He watched as she offered her hand to her husband, and he watched as the Chief Inspector took her hand in his. Lukha had never seen this before – a man and his wife holding hands at the kitchen table – and began to feel that he was on the verge of making some kind of discovery … a discovery about the importance of the simple things in life.

‘So, you murdered someone?’ Dikeledi said, rudely interrupting his thoughts. Why was she here? Who was she? Why did she seem to think that she mattered?

‘Murdered … yes,’ Lukha said. ‘But not someone … quite a lot of people. They say that all is forgiven, they call me a hero. But all cannot be forgiven, can it? They say I fought for their freedom, but I did no such thing. I fought, not for them, but for something else entirely.’

‘Eh! You say quite a lot of people – how many is quite a lot of people?’ Dikeledi asked.

‘I killed six people and permanently maimed two.’

‘During the war?’

‘Yes, during the war – but before I joined the war.’

‘Dikeledi, let the man find his story,’ the Chief Inspector said. ‘Lukha, why don’t you tell me what happened? From the very beginning.’