Kommandant van Heerden couldn't believe his ears. 'And what do you think you were doing to them yesterday afternoon, playing kiss-in-the-fucking-ring? You butcher half my bloody men, ruin a perfectly good Saracen and murder your sister's Zulu bleeding cook and you've got the nerve to come in here and protest at the assaults on…' Kommandant van Heerden was at a loss for words. When he recovered his temper he went on more quietly. 'Anything else you would like to ask me?' he said.

'Yes,' said the Bishop. 'I demand to see my lawyer.'

The Kommandant shook his head. 'Confession first,' he said.

'I'm entitled to see my lawyer.'

Kommandant van Heerden had to smile. 'You're not.'

'I am entitled by law to consult my lawyer.'

'You'll be bleating about Habeas Corpus next.'

'I most certainly will unless you bring me before a magistrate in forty-eight hours.'

Kommandant van Heerden sat back in his chair and grinned cheerfully. 'You think you know your law, don't you? Being the son of a judge, you'd know all about it, wouldn't you?'

The Bishop wasn't going to be drawn. 'I know my basic rights,' he said.

'Well, let me tell you something now. I'm holding you under the Terrorism Act and that means you can see no lawyer and there's no Habeas Corpus, nothing.' He paused to let this sink in. 'I can detain you till the day you die, and you never so much as get a whiff of a lawyer, and as for charging you before a magistrate, that can wait for forty-eight years or four hundred and eighty, for that matter.'

The Bishop tried to say something, but the Kommandant continued, 'I'll tell you something else. Under the Terrorism Act you have to prove yourself innocent. I don't have to go to the bother of proving you guilty. Really rather convenient from my point of view,' and the Kommandant picked up the paper-weight with what he hoped was a meaningful gesture.

The Bishop groped for something to say. 'But the Terrorism Act doesn't apply to me. I'm not a terrorist.'

'And what would you call a person who went round murdering twenty-one policemen if not a bloody terrorist?'

'I've no idea what you're talking about.'

'I'll tell you what I am talking about,' shouted the Kommandant, 'I'll spell it out for you. Early yesterday afternoon you attempted to destroy the evidence of a bestial crime committed upon the person of your sister's Zulu cook by shooting him with a monstrous elephant gun. You then forced your sister to confess to the crime to save your skin, while you went up to the main gate and shot down twenty-one of my men as they tried to enter the Park.'

The Bishop looked wildly round the room and tried to pull himself together.

'You've got it all wrong,' he said at last, 'I didn't kill Fivepence-'

Kommandant van Heerden interrupted him quickly. 'Thank you,' he said, and started to write, 'Confesses to killing twenty-one police officers.'

'I didn't say that,' screamed the Bishop. 'I said I didn't kill Fivepence.'

'Denies killing Zulu cook,' continued the Kommandant painstakingly writing it down.

'I deny killing twenty-one policemen too,' shouted the Bishop.

'Retracts previous confession,' said the Kommandant.

'There was no previous confession. I never said anything about killing the policemen.'

Kommandant van Heerden looked at the two konstabels. 'You men heard him confess to killing twenty-one police officers, didn't you?' he said. The two konstabels weren't sure what they heard but they knew better than to disagree with the Kommandant. They nodded.

'There you are,' the Kommandant continued. 'They heard you.'

'But I didn't say it,' the Bishop yelled. 'What would I want to kill twenty-one policemen for?'

The Kommandant considered the question. 'To hide the crime you'd committed on the Zulu cook,' he said at last.

'How would killing twenty-one policemen help to hide Fivepence's murder?' wailed the Bishop.

'You should have thought of that before you did it,' said the Kommandant smugly.

'But I didn't do it, I tell you. I never went anywhere near the main gate yesterday afternoon. I was too drunk to go anywhere.'

The Kommandant started to write again. 'Claims he acted under the influence of alcohol,' he said.

'No I don't. I said I was too drunk to go anywhere. I couldn't have got up to the gate if I had wanted to.'

Kommandant van Heerden put down his pen and looked at the prisoner. 'Then perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me,' he said, 'how it was that sixty-nine tracker dogs when put on your trail followed your scent up to the main gate and then back to the swimming-pool where you were disposing of the murder weapons?'

'I don't know.'

'Expert witnesses, tracker dogs,' said the Kommandant. 'And perhaps you'll explain how your wallet and handkerchief came to be inside a blockhouse from which my men had been shot down.'

'I've got no idea.'

'Right, then if you'll just sign here,' said the Kommandant holding out the statement to him.

The Bishop bent forward and read the statement. It was a confession that he had murdered Fivepence and twenty-one police officers.

'Of course I won't sign it,' he said straightening up at last. 'None of the crimes you mention there have anything to do with me.'

'No? Well then just you tell me who committed them.'

'My sister shot Fivepence…' the Bishop began, and realized he was making a mistake. In front of him the Kommandant's face had turned purple.

'You sordid bastard,' he yelled. 'Call yourself an English gentleman, do you, and try and shift the blame for a murder on your poor dear sister. What sort of a man are you? Doesn't the family name mean a bleeding thing to you?'

At a signal from the Kommandant the two konstabels grabbed the Bishop and hurled him to the floor. In a flurry of boots and truncheons, the Bishop rolled about the floor of the study. Just as he thought he was about to die, he was hauled to his feet in front of the desk.

'We'll continue this conversation when you feel up to it,' the Kommandant said more calmly, and the Bishop thanked the dear Lord for sparing him another encounter with Kommandant van Heerden. He knew he would never feel up to it. 'In the meantime I am sending for Luitenant Verkramp. This is clearly a political case, and in future he will interrogate you,' and with this dire threat the Kommandant ordered the two konstabels to take the prisoner back to the cellar.

As Kommandant van Heerden waited for Miss Hazelstone to be brought to him, he fingered the bathing-cap thoughtfully and wondered what had happened to Luitenant Verkramp. He had no great hope that the Luitenant was dead. 'The crafty swine is probably holed up somewhere,' he thought and idly poked his finger into the bathing-cap. He was beginning to wish the Luitenant was around to consult about the case. Kommandant van Heerden was no great one for theories and the cross-examination had not turned into a confession quite as easily as he had expected. He had to admit, if only to himself, that there were certain aspects of Jonathan's story that had the ring of truth about them. He had been dead drunk on the bed in Jacaranda House. The Kommandant had seen him there with his own eyes and yet the shooting at the gate had started only minutes later. The Kommandant could not see how a man who was dead drunk one minute half a mile from the blockhouse, could the next be firing with remarkable accuracy at the plain-clothes men. And where the hell had Els disappeared to? The whole thing was a bloody mystery.

'Oh well, never look a gift horse in the mouth,' he thought. 'After all my whole career is at stake and it doesn't do to be choosy.'

The Kommandant hadn't been far wrong in his assessment of Luitenant Verkramp's position. He was indeed holed up. Of all the people who slept in Piemburg that night, Luitenant Verkramp was perhaps the least restless and certainly the least refreshed when dawn broke. His sleep had been disturbed, very disturbed, but in spite of his discomfort he had not dared to move. Below him and in some cases actually inside him, the dreadful spikes made the slightest movement an exceedingly unrewarding experience.