Mma Ramotswe had made a list of matters on which she needed to brief her assistant. There were a number of enquiries from potential new clients. Mma Makutsi usually wrote those replies, as she had a persuasive turn of phrase that often translated a tentative approach into a firm contract. There were also bills to be paid – another task that Mma Makutsi always coordinated and Mma Ramotswe had let slip a little in her absence.

But whatever background tasks awaited her, the two issues that most interested Mma Makutsi were the Soleti and Molapo affairs. These were both investigations with an intense human-interest dimension, and that aspect always intrigued Mma Makutsi.

As Mma Ramotswe told her about the leaflet, Mma Makutsi’s expression clouded over. ‘Where is the leaflet in question?’ she asked.

Mma Ramotswe reached into her bag and withdrew the copy she had picked up at Riverwalk the day before. Mma Makutsi unfolded it and read the message in silence. After she had finished, she put it down on her desk and stared at it.

‘There is no clue as to who wrote it,’ said Mma Ramotswe from behind her own desk. ‘That bit at the bottom of the page about a concerned person is nonsense, don’t you think?’

Mma Makutsi did not reply. She was still staring intently at the page.

‘And there is nothing else,’ said Mma Ramotswe after a while. ‘I cannot see that we have anything else to go on.’

Mma Makutsi now looked up. ‘This is not printed, Mma,’ she said, holding up the piece of paper as one might a soiled rag. ‘This is photocopied.’

Mma Ramotswe nodded. ‘It is very easy to photocopy these things.’

‘If you have a machine,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘And many people do not have one.’

‘No…’

‘So,’ Mma Makutsi went on, ‘if you do not have a machine, you go to one of those places where they photocopy things cheaply. Such as…’

‘Clear Image Copies,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

Mma Makutsi adjusted her glasses. ‘Do you have that leaflet that woman at Clear Image gave us, Mma? Daisy Something-or-other.’

‘Daisy Manchwe.’

Mma Ramotswe rifled through the papers on her desk and extracted Mma Manchwe’s price sheet. Rising from her desk, she passed it to Mma Makutsi. She could see where this was going, and it excited her. The first step from having nothing to having something, even if not much, was always thrilling.

Mma Makutsi laid the two pieces of paper out beside one another. Then, reaching into her desk drawer, she fished out a large magnifying glass. Mma Ramotswe remembered when she had bought this, on the recommendation of Clovis Andersen in a chapter entitled: ‘What the investigator must always have by his side’. This glass, though, had never had occasion to be used – before this occasion.