Mbali was not surprised by his attitude.

She knew her male colleagues did not like her. The one who liked her least of all was Fransman Dekker. But that didn't disturb her because she knew why. Generally the men felt threatened by her talent and they were intimidated by her ethics and her integrity. She didn't drink, smoke, or curse. She didn't hold her tongue either. The SAPS was not a place for sweet talking; the task was too big and the circumstances too difficult for that. She said what she thought. About their egos, too often the axis around which everything turned. About their incessant sexism and racism. About their lack of focus. Too much 'Let's throw a chop on the grill', or 'Let's get a quick beer', like boys that hadn't yet grown up. Too much talk in the office about sport, politics and sex. She told them straight out it was inappropriate. They hated her for that. But Dekker had an extra reason to hate her. She'd caught him out a few weeks ago. He was in the corridor where he thought nobody could hear him. Cell phone to his ear, whispering words of lust to a Tamaryn, when his wife's name was Crystal. When he slunk back into the office she had gone and stood at his desk and said: 'A man should be faithful to his wife.' He just stared at her. So she said: 'Fraud comes in many different guises,' and left. Since then she had seen the hatred in his eyes. Because she knew, and despised him for it.

But there was work to be done here. So she listened attentively. She answered him only in English, although he spoke Afrikaans. Because she knew he hated that too.

Rachel Anderson closed the bathroom door behind her, feeling an urgent need to pee. She unzipped her denim shorts, pulled the garments down to her knees and sat down. The relief was so great and the sound so loud that she wondered if he could hear her from the kitchen. Rachel looked around the bathroom. The walls were a light pastel blue, the porcelain fittings snow white. The old restored claw-foot bath was suddenly tempting, hot foamy water to draw out the dreadful fatigue and dull aching of her body. But she suppressed the thought, a surrender she wasn't yet ready for. And the old man was cooking in the kitchen.

When she was finished she bent over the basin, opened the taps, picked up the soap and washed the dried blood and mud off her hands, all the dirt from touching rocks and plants, walls and earth. She watched it rinse away. She mixed hot and cold water in cupped hands and splashed her face. Then she took the cake of soap, lathered it over her cheeks and forehead, mouth and chin, and rinsed again.

The dark-blue towel was fresh and rough. She rubbed it slowly over her face and hung it up neatly again. Only then did she look in the mirror. In a habitual motion her hands reached for her hair and brushed it back from her face.

She looked haggard. Dreadful. Her hair was a mess, strands had escaped from the plait and framed her face, her eyes were bloodshot and there were lines of fatigue around her mouth. There was a cut on her chin, surrounded by a light purple bruise and another small graze across her forehead; she didn't know where she had got that. Her neck was grimy, like her powder-blue Tshirt.

But you are alive.

She was filled with enormous gratitude. Then came the guilt, because Erin was dead, dear Erin. The emotion washed over her like a tidal wave, sudden and overwhelming, the awful shame that she could be glad at being alive while Erin was dead. It broke down her defences and let her relive it fully for the first time: the two of them fleeing in terror, Erin putting a hand on the church wall and jumping over the sharp cast-iron railings. A fatal error.

'No!' she had screamed, yet followed blindly, jumping over so effortlessly. Erin had stopped on a narrow path in the churchyard, in the deep, dark shadows between huge trees. Rachel realised they were trapped; she had run on desperately looking for a way out. She intended to take the lead, show the way around the church and thought Erin was following. She was already behind the building, out of sight and away from the streetlights, when she realised she couldn't hear Erin's footsteps. She turned around, feeling deadly fear like a weight she was dragging along with her. Where was Erin? Reluctant and afraid, she had run back to the corner of the church building.

Erin was on the ground and all five were around her, bending over, kneeling, yowling like animals. The knife had flashed. Erin's desperate scream, abruptly cut off. Black blood in the dark.

That moment was petrified in the synapses of her brain, surreal, overwhelming. As heavy as lead.

She had run for her life. Around the back of the church. Over the fence again. She had a bigger lead this time.

Relief. Gratitude. She was alive.

In front of the bathroom mirror it was all too much for her. She could not look at herself. She let her head hang in shame, grasping the sides of the basin in despair. The emotion was physical, a nausea rising from her stomach that made her guts spasm and made her want to vomit, a wave of dry retching. She bellowed once, and shuddered. Then she began to cry.

Vusi Ndabeni sat in the front seat of one of the patrol vehicles between a Constable and an Inspector, both in uniform. Behind them on the West Coast Road was another police van.

They had wanted to put the sirens and lights on but he had said: 'No, please don't.' He wanted to arrive at J. M. de Klerk's house without fanfare, surround it quietly and then knock on the door. The Inspector said he knew where the address was, one of the crescents in Parklands, a new residential area where the white and up-and-coming black middle classes lived shoulder to shoulder in apparent harmony; the new South Africa successfully practised.

At a set of traffic lights they turned right into Park Road. Shopping centres, townhouse complexes, then left again down Ravenscourt, right in Humewood. These were not the linear street blocks of Mandela Park and Harare in Khayelitsha, but a maze of crescents and dead ends. Vusi looked at the Inspector.

'It's just up front here, first left, second right.'

Houses, townhouses, flats, all neat and new, gardens in development, with small trees or none at all.

'We mustn't park in front of the house,' said Vusi. 'I don't want to scare him.'

'OK,' said the Inspector, and showed the Constable which way to drive. Eventually a road sign said 'Atlantic Breeze'.

Townhouses. The numbers on this side were in the forties, big complexes behind high walls. 'Are they all townhouses?' asked Vusi.

'I don't think so.'

But Number 24 was. They stopped some way off. 'Let me get out,' said Vusi. The Inspector opened the door and slid out.

There was a high white wall with spiky metal deterrent on top and large painted numbers, a two and a four. In the centre was a large motorised iron gate and townhouses behind in a countrified style, blue and green shutters alongside plain- coloured window frames, and an A-frame roof. Yet another quick property speculation that would become stale and uninspiring in five years' time.

'Ai,' said Vusi. This was not the way he had visualised it. He beckoned to the vehicle with the two other uniforms. They got out and everyone came over to stand with him. 'The jackets,' he said. The Inspector opened the back of the police van. The bulletproof vests were no longer in the tidy pile they had been earlier. Vusi took one, pulled it over his head and began to buckle it up. 'You too. Wait here while I have a look, and have the gate opened.' They nodded enthusiastically. He crossed the street and walked alongside the wall. There was a panel at the closed gate with a grid for a speaker, call buttons, some with names alongside. He scanned them and saw no de Klerk. On the top left was one labelled Administrator. He pressed it. An electronic beep sounded. Then nothing.