It was obvious to Spokes that she was lying. She knew something that she desperately wanted to keep secret. He could tell from the intelligence held in her eyes that she was a woman long accustomed to knowing what others did not. She was a woman used to secrets: to having them, keeping them and storing them safely away.

‘When did you last see Mr Coetzee?’ Spokes asked.

‘On the day the ceasefire was announced,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘Well, actually, the morning after,’ she went on, looking at Kuki Coetzee before continuing. ‘He came in the afternoon, spent the evening … and the night. He left just after dawn the following morning.’

‘When he left, did he say where he was going?’ Spokes asked.

‘He did not say,’ Marion Hartley said, and chose that moment to look at her polished fingernails instead of him. She was not lying this time, but she was definitely hiding something.

‘Did the two of you have a fight … quarrel?’ Spokes asked.

Marion Hartley’s eyes flew up at him. There was clearly a truth in his words that she could not deny, and she said, almost in a whisper, ‘No, not quite. But it would have been better, I think, if we had.’

‘Better? How? Why?’

She looked at him for a long time as though trying to gauge something before she replied, ‘I’m sorry, I cannot seem to remember your name – did you tell it to me?’

He had not, he realised, introduced himself, and so he said with some embarrassment, ‘I’m Spokes Moloi. I’m with the BSAP.’ He intentionally omitted his rank, division and station.

‘I see,’ Marion Hartley said. ‘It is wonderful to meet you,’ she added before taking another sip of her drink. She was playing for time, contemplating her next move.

‘What is it that you probably should have fought about?’ Spokes pressed.

Her eyes flew up at him again, and then she said, rather too quickly, ‘He resigned from The Organisation.’ Again, she was not lying, but she was not telling the whole truth either.

‘Did he? Really?’ Kuki Coetzee asked, curious in spite of herself.

‘Yes. He did. As soon as he could after he heard about the ceasefire.’

‘I cannot imagine him not working for The Organisation,’ Kuki Coetzee said.