“You won’t forget to come out soon?” Neil said as Mma Ramotswe prepared to leave.

“I won’t,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Don’t worry. I’ll come out and have a word with a few people.”

“If they’ll talk,” said Neil gloomily. “It’s as if somebody has stuck their lips together with tape.”

“Somebody probably has,” said Mma Ramotswe quietly. “It’s just that we can’t see the tape.”

She drove back up the Mokolodi road to join the main road back to Gaborone. Mma Makutsi was still silent, sitting next to her, morosely looking out of her window. Mma Ramotswe glanced at her companion and was on the point of saying something, but did not. It seemed to her as if she was surrounded by silence—those silent men at the workshop, the silent woman beside her, the silent sky.

She looked again at Mma Makutsi. She had been about to say: “You know, Mma, I might just as well have come out here by myself, for all the fun you’re being.” But she did not. If I said anything like that, she told herself, I rather think Mma Makutsi would burst into tears. She wanted to reach across and lay a hand on Mma Makutsi’s arm, to comfort her, but could not. They were coming to a bend in the road, and they would end up in a ditch if she took her hands off the wheel. That would not help, thought Mma Ramotswe.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MR POLOPETSI, AND THE COMPLICATIONS IN HIS LIFE

MR J.L.B. MATEKONI was very pleased with the half-axle that he had obtained from Mokolodi. Fitting it, though, was a major job, requiring the assistance of the two apprentices—who needed to be instructed on this matter anyway. So the next morning, while the three of them conferred under the raised vehicle, Mr Polopetsi, who was the most recent addition to the staff of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, was left in charge of the routine work of the garage. He had been recruited after Mma Ramotswe’s van had knocked him off his bicycle and she had arranged for it to be fixed by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. It was after this that he had revealed what had happened to him, how he had been sent to prison for negligence after the wrong drug had been dispensed from the hospital pharmacy in which he worked. It had not been his fault, but lies had been told by another, and the magistrate had felt that a conviction and prison sentence were necessary to satisfy the outrage of the patient’s family. Mma Ramotswe had been moved by the story and by his plight, and had arranged work for him in the garage. It had been a good choice: Mr Polopetsi was a methodical worker who had rapidly learned how to service a car and carry out the more mundane repairs. He was an intelligent man, and discreet too, and Mma Ramotswe foresaw the day when he would be useful in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. He could never be a partner in the agency, as a ladies’ detective agency could not allow that, but he could certainly perform some of the tasks for which a man would be useful. It would be handy, for instance, to have a man who could go and observe what was going on in a particular bar, if that should be necessary in a case. A lady detective could not very well do that, as she would spend half her time fending off the men who pestered ladies in bars.