Spokes turned to see the owner of the voice, even though he already knew who it was: Bodecia. As soon as Philemon Dlodlo had mentioned his neighbour’s name, Spokes had known that he would find himself standing before her after so many years.

‘Spokes? Spokes Moloi? Is that you?’ Bodecia asked.

The detective beside him made a sound in his throat that Spokes ignored. Silas Mthimkhulu’s body stiffened, and Spokes ignored that too. He looked at Bodecia, who was no longer shy and retiring and was now tall and commanding.

Spokes removed his fedora from his head and said softly, ‘Bodecia.’

She smiled a smile that made the words she said next seem like a contradiction: ‘Spokes Moloi. The Man Who Disappointed Me. Standing before me without a care, as though he did not break my heart many years ago.’

Bodecia stretched both her arms towards him, and Spokes had no choice but to hold both her hands awkwardly in his. The detective next to him expertly swallowed a chuckle.

Bodecia had said more to him in the minute they had become reacquainted than she had ever said to him in the entirety of their knowing each other long ago, when they were supposedly courting. Whenever he had spoken to her then, she had shyly looked at the floor or the ground, finding something to occupy her – a blade of grass, a smooth stone, a piece of lint. It was apparently this shy, retiring quality that had made his mother certain that Bodecia would make him a good wife.

‘How did he break your heart?’ Silas Mthimkhulu asked with a smile that was tight and forced.

‘In the worst possible way. We were supposed to marry … but then we did not,’ Bodecia said, her eyes still looking into Spokes’s eyes, her hands still holding his.

‘Ah, I see,’ Silas Mthimkhulu said before he disengaged them as politely as he could, taking his wife by the arm and pulling her to his side. ‘Then I have a lot to thank you for, Chief Inspector,’ Silas Mthimkhulu continued. ‘Without you, I would not have known true happiness these past twenty-two years.’

It was Bodecia’s turn to smile a smile that did not quite reach her eyes.

Chief Inspector? Spokes had not told Silas Mthimkhulu his rank.

‘The Chief Inspector is here enquiring about the sad business next door,’ Silas Mthimkhulu informed Bodecia, his arm finding its way to the small of her back.

‘Poor Sitshengisiwe,’ Bodecia said, moving away from her husband and towards the house, making all of them follow her.

‘Did you know her well?’ Spokes asked as he entered the house with Silas Mthimkhulu close behind him.