If they had found any other type of hat, the ever popular boonie hat, for example, there might have been some hope that the man who had walked into the veld had not been Emil Coetzee. But there was only one man in the City of Kings who wore a Stetson. Even when they had been boys together at the Selous School for Boys, Coetzee had worn a Stetson. However, that was the only familiar detail in this whole affair. It was not like Emil Coetzee to walk into the bush unprepared. In Rutherford and Coetzee’s hunting heyday, their glorious twenties, before the arrival of Kuki Sedgwick and the creation of Emil Coetzee, before every hunt Coetzee would drape an ammunition belt like a sash over his shoulders, grab his rifle and then carefully place his Stetson on top of his head. The Stetson on top of his head was what let it be known that Coetzee was ready for the world and whatever it threw at him.

As he looked at the Stetson that Joseth had placed on his lap, Rutherford tried to reconcile the Emil Coetzee he knew well with this man who had gone into the bush unprepared for its obvious dangers … like one … like so … like this. Who was this man who had walked into the savannah unarmed, this man who had let go of the one thing that defined him – his Stetson?

Rutherford waited for the right moment to turn to Joseth and say, ‘It seems rather likely that the white man who walked into the bush and did not walk out of it is indeed Emil Coetzee.’

Joseth gave a slight nod from the passenger seat.

Rutherford looked at him before saying, cautiously, ‘What do you think happened?’

‘I think Emil Coetzee walked into the bush,’ Joseth said.

For a long few minutes, Rutherford thought that that was all that Joseth had to say on the subject. Was he being facetious? Insubordinate? Downright rude? All three? Rutherford was on the verge of fury. But then Joseth added the word that changed everything: ‘I think Emil Coetzee walked into the bush deliberately.’

Now that someone else had confirmed his own suspicions that Emil Coetzee had walked into the bush intentionally unarmed, knowing … wanting … willing something terrible to happen to him, Rutherford could not help but reach into his breast pocket and retrieve the sharpened HB pencil. This whole Emil Coetzee business was such a delicate matter, Rutherford acknowledged as he chomped down on the pencil and felt himself gradually relax and focus. He could never adequately explain to anyone else the satisfaction he felt as his incisors broke through first the thin veneer of black and red paint, and then the resisting hardness of the wood.