Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “There will be no trouble from them. You need not worry about that.”

“What about that statement?” he asked. “The one from that other girl? Will you destroy it?”

Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and moved towards the door.

“That statement?”

“Yes,” he said. “The statement about me from the girl who was lying.”

Mma Ramotswe opened the front door and looked out. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was sitting in the car and looked up when the front door was opened.

She stepped down onto the pathway.

“Well, Dr Ranta,” she said quietly. “I think that you are a man who has lied to a lot of people, particularly, I think, to women. Now something has happened which you may not have had happen to you before. A woman has lied to you and you have fallen for it entirely. You will not like that, but maybe it will teach you what it is to be manipulated. There was no girl.”

She walked down the path and out of the gate. He stood at the door watching her, but she knew that he would not dare do anything. When he got over the anger which she knew he would be feeling, he would reflect that she had let him off lightly, and, if he had the slightest vestige of a conscience he might also be grateful to her for setting to rest the events of ten years ago. But she had her doubts about his conscience, and she thought that this, on balance, might be unlikely.

As for her own conscience: she had lied to him and she had resorted to blackmail. She had done so in order to obtain information which she otherwise would not have got. But again that troubling issue of means and ends raised its head. Was it right to do the wrong thing to get the right result? Yes, it must be. There were wars which were just wars. Africa had been obliged to fight to liberate itself, and nobody said that it was wrong to use force to achieve that result. Life was messy, and sometimes there was no other way. She had played Dr Ranta at his own game, and had won, just as she had used deception to defeat that cruel witch doctor in her earlier case. It was regrettable, but necessary in a world that was far from perfect.

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

BULAWAYO