“You will have to tell me why you think you know who it is,” Mma Makutsi said to Teenie. “Have you seen this person taking something?”

Teenie thought for a moment. “Not exactly.”

“Ah.”

There was a short period of silence. “Has anybody else seen this person taking something?” Mma Makutsi went on.

Teenie shook her head. “No. Not as far as I know.”

“So, may I ask you, Mma: How do you know who this person is?”

Teenie closed her eyes. “Because of the way he looks, Mma. This man who is taking things, he just looks dishonest. He is not a nice man. I can tell that, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi reached for a piece of paper and wrote down a few words. Teenie watched the pencil move across the paper, then she looked up expectantly at Mma Makutsi.

“I shall need to come and have a look round,” said Mma Makutsi. “You must not tell the staff that I am a detective. We shall have to think of some reason for me to be visiting the works.”

“You could be a tax inspector,” ventured Teenie.

Mma Makutsi laughed. “That is a very bad idea,” she said. “They will think that I am after them. No, you can say that I am a client who is interested in giving the firm a big job but who wants to have a good look at how things are run. That will be a good story.”

Teenie agreed with this. And would Mma Makutsi be available that afternoon? Everybody, including the man under suspicion, would be there and she could meet them all.

“How will I know which is the one you suspect?” asked Mma Makutsi.

“You’ll know,” said Teenie. “The moment you see him. You’ll know.”

She looked at Mma Makutsi. Still pleading.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DR CRONJE

WHILE MMA MAKUTSI dealt with her diminutive client, Mma Ramotswe made the brief drive out to Mochudi; forty minutes if one rushed, an hour if one meandered. And she did meander, slowing down to look at some cattle who had strayed onto the verge of the road. She was her father’s daughter after all, and Obed Ramotswe had never been able to pass by cattle without casting his expert eye over them. She had inherited some of that ability, a gift really, even if her eye would never be as good as his had been. He had cattle lineages embedded in his memory, like a biblical narrative setting out who begat whom; he knew every beast and their qualities. And she had always dreamed that when he died, at the very moment at which that bit of the old Botswana went, the cattle had somehow known. She understood that this was impossible, that it was sentimental, but the thought had given her comfort. When we die there are many farewells, spoken and unspoken—and the imagined farewell of the cattle was one of these.