Her breathing steadied and the image in her mind was clearer.

The idea took shape, instinctive and irrational, to get up and phone her father.

He would save her.

If there was a murder or armed robbery in his area at night, the SAPS members of Caledon Square had instructions to call the station commander at home. But the more mundane affairs of the previous night had to wait until he was at his desk in the morning and could scan the notes in the register from the charge office. The SC was a black Superintendent with twenty-five years' service to his name. He knew there was only one way to tackle this job, slowly and objectively. Otherwise the nature and extent of that list could undo you. So he ran his pen down the list with professional distance, over the domestic violence, public drunkenness, the theft of cell phones and cars, drug sales, disturbance of the peace, burglaries, assault, indecent exposure and various false alarms.

At first his pen slid over the Lion's Head incident on page seven of the register, but it hovered back. He read through it again more carefully. The reluctant woman who had seen a young girl on the mountain. Then he reached for the bulletin that lay to his left on the corner of the scarred wooden surface. A Constable had brought it in only minutes before. He had scanned it quickly. Now he gave it his full attention.

He saw the connection. At the bottom was Inspector Vusumuzi Ndabeni's name and phone number.

He picked up the phone.

Vusi was walking down Long Street towards the harbour, on his way to the Van Hunks nightclub, when his phone rang. He answered without stopping.

'Inspector Ndabeni.'

'Vusi, it's Goodwill,' said the Caledon Square SC in Xhosa. 'I think I have something for you.'

Benny Griessel stood with his colleagues in one of the examination rooms of the City Park Hospital Casualty Department. He had a strong sense of deja vu.

Space was limited, so they were quite an intimate little group behind the closed door. While Fransman Dekker talked with his habitual frown, Griessel observed the people around him: John Afrika, District Commissioner: Detective Services and Criminal Intelligence, in full impressive uniform, his epaulettes weighed down with symbols of rank. Afrika was shorter than Dekker, but he had presence, an energy that made him the dominant force in the room. Beside Afrika was the fragile Tinkie Kellerman, her delicate features overshadowed by her huge eyes revealing how intimidated she was by this gathering. Then there was the broad- shouldered Dekker with his crew cut and angular face; serious, focused, voice deep and intense as he talked. They said he made women weak at the knees but Griessel couldn't see how. They said Dekker had a beautiful coloured wife in a senior position at Sanlam, and that's how he could afford to live in an expensive house somewhere on the Tygerberg. They also said that he sometimes played away from home.

And Cloete, beside him, the liaison officer with tobacco stains on his fingers and permanent shadows under his eyes. Cloete, with his endless patience and calm, the man in the middle, between the devil of the media and the deep blue of the police. How many times had he been through this, Griessel wondered, in this kind of emergency meeting, the one who had to make sure all the bases were covered, so that explanations higher up in the SAPS food chain would be consistent. The difference now was that he, too, like Cloete, was caught in a no-man's-land, his created by the mentorship that he didn't think was going to work.

Dekker concluded his explanation and Griessel drew an unobtrusive breath, preparing for the predictable conclusion.

'Are you sure?' Afrika asked and looked at Griessel.

'Absolutely, Commissioner,' he said. Everyone but Cloete nodded.

'So why is the doos carrying on like this?' The Commissioner glared guiltily at Tinkie Kellerman after the expletive and said: 'Sorry, but that is what he is.'

Tinkie merely nodded. She had heard everything by now.

'He was trouble from the start,' said Fransman Dekker. 'He gave the Constable trouble at the gate, insisted on coming in. It was a crime scene, sir, and I do things by the book.'

'Fair enough,' said John Afrika and dipped his head thoughtfully with a hand over his mouth. Then he looked up. 'The press ...' he looked at Cloete enquiringly.

'It's a major story,' said Cloete, on the defensive as usual, as if he was implicated in the blood lust of the media. 'Barnard is a celebrity of sorts ...'

'That's the problem,' said John Afrika, and thought some more.

When he looked up and focused on Dekker with an apologetic slant to his mouth, Griessel knew what was coming.

'Fransman, you're not going to like this ...'

'Commissioner, maybe ...' Griessel said, because he had been the one who had control taken away from him before, and he knew how it felt.

Afrika held up a hand. 'They will tear us apart, Benny, if Mouton puts the blame on us. You see, we were there, in her room . . .You know what the papers are like. Tomorrow they will say it's because we put inexperienced people on the case ...'

Dekker got it now. 'No, Commissioner ...' he said.

'Fransman, don't let us misunderstand each other; it happened on your watch,' Afrika said sternly. Then more gently: 'I'm not saying it's your fault; I want to protect you.'

'Protect?'

'You have to understand. These are difficult times ...'

They knew he was referring to the recent investigational failures that the newspapers and politicians had pounced on like predators.

Dekker tried one last time, 'But, sir, if I crack this, tomorrow they will write ...'

'Djy wiet dissie soe maklikie!' You know it's not that simple.

Griessel wondered why Cape Coloureds only spoke Cape Flats Afrikaans with each other. It always made him feel excluded.

Dekker wanted to say more, his mouth opened, but John Afrika lifted a warning finger. Dekker's mouth closed, his jaw clenched, eyes fierce.

'Benny, you take charge of this one,' the Commissioner said. 'As of now, Fransman, you work closely with Benny. Lat hy die pressure vat. Lat hy die Moutons van die lewe handle! Let him take the pressure, let him handle the Moutons of this world. And then, almost as an afterthought: 'You're a team, if you crack this .. .'

Griessel's phone rang.

'... then you can share the honours.'

Benny took the phone out of his pocket and checked the screen.

'It's Vusi,' he said meaningfully.

'Jissis,' said Afrika shaking his head. 'It never rains ...'

Griessel answered with a 'Vusi?'

'Is the Commissioner still there with you, Benny?'

'He's here.'

'Keep him there, please, just keep him there.'

Tafelberg Road is tarred, and follows the contour of the mountain, starting at 360 metres above sea level. It runs past the cable car station with its long queues of tourists, but just beyond Platteklipstroom ravine a concrete barrier keeps cars out, so only cyclists and pedestrians can continue. From there on it rises and falls between 380 and 460 metres for four kilometres or more around Devil's Peak before it becomes an increasingly rough dirt track, eventually connecting with the Kings Battery hiking trail.

The observation point with the best view of the city bowl is a hundred metres below Mount Prospect on the northern flank of Devil's Peak, just before the path turns sharply east.

The young man was sitting just above the path, on a rock in the shade of a now flowerless protea bush. He was in his late twenties, white, lean and tanned. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, a bleached blue shirt with a green collar, long khaki shorts and old worn Rocky sandals with deep tread soles. He held a pair of binoculars to his face and scanned the ground slowly from left to right, west to east. Below him the Cape was breathtaking - from the cable car sliding, seemingly weightless, past Table Mountain's rugged cliffs to the top, past the sensuous curves of Lion's Head and Signal Hill, over the blue bay, a glittering jewel that stretched to the horizon, to below him where the city nestled comfortably, like a contented child in the mountain's embrace. He saw none of this, because his attention was focused only on the city's edge.