“I’m all right, Mma Ramotswe. Don’t worry. It’s just that … well, it’s just that that man is absolutely useless. I know I shouldn’t speak about a fellow member of my profession like that, but I can think of nothing else to say. He knows no law at all, Mma—none. In fact, none of us knows how he ever managed to get his LLB in the first place. Maybe they’re putting law degrees in cornflakes boxes these days.”

There was little comfort in this conversation. She had been hoping that somehow this man might offer to help, yet he seemed to have precluded the possibility. But then he lowered his voice and said, “Don’t tell anybody this, but the young man could fire him. Then, once he has no lawyer, he could contact me and I could see what I could do.”

Mma Ramotswe reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Oh, Rra, that is such good news.”

“When is he due to appear in court?”

“Tomorrow. Nine o’clock.”

The lawyer recoiled. “Tomorrow? Oh dear, Mma, that will not be possible then. He cannot dismiss his lawyer at the last moment, because I won’t have time to read the papers in the case, and anyway, I am busy for the next three weeks. I have a big case for the Government.”

“So he’ll have to stick with the lawyer he has?”

“I’m afraid so, Mma. And maybe it won’t be too bad. You never know with the law. It’s a bit of a lottery, as they say: you win some and you lose some.” His tone was sympathetic. “This young man, of course, might be one of the losers.”

She thanked him. “You have been very kind, Rra.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything, Mma, but I hope all goes well … if he’s innocent. If he’s guilty, well, then he’s guilty.”

She felt she could not argue with that. Perhaps that was why this lawyer had the reputation he did: because he put things succinctly, in a way that anybody could understand.

MR. J.L.B. MATEKONI drove Fanwell to court the next day in his garage truck, with Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi following in the white van. The magistrate’s court was in a handsome new building of an open disposition that in no way spoke of the distressing events which it witnessed daily: the accounts of petty crime, the tears and protests of litigants, the outrage and the untruths—in short, the business of the average court. This court stood on the road to the jail, a fact that both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi could not help thinking about as they drove there that morning but also secretly hoped would not be relevant to Fanwell.