the flashlight out of the locker, he snapped.
Obediently Jock knelt on the seat and groped in the heavy tool-locker that was bolted to the truck bed, and came out with the big Maglite.
Like the rest of the camp the warden's cottage was in darkness. The rain streamed down from the eaves in a silver torrent so that the headlights could not illuminate the screened verandah beyond. Daniel snatched the torch from Jock's hand and jumped out into the rain.
Johnny! he yelled. Mavis! He ran to the front door of the cottage.
The door had been smashed half off its hinges and hung open. He ran through on to the verandah.
The furniture was shattered and thrown about in confusion.
He played the torch-beam over the chaos. Johnny's cherished collection of books had been tumbled from their cases along the wall and lay in heaps with their pages fanned and their spines broken.
Johnny! Daniel shouted. Where are you?
He ran through the open double doors into the sitting-room.
Here the destruction was shocking. They had hurled all Mavis's ornaments and vases at the stone fireplace and the broken shards glittered in the torch beam. They had ripped the stuffing out of the sofa and easy chairs. The room stank like an animal cage and he saw that they had defecated on the carpets and urinated down the walls.
Daniel stepped over the reeking piles of faeces and ran through into the passageway that led to the bedrooms. Johnny! he shouted in anger and despair, as he played the torch-beam down the length of the passage.
On the end wall was a decoration that had not been there before. It was a dark star-shaped splash of paint that covered most of the white-painted surface. For a moment Daniel stared at it uncomprehendingly and then he dropped the beam to the small huddled shape that lay at the foot of the wall.
Johnny and Mavis had named their only son after him, Daniel Robert Nzou.
After two daughters, Mavis had finally given birth to a son and both parents had been overjoyed.
Daniel Nzou had been four years old. He lay on his back. His eyes were open but sightlessly staring into the beam of the torch.
They had killed him in the old barbaric African way, in the same way that Chaka's and Mzilikazi's impis had dealt with the male children of a vanquished tribe. They had seized little Daniel by the ankles and swung him head-first against the wall, crushing his skull and beating his brains out against the brickwork.
His splattering blood had daubed that crude mural on the white surface.
Daniel stooped over the little boy. Despite the deformation of the crushed skull his resemblance to his father was still marked. Tears prickled the rims of Daniel's eyelids and he stood up slowly and turned to the bedroom door.
It stood half open but Daniel dreaded pushing it all the way.
He had to force himself to do it. The hinges of the door whined softly as it swung open.
For a moment Daniel stared down the beam of the Maglite as he let it play around the bedroom and then he reeled back into the passageway and leaned against the wall, gagging and gasping for breath.
He had witnessed scenes such as these during the days of the bush war, but the years had eroded his conditioning and softened the shell that he had built up to protect himself. He was no longer able to look dispassionately on the atrocity that man is able to perpetrate on his fellows.
Johnny's daughters were older than their brother. Miriam was-ten and Suzie almost eight. They lay naked and spreadeagled on the floor at the foot of the bed. They had both been raped repeatedly. Their immature genitalia were a torn and bloody mush.
Mavis was on the bed. They had not bothered to strip her entirely, but had merely pushed her skirts up around her waist.
Her arms were pulled up above her head and tied by the wrists to the wooden headboard. The two little girls must have died of shock and loss of blood during the prolonged assault upon them. Mavis had probably survived until they were finished with her, then they had put a bullet through her head.
Daniel forced himself to enter the room. He found where Mavis kept her extra bed-linen in one of the built-in cupboards and covered each of the corpses with a sheet. He could not bring himself to touch any of the girls, not even to close their wide staring eyes in which the horror and the terror was still deeply imprinted.
Sweet Mother of God, Jock whispered from the doorway. Whoever did this isn't human. They must be ravaging bloody beasts. Daniel backed out of the bedroom and closed the door. He covered Daniel Nzou's tiny body.
Have you found Johnny? he asked Jock. His voice was hoarse and his throat felt rough and abraded with horror and grief. No. Jock shook his head, then turned and fled down the passage. He blundered out across the verandah and into the rain.
Daniel heard him retching and vomiting in the flowerbed below the step.
The sound of the other man's distress served to steady Daniel. He fought back his own repugnance and anger and sorrow and brought his emotions back under control. Johnny, he told himself. Got to find Johnny-He went swiftly through the other two bedrooms and the rest of the house. There was no sign of his friend, and he allowed himself the first faint hope.
He might have got away, he told himself. He might have made it into the bush. It was a relief to get out of that charnel house. Daniel stood in the darkness and lifted his face to the rain. He opened his mouth and let it wash the bitter bile taste from his tongue and the back of his throat.
Then he turned the torch-beam on to his feet and saw the clotted blood dissolve from his shoes in a pink stain. He scrubbed the soles in the gravel of the driveway to clean them and then shouted to Jock Come on, we have to find Johnny!
In the Toyota he drove down the back of the hill to the domestic compound that housed the camp servants. The compound was still enclosed with an earthen embankment and barbed-wire fence from the war days.
However the fence was in a ruinous state and the gate was missing.
They drove through the gateway and the smell of smoke was strong. As the headlights caught them Daniel saw that the row of servants-cottages was burnt out. The roofs had collapsed and the windows were empty.
