“He’ll be with some girl,” said Mma Makutsi. “That is where he is.”

Mma Ramotswe said nothing. She was watching the congregation coming in, waving discreetly to one or two, and smiling at the children. At last the platform party entered-the minister, dressed in a flowing blue gown, and the choir, also in blue, in whose ranks the apprentice was to be seen, smiling encouragingly at his guests.

There were hymns and prayers, and then the minister rose to speak.

“There are sinners all about us,” he warned. “They are wearing ordinary clothes, and they walk and talk like any other person. But their hearts are full of sin, and they are plotting more sin as we sit here.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni glanced at Mma Ramotswe. Was his heart full of sin? Was hers?

“Fortunately we can be saved,” continued the minister. “All we have to do is to look into our hearts and see what sins are there. Then we can do something about it.”

There were murmurs of agreement from the congregation. One man groaned softly, as if in pain, but it was only sin, thought Mma Ramotswe. Sin makes one groan. The weight of sin. Its mark. Its stain.

“And those who come into this church,” said the minister. “They bring their sins in, too. They bring sins into the midst of God’s people. They come straight from Babylon.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who had been looking at his folded hands as the minister spoke, now looked up and saw that people were staring at him, as well as at Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi. He nudged Mma Ramotswe discreetly.

“Yes,” said the minister. “There are strangers here. You are very welcome, but you must declare your sins before God’s people. We shall help you. We shall make you strong.”

There was now complete silence. Mma Makutsi looked around anxiously. Surely this was no way to welcome visitors. Usually congregations greeted strangers warmly and clapped when you stood up. This must be a strange religion to which the apprentice had subscribed.

The minister now pointed at Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Speak, my brother,” he said. “We are listening.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked frantically at Mma Ramotswe.

“I…” he began. “I am a sinner. Yes-I suppose…”

Suddenly Mma Ramotswe stood up. “Oh my!” she called out. “I am the sinner here. I am the one! I have committed so many sins that I cannot count them. They are weighty. They are making me sink. Oh! Oh!”

The minister raised his right arm. “The power of the Lord be upon you, my sister! He will release you from these sins! Tell the sins! Speak their awful name!”

“Oh, they are so numerous,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Oh! I cannot bear these sins. They are making me hot. I am feeling the fire of hell! Oh, the fire of hell is consuming me! I am so hot! Oh!”

She sank back on the pew, fanning herself with the hymn sheet.

“The fires!” she shouted. “The fires are all about me. Take me out!”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni felt the dig in his ribs.

“I must take her outside,” he said to the congregation at large. “The fire-”

Mma Makutsi rose to her feet. “I will help you. The poor lady. All those sins. Oh! Oh!”

Once outside, they walked as quickly as they could to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s car, which was parked alongside a row of believers’ cars, outwardly no different from any of them.

“You are a very good actress,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni as they drove away. “I was very embarrassed there. I was having to think of sins.”

“Maybe I wasn’t acting,” said Mma Ramotswe dryly.

CHAPTER NINE

MR. MOLEFELO had given Mma Ramotswe very little information. All she knew about the people for whom she was to look was that Mr. Tsolamosese had been a senior officer at the prison; that the Tsolamosese family had lived in a government house near the old airfield; and that the girlfriend, whose name was Tebogo Bathopi, came from Molepolole and was hoping to train as a nurse. This was not a great deal to go on: much would have happened in the course of twenty years; Tebogo would probably have married and changed her name; Mr. Tsolamosese would surely have retired and the family would have left the house. But it was hard to disappear completely in Botswana, where there were fewer than two million people and where people had a healthy curiosity as to who was who and where people had come from. It was very difficult to be anonymous, even in Gaborone, as there would always be neighbours who would want to know exactly what one was doing and who one’s people had been. If you wanted anonymity, you had to leave the country altogether and go somewhere like Johannesburg, where nobody knew, nor cared very much, it would seem.

Tracking down the Tsolamosese family would be relatively easy, thought Mma Ramotswe. Even if Mr. Tsolamosese had retired from the prison service, there was bound to be somebody at the prison who would know where he had gone. Prison officials were a close-knit community; they lived cheek by jowl with one another in the prison lines, and their families often intermarried. They had to be protective of one another, as there was always the danger that a released prisoner might try to settle a score, which had happened on one or two occasions, as Mma Ramotswe had read. In one case, a prisoner who succeeded in escaping hid in the house of a warder, under his bed, and waited for him to go off to sleep before he crawled out and stabbed him through his blankets. It had been a chilling incident, although the warder had survived the attack relatively unscathed, and the prisoner had been rearrested and beaten. Such evil was difficult to contemplate, thought Mma Ramotswe. How could anybody do that sort of thing to a fellow human being? The answer, of course, was that such people were cold inside. They had no feelings, and it was easy for them to do things like that and worse. God would judge them, she knew, but in the meantime they could do a great deal of damage. Worst of all, these people destroyed trust. You used to be able to trust people, but now you had to be so careful, even in a good country like Botswana. It was unimaginably worse in other places, of course, but even in Botswana you had to hold on to your handbag if you walked out at night, in case a young man with a knife came and took it from you. What could be further from the old Botswana ways of courtesy and respect? What, she wondered, would Obed Ramotswe make of it if he were to come back and see what had happened; her father, who, if he found so much as a one-pula note on the roadway, would hand it over to the police, oblivious to their surprise at his honesty.

Mma Ramotswe decided to divide her task into two. First she would find the Tsolamosese family and propose the reparation which she had discussed with Mr. Molefelo. Then, that piece of the past set to rest, she would set about the more difficult task of tracing Tebogo. The first step, though, was a telephone call to the prison, and an enquiry as to whether Mr. Tsolamosese still worked there. As she had anticipated, the official who answered the telephone had not heard the name. Mma Ramotswe asked then to speak to the oldest person in the office.

“Why do you want to speak to an old person, Mma?” she had been asked politely.

“Because they know more, Rra,” she had replied.

There was a silence at the other end of the line. Then, after a few moments of hesitation, the oldest official was fetched.

“I am fifty-eight, Mma,” he said, introducing himself over the line. “Is that old enough for you, or do you want somebody who is eighty or ninety?”

“Fifty-eight is very good, Rra,” she said. “A person who is fifty-eight will know what he is talking about.”

This remark was well received. “I shall try to help you, if I can. What is it you wish to know?”