Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

deliberately? Whose side do you think he was really on?
    After about ten minutes, Puso reappeared with Mr. Molofololo. The owner of the Kalahari Swoopers looked extremely downcast, and his conversation on the way to drop them off at Zebra Drive was virtually monosyllabic.
    “Bad,” he said. “Very bad.”
    “I'm sorry, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I was very much hoping that you would win. But maybe the Township Rollers are just playing very strongly these days. Maybe they deserved to win.”
    “No.”
    “Oh well, perhaps things will be better at the next game. You never know.”
    “Won't,” snapped Mr. Molofololo.
    After that, Mma Ramotswe was silent. Then, as the driver brought the large car to a halt outside the house on Zebra Drive, she spoke to Mr. Molofololo again. She reminded him that when he had first come to see her they had spoken of her being given a list of all the names of the players, along with their addresses. Could Mr. Molofololo provide that?
    “Yes.”
    Mma Ramotswe opened the car door. “We have had a very good afternoon, Rra. Thank you very much for that. And Puso …”
    Puso took his cue and thanked Mr. Molofololo for allowing him to watch the game. This produced a rather better response,and an offer to take the boy to the match that the Swoopers would play the following weekend. Would he like that?
    The boy looked pleadingly at Mma Ramotswe, who nodded. “I would like that very much, Rra,” he said. “Thank you.”
    They got out of the car and went into the house.
    “I am so happy Mma,” said Puso.
    Mma Ramotswe patted him affectionately on the head. “I can tell that. And I am glad that you are happy, Puso, even if it seems that the Swoopers themselves are not very happy.”
    “Oh, I think they are happy,” said Puso. “I do not think they wanted to win very much.”
    Mma Ramotswe frowned. The little boy was about to go off to his bedroom, but she reached out to grab his arm. “Puso! Why did you say that?”
    The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I could tell,” he said. “One of them even smiled when the Township Rollers scored that first goal. I saw him.”
    Mma Ramotswe's eyes widened. “He smiled? One of the players?”
    “Yes. I was watching him, and I saw him smile. Then he suddenly stopped smiling, as if somebody had told him he mustn't.”
    Mma Ramotswe stared at Puso. What was that expression that somebody had used the other day, and she had noted down as a very useful thing to say?
Out of the mouths of babes …
Yes, that was it.
    She tried not to sound too concerned. You had to be careful when getting information from children; you had to be careful that you did not encourage them to embroider things. Clovis Andersen, author of
The Principles of Private Detection
, had written about that, she remembered.
Always be very cautious when getting evidence from children
, he advised.
Never let the child think that you want a particular answer, because if you do that, the childwill make something up in order to oblige. I have been involved in many cases where apparently valuable information from children has proved to be misleading because the child was trying to be helpful. Children, in general, do not have a clear idea of the distinction between what the world is and what we want it to be
.
    Clovis Andersen was right about that, as he was about so much, and Mma Ramotswe suspected that Mma Potokwane, with all her experience of children, would concur. One of the children at the orphan farm had happened to witness a burglary in a neighbouring house, and Mma Potokwane had sat with the child while he made the statement to the police. The boy, who was barely seven, had said that the man he saw breaking in through the window was Santa Claus. The police had tried to shift him from this, but he was adamant. “It was Santa Claus,” he had said.
    So now, affecting nonchalance, Mma Ramotswe sought to elicit information about the player who had smiled when the opposition had scored