“That is very rude,” she complained to Mma Ramotswe. “It is very ill-mannered to say that you will meet somebody but only if they buy you something.”

“Perhaps he was joking,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There are people who talk like that, you know. They do not mean to be rude—they mean to be funny.”

“But I am not laughing,” said Mma Makutsi.

They left it at that, but when Mma Makutsi alighted from the minibus at the back of the President Hotel that morning, she already felt that her meeting with Oteng Bolelang, an experienced attacking midfielder (whatever that was) in the Kalahari Swoopers, would be trying. The term attacking midfielder had been used by Mma Ramotswe when she had asked her assistant to speak to Bolelang, but Mma Makutsi was doubtful as to whether Mma Ramotswe knew what it meant. “What is it?” she asked, and Mma Ramotswe had waved a hand and said, “He attacks, Mma. He attacks from the middle of the field.” Mma Makutsi had considered this, but it was only later that she thought of the obvious retort. “But what if the play has moved down to the other end of the field, Mma? What then? How can an attacking midfielder launch an attack when he is in the middle of the field and all the other players are down near the goalposts?” Mma Ramotswe would not have been able to answer that, she imagined, but then both of them were on very weak ground in this case and she was not one to talk. At least Mma Ramotswe had been to a football match, which was more than Mma Makutsi could claim.

The whole business, she thought as she made her way round the side of the President Hotel, was a complete waste of time. She and Mma Ramotswe would talk to these football players, with their ridiculous schoolboy-ish nicknames, and at the end of it all they would be none the wiser. Or they might be a little wiser in that they would have learned a bit more about the silliness of men's games, but they would not be wiser in their search for Mr. Molofololo's traitor.

The square in front of the President Hotel, a large, well-used pedestrian thoroughfare known as the Mall, was more crowded than usual. The end-of-the-month pay-day had fallen a few days ago, and the effect of the sudden injection of money into pockets was still being felt. All along the square, which ran from the government offices at one end to the bank offices at the other, small traders had set up their stalls. There were sellers of crudely made sandals, the shoes laid out before them in rows; dressmakers, with their racks of voluminous dresses; purveyors of traditional medicines, with their little piles of twisted roots and strips of bark; sellers of carvings and wooden salad bowls; hawkers of cheap sunglasses and perfumes. Business was being done—but not a great deal, as this spot seemed to provide for as many social as commercial opportunities. Questions were being asked about relatives and colleagues; marriages were being discussed and planned; complaints about the doings of officials and officialdom were being shared, and expanded; and, of course, news was being conveyed of distant cattle. There was a lot happening.