Eddie touched the butt of his service weapon. “I’m going to go have a word with the man who bought my captain a new pool last Christmas.”

She didn’t ask questions. That’s why he came. “And you?”

Eddie Zondi smiled. It had been a long time since he’d felt this awake.

The call came at 3:17 a.m. A name from the cold case files—Blessing “Bless” Ndlovu, shot dead outside a Soweto shebeen fifteen years ago. The case had gone nowhere. Witnesses forgot. Files got lost. But last week, a kid trying to hotwire a car in Orlando East had popped the trunk and found a diary. Not a diary—a ledger. Bless Ndlovu’s ledger. Every dirty cop, every payoff, every blind eye listed in neat, angry handwriting.

He turned left instead of right, doubled back through a taxi rank, abandoned the Golf behind a bottle store, and walked three kilometers in the dark. By the time he reached Khanyi’s flat in Yeoville, his shoes were soaked and his hand shook when he knocked.