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way that they were displayed now.
    It had taken Garry a few tries to get the pronunciation right when he asked what the knives were called. The closest he’d been able to get was “ski-and-do”.
    “In the old days they were secret weapons,” the buxom Scottish shop assistant had explained to him in her delightful accent, hooking her thick, copper-coloured hair behind her ears. “They’re small, see, so they could be carried hidden. That way, if you had one, you’d have the element of surprise in a fight.”
    “The aily-ment of surprise, hey?” Garry had grinned at her, mimicking her accent, and she’d giggled and blushed. He’d bought the knives, asked her out that night, and taken her along to the wedding with him the following day. What had her name been? Morgan? Morag? Something like that. They’d lost touch soon after his return to South Africa, but looking at the knives always reminded him of that Scottish salesgirl.
    “May I see one of those, please?” The black man was pointing to the sgian dubhs. Garry noticed that his fingertip did not quite touch the glass. Respect. Older guys had it. It made a welcome change from the youngsters, usually rough types who flattened their entire palms over the counter and peered inside, bending so close that their breath steamed up the glass, leaving greasy smudges and sweaty finger-marks behind them.
    “Ja, sure.” He unlocked the display cabinet, reached inside, and placed one of the knives on the counter. He stepped back, just in case the man was going to try anything funny with it, but he wasn’t overly concerned. After all, they weren’t throwing knives, and his gun was within easy reach.
    But the man simply took it and, holding it in his palm, ran the back of one of his swollen knuckles gently down the blade. Then, as if reaching a decision, he nodded once and closed his fingers around the handle.
    “I’ll take them.”
    “Them? You mean …?”
    “All four, please.”
    “They’re a thousand rand each, my friend,” Garry said, in the particular accent he always used when dealing with black customers. “You sure you got the money for that? Cash only, hey.”
    The man reached into his jacket pocket and produced a bulky white envelope. He opened it, and offered it to Garry in the same way that a friend might have offered him a piece of biltong from an open packet. Inside the envelope, Garry could see a thick wad of two-hundred-rand notes.
    “Please, take your money.”
    Surprised, Garry took the envelope. The man wasn’t a local— he could tell that from his accent—but he sounded well educated. He could surely count twenty notes off a stack without help.
    Perhaps those swollen knuckles would make the job too painful; although Garry’s old man had worse arthritis than that, and he could still shuffle and deal a pack of cards like a croupier.
    Garry counted out the notes, examining them carefully, holding each one under the uv light on his desk to check its authenticity. They looked genuine enough as far as he could tell. Genuine enough, at any rate, to be spent by him again.
    When dealing with customers like these, Garry’s standard policy was to short-change. Hell, why not? Especially seeing there was way more than four grand in the envelope that the man had so unsuspectingly handed over. Garry guesstimated that it contained over six thousand rand. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Just let his fingernail hook a bunch of notes all at once, and add a little onto his own personal Christmas bonus. Money that he would not have to declare to the taxman, or to his business partner, who was away today doing a stocktake at their other shop in Jo’burg city.
    He glanced up furtively, but his customer wasn’t watching. He had his head turned away, and was looking around the shop.
    Garry’s right index fingernail snagged the extra notes easily, but then he hesitated.
    He had a pretty strong sense of self-preservation—a must for any guy running