Charlie and Mma Makutsi exchanged glances. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was decent by nature and the problem with people who were trusting, she had always thought, was that they assumed others were like them, and they were not. They could hope that this Chobie might explain that he alone was answerable for handling stolen property, but they could not rely on it. Nor could they rely on his being believed even if he were to say it. If two young men were standing in the dock together, why should a magistrate believe one of them if he said the other was innocent?

“This is very serious,” said Mma Makutsi.

“He’s innocent,” said Charlie.

“Of course he’s innocent,” snapped Mma Makutsi. “We know that Fanwell would never do anything wrong. But we’re not the ones who will be sitting there in court, are we?”

Charlie stared at her. “If they convict him, what then?”

“They send you to prison for handling stolen property,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “That man at the bottle store—remember him? He went to prison for two years for selling stolen beer.”

“Two years!” Charlie exclaimed.

“He’s a first offender,” said Mma Makutsi.

This remark, innocently intended though it was, drew Charlie’s ire. Pointing a finger at Mma Makutsi, he almost shouted. “You think he’s guilty, don’t you?”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “I do not think that.”

“Then why do you call him an offender? Isn’t an offender somebody who’s guilty?”

Mma Makutsi tried to explain what she had meant; Charlie listened resentfully.

“We mustn’t argue,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Arguing won’t help Fanwell.”

“Nothing will help Fanwell,” said Mma Makutsi.

MMA RAMOTSWE RETURNED to the office an hour or so after the police and a fearful, almost tearful Fanwell had left. Her heart was heavy with the upsetting encounter she had just had with Mma Potokwane, and so when she came in and saw Mma Makutsi sitting disconsolately at her desk, she assumed that her assistant was merely sharing her own distress over the injustice done to her friend. But then she realised that Mma Makutsi did not know what had happened, and whatever the explanation for her assistant’s state of mind, it was not that.

“Is there something wrong, Mma?”

Mma Makutsi reached into the pocket of her blouse and took out a handkerchief. “Oh, Mma Ramotswe, it is very bad, very bad.”