She scrambled up quickly, meaning to run around the house, across the front to the back, away from the street before they saw her. Over the grass, a paved path, more flower beds in cheerful white, yellow and blue. Her mouth was gaping to get enough air. Past the furthest corner of the house there were bougainvilleas, big and dense, the purple flowers tumbling over an arbour. A hiding place. She hesitated for only an instant to estimate the size of the bushes, not realising they had thorns. She dived inside, to the deepest shadow at the back. The sharp points pierced her, scratched long bloody tracks on her arms and legs. She cried out softly at the pain, and lay gasping on her stomach behind the screen of leaves. 'Please, God,' she murmured and turned her face to the street. She could see nothing, only the thick curtain of green, and the tiny white flowers in each purple cup.

If they hadn't seen her, she was safe. For now. She shifted her hand down her limbs, to try and pull the thorns out.

'Let me go and phone the American Consul,' the Provincial Commissioner said to John Afrika as he rose. 'I'm going to tell him we are doing everything in our power to track her down. John, you must make sure that that is true. Get Benny Griessel to take full control.'

'Right. But the stations are reluctant to allocate people ..

'Leave that to me,' said the Provincial Commissioner. He walked to the door and stopped.

'Isn't Griessel up for promotion?'

'It's been approved; I think he'll be notified today.'

'Tell him. Tell the whole team.'

'Good idea.' Afrika's phone rang. The Provincial Commissioner waited, in the hope that there would be news.

'John Afrika.'

'Commissioner, this is Inspector Mbali Kaleni. I am at Caledon Square, but they say they don't have a place for me.'

'Mbali, I want you to go to the station commander's office, because he is going to get a call right now.'

'Yes, sir,' she said.

'The missing girl ... She's alive. She called home half an hour ago.'

'Where is she?'

'She did not have enough time to say. We need to find her. Quickly.'

'I will find her, Commissioner.' So self-assured. John Afrika put down the phone. 'Caledon Square,' he told the Provincial Commissioner. 'They don't want to cooperate.'

'Wait,' said the little Xhosa in his impeccable uniform. 'Let me call him too.'

'Would you like to tell me what happened yesterday?' Griessel sat down on the other side of the oval table, with his face towards the door. The big man was sitting down now, elbows on the table, one hand nervously touching the drooping blonde moustache. 'It wasn't me.' He didn't look at Griessel. 'Mr Geyser, let's start at the beginning. Apparently there was an incident yesterday ...'

'What would you do if a son of Satan messed with your woman? What would you do?'

'Mr Geyser, how did you find out that Adam Barnard and your wife ...'

'We're all sinners. But he had no remorse. Never. He never stopped. Idols. Mammon. Whoring.' He gave Griessel an ominous look and said: 'He believed in evolution.' 'Mr Geyser ...'

'He's a son of Satan. Today he burns in hell...'

'Mr Geyser, how did you find out?' With infinite patience.

He shrugged as though he needed to steel himself. 'Yesterday when she came home, she didn't look well, so I asked what was wrong ...' He leaned his forehead on his hand and looked down at the table. 'First she said "nothing". But I knew something was ... So I said: "Pokkel, you're not okay, what is it?" Then she sat down and she couldn't look me in the eye. That's when I knew something was very wrong ...' He went quiet, clearly unwilling to relive the events.

'What time was that?'

'Three o'clock, round about.'

'And then?'

'Then I sat next to her and held her hands. And she started crying. Then she said: "Beertjie, let us pray, Beertjie".  And she held my hands tight and prayed and she said: "Lord, forgive me because Satan ..."' Geyser opened and closed his fists, his face contorted with feeling.' "... because Satan got into my life today." So I said: "Pokkel, what happened?" But she just kept her eyes shut...' The big man shielded his face with his hands.

'Mr Geyser, I know this is hard.'

Geyser shook his head, still hiding his face. 'My Melinda ...' he said and his voice cracked. 'My Pokkel.'

Griessel waited.

'Then she asked God to forgive her, because she was weak, so I asked her if she had stolen something, but she said, Lord, One John One verse eight, she said it over and over until I said stop, what did she do? Then she opened her eyes and said she had sinned in Adam Barnard's office, because she wasn't as strong as I think, she couldn't stop the devil, and I said what kind of sin, and she said: "of the flesh, Beertjie, the big sin of the flesh ..."' Geyser's voice broke down and he stopped, with both hands over his face.

Benny Griessel sat there suppressing the urge to get up and put his hand on the massive shoulder, to console, to say something. In twenty-five years he had learned to be sceptical, not to believe anything until all the evidence was in. He had learned that when the sword of righteousness hung over your head, you were capable of anything - heart-rending, tearful denial, the pained indignation at being falsely accused, strong protest, deep remorse or pathetic self-pity. People could lie with astonishing skill; sometimes it led to total self-deception, so that they clung with absolute conviction to an imaginary innocence.

So he did nothing. He just waited for Josh Geyser to finish crying.

Galia Federova pressed a switch and neon lights flickered on near the roof of the club, just enough to cloak the large space in twilight.

'You can wait here,' she said to Vusi and pointed at the table and chairs around the dance floor. 'Would you like something to drink?'

'Do you have tea?'

He fancied she smiled before she said: 'I will tell them.' Then she was gone.

He walked between the tables that hadn't yet been set out since the previous night.

He stopped at one, took down the chairs and sat down. He put his notebook, pen and cell phone on the table and looked around in amazement. On the right against the wall was the long bar counter made from rough, thick wooden beams. On the walls were artificial shipwreck ornaments from the era of sailing ships, between modern neon curlicues in piratical designs. On the left, right at the back, was a bank of turntables and electronic equipment, with a dance floor in front. Four dance towers stood metres above the dance floor. High up against the ceiling hung bunches of lasers and spotlights, all dark now. Giant speakers were mounted on every wall.

He tried to imagine how it had been last night. Hundreds of people, loud music, dancing bodies, flickering lights. And now it was quiet, empty and spooky.

He felt uneasy in this place.

In this city too. It was the people, he thought. Khayelitsha had often broken his heart with its pointless murders, the domestic violence, the terrible poverty, the shacks, the daily struggle. But he had been welcome there, the source of law and order, simple people, his people, they respected him, stood by him, supported him.

Ninety per cent of those cases were straightforward. In this city the possibilities were complicated and legion, the agendas inscrutable. It was all antagonism and suspicion. As if he were some intruder.

'No respect,' his mother would say. 'That's the problem with the new world.' His mother carved elephants out of wood in Knysna, sanding and polishing them until they came alive, but she refused to sell them in the roadside stall next to the lagoon, 'Because people don't have respect any more.' To her, the 'new world' was anything across the brown waters of the Fish and Mzimvubu Rivers, but there were no jobs in Gwiligwili, 'at home'. Now she was an exile, cast out on this 'new world'. Even though she only went shopping once a week. The rest of the time she sat in front of the corrugated iron shack in Khayalethu South with her elephants, waiting for her son to phone on the cell phone he had bought for her. Or for Zukisa, to hear how many artworks they had sold to the disrespectful tourists.