‘An anonymous caller warned me this morning that something like this might happen,’ James says as they drive away.

‘You had an anonymous call this morning?’ Lomba asks, repeating James’s words.

‘I did. But I didn’t take him seriously. Now I do. He also advised me to carry my passport about – in case I have to get out in a hurry.’

Passport. Exile. Asylum. The association flashes through Lomba’s mind and he thinks, has it really come to that? This morning everything was fine, apart from the heartbreak – and now even the sun has grown dark and is threatening to fall out of the sky.

‘I’ll take his advice from now on. Let’s go to my house.’

Lomba has worked with James for two years, but still he doesn’t know where James lives. James is the type of person who partitions his life into neatly labelled compartments, with ‘Work’ placed as far away as possible from ‘Family’. Lomba doesn’t know if James has a wife or not, or children. Well, he will soon find out. James lives in Yaba.

‘I’ve lived in the same house for the past ten years,’ he says; his voice sounds nostalgic. Lomba knows that James is not the type to make small talk, so this bit of information is a sort of lament, an unconscious valediction, even; James can feel his ordered, rooted life coming to an end, and in front lies nothing but chaos, even exile – as for the slaves remembered in the museum.

‘Here we are,’ James sighs and enters a turning; he begins to slow down but suddenly his leg shifts from the brake to the accelerator.

‘Where?’ Lomba queries, looking out of the window. James is looking in the rear-view mirror. He takes another turning, and another, then he stops in a parking space before a supermarket. He is sweating, but not from the heat of the low-flying sun; it is an inner heat, a personal heat.

‘There is a car parked in front of my house with two men in it,’ he says, forcing himself to sound casual. ‘A black Peugeot 504.’

People go in and out of the supermarket, some singly, some arm in arm, pretending that all is fine. ‘Murphy’s Mini Mart’ reads the sign above the supermarket.

Lomba says to James, ‘If you describe the house to me, I could go back and bring the passport for you.’

James looks at him as if to protest, but all he does is sigh and nod his head. ‘You can take a taxi from here. I’ll wait for thirty minutes. If you don’t return I’ll come. Tell my wife to give you my passport and some money, foreign exchange. Tell her to go to my sister in Ikoyi early tomorrow. I’ll contact her there. Explain things to her.’