Mr. Botumile drove through the centre of town, past the Princess Marina Hospital, and on towards the Gaborone Sun Hotel. Then he stopped, parking in front of the hotel just as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni turned his truck into a different section of the hotel parking lot and turned off the engine. Then both men left their vehicles and entered the hotel, Mr. Botumile going first, alone—he thought—and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni following him a discreet distance behind, his heart beating hard within him at the sheer excitement of what he was doing. This is better, he thought, infinitely better than adjusting brake pads and replacing oil filters.

“MR GOTSO?” exclaimed Mma Ramotswe. “Mr Charlie Gotso? Him?”

“Yes,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I recognised him immediately—who wouldn’t? Charlie Gotso was sitting there, and when I saw him I had to look away quickly. Not that he would know who I am. He’d know who you are, Mma Ramotswe. You’ve spoken to him, haven’t you? All those years ago when…”

“That was a long time ago,” Mma Ramotswe said. “And I was just a small person to him. Men like that don’t remember small people.”

“You are not small, Mma,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni found himself protesting, but stopped. Mma Ramotswe was not small.

She looked at him with amusement. “No, I am not small, Rra. You are right. But I was thinking of how I would mean nothing to a man like that.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was quick to assent. “Of course that’s what you meant. I know men like that. They are very arrogant.”

“He is a rich man,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Rich men sometimes forget that they are people, just like the rest of us.” She paused. “So there was Charlie Gotso, no less! And Mr. Botumile went straight up to him and sat down?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. He and Mma Ramotswe were sitting at the kitchen table in their house on Zebra Drive. Behind them, on the stove, a pan of chopped pumpkin was on the boil, filling the air with that familiar chalky smell of the yellow pumpkin flesh. Inside the oven, a small leg of lamb was slowly roasting; it would be a good meal, when it was eventually served in half an hour or so. There was time enough, then, to talk, and for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to give Mma Ramotswe an account of the enquiry from which he had just returned.

“This was outside,” he said. “You know that bar at the back? That place. And since there were quite a few people there, and most of the tables were occupied, I was able to sit down at the table next to theirs without it appearing odd.”