in peace. Nobody should care—it’s not their business.”
Mma Makutsi agreed. “These days it is not important. And there are many men who like other men just a little bit, you know. Look at a group of men together—they are smiling and laughing and drinking beer and so on. All the time. They must like those other men. They must want to hug them from time to time.”
Charlie shook his head vehemently. “No, Mma. They do not. They do not like to hug other men.”
“Then that’s very sad,” said Mma Makutsi. “Perhaps they really do want to hug other men but have been told that they cannot, because it is not allowed.” She remembered something. “I have read somewhere that all men feel a bit like that at some point in their lives. Just now and then. I have read that ninety-seven per cent do. Something like that.”
She was taunting Charlie, who was unaware of it. “No, Mma,” he said. “No, that is not right.”
“Perhaps you should stop worrying about these things, Charlie. Perhaps you worry too much.”
Mma Ramotswe decided that it was time to abandon this discussion, interesting though it was. “We shall have to think a bit more about this case,” she said. “But perhaps not right now. I would like to tell you about what I found out this morning.”
* * *
—
MMA RAMOTSWE TOLD THEM about her attempt to visit Nametso in the diamond-sorting office. She described the security consultant—“He was a security guard, really, but you know how everybody has become a consultant these days”—and she told them what he had revealed about Nametso. “He said that she now has a Mercedes-Benz, but she parks it elsewhere, not in the parking place she used to have.”
“It’s best to put a car like that in a safe place,” said Charlie. “If you put it in a public parking place, then bang, some lady comes and reverses into you.”
Mma Makutsi glared at him. “Some lady, Charlie? Why do you say some lady? Is it because you think we women can’t drive safely? Is that what you think?”
Charlie made a conciliatory gesture. “I only said ‘some lady’ because I do not want to use sexist language, Mma Makutsi. If I said ‘some man,’ then you would come and say to me, ‘Why are you always talking about men, what about ladies?’ And so I say ‘some lady’ and you jump up and down and say, ‘Why are you picking on ladies?’ ”
“You’re not fooling me, Charlie,” snorted Mma Makutsi. “You said ‘some lady’ because you think it is always ladies who are bumping into other cars in car parks. That is what you think.”
Mma Ramotswe was staring at the ceiling. Over the last twelve months, she had bumped her van into two other cars, both of them in parking places. She had done no real damage, and the owners of the two cars in question had been understanding. One of them was a woman, and she had said to Mma Ramotswe, “Don’t you worry, Mma. I’m always bumping into other cars myself.” It was best, perhaps, not to mention that now, she thought.
And Mma Makutsi was thinking of how Phuti had come back from the Double Comfort Furniture Store one day recently and told her that his secretary had come into the office in tears because she had bumped into a furniture van in the off-loading bay at the back of the building. “He should not have been there, Rra,” she said. “He normally comes at eleven in the morning. This was at nine. What was he doing there? It’s his fault, Rra.”
And yet Mma Ramotswe had read that women were safer drivers than men, and these stories were both unfair and inaccurate. It was young men who caused many of the accidents—young men like Charlie, who only wanted to go fast and show off to people in the back seat. They were the bad drivers, not women. That was well known. Indeed, it was probably the sort of thing that Seretse Khama himself might have said.
“It doesn’t really make much difference,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It seems to me that it is a reasonable explanation to say that she does not want her Mercedes-Benz to be damaged. But—and it’s a big but, I think—the real question is this: Where does a young woman like that get a Mercedes-Benz?”
Mma Makutsi looked thoughtful. “Diamonds, Mma.”
Nobody spoke for a good minute or so. Illicit activities in relation to diamonds was a