Did she look like a detective, she wondered? This was an intriguing question. If somebody saw her in the street, they would probably not look twice at her. She was just an ordinary Motswana lady, in the traditional mould, going about her daily business as so many other women did. Surely nobody would suspect her of watching, which is what she had to do in her job. Perhaps it was different with Mma Makutsi, with those large glasses of hers. People noticed those glasses and clearly thought about them. They might wonder, might they not, why somebody would need such large glasses and they might conclude that this was because she was interested in looking closely at things, at magnifying them. That, of course, was an absurd vision of what she and Mma Makutsi did; they very rarely had to examine any physical objects—human behaviour was what interested them, and all that this required was observation and understanding.

Her observation of Mr Bobologo lasted only a few seconds. Now he stood up, closing the Bible with some regret, as one might close a riveting novel in which one had become immersed. Of course Mr Bobologo would know the end of the story—which was not a happy ending, if one thought about it carefully—but one might still be absorbed even in the completely familiar.

“I am sorry to disturb you,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The school holidays must be a good time for you teachers to catch up on your reading. You will not like people coming along and disturbing you.”

Mr Bobologo responded well to this courteous beginning. “I am happy to see you, Mma. There will be plenty of time for reading later on. You may sit on this chair and I will fetch another.”

Mma Ramotswe sat on the teacher’s chair and waited for him to return. It was a good spot that he had chosen to sit, hidden from passers-by on the road, but with a view of the children’s playground where even now in the holidays the children of the school staff were engaged in some complicated game with a ball. It would be good to sit here, she thought, knowing that the Government was still paying one’s salary every month, and that reading, and becoming wiser and wiser, was exactly what one was expected to do.

Mr Bobologo returned with another chair and seated himself opposite Mma Ramotswe. He looked at her through the thick lenses of his spectacles, and then dabbed gently at the side of his mouth with a white handkerchief, which he then folded neatly and placed in the pocket of his shirt.