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‘But you are still the greatest polo player in Africa, and I have heard that you have become a mighty shikari. What is more, I see you bring proof of that.’ He shouted to Mrs Vilabjhi in the back of the store, asking her to bring coffee and sweetmeats, then ushered Leon between rows of heavily laden shelves into his tiny cubby-hole office. A book case that occupied one entire wall was filled with all twenty-two volumes of the Complete Oxford English Dictionary, a full set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Burke’s Peerage and Gentry and several dozen histories of the English kings, their people and language. Mr Vilabjhi was an ardent anglophile, royalist and proponent of the English language.

‘Please be seated, kindest sir.’ Mrs Vilabjhi bustled in with the coffee tray. She was even plumper than her husband and just as affable. When she had filled the glasses with the thick, sticky black liquid her husband shooed her away and turned back to Leon. ‘Now, tell me, Sahib, what is your pleasure?’

‘I want to sell you that tusk.’

Mr Vilabjhi thought about that for so long that Leon was becoming restless. Eventually he said, ‘Alack and alas, revered Sahib, I will not purchase that ivory from you.’

Leon was startled. ‘Why the hell not?’ he demanded. ‘You’re an ivory dealer, are you not?’

‘Did I ever tell you, Sahib, that I was once a horse groom or, as we say in India, a syce, in the stables of the maharaja of Cooch Behar? I am the utmost admirer and connoisseur of the royal game of polo and the men who play it.’

‘Is that why you won’t buy my tusk?’ Leon asked.

Mr Vilabjhi laughed. ‘That is a fine jest, Sahib. No! The reason is that if I buy that tusk I will send it to England to be made into the keys of a piano or carved into pretty coloured billiard balls. Then you will hate me. One day when you are an old man you will think back on what I did with your trophy and you will say to yourself, “Ten thousand curses on the head of that infamous villain and flagitious scoundrel, Mr Goolam Vilabjhi Esquire!” ’

‘On the other hand, if you do not buy it I will call down a hundred thousand curses on your head right now,’ Leon warned him. ‘Mr Vilabjhi, I need the money and I need it badly.’

‘Ah! Money, she is like the tide of the ocean. She comes in and she goes out. But a tusk like that you will never see again in all your existence.’

‘At this moment my tide is so far out that it’s over the horizon.’

‘Then, Sahib, we have to find some ruse or, as we were wont to say in Cooch Behar, some stratagem to accommodate our diverse wishes.’ He posed a moment longer in an attitude of deep thought, then raised one finger and touched his temple. ‘Eureka! I have it. You will leave the tusk with me as security, and I will loan you the money you require. You will pay me interest at twenty per cent per annum. Then one day, when you are the most famous and renowned shikari in Africa you will come back to me and tell me, “My dear and trusted friend, Mr Goolam Vilabjhi Esquire, I have come to repay the debt I owe you.” Then I will return your fine and magnificent tusk to you, and we will be lifelong friends until the day we die!’

‘My dear and trusted friend, Mr Goolam Vilabjhi Esquire, I call down ten thousand blessings on your head.’ Leon laughed. ‘How much can you let me have?’

‘I have heard tell that the weight of that tusk is one hundred and twenty-eight pounds avoirdupois.’

‘My God! How did you know that?’

‘Every living human creature in Nairobi knows it already.’ Mr Vilabjhi cocked his head to one side. ‘At fifteen shillings a pound I find that I am able to advance you the grand sum of ninety-six pounds sterling in gold sovereigns.’ Leon blinked. That was the most money he had ever held in his hand at one time.

Before he left Mr Vilabjhi’s shop he made his first purchase. On one of the shelves behind the counter he had noticed a small pile of red and yellow cardboard packets displaying the distinctive lion’s head trademark of Kynoch, the pre-eminent manufacturer of cartridges in Britain. When he examined the boxes closely he was delighted to discover that they were marked ‘H&H .470 Royal Nitro Express. 500 Grain. Solid’. Of the ten cartridges that Verity O’Hearne had left him as part of her gift, only three remained. He had fired five shots to check the sights on the rifle and two more to despatch the great bull.

‘How much are those bullets, Mr Vilabjhi?’ he enquired, with trepidation, and gulped at the reply.

‘For you, Sahib, and for you only, I will make my very best and extra special price.’ He gazed up at the ceiling as though seeking inspiration from Kali, Ganesh and all the other Hindu gods. Then he said, ‘For you, Sahib, the price is five shillings for each bullet.’