anybody else, including general managers, deputy general managers, and managers of any description. From the point of view of a private detective, indiscreet receptionists were gold mines of information, provided, of course, they could be persuaded to reveal what they knew. In general, Mma Ramotswe had found that people wanted to confide, and that all that was necessary was the provision of a sympathetic ear.
* * *
—
NOW SHE STOOD OUTSIDE the discreet building that was the headquarters of the Botswana Diamond Sorting Consortium. Into this building, with its modest four floors, were delivered the gems wrested from the great open-cast mines of the Kalahari, the end result of the reduction of millions of tons of ore into pellets, and the extraction from those pellets of the diamonds themselves. These arrived in sealed safe-boxes, packed by machine and unexposed to any human hand. Only once they were in the diamond-sorting building would they be opened and the stones within spread out on large sorting tables. At that point, the sorters began their work, expertly flicking stones into piles according to size and brilliance.
Mma Ramotswe had read about the process in an article in the Botswana Daily News. This had explained the training of the sorters, and the strict security measures surrounding the diamonds. Botswana’s diamonds were clean, the paper pronounced, and elaborate steps were taken to keep them that way. Temptation, of course, was the enemy, and everything possible was done to remove the occasions for that. Mma Ramotswe had stared at the photograph in the paper of a pile of diamonds on a sorting table. A pile of diamonds—and to think that these were handled by ordinary people whose lives could be changed beyond recognition by just one of these glittering stones. Such a small thing, a diamond, and yet a thing of such power.
The sorters were allocated parcels of raw stones. These were weighed to the last fraction of an ounce, and signed for on the basis of weight. The slightest discrepancy, the smallest whisker of difference between weight signed for and weight later returned to a supervisor, would set in motion a process of rigorous searches and revealing X-rays. It was no use trying to swallow a diamond; an X-ray would show exactly where in the human body the stone was concealed. Nobody, it was said, had ever succeeded in smuggling so much as a single carat out of the high-security sorting area.
She parked her van in the parking place beside the building. There were no trees there, she noted—this was too grand a place, too modern for such things. She disapproved: some people thought that progress was synonymous with the cutting down of trees and the planting, instead, of concrete. They were wrong, she felt: concrete cut you off from the land and stopped the earth from breathing. Concrete was hardness and silence; it had no voice, as other building materials had. Wood brought a memory of trees, thatch of reed bed, mud of the place from which the earth had been taken. The people who commissioned and built large buildings thought nothing of that, but ordinary people, people who did not think always of money, had always turned to trees for shade, and she saw no reason for that to change. If that was progress, then she would have none of it. And yet, she thought, I am a modern lady and have no desire to go backwards rather than forwards. It all depended, she felt, on where you thought forwards was.
She sighed as she left her tiny white van out in the full glare of the sun. She knew that when she came back to it—even only a few minutes later—the burning rays would have heated the interior to the point of discomfort. She would have to open both doors and wait for the seats and the steering wheel to cool. If only they had kept a few trees…
A man was walking towards her—a man in a blue uniform with a badge on each shoulder. This badge, the same on each side, said Security Consultant, and now, reaching Mma Ramotswe, he looked at her over the rim of a pair of rectangle-framed glasses.
His greeting was polite, in spite of his stern expression. Following the old Botswana custom, he enquired about her health and whether she had slept well. On both of these matters, she gave a positive report.
“So, Mma, what are you doing with your van?”
He gestured to the van, which looked distinctly