Now, driving her tiny white van along the road that led to the Gaborone dam, she let her thoughts wander: Mma Potokwane, men and their little ways, the Government, next year’s rains, Motholeli’s homework problems: there was so much to think about, even before she started to dwell upon any of her cases. Once she started to think about that side of her life, Mochudi Hospital came to mind, with its cool corridors, and the ward where three people had died, all in the same bed. Three fingers raised, one after the other, and then lowered. Three stitches taken out of our shared blanket. She had talked to how many people now? Four, if one did not count Tati Monyena, who was really the client, even if it was the hospital administration that was paying. Those four people, the three nurses and Dr Cronje, had all endorsed the view that Tati Monyena had voiced right at the beginning—that the deaths were just an extraordinary coincidence. But if that was what everybody believed, then why had they sought to involve her in the whole business? Perhaps it was one of those cases where doubts simply refused to lie down until somebody independent, somebody from the outside, had come and put them to rest. So she was not a detective, then, but a judge brought in to make a ruling, as judges, chiefs, will do when with a few carefully chosen words they bury a cause of conflict or doubt. If that were so, then there was not much for her to do but to declare that she had looked into the situation and found nothing suspicious.

And yet she was not sure if she could honestly say that. It was true that she had looked into the situation, and while she had been unable to come up with any idea as to why the patients had died, she could not truthfully say that she had no suspicions. In fact, she had felt quite uncomfortable after her conversations with the nurses and with Dr Cronje; she had sensed an awkwardness, an unhappiness. Of course, that could have been nothing to do with the matter she was investigating—Dr Cronje was an unhappy man because he was in self-imposed exile; and as for the nurses, for all she knew they might have some cause for resentment, some work issue, some unresolved humiliation that gnawed away; such things were common and could consume every waking moment of those who allowed them to do so.