The telephone rang while Lindiwe was trying to eat.
The man had left a bowl of soup on the small table beside her chair. It had gone cold while she watched the street through a gap in the curtains.
She heard him lift the receiver in the next room.
“Yes.”
A pause.
“When?”
She looked towards the doorway.
His voice had changed. With her, he was blunt and often impatient. Now he sounded precise, each question separated by a silence in which he seemed to be deciding whether the answer was adequate.
“Both of them?”
Another pause.
“No. Not yet.”
Lindiwe put down her spoon.
“I’ll make contact.”
The receiver settled into its cradle.
For a while, he remained in the other room. She could hear him moving, opening a drawer, then closing it again.
When he appeared in the doorway, he had put on his jacket.
“We’re going out.”
Lindiwe glanced at the soup.
“Apparently.”
He checked the dressing on her shoulder before they left.
His hands were careful, which somehow made his refusal to explain himself more irritating.
“Does that hurt?”
“Yes.”
He stopped.
“More than before?”
“No.”
He finished securing the bandage.
Lindiwe looked at the side of his face.
“Where are we going?”
“A hotel.”
“Why?”
“I have to meet someone.”
“Then why am I coming?”
He hesitated just long enough for her to notice.
“Because you shouldn’t be alone.”
She could have argued. Instead, she watched him put the remaining dressings away.
There had been something beneath his answer: concern, certainly, but also a reluctance she couldn’t place.
“You don’t want them to know I’m here.”
His hands stopped.
“Who?”
“The people on the telephone.”
He looked at her.
“You heard one side of a conversation.”
“I heard enough.”
“No. You didn’t.”
She held his gaze. The room had become quiet in the particular way it did when he was deciding how much to tell her.
Then he reached for her coat.
“We need to go.”
Outside, the world appeared offensively normal.
A woman carried shopping bags along the pavement. Two men stood beside a parked van, arguing over something on a sheet of paper. Somewhere nearby a radio was playing.
Lindiwe paused beside the car.
For days she had wanted to leave the house. Now the thought of sitting behind a car window made her stomach tighten.
The man opened the passenger door. She didn’t move. He waited without telling her to hurry. That helped more than she wanted it to.
Eventually she sat down. Before he closed the door, she checked the handle.
It worked.
He saw her do it and said nothing.
They drove for several minutes before she spoke.
“Does Peter’s family know?”
The man kept his eyes on the road.
“Yes.”
“Who told them?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked out through the windscreen.
Peter had complained that morning about having to collect refreshments. He thought Maseko relied on him too much for small things and not enough for important ones.
She had told him to stop talking and carry the tray.
That was the conversation she kept remembering.
Not anything kind. Not anything worth remembering.
Just her telling him to be quiet.
Beside her, the man eased his grip on the steering wheel.
“You couldn’t have stopped it.”
Lindiwe turned.
“I didn’t say I could.”
“No.”
“Then why say that?”
He watched the traffic ahead.
She looked back towards the road.
“I was thinking about the coffee.”
He didn’t answer, but she felt him listening.
“He spilled some on his sleeve. He was worried somebody would notice.”
She tried to smile. It didn’t hold.
“He spent half the meeting keeping that arm under the table.”
The man drove on.
For once, his silence didn’t feel like a locked door. She was grateful he hadn’t offered another sentence designed to make the death easier.
At the next junction, she wiped her face with the back of her hand.
He passed her a clean handkerchief without looking at her.
The hotel was larger than she expected.
He drove past the entrance once, continued around the corner and returned before stopping in a place from which he could see the doors.
Lindiwe watched him check the mirror.
“Are the people you’re meeting dangerous?”
“Not deliberately.”
She turned towards him.
“That’s an extraordinary answer.”
He looked faintly annoyed with himself.
“They’re young.”
“So am I.”
“I’d noticed.”
He switched off the engine.
“I need you to wait here.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know how long this will take.”
“I could wait inside.”
“It’s simpler if you stay here.”
“For you.”
“Yes.”
The admission surprised her.
He looked towards the entrance again.
“Lock the doors after I get out. If anyone approaches, you don’t open them.”
She glanced at the handle.
“And if I need to get out?”
“You can.”
Something in his voice told her he understood why she had asked.
He stepped from the car and waited until she had locked it. Then he crossed towards the hotel.
Lindiwe watched him enter.
For the first time since the attack, she was alone somewhere he hadn’t chosen to keep entirely out of sight.
She should have found that comforting.
Instead, she looked at the hotel doors and felt that something had brought her here for a reason he hadn’t explained.
At reception, Adrian Vale asked whether Daniel Ashcroft was in his room.
The receptionist checked, then shook her head.
“Out for the day, sir. Would you like to leave a message?”
“No. I’ll wait.”
He took a chair in the lobby with a clear view of the entrance.
The instructions had been straightforward. Ashcroft and Bennett were in Johannesburg. Establish what had brought them there and whether the museum discovery had produced anything further.
There had been no mention of Lindiwe.
He had reported the attack, the intervention and her survival. The questions since had concerned her condition and when observation could resume. He had answered those.
He had said nothing about the moments when she seemed to reach past an answer and find what he was withholding.
Nor about the strange certainty that had drawn her from her chair that morning.
Outside, she sat in his car within sight of the entrance.
He could have left her in the house. He had considered it until he found himself imagining her standing again, following a feeling neither of them understood.
Bringing her had seemed the safer choice.
Now he watched the doors and wondered whether he had mistaken a decision he wanted to make for one he ought to make.
He knew how easily that happened.
Even to him.