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piece of a minor puzzle had fallen into place: Terblanche was obviously some kind of practicing Christian, poor bugger.
    “Why? I don’t know why! I hadn’t even realized it until that moment—it was like a sudden feeling that came over me, therebeside the house where little Annika had been blown to bits. You know what else?”
    Kramer shook his head.
    Terblanche gave a mirthless chuckle. “I got angry next,” he said. “I got so furious! I was outraged that he’d died a hero’s death of all things—now they’d
never
stop calling him ‘one of the best’!”
    And with that, Hans Terblanche accelerated hard, taking the Land Rover up the side of a high dune, and then slowed to a stop. Devastated, Fynn’s Creek lay before them.

5
    K RAMER TRIED NOT to gape and look foolish, but nothing had fully prepared him for that moment at Fynn’s Creek. It was an extraordinary sight. Not just the sheer scale of it all, but that dizzy sense of being right at the edge of things.
    “What’s up?” asked Terblanche, puzzled. “You look like a man who’s never seen the sea before!”
    “No, never,” said Kramer. “There’s one hell of a lot of it.”
    “Ja, and remember, as my grandpa always used to say, that is only the top!”
    Kramer pondered this thought for a moment, then redirected his gaze down the far side of the dune to the remains of the game ranger’s house. Jesus wept, he thought, here’s a mess worse than Terblanche’s office.
    The only parts of the house still in place were the stout wooden posts that had once supported it high above flood level. The rest of the structure lay in pieces over an area the size of two tennis courts: a flapping, smoldering, scorched hodgepodge of half-recognizable shapes. Yet there was something of a predictable pattern to it: sections of plasterboard walls had been flung far from the apparent center of the blast, but as a general rule, the bulk of an object had determined the distance it had traveled. The stove, refrigerator, and kitchen sink, for example, had moved no distance at all, plunging instead to the ground beneath where they had once been positioned.
    “Let’s begin with where Kritz’s body was found and work our way in from there,” suggested Kramer.
    They climbed out of the Land Rover and started down the dune, the fine sand immediately making its way into Kramer’s shoes and thoroughly irritating him.
    “We’ve marked the spot,” explained Terblanche, “and I made sure that Sarel took plenty of snaps with his camera before the body was moved. With the sun so hot, we couldn’t delay—and besides, the Colonel wanted the postmortems done as soon as possible. Doc Mackenzie had to be in court over at Muilberg this morning, but he’s promised me he’ll start them at three.”
    “At three?” said Kramer, glancing at his watch. “That means we don’t have very long here.”
    Terblanche stopped and turned to him. “You don’t want to be present, do you?” he said, his face a picture of distaste. “There’s truly no need, not locally. We have this arrangement with Doc, whereby he just phones over his reports when he’s finished.”
    “I see. Did Kritzinger do business this way?”
    “Most often, ja, and—”
    “Me, I go by the book, Hans, which makes it imperative for me to attend,” said Kramer. “On top of which, I like to meet the people I’m working for—makes it all so cold and impersonal otherwise, don’t you agree?”
    Terblanche hesitated, a wary look in his eyes indicating he wasn’t too sure how seriously the remark was intended. “Whatever you decide, Tromp, you’re the boss,” he said. “But when we’re finished here, I’m going home to catch up on my beauty sleep!”
    “Fine,” said Kramer. “Who’s this lot poking around in the mess—your entire establishment at Jafini?”
    “Almost: Suzman, Malan, Mtetwa, and two of his boys. I hope I did right; I told them to start searching for clues,pending further instructions