Of course, Mma Ramotswe and Mr J. L. B. Matekoni had discussed the issue many times themselves, as they did that evening some months previously when he had first raised it with her. They were sitting on their veranda in that companionable manner that may come upon a married couple at the end of a day’s work, when they are together again and watching the sun sink behind the acacia trees and the untidy telephone wires of their neighbour’s garden. They had been talking about nothing in particular, with few matters that were likely to disturb the peace of this quiet half-hour before supper.

‘I wonder when our neighbour is going to tidy up those wires,’ mused Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘You’d think that he’d get in touch with the telephone people and get them to come round and sort things out. I shouldn’t be surprised to find out that half those wires are dead – just ancient wires from the past.’

Mma Ramotswe glanced over the fence at the untidy cluster of wires attached to the wooden telephone pole. She felt that Mr J. L. B. Matekoni was probably right; the country was full of wires that might have done something important in the past but had long since stopped being used. She imagined somehow listening in to one of these wires and hearing the echoes of some forgotten exchange between people that had taken place many years before but still echoed through those old abandoned wires. One might hear a conversation that took place in 1962, perhaps, when Botswana was still the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and when cattle were the main industry and there were no diamonds. It might be a conversation between somebody in Lobatse driving up to see somebody in Gaborone and not requiring any directions because there were only a couple of roads. ‘You take the right-hand road. You know the right-hand road?’

Silence, empty silence, and then a faint, tinny voice ringing down the line. ‘I know that road, Rra. That is the road my grandfather lives on.’

The voice of the dead – you could hear them still, if you listened hard enough. Late people still talking, like children after lights-out: the faint, distant voices of our ancestors.

And then, as if he had already forgotten about the telephone wires, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni suddenly said, ‘Mma Makutsi?’

It was a question rather than a pronouncement, and Mma Ramotswe waited a moment or two before answering, in case the point of the question might be expanded upon. But it was not.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Mma Makutsi: what of her, Rra?’

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni shrugged. ‘Nothing, Mma.’ But it was not nothing. ‘I just happened to be wondering whether there was anything… different about her?’ He paused. ‘Now that she’s married, you see.’

She looked at him, and he turned away, embarrassed. ‘No, I don’t mean…’