“It was after I had been in the brigade for five or six months,” he continued. “I had been given extra responsibility—I was in charge of organising extra transport for those occasions when we had too many people for our own vehicles. We would hire a minibus from one of the taxi people, and I paid them. I had a float for that—money that was kept in a tin and then locked away in a drawer in the office. I was the only person with a key to that drawer—or so I thought.”

Mma Ramotswe put down her glass. It was obvious which way this was going—and it was clear that the story would be one of major injustice. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was a person of the utmost probity—she had known that right from the beginning. He was scrupulously honest in all his dealings, but particularly where money was involved. On one occasion he had driven twenty miles to hand over an inadvertent overpayment made by a client: a fifty-pula note had been stuck to the back of another note and had not been counted.

“I can imagine what’s coming, Rra,” she said.

He sounded sad. “Yes, that’s what happened. I went to open the drawer and found that exactly half the money had gone from the tin. Thieves don’t always take the full amount, I believe—if they leave some, then the person they’ve robbed might think that he had made a mistake about how much was there in the first place. It’s a common trick.

“But I knew I hadn’t made a mistake,” he continued. “I knew that there had been exactly six hundred pula in that tin—I was certain of it. And so I decided that I would tell the director about it and start looking into the question of who else might have got hold of a key to the drawer.”

“That was the right thing to do,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Go straight to the relevant authorities. That’s what I always advise—then you’re protected.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head sadly. “I wish I had gone straightaway. I didn’t. I was going to go first thing the following morning, but…”

Mma Ramotswe’s heart sank. “Oh no, Rra!”