MMA RAMOTSWE looked into her tea cup. The red bush tea, freshly poured, was still very hot, too hot to drink, but good to look at in its amber darkness, and very good to smell. It was a pity, she thought, that she had become accustomed to the use of tea-bags, as this meant that there were no leaves to be seen swirling around the surface or clinging to the side of the cup. She had given in on the issue of tea-bags, out of weakness, she admitted; tea-bags were so overwhelmingly more convenient than leaf tea, with its tendency to clog drains and the spouts of tea-pots too if one was not careful. She had never worried about getting the occasional tea leaf in her mouth, indeed she had rather enjoyed this, but that never happened now, with these neatly packed tea-bags and their very precise, enmeshed doses of chopped leaves.

It was the first cup of the morning, as Mma Ramotswe did not count the two cups that she took at home before she came to work. One of these was consumed as she took her early stroll around the yard, with the sun just up, pausing to stand under the large acacia tree and peer up into the thorny branches above her, drawing the morning air into her lungs and savouring its freshness. That morning she had seen a chameleon on a branch of the tree and had watched the strange creature fix its riveting eye upon her, its tiny prehensile feet poised in mid-movement. It was a great advantage, she thought, to have a chameleon’s eyes, which could look backwards and forwards independently. That would be a fine gift for a detective.

Now at her desk, she raised the cup to her lips and took a sip of the bush tea. She looked at her watch. Mma Makutsi was usually very punctual, but today she was late for some reason. This would be the fault of the minibuses, thought Mma Ramotswe. There would be enough of them coming into town from Tlokweng at that hour of the morning, but not enough going in the opposite direction. Mma Makutsi could walk, of course—her new house was not all that far away—but people did not like to walk in the heat, understandably enough.