At the police station Thabiso established that the young officer had very little experience, clearly trying to prove something to his superiors.

“So, Mr Mokoena, why did you order the full English breakfast in particular?” young Officer Johannes Dipenaar asked.

Thabiso tried to stop himself from laughing. The way Johannes jiggled his pen in his hand and pursed his lips suggested that he was getting irritated that this hardened criminal thought this interrogation was some kind of a joke.

“OK, let me ask you this — Who is your accomplice?”

That was the question that had Thabiso laughing like a crazed hyena. He laughed so hard that he didn’t even care when Dipenaar shoved him into a holding cell.

“You, my friend, are in the wrong profession,” he retorted, as he tried to regain some sort of composure.

“We’ll see how funny this is when my Kaptein gets here!” Dipenaar snapped back as he marched towards the front desk.

Two hours later Thabiso was walking out the local police station.

“Kaptein, you better keep a close eye on that one or you will be sued one day,” he chuckled.

The Kaptein was a balding middle-aged man who shared Thabiso’s sense of humour. Once Thabiso had explained the situation to him, he thanked him for providing him with ammo to use against Dipenaar whenever he got out of line.

“I’ll phone Ouma Marie and explain the situation to her. You just make sure you go and settle what you owe or I’ll send Dipenaar after you, loaded with more silly questions,” he sniggered.

After settling his bill, Thabiso set on the on the road. He had now been two weeks on the road to nowhere. And he was actually starting to enjoy this unplanned road trip.

One night he was walking back from a local pub and grill when he heard a commotion between what sounded like a man and a woman. He wasn’t going to pay the quarrel any heed, until he was stopped dead in his tracks by a piercing scream. The scream was so familiar that it sent chills down his back and left him stiff with fright.

It was the same terrifying scream that bolted him into the upright position in his bed about three weeks ago.

When he heard the scream again, he realised that it was coming from about two floors up in the establishment, just across the street. The sounds of furniture being overturned and something being smashed had him running across the road into the small three-storey hotel.

By the time Thabiso had located the room where the commotion was coming from, the manager of the hotel and a security guard were standing in the entrance.

Room 23, there on the floor, in a pool of blood, lay a young woman’s lifeless body.

***

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