Again the draught of air sank in his throat.

"It's closed."

The Boer's voice. The enemy's voice. His hand snaked back out of the bag. The arm that was to hurl the bag into the lobby of the court frozen useless.

"You can't go in there for another eighteen minutes."

He spun his head. He saw the one with the Makharov and the one with the R.G.-42 and the one who had nothing at all gawping back down onto the path. The uniformed warrant officer stood in the centre of the pathway, his arms were clasped behind his back on a short leather-coated swagger stick. An immaculate police tunic, knife-edge trousers, shoes that a servant had polished.

"Seventeen minutes actually." The warrant officer grinned cheerfully. "For now, get yourselves away."

The country boy flexed his arm, turned and threw the bag into and inside the doorway.

He ran.

He cannoned into the one with the Makharov, felt the bite of the barrel into his thigh, and he ran. Across the grass.

Jumping the wall. All of them charging together. None of them hearing the shout of the warrant officer. None of them seeing him stagger from the shoulder charge of the one who had nothing, and then go as if from instinctive duty through the doorway, none of them seeing him grope for the duffel bag under a table deep in the lobby and take it in his arms and twist again for the bright sunlight of the doorway. All of them sprinting. None of them seeing the fast sweep of understanding chisel the face of the plain clothes policeman with the personal radio.

They were past the building site. They were running, swerving, sidestepping, jumping into the traffic on Van Wielligh, going chicken with a bus driver and having him brake when the bomb exploded.

A bomb detonated in the centre of a safe city, in the middle of a safe lunch hour.

A bomb that spewed fire, showered glass, ripped at plaster and concrete and brick work.