‘It was our time, you see,’ Kuki said, wiping her eyes and nose. ‘The three of us. From the 15th of December to the 2nd of January. The holidays were ours. The boy loved to travel, especially by road, and so that is what we did mostly. And you have no idea how we … came together in those two weeks. How we were a family … how happy we were and could be. My husband, I’m sure you know, is The Head of The Organisation of Domestic Affairs. My ex-husband, I should say rather. It is a very demanding job and does not leave room for much else. But from 15 December to 2 January, he was not Emil Coetzee, Head of the Organisation. He was just simply ours, and it was lovely, absolutely lovely.’ Kuki sighed deeply before adding, ‘And now it is no more. And so I cry.’

The Chief Inspector nodded yet again, and Kuki was more than certain that he did understand.

They sat together in the long silence that followed.

‘I know the person you can give the keys to,’ Kuki said at last, standing up.

The Chief Inspector’s forehead creased.

Spokes

SPOKES

The woman opened the door expectantly, and Spokes immediately thought of those scenes he had seen at the bioscope in which the heroine, newly in love, opens the door to the hero, but does so only after standing in front of a mirror and making sure that she looks immaculate. As she gazes up at the hero with as much nonchalance as she can muster, the camera obligingly softens the look of her face so that it does not seem to have ever been affected by the ordinariness of everyday life.

The woman, Marion Hartley, stood before them looking both cool and warm, and managing, somehow, to make it not seem a contradiction. She wore a lemon-coloured dress and there were ready tears in her astonishingly azure eyes. Before she could stop her half-smiling mouth, she said one word: ‘Emil’.

Beguiling. Spokes had always loved that word, and now he had found someone – besides the lovely Loveness, of course – to attach it to. He watched as Marion Hartley’s hopeful look changed as she began to actually register the incongruous scene in front of her. Instead of the hero standing before her, there was a white woman she knew and a black man she did not. Her eyes went from one to the other, and then widened as she comprehended what Spokes’s presence there probably meant.

She fixed her eyes on Kuki Coetzee and said, almost in a whisper, ‘Emil … something has happened to him.’ It was not necessarily a question, and so Kuki Coetzee could be excused for not responding.

An awful breaking sound escaped from Marion Hartley, and in a pathetic show of strength, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. Her eyes left Kuki Coetzee and travelled to Spokes. ‘Please. Tell me,’ she said.