There was one good restaurant, though, one that she liked, which had a garden and tables in that garden. The kitchens were clean, the food wholesome, and the waitresses adept at friendly conversation. She went there from time to time when she felt that she needed to catch up on Mochudi news, and she would spin out her lunch to two or three hours, talking or just sitting under one of the trees and looking up at the birds on the branches above. It was a good place for birds, a bird restaurant, and the more confident amongst their number would flutter down to the ground to peck at the crumbs of food under the tables, minute zebra finches, bulbuls, plain birds that had no name as far as she knew.

The tiny white van drew up in front of the restaurant and Mma Ramotswe alighted. A wide acacia tree stood at the entrance to the restaurant garden, an umbrella against the sun, and a dog sat just outside the lacy shadow of the tree, his eyes half closed, soaking up the winter sun. A couple of flies walked across the narrow part of his nose, but he did not flinch. Mma Ramotswe saw that only one of the outside tables was occupied, and she knew immediately that it was the doctor. Half Xhosa, half Afrikaner. It could only be him.

“Dr Cronje?”

The doctor looked up from the photocopied article he had been reading. Mma Ramotswe noticed the graphs across the page, the tables of results. Behind the things that happened to one, the coughs and pains, the human fevers, there were these cold figures.

He started to rise to his feet, but Mma Ramotswe urged him not to. “I am sorry to be late. It is my fault. I drove very slowly.” She noticed that the doctor had green eyes; green eyes and a skin that was very light brown, the colour of chocolate milk, a mixture of Africa and Europe.

“Drive slowly,” he mused. “If only everyone would do that, we’d be less busy in the hospital, Mma Ramotswe.”

A waitress appeared and took their order. He put his papers away in a small folder and then turned his gaze to Mma Ramotswe. “Mr Monyena told us that you might want to speak to people,” he said. “So here I am. He’s the boss.”

He spoke politely enough, but there was a flatness in his tone. That explains it, thought Mma Ramotswe. That explains why he came.

“So he told you that I have been asked to look into those unexplained deaths,” she said. “Did he tell you that?”

“Yes,” he said. “Though why we need anybody else to do that beats me. We had an internal enquiry, you know. Mr. Monyena was on that himself. Why have another one?”

Mma Ramotswe was interested. Tati Monyena had not told her about an internal enquiry, which must have been an oversight on his part.