An English Country Garden — Part 3.

Let’s go back to 1994 in South Africa one last time. It’s a different place and situation. Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.

They say Africa gets in your blood. It’s true. I have the recurrent malaria to prove it. But that wasn’t all I was destined to bring back from that most exotic of continents.

There’d been a murder. A five year old little girl had been killed and the circumstances were particularly violent. What I’m about to describe is hard for me, and I suspect it won’t be a lot easier for you, as this was a level of violence that, although I was acclimated to high degrees of violence, I found pushed me beyond my own limits.

A journalist and I had driven down from Jo’burg to find the house, get a few shots and then go and attend the court hearings. As it happened we arrived as the last of the police crime scene guys were packing up. I shot a few pictures discretely, and then, as the last of the police vehicles left, we noticed that there was no one about, we could easily get a few shots through the window.

I walked up to the front of the house, with a reporter named Cathy. We peeked in through the window, and as luck would have it a maid inside happened to see me. She came to the front door and asked if we needed anything more.