Mma Makutsi nodded. She knew. Any sensitive person in Africa would know what Mma Ramotswe meant. When we die, we do not leave the place we were in when we were alive. We are still there, in a sense; our spirit is there. It never goes away. This was something which white people simply did not understand. They called it superstition, and said that it was a sign of ignorance to believe in such things. But they were the ones who were ignorant. If they could not understand how we are part of the natural world about us, then they are the ones who have closed eyes, not us.

Mma Makutsi poured the tea and handed Mma Ramotswe her mug.

“Are you going to tell the American woman this?” she asked. “Surely she will say: ‘Where is the body? Show me the exact place where my son is.’ You know how these people think. She will not understand you if you say that he is there somewhere, but you cannot point to the spot.”

Mma Ramotswe raised the mug to her lips, watching her secretary as she spoke. This was an astute woman, she thought. She understood exactly how the American woman would think, and she appreciated just how difficult it could be to convey these subtle truths to one who conceived of the world as being entirely explicable by science. The Americans were very clever; they sent rockets into space and invented machines which could think more quickly than any human being alive, but all this cleverness could also make them blind. They did not understand other people. They thought that everyone looked at things in the same way as Americans did, but they were wrong. Science was only part of the truth. There were also many other things that made the world what it was, and the Americans often failed to notice these things, although they were there all the time, under their noses.

Mma Ramotswe put down her mug of tea and reached into the pocket of her dress.

“I also found this,” she said, extracting the folded newspaper photograph and passing it to her secretary. Mma Makutsi unfolded the piece of paper and smoothed it out on the surface of her desk. She gazed at it for a few moments before looking up at Mma Ramotswe.

“This is very old,” she said. “Was it lying there?”

“No. It was on the wall. There were still some papers pinned on a wall. The ants had missed them.”

Mma Makutsi returned her gaze to the paper.

“There are names,” she said. “Cephas Kalumani. Oswald Ranta. Mma Soloi. Who are these people?”

“They lived there,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They must have been there at the time.”