She looked down at him, at his funny, rather serious face; he was wiser, perhaps, than most boys of his age. Boys know everything, she remembered somebody saying. Everything.

“Tell me,” she said to the boy. “Big Man Tafa: Is he a good man, do you think, or is he a bad man?”

The boy's eyes moved slightly. A fly had landed on his head and was walking slowly across the smooth expanse of his brow. He did nothing to brush it off.

“He is bad man, I think,” he said. “A very bad man. And one day God is going to punish him.”

Mma Ramotswe was taken aback. The judgement had been so swift, so clear; but it always is, she reflected, when you're that size.

“Who says he is a bad man?” she asked. “Just you?”

The boy shook his head, making the fly take off from its suddenly uncertain landing strip.

“My father,” he said. “Big Man Tafa owes my father ten thousand pula. That is this much, Mma.” He stretched out his hand to illustrate a pile of money. “He says that only bad men don't pay what they have promised to pay. That is why I think that God will get him.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “You are a very interesting boy” she said.

CHAPTER TWELVE. CROCODILE SHOES

WHEN MMA RAMOTSWE arrived back at an empty office, she found on her desk a handwritten note from Mma Makutsi:

Mma Ramotswe, I am feeling a bit better now and I have decided to go shopping. I need to think about the matter I discussed with you, but I must go to the shops now. Phuti is coming for dinner and I must buy food for him. I shall talk to him, Mma. You said that it is always best to talk and that is what I shall do.

Grace Makutsi, DSP

Mma Ramotswe smiled at this note. If the way we write a letter gives us away, as people said it did, then the DSP said it all: the Diploma in Secretarial Practice that Mma Makutsi had was her proudest possession-and understandably so. But did she have to put it after her name, and do so even when she wrote a note to her employer? Mma Ramotswe herself had no letters to put after her name, unless, of course, she wrote W, for Woman. Mma Precious Ramotswe, W. That seemed a bit unnecessary because the Mma made it clear that she was a woman, as did her first name, Precious. Perhaps she could put TBW (Traditionally Built Woman) or PI (Private Investigator). The last of these sounded much better, she thought, but really was not necessary, as everybody appeared to know that she was a private detective, or so the Tafas had claimed.

She hoped that Mma Makutsi would handle her conversation with Phuti tactfully, and not say anything that she would later regret. When she had suggested to her assistant that she should talk about her concerns, Mma Ramotswe had not meant that she should talk to Phuti; she had meant that Mma Makutsi should talk to her. Discussing that sort of thing with a woman friend was one thing; discussing it with a man, and with the man under suspicion as well, was quite another, and much more hazardous. Men did not like to be suspected of unfaithfulness; indeed, she had heard of cases where men had responded to such accusations by going out and finding another girlfriend, even when there was no truth to the original accusation. It seemed that the mere mention of such a possibility could be enough to trigger the desire in a man's mind to do what he would otherwise not have done. One had to be extremely careful.

Mma Ramotswe thought it very unlikely that Phuti was entertaining the possibility of abandoning Mma Makutsi in favour of Violet Sephotho. Phuti had always struck her as being an unadventurous, loyal man; not the sort of man to take up with a woman like Violet, with her loud, loose ways and her utter ruthlessness. And yet, and yet… The problem was that men were weak, and sometimes the steadiest of men proved to be the weakest of all when faced with a determined onslaught. Violet probably knew that very well. She knew how to turn a man's head, as she would have done so on many occasions before, presumably leaving a trail of broken engagements and marriages behind her. She was, Mma Ramotswe believed, a husband-stealer, as she had heard this accusation levelled against her on more than one occasion. And would Phuti, for all his fine qualities, be able to resist the devastating power of one so skilled in the sinister arts of husband-stealing?

She sat down at her desk, pondering these matters, and was doing this, looking up at the ceiling, when Fanwell came in.

“I know that it is not yet tea time, Mma,” he said, looking at his watch. “But I am very thirsty. I would like to make some tea.”

“I am thirsty too,” said Mma Ramotswe. “So perhaps you will make some for me, too.”

Fanwell went off to fill the kettle and returned a few moments later. While waiting for the water to boil, he sat on top of Mma Makutsi's desk, kicking his legs against the side. He would never have dared to do that, thought Mma Ramotswe, had Mma Makutsi been present, but he could be forgiven the presumption. There were some things that she herself did when Mma Makutsi was absent that she would never have dared to do in her presence-such as using her assistant's cup if her own cup needed washing and she was too busy-or it was too hot-to do it.

“I'm very sorry,” said Fanwell suddenly.

Mma Ramotswe looked up in surprise. “What have you done?”

“No, I've done nothing, Mma. I'm very sorry about your late van.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. “You're very kind, Fanwell. You're kind to say that.” Charlie, she had noticed, had said nothing about the end of her tiny white van, had even smiled over it, she recalled. But she was not vindictive, and there was no point in going into any of that.

“When we towed it away, I felt very sad,” Fanwell went on. “To think of all the times that van had carried you home and then back to the office. It must have been very sad for you, Mma.”

“It was,” said Mma Ramotswe. She had not seen the van being towed away, but it was no longer parked next to the garage, and she assumed that the deed had been done. She hardly dared ask about the physical fate of the van, but now she decided that perhaps she should. She had counselled Mma Makutsi that it was best to talk; well, perhaps it was best for her to talk too, in her case about the van's fate.

She asked Fanwell what had happened, and he explained. “We did it this morning,” he said. “While you were away somewhere in your new van. The boss drove the truck and I steered your van. We took it to that man who finds spare parts from scrapped cars. Harry Moloso. He has that place in the industrial site, over that side. I sometimes go and get spares there. He is a fat man who drinks a lot of beer and has a stomach that goes out like this. That is where we took it.”

Mma Ramotswe listened to this with a growing feeling of emptiness. It was not a dignified end for her tiny white van-to be handed over ignominiously to Harry Moloso with his beer belly and his oxyacetylene torch waiting in the background, every bit the cruel instrument of torture. She shuddered.

Fanwell whistled. “It's a pity about your van, Mma,” he said. “Maybe it could have been fixed after all. If one could find the parts. A big job, though.”

Mma Ramotswe was silent, and Fanwell looked at her, smiling. “Very big job. But there must be some of them somewhere. If you looked hard enough.”

Mma Ramotswe took a pencil in her hand and played with it gently between her thumb and forefinger. “Parts?”

“Yes,” said Fanwell. “You'd need to get… Oh, it's a long list, Mma. Not worth doing, which is what the boss said when we opened it up. He's right, I think.”

It was the smallest of straws, but a straw nonetheless. “But it could be done? You could find the parts somewhere, do you think?”

Fanwell nodded. “You'd start at Harry Moloso's. He must have had vans like that going through. He must have some of the parts. And Harry Moloso knows everybody in the parts business, Mma. He can phone Johannesburg if necessary and speak to somebody there. Or Francistown, Mafikeng -anywhere. He has the contacts.” He smiled. “Me-I have no contacts. None.”