Mma Ramotswe noted what had been said about intuition and bones. She knew what Mma Sheba meant – she herself regularly used her intuition – but she was a detective and Mma Sheba was a lawyer. Lawyers were not meant to follow their noses, to rely on hunches and so on. Lawyers were meant to look at the evidence and weigh it carefully. That was how they were meant to work.

‘Exactly what do you want me to do, Mma?’ she asked.

The lawyer looked at her intently. ‘I want you to prove that this young man is an imposter. That is what I want. I want you to find out just who he is.’

Again this struck Mma Ramotswe as a strange thing for a lawyer to say. Lawyers should not make up their mind in advance of a full understanding of the facts. It seemed that Mma Sheba had decided what she wanted the outcome to be. It was very strange, but just as there could be strange detectives, and strange mechanics for that matter, presumably there could be strange lawyers too.

‘I shall do my best to investigate the situation, Mma,’ she said. ‘I shall try to establish the truth.’

‘That is what we always do,’ echoed Mma Makutsi. ‘We establish the truth. That is our business, you see.’

Chapter Three

Snakes Are Very Shy

The house that Phuti Radiphuti and Grace Makutsi had built for themselves stood on a plot of land cleared from the bush at the edge of town. The land had been a haven for snakes and there were still a few who had survived its clearing. This came home to them when, two days after they had moved in, a cobra was discovered behind the washing basket in the bathroom, to be removed, hissing in anger, at the end of a long pole left behind by the builders. Grace would have preferred it had Phuti despatched the snake altogether with blows from the pole, but he did not believe in killing snakes.

‘If we killed all the snakes in Botswana,’ he pointed out, ‘then we would be in serious trouble with rats. We would end up asking the snakes to come back.’

‘I do not want all the snakes in the country killed,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘I want those in my garden, and now in my house, to be got rid of. That is all, Rra.’

‘I am getting rid of him,’ said Phuti.

This did not impress her. ‘But he will come back. That snake is thinking: this man is putting me out, but I have my own ideas on that. I shall return when his back is turned and I shall find that nice cool place in the bathroom once more. And if he comes in again, I shall bite him to remind him that I am a cobra and we do not like being poked with sticks.’