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famed, Peter had launched himself straight up the granite slope, not bothering to pick a route, just taking the shortest way to the top. Sheer speed had carried him over the brow and into the boulder-strewn killing zone. The churned, dark-streaked and sticky earth had instantly clung to his shoes where only light dust should have been, and the rocks framed a tableau that would be fixed forever in his fevered mind. He had stopped, stunned. Unable to comprehend what lay before him as he stared at the torn earth and shattered, bloody remains of his only son. A sight no parent should have to endure brought Peter to his knees as though poleaxed. A thin moan dribbled through his lips just as John came bolting up behind his boss, arriving barely in time to hear the words of pure anguish pouring from Peter’s mouth. “My son, my son, what has it done to you? Oh, what has it done to you?”
    Almost unable to maintain his sanity, Peter had begun to rock gently from side to side, hands pressed to his temples as he stared, practically unseeing, at the scarcely recognisable ruin of what had once been a vibrant young man. And as he did so, murderous, implacable intent blossomed full-formed in his heart. If it was the last thing he ever did, he would put a bullet through that lion and make sure it didn’t die quickly. For Peter the world had narrowed to a single dreadful spectacle, his whole existence distilled into a dream-like quality. Staggering to his feet he had steadied himself against John, whose distress and grief were all too quickly catching up with his own. Then, with a supreme effort, moving as if on autopilot, Peter had forced himself to step forward, to stoop and gather his son’s bloody remains together and to whisper to John, “Get one of the horse blankets and bring it here to me.”
    His night would be spent in vigil. Alone. No one and nothing would come near his son now. Of that he was grimly certain. And from a short distance, John would watch over his boss, his own pain little less. Mzee had been dispatched with me and together we would take the dread news to Peta. It was enough for now. The morning would bring action. And with it, seething revenge.

Chapter 6

    It took weeks for my leg to mend, but that was the easy part. What wouldn’t heal was the deep wound I felt in my spirit, the festering knowledge that I had failed. Failed my friend, failed myself, and been found utterly wanting the first time I’d ever needed to show any real courage. And boy, did that hurt. I can remember how the pain dug deep into my psyche, how it got into everything I did or thought, shredding my ego and whispering its insidious charge day in, day out. Slowly but surely, the memory of disaster and its associated pain ate into my soul, destroying me piece by piece more comprehensively than any physical wound could ever achieve. I had survived the leg break, but what I was singularly failing to do was learning to live with myself. True, the neighbours had all shown sympathy, treated me with kid gloves but, even so, I was in such a state of mental turmoil that it only took what, usually mistakenly, I assumed to be a thinly veiled reproach and I was off again.
    Except where my father was concerned. He just came right out with it. Expected, of course, but no less destructive for all that. Every reserve I’d ever had was used up, finished. And my guard was down. I remember I became totally vulnerable. Eaten up by the unrelenting blackness of the despair I felt over Matt’s loss. Drowning in a remorseless and relentless self-criticism which can be the most insidious poison of all. Through it all I had tried desperately to come to terms with my cowardice, while picking at the wound almost every minute of every day. I neither knew nor really cared that, actually, I was no less a human than anyone else. I suppose I was too young and my idealism had not yet been tempered in the fires of life. I was completely