“You see,” went on the other woman, “this trip is a sort of farewell. We used to go everywhere together. We went to many places. This will be our last trip. So thank you for being so kind and having your photograph taken with us. Thank you, Mma.”

For a moment Mma Ramotswe stood quite still. Then she turned and walked back to the table, to stand beside the woman, who looked up at her in surprise. Mma Ramotswe went down on her haunches, squatting beside the thin woman, and slipped an arm around her shoulder. It was bony beneath the thin blouse, and she was gentle, but she hugged her, carefully, as one might hug a child. The woman reached for her hand, and clasped it briefly in her own and pressed it, and Mma Ramotswe whispered very quietly, but loudly enough for the woman to hear, The Lord will look after you, my sister, and then she stood up and said goodbye, in Setswana, because that is the language that her heart spoke, and walked off, her face turned away now, so that they should not see her tears.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

YOU WILL BE VERY HAPPY IN THAT CHAIR

MMA MAKUTSI LOOKED at her watch. Mma Ramotswe and Mr Polopetsi were away on their trip to Mokolodi—she had felt slightly irritated that Mma Ramotswe should have chosen him to accompany her rather than herself; but she should not begrudge him the experience, she reminded herself, particularly if he was in due course to become her own assistant, an assistant– assistant detective. With the two of them gone for the rest of the afternoon and everything in the office, filing and typing, up-to-date, there was no real reason for her to stay at her desk now that it was four o’clock. In the garage itself, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had finished the work he had been doing on a customer’s persnickety French car and had sent the apprentices home. He would probably stay for an hour or so and clear up; if the telephone went, then he could answer it and take a message. It was unlikely to ring, though, as clients very rarely got in touch in the late afternoon. The morning was the time of important telephone calls, as it was at the start of the day that people plucked up the courage to contact a private detective; for an act of courage was what it often was, an admission of a troubling possibility, something suppressed and not thought about, something fretted over and dreaded. The morning brought the strength to tackle such matters; the dying hours of the day were hours of defeat and resignation.