With Moloi gone, the Chief Superintendent said, ‘In case there is any doubt, gentlemen, mine is, quite naturally, the biggest. Never forget that. And the man who just walked out of this office is not only my best officer; he also has the best reasoning mind in the country. Never forget that either. I have always been wise enough to keep him out of all things political. And you have just dropped him right in the thick of it. All I can do now is wish you gentlemen good luck.’

Spokes

SPOKES

It was 28 December, and the station was still decorated with the tinsel and paper decorations that the officers’ wives made every year. This year the lovely Loveness had not contributed to the decorations, and Spokes noticed, as he walked from Chief Superintendent Griffiths’ office to the Sergeants’ Office, that the Christmas tree looked incomplete without Loveness’s twinkling star affixed atop it, and the ceiling looked bereft without her intricately interlocked decorations and bunting. Spokes had had to reconcile himself to a festive season that had been anything but.

‘Merry Christmas,’ one of the junior officers said to him as he walked along the corridor.

‘A few days late, aren’t you?’ Spokes said with a weak smile.

‘Your middle name, sir. Merry Christmas,’ the junior officer said with a much broader smile.

‘Back in my day a superior would have had you running around the station yard until you could not remember how to smile,’ Spokes said, chuckling and shaking his head so that the junior officer knew that he was in jest. As he neared his office, he saw that the sergeants with whom he shared it were standing outside and looking at him with open curiosity, as though they were expecting something to happen. Had they also noticed the missing twinkling star? Had they overheard the conversation with the two men from the SIU who had been ready to humiliate him but not as ready to fail? Instead of the sergeants saying anything to him, they just grinned and opened the office door.

‘Merry Christmas, Chief Inspector Moloi, albeit belated,’ Marion Hartley said as he entered the office. She was sitting by his desk on the chair opposite his, and she smiled and her eyes twinkled up at him.

Spokes now understood the look his fellow officers had given him. Not knowing what else to do, he responded with a ‘Merry Christmas’ of his own, and then stood there awkwardly, as though he was a visitor in his own office.

Well aware that they had a captive audience in his fellow officers, who had sat themselves and their curiosity and expectation down at their desks, Marion Hartley said. ‘I have something that I would like to share with you. In private.’

Spokes could feel the sergeants trying to read the situation.

‘The courtyard,’ Spokes suggested. ‘We will have privacy there.’