‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Mma Ramotswe. Mma Makutsi’s weakness for fashionable shoes was well known, and she could talk for hours on the subject. ‘But this Alice – what has she said about James? Has she told you much about him?’

Mma Makutsi looked out of the window. ‘A little,’ she said. She paused. ‘Very little, in fact. She said that he comes from Lobatse.’ She paused. ‘She said that he was not a good boyfriend, and that she was pleased when she got rid of him. Just a little sad, maybe. You know how it is when a man goes away. You feel a bit sad, and then you get better.’

Mma Ramotswe nodded. ‘Is that all she said about him – that he came from Lobatse?’

Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. ‘I think so,’ she said.

‘Do you think you could find out anything else, Mma?’ she asked. ‘Could you phone Alice and ask her?’

Mma Makutsi nodded. ‘She likes to talk,’ she said. ‘I don’t think that she would mind being phoned at work.’

While Mma Makutsi dialled the number of the shoe shop, Mma Ramotswe busied herself with pen and paper. At the top of a page she wrote: James Pikani, and underneath that she wrote: Comes from Lobatse; had girlfriend called Alice; drives old car (according to Mr Gefeli). That, she thought, is all we know about him, apart from the fact that he is a very fine goalkeeper (sometimes).

Mma Ramotswe tried to make sense of what was said on the phone between Mma Makutsi and Alice, but it was difficult to reconstruct the conversation when she could only hear one side of it. There were plenty of ahs and ohs from Mma Makutsi and at one point a sharp intake of breath, but that was all. It was clear, though, that a good deal of information was being gathered.

‘Well?’ she said to her assistant at the end of the call. ‘What did she say?’

‘Nothing much,’ said Mma Makutsi airily. ‘Most of the time she was talking about his brother, whom Alice has her eye on. He’s quite a ladies’ man, it would seem.’

‘And James?’ asked Mma Ramotswe. ‘What about James?’

Mma Makutsi shrugged. ‘All she said was that he was very vain. She said that he was the vainest man she had ever met. He always looked at himself in mirrors. Even in the car he would look at himself in the mirror, just to check that he was still handsome.’

Mma Ramotswe sighed. It was not very much information to go on. Many men were vain these days, she thought. It was something to do with women being free to look at men in the same way in which men had always looked at women. Women had not realised it, but all that this new freedom led to was the creation of a lot of vain men.

She wrote down the word vain on her sheet of paper and then put it to one side, tucked into a file that she had opened under James Pikani’s name. The post had brought one or two letters to be answered, and she decided that she would attend to these now, dictating her responses to Mma Makutsi. Later on, she would come back to the question of how she might find out more about James Pikani before she sought him out.