Spokes had expected the gold watch and the car that they had wanted to give him when he became Chief Inspector, and which he had requested they give him upon retirement. He had expected the lovely Loveness to look radiant as she sat next to him on the dais set up on the lawn of the Western Commonage, one of her beautiful brown hands held in his. What he had not expected was to have Dikeledi and Lukha – leaning towards each other – sitting amongst the invited guests and looking up at him with such great pride, but they were a wonderful and unexpected thing.

He had been to enough of these send-offs to know that there were three speeches – one from the Deputy Commissioner, another from Chief Superintendent Griffiths, and the last from the retiree himself – after which the BSAP band struck up ‘Kum-A-Kye’ on the bandstand, and then the gathering went to the canteen for tea and cake before dispersing. The entire thing rarely took more than two hours, and so that was what he had prepared for – but none of it was going according to plan.

It began with the speeches. First, the Commissioner gave a short speech about the history Spokes had made in becoming Chief Inspector. Second, the Deputy Commissioner gave a surprisingly lengthy and detailed speech that seemed to take great pains to elaborate on what the Commissioner had said. Third, Chief Superintendent Griffiths gave a predictably lengthy speech that started off by using fishing as a metaphor for police work before launching into what Spokes had accomplished in his thirty-three years of service: the deserved rise through the ranks, the criminals brought to justice, the unmatched number of cases solved, the dedicated maintenance of law and order. ‘In a country whose politics has been forever shifting, Spokes Moloi has been unwavering in his dogged pursuit of justice. He has ruffled some feathers. Got under thin skin. Some of us on this dais have butted heads with him as we tried to make him do the more expedient thing – but there was never any dissuading him from doing what is absolutely right. I, for one, will miss having the fedora-wearing and bicycle-riding Chief Inspector,’ – here Chief Superintendent Griffiths took a moment to clear the frog that had found its way into his throat before continuing – ‘the fedora-wearing and bicycle-riding Chief Inspector whose middle name is … not … Magnanimous … amongst us here at the Western Commonage.’