Mma Makutsi returned to her desk. She placed her teacup in front of her, contemplated it for a few moments, and then fixed Fanwell with a firm stare.

“Fanwell,” she said, “when you picked up that dog, did you think about what’s involved in looking after a dog? Did you think about what you were going to do with it?”

Fanwell looked sheepish. “I was worried about him, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe came to his rescue. “He had run the dog over, Mma Makutsi. He had some responsibility.”

Mma Makutsi’s large round glasses caught the light. This was always a danger sign. “All he had to do was to check that it wasn’t too badly injured,” she said.

“Or that it was not late,” offered Charlie.

“Precisely,” said Mma Makutsi. “Once he had done that, then the dog was not his responsibility.”

“But I couldn’t leave him where he was,” pleaded Fanwell. “He was looking very confused, Mma Makutsi. His head went round and round like this. And he had a sore leg. I couldn’t leave him.”

“Well, it’s much better now,” said Mma Makutsi. “You’ve done what you needed to do. Now you can take it somewhere and let it loose. It’ll find its way back to its home, wherever that is.”

Mma Ramotswe was more sympathetic, although she had always been slightly wary of dogs and could be nervous in their presence. This came from an incident she had witnessed during her childhood in Mochudi. A rabid dog had wandered into the village and created panic with its looping gait and strange, whooping howls. It was a Saturday morning and the young Precious had been making her way to the informal vegetable market set up by small farmers from the surrounding districts. The soil was dry and would yield some crops only where irrigation was available—for the rest, offerings were slight: pumpkins and melons, maize cobs, and sorghum that could be made into a staple porridge.

She had seen the dog at a distance, and had pointed it out to her father’s cousin, who helped look after her. The cousin had looked anxious.

“But it’s only a dog,” said Precious. “It’s not dangerous—it’s not a hyena.”

The cousin had taken her hand and began to shepherd her to safety. “There are some dogs that are many times more dangerous than a hyena—or even a lion,” she said. “Look at the way it is walking—it’s going sideways, Precious, and that means only one thing. That dog is a very bad dog—very bad.”

Word had got out, and within a few minutes a police truck came bumping its way down the road. It slowed down when it was opposite the cousin, and a window was wound down.

“Over there,” said the cousin, pointing to where the dog had lurched off into the scrub bush a few minutes earlier.