Hans came over, rubbing driver’s stiffness from his shoulders. As he shook Angus’s hand, the Scotsman smiled, quite warily, his green eyes gleaming.

‘And you are?’

‘Hans Petersen. Offered these guys a lift.’

‘Apparently so. Think I know your work with the ellies. Save the desert ellies, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Know the accent…Dorslander? Northern Dutch? Not an original thirstlander?’

Hans smiled at Angus.

‘Sorry, no…German Dutch. Otasha.’ He made his goodbyes to Amy and David. ‘OK. We gotta make the Huab by nightfall. Glad I could be of help.’

Nairn nodded, Hans retreated. The Desert Elephant Land Rovers departed, trailing clouds of orange dust, like cannon smoke drifting over a battlefield. Angus picked up a big steel syringe and beckoned over another tribeswoman. David felt absurd standing here, doing nothing. Where was Eloise? Was Enoka with Miguel?

Miguel and Enoka.

‘Mister Nairn. We think we may have been followed. To Namibia.’

The geneticist nodded, pensively. He continued drawing blood as he talked.

‘Call me Angus. Followed how?’

‘We’re not sure. We just think maybe someone was looking for us in Swakop. A friend of Miguel’s. Might be wrong.’

Angus sighed.

‘Eloise told me about Miguel. Garovillo? Yup. I knew they’d come for us. But we’re nearly done anyway. And we’re pretty safe out here in the bush.’

‘Where is Eloise?’

Angus lifted a hand.

‘Wait. Let me finish. Just a few Nama and Damara to go. And the ever delightful Himba.’

David watched as Angus took samples from the last tribespeople. The process of collecting blood was simple, it seemed. The locals queued patiently in the sun, then exposed their black and brown arms for Angus to plunge a shining needle in the soft veiny crook of the elbow. In return for the extracted blood samples, he then offered a brief medical examination, and dispensed medications – antibiotics, analgesics, antimalarials – to his sardonically mystified but apparently grateful customers.

Now he was almost done. One girl remained, her hair and her bare body smeared with a reddish ochre substance – a form of grease, Angus told them, made from dust and butter.

‘The topless ones are the Himba – don’t know why bras are taboo. OK, that’s it, just unfold your arm. Less jouncing would be good.’

The syringe glittered. The glass tube filled with blood, deep crimson blood, rubescent in the fading yet still burning sun. The shadows of the Damara canyon walls were long against the rocks; squawks and chirrs of birds and hyrax trilled through the air. The desert was returning to life after the infernal heat of the day.

‘There,’ said Angus. ‘One more fluid ounce and we’re finished.’

He turned and squirted the blood into a sealed glass vial, which he handed to Alphonse, who escorted it away with ceremonial care. Like a newborn being taken to the scales. Angus swabbed the girl’s arm with a cotton wool bud. ‘Alright love. Thank you very much. Here’s some medicine for the kiddo. Do you understand? De Calpol juju?’

The girl smiled, in shy puzzlement, and took the bottle of medicine, then turned and followed her family homeward through the acacias, assimilating with the long dark shadows of the trees.

‘Finally!’ Angus almost cheered. ‘Finito Benito! Now let’s have some Tafels and tucker. Guess you’re a bit confused, come all this way to see me and you can’t see Eloise? All can be explained, but first we drink. And eat!’

He was right. In the centre of the camp some trestle tables had been laid for a meal. There were big steel bowls of kudu steaks with cold pepper sauce, golden Windhoek and Urbock lager already poured into glasses. Fruit sat next to chocolate bars.

‘Courtesy of Nathan Kellerman, such a generous benefactor, albeit a Zionist hoodlum. Come on, sit down for fuck’s sake, you two came a long way in one drive. Damaraland from Swakop? Mad men! Amy, your name is Amy Myerson right? Eloise told me everything.’

Amy nodded, and said firmly: ‘Where is Eloise?’

A mosquito whined and Angus shot out his hands and clapped. A squished mosquito was black on his fingers. ‘Howzat!’ He squinted closely at the insect’s corpse. ‘Anopheles Moucheti Moucheti. The day ones are arguably more dangerous, they carry dengue -’

‘Please. Where is Eloise?’ Amy repeated. ‘She told us to come here -’

‘She was here, you’re quite right. But I got a bit angsty. Decided to send her south.’

‘Where?’

‘The Sperrgebiet. The Forbidden Zone. Safest place in the world – for the world’s last breeding Cagot.’

‘Apart from Miguel.’

Nairn’s eyes brightened.

‘So he is a Cagot as well? The terrorist! How is that? Tell me how. Tell me everything. The Urbock is cold and the desert evening is long. Tell me!’

Over half a dozen beers, and plates of cold kudu steak and okra, Amy and David relayed the story to Angus Nairn. They were getting used to telling this story. There seemed increasingly little point in concealing the story from a potential ally. Miguel was the enemy.

At length Angus sat back, the desert breeze riffling his red hair.

‘This explains a lot. It explains the murders, the ones you mention!’

David said, ‘But…why? It doesn’t explain why Miguel…’

‘Don’t you see? He’s involved in the killings where torture is involved. The first two victims, the poor old girls who turned out to be rich.’

The logic unfolded in David’s mind. Dimly.

‘I guess…He was just back from abroad. When he came in the bar – Amy -?’

She nodded. ‘And after Miguel was back in Spain, the killings changed. Right? The man in Windsor – he was just killed. Not tortured. And Fazackerly, the scientist, he was also…just killed. Cruelly but…efficiently. I suppose. But then when Miguel got another chance, in Gurs – Eloise’s mother. She was elaborately tortured…Miguel again. But why?’ Her blue eyes gazed Angus’s way, full of questions. ‘Why would he kill and torture – where others just kill?’

Angus stuffed another morsel of bread and chewed, exuberantly. ‘Think harder. One reason is obvious.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes!’ A broad smile. ‘Why is he so murderously cruel to the Cagots? In particular?’

The truth unpetalled in David’s mind.

‘Because…he knows about himself?’

‘Zakly. He’s a fucking self-hater! Like that Basque witch burner.’

‘De Lancre?’

‘Yep. That’s it! He can’t face his own reality, his own race, his terrible identity. Can’t deal with it. Sublimated self-hatred becomes externalized violence. That must be the answer. Like Freud said! And Miguel Garovillo is a Cagot! So he takes his violent feelings, and inflicts them on the hated Cagots who embody his self loathing, his misery. He uses the tortures once inflicted on the deformed people. The witches and outcasts. The pariahs of the forest who he cannot accept as kin.’

‘But -’

‘And he probably heard about the Basque witch burnings when he was a kid, all the stories. And that’s gotta affect you. Tales of fire and torments! They fuck you up, your mum and dad, especially if they are terrorists. He probably has a psychosexual neurosis about the witch tortures.’

There was a momentary silence. David turned Amy’s way, and he flinched. Because he’d noticed. Amy had just that second – briefly, subconsciously, surreptitiously – put her hand to her head.

As if she was hiding the scar. The marks of the witch. David considered that scar, the interlocking curves. Was the scar simply more evidence of Miguel’s obsession, his sexual hang-ups, of the killer’s psychic need to revisit these witch tortures? But why did Amy let him do it? Cut her living skin? Why?

He remembered her words in Arizkun.

We do not exist, yes we do exist, we are fourteen thousand strong.

Angus was talking again, his face shadowed yet animated in the long Damara twilight.