“Interesting,” said the superintendent. “We have a lab—you know, a police lab—but we can’t get anybody to run it. There’s not all that much work for it to do and the government won’t pay for a chemist. So it sits there unused and we have to send our samples off—at great expense, I might add—to a lab over the border. It’s a big waste of money, if you ask me. Now, if we could find somebody who could do the job part-time for us, and cheaply enough…well, it would be very convenient.” He looked at his fingernails. “Just a few hours a week, of course. Not very much. And not much pay, I’m afraid.”

Mr. Polopetsi suddenly brightened. “But I’d like to do that, Rra. I enjoy lab work.”

“My goodness,” exclaimed the superintendent. “These things sometimes arrange themselves in the strangest way. What a coincidence that I should talk about our lab problems and there you are, sitting right in front of me. That is very odd.”

“Very odd,” agreed Mma Ramotswe.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I WOULD LIKE SOME FAT CAKES, MMA

THE CORRUGATIONS on the road out to the Orphan Farm were worse than usual following the prolonged dry season, shaking Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van with the unrelenting determination of a terrier with a rabbit. In the back of the van, holding on to Zebra’s collar, Fanwell bounced up and down, as did the dog.

“Slower, Mma!” shouted Fanwell, but his voice was drowned in the rattles and other protests rising from the van’s chassis, and Mma Ramotswe, a believer in the theory that a badly corrugated road was best tackled at speed—allowing one to fly across the top of the bumps without descending into the valleys between them—merely drove all the faster.

By the time they reached the gate, Fanwell had abandoned Zebra and was concentrating on supporting himself. The dog was lying on the floor of the van, apparently trying to sleep; now, as they drew to a halt under an acacia tree, Zebra sat up, sniffed at the air, and uttered a low bark.

“He obviously enjoyed the trip,” said Mma Ramotswe over her shoulder, as she turned off the engine. “Dogs like cars, don’t they?”

“I think he was knocked unconscious,” muttered Fanwell. “And so was I.”

They left the van and walked over to the small office building from which Mma Potokwane ran her domain. Two children, a boy and a girl both about five or six years old, sat on the cramped verandah outside the office, mutely staring at Zebra. As Mma Ramotswe approached, they looked up and gazed at her with wide, rheumy eyes. Around their eyes flies were crawling.

Mma Ramotswe frowned disapprovingly, and bent down to brush the flies away.