TWO DAYS PASSED—two days in which more rain fell, great cloudbursts of rain, drenching the length and breadth of Botswana. People held their breath in gratitude, hardly daring to speak of the deluge lest it should suddenly stop and the dryness return. The rivers, for long months little more than dusty beds of rust-coloured sand, appeared again, filled to overflowing in some cases, twisting snakes of mud-brown water moving across the plains. Here and there low bridges were overwhelmed by the floods and were covered with fast-moving water, cutting off villages and settlements from the larger roads; but nobody complained. The bush, a desiccated brown before the storms, turned green overnight, as the shoots of dormant plants thrust their way through the soil. Flowers followed, tiny yellow flowers, spreading like a dusting of gold across the land. Ground vines sent out tendrils; melons would grow in abundance later on, as an offering, an expiation for the barrenness of the dry months that had gone before.

For Mma Ramotswe, those two days of rain were days of waiting. There was work enough for her to attend to—several matters that for some time she had been meaning to finish off were calling for attention—and Mma Makutsi too had things to do. She had been handling the case of the tenant who was not who he claimed to be, and there was a report to be written on that. She and Phuti had followed the man staying in the house, driving behind him discreetly in Phuti’s white car with the red stripe down the side. That had gone smoothly enough, and they had seen the tenant go into the office of a supplier of diesel generators, exactly where the informing neighbour had said that he worked. But was he the Mr. Moganana who was named in the lease, or was he his brother-in-law, who had no right to be staying in the house? That had been solved by Phuti, who had gone into the office and asked to speak to Mr. Moganana. He had expected to be told that no such person worked there; instead the man they had followed had appeared. Phuti, unprepared for this, had simply asked him whether he was the man who had leased the house in question.

“Of course I am, Rra,” Mr. Moganana replied. “And a real dump it is too. Are you from the landlord?”

“In a way,” said Phuti.

“Well, you can tell her that I am fed up with her never doing anything about that bathroom.”

“Is there something wrong, Rra?”

“There certainly is. If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve signed that lease I would leave tomorrow.”

And that had solved that. The client would be told that if she wanted the house back, all she had to do was to cancel the lease; both sides would be pleased. It was one of those cases where both sides appeared to win, and everybody ended up happy.