Such unworthy thoughts were now no longer necessary, and after that glorious release pronounced by Mma Ramotswe at the dinner table, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni felt no need to plan his will. That night, after he had returned to his house near the old Botswana Defence Force Club, he contemplated his familiar possessions, not with the eye of one who was planning their testamentary disposal, but with the relief of one who knew that he was not soon to be separated from them. He looked at his sofa, with its stained arms and cushions, and thought about the long Saturday afternoons that he had spent just sitting there, listening to the radio and thinking about nothing in particular. Then he looked at the velvet picture of a mountain that hung on the wall opposite the sofa. That was a fine picture which must have taken the artist a great deal of time to make. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew every detail of it. All of this would go over to Mma Ramotswe’s house one of these days, but for the time being it was reassuring to see things so firmly and predictably in their proper place.

It was almost midnight by the time Mr J.L.B. Matekoni went to bed. He read the paper for a few minutes before he put out the light, drowsily dropping the paper by his bedside, and then, enveloped in darkness, he drifted into the sleep that had always come so easily to him after a day of hard work. Sleep was welcome; the nightmare that he had experienced had been a diurnal one, and now it was resolved. There was to be no drop, no plummet to the ground, no humiliation as his fear made itself manifest to all …

That was in the waking world; the sleeping world of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had not caught up with the events of that evening, with the release from his torment, and at some point that night, he found himself standing on the edge of the tarmac at the airport, with a small white plane of the sort used by the Kalahari Flying Club taxi-ing towards him. A door of the plane was opened, and he was beckoned within by the pilot, who, as it happened, was Mma Potokwane herself.

“Get in, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” shouted Mma Potokwane above the noise of the engine. She seemed vaguely annoyed that he was holding things up in some way, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni obeyed, as he always did.

Mma Potokwane seemed quite confident, leaning forward to flick switches and adjust instruments. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni reached to touch a switch that appeared to need attention, as an orange light was flashing behind it, but his hand was brushed away by Mma Potokwane.

“Don’t touch!” she shouted, as if addressing an orphan. “Dangerous!”