Chapter 2 Summary

The lieutenant, Pieter van Vlaanderen, prevents a rape. He catches a young Afrikaner called Dick chasing Stephanie, a black woman, through the streets of Venterspan. When questioned, the boy offers a thinly veiled lie, saying he was chasing someone whom he believed was a thief. The lieutenant releases him, tells him to go to the lieutenant's house and wait for him there.

When the boy is gone, he questions the woman, in her mid-twenties, about the incident. She is well known to the police having been jailed a number of times previously for making and selling liquor. It is also known that she has a child, though it lives not in town with her, but in the countryside. She knows her would-be attacker, but the lieutenant makes her see, without force or threat, that telling anyone would cause considerable trouble for the boy...