A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire encircled the back entrance of the red-brick industrial building. Rusted paint cans leaked colour onto the drive that led from the street to the factory. Miss Morgensen lobbed a stone across the yard and hit the back door, which opened a fraction.

'Come,' she called and a lopsided black man sprinted across the concrete with his nightwatchman's coat flapping behind him. He lifted a loose section of the fence and the missionary pushed the care package into the yard. Points of sharp wire punctured the man's hands but he appeared not to notice. 'Ngiyabonga.' He mumbled his thanks and ran back with the box to the shelter of the factory. The whole exchange took less than a minute. Silhouettes flittered in the doorway and then disappeared when the man reached the door.

'He's not alone,' Emmanuel said.

'You are mistaken.' Miss Morgensen turned to the car, chin out and shoulders back. 'He is a single man.'

She walked away quickly and Emmanuel had to extend his stride to keep up. The wariness from in the churchyard was back and he knew why.

'I'm investigating a murder. Natives who are in town without a proper passbook are not my concern.' And thank god for that, he thought. The National Party's passbook laws had come into effect after he made the jump from the foot police to the detective branch. Yes, he'd used the passbook laws to extract information from vulnerable suspects but the endless trawl for natives who had trespassed too long on white streets was never one of his duties. 'And neither are their families,' he added. Two or more people could have cast the flickering silhouettes in the factory doorway.

Miss Morgensen reached the Buick and rested against the hood. She studied Emmanuel's face. He let her. A minute passed and, satisfied by whatever she saw, the missionary said, 'The factory owner lets Ephraim stay in the storeroom with his wife and two children. She doesn't have the passbook that allows her to work and live in the city so they have to be careful. The package helps keep the family together.'

'So things haven't improved in the black locations.'

'Not enough. Men still have to leave their kin and find work in the white man's world. And what are we without family, Detective Sergeant? We are dust in the wind.'

'You have family in South Africa?' Emmanuel asked. The missionary was as solid and individual as a rock.

'My blood relations are in Norway,' she said. 'But my real family is here at the Zion Church. And you?'

'My parents are dead and I don't see my sister much any more.'

It was a lie. His father was still alive. The last time he'd seen him was twenty years earlier: standing on the front steps of the Johannesburg central courthouse, awkward in a pressed suit on loan to him for the duration of the murder trial. 'Wave,' his sister Olivia had whispered, desperate even at that young age to appear normal. 'Wave goodbye.' Emmanuel waved and his father turned his back. It was a final parting with no words. Twenty years. His father might as well be dead. His sister lived hundreds of miles away in Jo'burg.

'It's not good for man to be alone,' Miss Morgensen said. 'That goes double for you, Detective Sergeant.'

'Double?' She didn't know one thing about him.

She corrected herself. 'No. Triple. You are no more suited to being a speck of dust than I am. We were born to take up space in this world, Detective Sergeant. There's no running from that.'

Miss Morgensen had her broken family to fuss over and protect. He had three murders to solve in a dwindling amount of time. Maybe after that, when life was less complicated, maybe then he'd think about family and just where his speck of dust would land.