It was easy enough watching a stranger. One could sit in one’s van and pretend to be reading, or even sleeping. Plenty of people did that: they sat in their cars, talking to friends or listening to the car radio, or even just sitting. Nobody would have reason to be suspicious of that. But if one sat in one’s van outside the house of somebody one knew, and then followed him as he turned out of the drive, one would obviously be noticed. She imagined the scene, as Herbert Mateleke asked her, “Mma Ramotswe, I saw you sitting outside my house yesterday afternoon. It was you, wasn’t it? I’m sure it was. And then when I drove off down the road, you followed me. Perhaps you wanted me to show you the way, Mma …” And she would not know what to say, but would mumble something about how small the town was, in spite of being so big, and how easy it was to bump into people one knew along the road, just as easy, in fact, as in one of those tiny villages …

By the time she had reached the shared premises of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, she had decided that she could not possibly follow Herbert Mateleke, and that the only thing to do was to stick to the procedure that she used in so many of her cases. If she wanted to find out the answer to anything, then she simply had to ask somebody. It was that simple, it really was, and she had done this on numerous occasions, with conspicuously successful results. Sometimes the answer she received was direct; on other occasions it was not so direct, but was nonetheless unambiguous. She remembered how, in one investigation into pilfering in an office—disappearing petty cash and so on—she had simply called the staff to attend a meeting. Then, as they all stood before her, some twelve people, she had said, “Now then, everybody, the manager says that money has been stolen, and I wonder who’s doing it?” And immediately all pairs of eyes had turned and looked at one member of staff, who had stared steadfastly at the ground. People know, she thought; they know things that they might be unwilling to say. Nobody in that office would have been willing to denounce the offender openly, but we reveal so much through our eyes. Our eyes, she thought, show what is in the heart.