‘We are aware of that,’ Spokes said, choosing not to mention all the other evidence which indicated that Emil Coetzee had entered the bush without a weapon or any means of sustaining himself.

‘Is there something you are not telling me? Something that I should know?’ Marion Hartley shot at him. ‘Something that we should know?’ she corrected, her hand reaching for Kuki Coetzee’s again. Kuki Coetzee was still sitting on her hands, but her eyes were now searching Spokes’s eyes for the something that he might be hiding.

‘It is early days yet, and, to be honest, we don’t really know what we know. You have both been very helpful and co-operative, and we thank you. It is probably as you say: he is just giving himself a few days to clear his head, and then he will resurface. If he contacts you, please let us know immediately,’ Spokes said, and then he stood and offered both women his card.

‘I will definitely contact you as soon as I hear from him,’ Marion Hartley said as she took his card. ‘Chief Inspector,’ she added.

As Marion Hartley led him and Kuki Coetzee out of her living room, it struck Spokes that she seemed certain that she would be hearing from Emil Coetzee again. Whatever she was hiding, she fully expected him to return to her. Spokes remembered the relieved and excited way she had opened the door to them when she thought they were Emil Coetzee; he remembered the flawless perfection of the bioscope heroine she must have mastered just before opening the door. She had let Emil Coetzee go without really letting him go; she had, even in that moment of letting him go, wanted him back again.

Spokes hoped, for her sake, for Kuki Coetzee’s sake, and even for Saskia Hargrave’s sake, that Emil Coetzee would return.

As Marion Hartley opened her front door and let the sun shine in, Spokes said, as though only now remembering to ask a question that he had meant to ask all along: ‘Do either of you know anyone by the name of Zora?’

Marion Hartley frowned, and Kuki Coetzee looked at him blankly. Oh well, it had been worth a try. Saskia Hargrave had dropped the name tantalisingly, as though it were a delicious morsel, and Spokes had thought that maybe Zora was somehow tied to all of this. But most probably, Saskia Hargrave, who definitely was hiding something and not doing a very good job of it, had deliberately tried to send him down the wrong path.

Marion Hartley suddenly laughed, a deep, throaty laugh, and Spokes knew that this was something else Emil Coetzee had tripped over. ‘Unless, of course, you mean Zora Neale Hurston,’ she said. It was Spokes’s turn to frown and look at her blankly. ‘I will go and fetch her. Please wait a moment,’ Marion Hartley said, the laughter still in her voice.