‘Why not?’

Tom told him briefly. ‘When we got back, we saw the fire. Looked to me like it had started downstairs, probably in two sites, maybe more.’

Konrad stared at his book as if he’d made copious notes.

Tom got impatient. ‘What did Forensics find?’

‘It was a fire. Everything was burned up. People. Clues. Everything.’

Tom felt dawning suspicion. ‘Was there a forensic investigation?’

‘You let the dog go?’

Tom was confused enough, by this sudden change in tack, to answer, ‘Yes.’

‘The dog was chained up for a reason. It’s a vicious dog.’

Tom mentally shook his head in surprise. ‘So what? It would have died if we’d left it there.’

‘We?’ Konrad looked at him sharply.

Something told Tom that being involved in the dog’s release was a bad thing. ‘Me. It would’ve died if I’d left it there.’

‘After you let it go, it bit someone.’

‘Yeah, well, it bit me but I was too busy worrying about six people burning to give a shit.’

Konrad shook his head disapprovingly. ‘I’ve been told about your language, Mr Patrick. Here in South Africa we don’t think it’s clever or funny.’

‘Fuck off.’

Konrad glared at him. ‘You let the dog go. It bit someone. You’re responsible.’

‘Okay, fine. I’m responsible. Sorry. What about the six dead people? Who’s responsible for that?’

Konrad shrugged. ‘Mrs Marais. She smoked a lot. People said it was only a matter of time.’

‘So that’s it? She smoked a lot. Case closed? What about the car that drove us off the road? What about the stolen wreckage?’

‘There’s no point spending taxpayers’ money if you know what happened.’

‘Six people died in that fire, asshole! Five of them were government employees! Two of them were even white!’

Konrad stood up abruptly and, for a moment, Tom thought he was going to hit him where he lay. Ness obviously thought the same thing because she rose and took a protective step forward.

Instead the policeman dug out a creased bit of paper from his pocket and dropped it on the bed. ‘Here’s the fine. You can pay it at any police station.’

He pushed past Ness and left.

*

Tom left the little hospital with a bottle of painkillers rattling in his hip pocket and the hostile stares of the staff burning a hole between his shoulder-blades.

Ness went to open the car door for him but he beat her to it. ‘I’m fine,’ he insisted.

She rolled her eyes, then waved cheerfully at someone back at the hospital.

‘What makes you so popular?’ he asked, as he dropped heavily into the passenger seat.

‘I think they feel sorry for me,’ she answered, with a little smile, and got behind the wheel.

For the first time in a long time, he couldn’t think of anything clever to say.

*

Ness drove away from De Rust. Tom didn’t like being a passenger but Ness was a fast and good driver, shifting and cornering smoothly, even on the challenging dirt road. After she’d caught her first slide and locked swiftly to get them back on track, he relaxed and stopped worrying.

There were other things he didn’t have to worry about. Ness had arranged for new passports to be picked up in Cape Town and had bought them both clothes from the only store De Rust had to offer, leaving Tom looking like an extra from The Dukes of Hazzard. Of course, Ness still looked incredible – even wearing something that looked like it might once have contained flour.

They passed the unmarked turn that would have taken them to the barn.

‘You want to go to the plane?’

He shook his head. There was no point. He wondered idly if the Cokes were still cold, then realized he’d left his thirty-nine-cent flyswatter there. If he’d been alone he’d have turned round and driven to fetch it, even though he knew he could pick one up in any convenience store in South Africa.

She seemed to realize where his thoughts were and took her hand off the wheel momentarily to graze his cheek with her knuckles.

His hands were still relatively painful, but the miles of crêpe bandage had now been replaced by a minimal covering, and he could use them almost normally if he was careful.

‘Have you taken your pills?’

‘They make me sleepy.’

‘So? Sleep.’

He dry-swallowed two painkillers. Within fifteen minutes he was unconscious.

*

Tom slowly became aware that the car had stopped. First he felt the complete calm that follows the engine switch-off. The quiet was so all-encompassing that it actually started to push him back into sleep.

He heard distant voices and wondered why Ness was so far away when she should have been in the driver’s seat.

Then he heard another voice, high, sing-song, luring.

It was this that finally forced him to open his eyes groggily and look around.

The car was stopped on a nondescript stretch of straight Karoo dust road. As he looked to his left he could see only sheep and shimmer. He shifted his gaze to the right, where the driver’s door was open. It afforded him a good view of Ness standing about fifty yards away, one hand on her hip, the other shielding her eyes from the fierce sun.