She finished dictating the letters by the mid-morning tea break. It was a fine morning, not too hot, and she thought that she would drink her tea with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni and his two apprentices. They liked to sit at the side of the garage and have their tea there, and it was an ideal spot on a day like this.

Her teacup in hand, Mma Ramotswe surveyed the scene. Mr J. L. B. Matekoni was sitting, legs stretched out, on an old car seat that he had placed against the garage wall, while the two apprentices were perched on top of two upturned oil drums. Mma Ramotswe joined them, lowering herself on to a box which she used as a seat when she took her tea with the mechanics.

She looked at Charlie, the elder of the two apprentices. He was looking up into the sky, smiling at something, and she wondered what it was. Probably some football victory, she imagined … Then a thought occurred to her.

‘Charlie,’ she said, ‘have you heard of a goalkeeper called James Pikani?’

His daydream interrupted, Charlie looked at Mma Ramotswe in surprise. ‘Of course I have,’ he said. ‘Everybody knows James. He’s a really good player. Although recently he’s been useless. Maybe he’s getting too old. Maybe he’s lost interest.’

‘He’s finished,’ chipped in the younger apprentice. ‘The crowd sometimes gets angry with him, you know. They call out rude names. They shout that he’s an old man, that he needs glasses or that he’s forgotten how to play. They make it very tough for him.’

Mma Ramotswe had been half listening to what the younger apprentice had been saying. Now she stood up, spilling some of her tea as she did so.

‘Are you going somewhere?’ Mr J. L. B. Matekoni asked. ‘You haven’t finished your tea.’

Mma Ramotswe made a vague gesture with her free hand. ‘I have to go out,’ she said. ‘There is somebody I need to speak to.’

Inside the office, she found Mma Makutsi still drinking her tea, paging through a fashion magazine; the magazine was open at a page where people were showing off shoes. It was just the sort of thing, Mma Ramotswe thought, which Mma Makutsi would find fascinating.

‘Mma Makutsi,’ she said. ‘Would you like to come with me to have a word with James Pikani?’

Mma Makutsi needed no persuading, and soon she and Mma Ramotswe were on their way together in the tiny white van. They followed the road that led to the address which Mr Gefeli had given them the day before, to the house occupied by Mr James Pikani. It was not, she noted, a fashionable address. It was a small plot on the edge of Old Naledi, a house that would never have suggested itself as the house of a famous footballer, let alone one who was being bribed with a great deal of money.

A middle-aged woman opened the door when Mma Ramotswe knocked. She stared at her two visitors for a moment, and then greeted them politely in the traditional way.