“But let’s not get involved in all that,” she said briskly. “The police are not going to arrest you…” She almost said yet, but stopped herself just in time. “We are going to help the police, you see, and in return I shall ask them to help us.”

Mr. Polopetsi looked doubtful. “I do not see how I can help the police, Mma. I do not see it.”

She explained it to him, and he listened gravely. “But will it work, Mma?”

She tried to sound confident. “I hope so, Rra.” She looked at him intently. “How much money have you got, Mr. Polopetsi? How much in total? In savings, cattle—the lot?”

He winced. “I have fifty cattle of my own, Mma. They belonged to my wife, but she has given them to me.”

She let out an exclamation. “Fifty, Rra! That’s a very good herd. And are they in good condition?”

He nodded, and inclined his head towards the window. “They are over that way—near the Limpopo. There is still water over there.”

She took out a calculator that she kept in her top drawer, and keyed in some figures. “In that case you can pay everybody back,” she said. “There will be enough to give all the people you recruited into the Fat Cattle Club their money back.”

Mr. Polopetsi’s mouth opened silently. He seemed to shrink even further, all but disappearing into his jacket. Soon there would just be clothes visible, and no man, and one would only know that he was there when the clothes started miraculously to move by themselves.

“I’m very sorry, Rra,” she said. “But there is no other way.” She paused. She felt for him—of course she did; the pain of selling cattle was something that any Motswana instinctively understood. It was like selling one’s children—not quite as bad as that, but approaching it.

They drank their tea in silence. Then Mma Ramotswe sighed, stood up, and announced that it was time to leave.

“I am ready,” came a voice from somewhere within the jacket. It was a thin, distant voice—rather like the voice of Mma Makutsi’s shoes. “I am very nervous,” it continued, “but I am ready.”

“You do not need to be nervous,” she said, trying to sound as cheerful as she could. She knew, though, that she sounded far from confident.

—