Ryland wanted to pull the trigger, goddammit. This whole thing could be over in an instant. He could take a shower and dress before Sylvie got back with the hordes. Otherwise he was destined to spend the rest of his day in his pyjamas, recounting how he came to have two corpses in his lounge. He looked at Black Eyes, who was watching him again from his slumped position against the TV cabinet. Really, this low-life piece of shit didn’t deserve to live.

“Sylvie, I wish to God you would hurry up,” he said aloud.

“Sylvie …” Black Eyes echoed.

“You shut up – you don’t have the right to say her name.”

Mzwempi laughed, arrogant and sneering again.

Ryland stood up and walked to the window where the intruders had come in. Outside, on the ground below, he made out a knobkierie lying across an open canvas bag with a hacksaw and pair of pliers on top of it. Ryland could see what they had planned. The rope and wire they had brought in with them was to tie him and Sylvie up; maybe to throttle them. Would they have raped her? If they had done that and killed him, how would she have lived with it afterwards? Loch Inver would have been finished. And the kids? How would they have coped if he had been tortured and murdered? He had no doubt now that was what these dogs had planned.

The horizon was a deep burnt orange and he knew the sun would be up soon. This place, this farm, this coastline, this country was so damn beautiful. The smell of cooking fires hung in the air and he could hear the occasional shout of a child as they prepared for school. In a little while the men would come up to the barn and Zandile would be hustling into the kitchen.

They had planned to cut the back camp today and he wanted the cattle in there by sunset. Would he do that now that he had shot dead two men in his lounge? Would life be the same today as it was yesterday? Would he sleep tonight or listen always for the tread of killers at the window?

He should go out the back and shout for the staff. Someone would hear him and come up to help. When he turned back, he could see that Black Eyes was shivering. No. Wait for the cops. If the staff saw this lot, they would go nuts and this kill him and that would introduce a host of new problems.

Thank God he had woken up when he did. Sylvie had been nagging him for months to ask the doctor for sleeping pills to get him through the night. It was dangerous times in South Africa and this part of the country was one of the worst. Look at a chap like Jolyon Whitton down the road. Nearly 45 years farming in the area and then shot dead in his barn and his bakkie taken. No, no, a man had to have his wits about him here.

That murder had rattled everyone in the region, but the insomnia had set in for good when he had been notified that the iNkosi had filed a land claim against Loch Inver. The absolute bloody cheek of it. Three generations of Rylands had invested everything they had in this farm only to have some Johnny-Come-Lately decide he fancied a bit of cane and cattle. First thing someone like that would do is let the place go to seed and leave the staff with nothing. It had happened in Zimbabwe and it was going to happen here. No, there was no way he could take sleeping pills. Whisky, yes, but pills? No!

***

Tell us: What do you think of Ryland’s attitude to the Nkosi reclaiming his land?