Mr. Polopetsi nodded. There was a certain envy on his part of the fact that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had been given this assignment which should, in his view, have been given to him. He had been led to understand that he was principally an employee of the agency, an assistant detective or whatever it was, and that his garage duties would be secondary. Now it seemed that he was expected to be more of a mechanic than a detective. But he would not complain; he was grateful for the fact that he had been given a job, whatever it was, after he had found such difficulty in getting anything.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni drove his truck to the chemist’s shop where he had left the photographs for developing. The assistant there, a young man in a red tee-shirt, greeted him jauntily. “Your photographs, Rra? They’re ready. I did them myself. Money back if not satisfied!” He reached behind him into a small cardboard box and extracted a brightly coloured folder. “Here they are.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni began to take a fifty-pula note from his wallet.

“I won’t charge you the full cost,” the young man said. “You only had two exposures on the roll of film. Is there something wrong with your camera?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni wondered what the other photograph was. “Two photographs?”

“Yes. Here we are. Look. This one.” The young man opened the folder and took out two large glossy prints. “That one is of a house. Down there, round the corner. And this one here…this one is of a lady with a man. He must be her boyfriend, I think. That is all. The rest—blank. Nothing.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni glanced at the photograph of the house—it had come out very well and he could make out the figure of a woman standing on the verandah although the man on the steps, his head turned away from the camera and obscured by the low branch of a tree, could not be identified. But it was not Mr. Botumile who was the object of interest here—it was the woman, and she was shown very clearly. He looked at the other photograph—it must have been on the roll of film already, taken some time ago and forgotten. He took it from the young man and stared at it.

Mma Ramotswe was standing in front of a tree somewhere. There were a couple of chairs behind her, in the shade, and there, standing next to Mma Ramotswe, was a man. The man was wearing a white shirt and a thin red tie. He had highly polished brown shoes and a gleaming buckle on his belt. And his arm was around Mma Ramotswe’s waist.