Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (12 page)

An
elderly cousin had said to him at the wedding in Durban: “Look, man, we
Indians have got to be careful. You shouldn’t go flashing your money
around the place. The Africans don’t like that, you know, and when they
get the chance they’ll take it all away from us. Look at what happened in
Uganda. Listen to what some of the hotheads are saying in Zimbabwe. Imagine
what the Zulus would do to us if they had half a chance. We’ve got to be
discreet.”

Mr Patel had shaken his head. “None of that
applies in Botswana. There’s no danger there, I’m telling you.
They’re stable people. You should see them; with all their diamonds.
Diamonds bring stability to a place, believe me.”

The cousin
appeared to ignore him. “Africa’s like that, you see,” he
continued. “Everything’s going fine one day, just fine, and then
the next morning you wake up and discover your throat’s been cut. Just
watch out.”

Mr Patel had taken the warning to heart, to an
extent, and had added to the height of the wall surrounding his house so that
people could not look in the windows and see the luxury. And if they continued
to drive around in their big cars, well, there were plenty of those in town and
there was no reason why they should be singled out for special attention.

MMA RAMOTSWE was delighted when she received the
telephone call from Mr Patel asking her whether she could possibly call on him,
in his house, some evening in the near future. They agreed upon that very
evening, and she went home to change into a more formal dress before presenting
herself at the gates of the Patel mansion. Before she went out, she telephoned
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

“You said I should get a rich client,”
she said. “And now I have. Mr Patel.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni
drew in his breath. “He is a very rich man,” he said. “He has
four Mercedes-Benzes. Four. Three of them are all right, but one has had bad
problems with its transmission. There was a coupling problem, one of the worst
I’ve seen, and I had to spend days trying to get a new casing
…”

YOU COULD not just push open
the gate at the Patel house; nor could you park outside and hoot your horn, as
everybody did with other houses. At the Patel house you pressed a bell in the
wall, and a high-pitched voice issued from a small speaker above your
head.

“Yes. Patel place here. What do you want?”

“Mma Ramotswe,” she said. “Private …”

A crackling noise came from the speaker.

“Private? Private
what?”

She was about to answer, when there was another crackling
sound and the gate began to swing open. Mma Ramotswe had left her tiny white
van round the corner, to keep up appearances, and so she entered the compound
by foot. Inside, she found herself in a courtyard which had been transformed by
shade netting into a grove of lush vegetation. At the far end of the courtyard
was the entrance to the house itself, a large doorway flanked by tall white
pillars and tubs of plants. Mr Patel appeared before the open door and waved to
her with his walking stick.

She had seen Mr Patel before, of course,
and knew that he had an artificial leg, but she had never seen him at really
close quarters and had not expected him to be so small. Mma Ramotswe was not
tall—being blessed with generous girth, rather than height—but Mr
Patel still found himself looking up at her when he shook her hand and gestured
for her to come inside.

“Have you been in my house before?”
he asked, knowing, of course, that she had not. “Have you been at one of
my parties?”

This was a lie as well, she knew. Mr Patel never
gave parties, and she wondered why he should pretend to do so.

“No,” she said simply. “You have never asked
me.”

“Oh dear,” he said, chuckling as he spoke.
“I have made a big mistake.”

He led her through an entrance
hall, a long room with a shiny black and white marble floor. There was a lot of
brass in this room—expensive, polished brass—and the overall effect
was one of glitter.

“We shall go through to my study,” he
said. “That is my private room in which none of the family are ever
allowed. They know not to disturb me there, even if the house is burning
down.”

The study was another large room, dominated by a large
desk on which there were three telephones and an elaborate pen and ink stand.
Mma Ramotswe looked at the stand, which consisted of several glass shelves for
the pens, the shelves being supported by miniature elephant tusks, carved in
ivory.

“Sit down, please,” said Mr Patel, pointing to a
white leather armchair. “It takes me a little time to sit because I am
missing one leg. There, you see. I am always on the lookout for a better leg.
This one is Italian and cost me a lot of money, but I think there are better
legs to be had. Maybe in America.”

Mma Ramotswe sank into the
chair and looked at her host.

“I’ll get straight to the
point,” said Mr Patel. “There’s no point in beating about the
bush and chasing all sorts of rabbits, is there? No, there
isn’t.”

He paused, waiting for Mma Ramotswe’s
confirmation. She nodded her head slightly.

“I am a family man,
Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “I have a happy family who all live in this
house, except for my son, who is a gentleman dentist in Durban. You may have
heard of him. People call him Pate these days.”

“I know of
him,” said Mma Ramotswe. “People speak highly of him, even
here.”

Mr Patel beamed. “Well, my goodness, that’s a
very pleasing thing to be told. But my other children are also very important
to me. I make no distinction between my children. They are all the same.
Equal-equal.”

“That’s the best way to do it,”
said Mma Ramotswe. “If you favour one, then that leads to a great deal of
bitterness.”

“You can say that again, oh yes,” said
Mr Patel. “Children notice when their parents give two sweets to one and
one to another. They can count same as us.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded
again, wondering where the conversation was leading.

“Now,”
said Mr Patel. “My big girls, the twins, are well married to good boys
and are living here under this roof. That is all very excellent. And that
leaves just one child, my little Nandira. She is sixteen and she is at
Maru-a-Pula. She is doing well at school, but …”

He
paused, looking at Mma Ramotswe through narrowed eyes. “You know about
teenagers, don’t you? You know how things are with teenagers in these
modern days?”

Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “They are often bad
trouble for their parents. I have seen parents crying their eyes out over their
teenagers.”

Mr Patel suddenly lifted his walking stick and hit
his artificial leg for emphasis. The sound was surprisingly hollow and
tinny.

“That’s what is worrying me,” he said
vehemently. “That’s what is happening. And I will not have that.
Not in my family.”

“What?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
“Teenagers?”

“Boys,” said Mr Patel bitterly.
“My Nandira is seeing some boy in secret. She denies it, but I know that
there is a boy. And this cannot be allowed, whatever these modern people are
saying about the town. It cannot be allowed in this family—in this
house.”

AS MR Patel spoke, the door to
his study, which had been closed behind them when they had entered, opened and
a woman came into the room. She was a local woman and she greeted Mma Ramotswe
politely in Setswana before offering her a tray on which various glasses of
fruit juice were set. Mma Ramotswe chose a glass of guava juice and thanked the
servant. Mr Patel helped himself to orange juice and then impatiently waved the
servant out of the room with his stick, waiting until she had gone before he
continued to speak.

“I have spoken to her about this,” he
said. “I have made it very clear to her. I told her that I don’t
care what other children are doing—that is their parents’ business,
not mine. But I have made it very clear that she is not to go about the town
with boys or see boys after school. That is final.”

He tapped his
artificial leg lightly with his walking stick and then looked at Mma Ramotswe
expectantly.

Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. “You want me to do
something about this?” she said quietly. “Is this why you have
asked me here this evening?”

Mr Patel nodded. “That is
precisely why. I want you to find out who this boy is, and then I will speak to
him.”

Mma Ramotswe stared at Mr Patel. Had he the remotest idea,
she wondered, how young people behaved these days, especially at a school like
Maru-a-Pula, where there were all those foreign children, even children from
the American Embassy and such places? She had heard about Indian fathers trying
to arrange marriages, but she had never actually encountered such behaviour.
And here was Mr Patel assuming that she would agree with him; that she would
take exactly the same view.

“Wouldn’t it be better to speak
to her?” she asked gently. “If you asked her who the young man was,
then she might tell you.”

Mr Patel reached for his stick and
tapped his tin leg.

“Not at all,” he said sharply, his
voice becoming shrill. “Not at all. I have already been asking her for
three weeks, maybe four weeks. And she gives no answer. She is dumb
insolent.”

Mma Ramotswe sat and looked down at her feet, aware of
Mr Patel’s expectant gaze upon her. She had decided to make it a
principle of her professional life never to turn anybody away, unless they
asked her to do something criminal. This rule appeared to be working; she had
already found that her ideas about a request for help, about its moral rights
and wrongs, had changed when she had become more aware of all the factors
involved. It might be the same with Mr Patel; but even if it were not, were
there good enough reasons for turning him down? Who was she to condemn an
anxious Indian father when she really knew very little about how these people
ran their lives? She felt a natural sympathy for the girl, of course; what a
terrible fate to have a father like this one, intent on keeping one in some
sort of gilded cage. Her own Daddy had never stood in her way over anything; he
had trusted her and she, in turn, had never kept anything from him—apart
from the truth about Note perhaps.

She looked up. Mr Patel was watching
her with his dark eyes, the tip of his walking stick tapping almost
imperceptibly on the floor.

“I’ll find out for you,”
she said. “Although I must say I don’t really like doing this. I
don’t like the idea of watching a child.”

“But
children must be watched!” expostulated Mr Patel. “If parents
don’t watch their children, then what happens? You answer
that!”

“There comes a time when they must have their own
lives,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We have to let go.”

“Nonsense!” shouted Mr Patel. “Modern nonsense. My father
beat me when I was twenty-two! Yes, he beat me for making a mistake in the
shop. And I deserved it. None of this modern nonsense.”

Mma
Ramotswe rose to her feet.

“I am a modern lady,” she said.
“So perhaps we have different ideas. But that has nothing to do with it.
I have agreed to do as you have asked me. Now all that you need to do is to let
me see a photograph of this girl, so that I can know who it is I am going to be
watching.”

Mr Patel struggled to his feet, straightening the tin
leg with his hands as he did so.

“No need for a
photograph,” he said. “I can produce the girl herself. You can look
at her.”

Mma Ramotswe raised her hands in protest. “But
then she will know me,” she said. “I must be able to be
unobserved.”

“Ah!” said Mr Patel. “A very good
idea. You detectives are very clever men.”

“Women,”
said Mma Ramotswe.

Mr Patel looked at her sideways, but said nothing.
He had no time for modern ideas.

As she left the house, Mma Ramotswe
thought: He has four children; I have none. He is not a good father this man,
because he loves his children too much—he wants to own them. You have to
let go. You have to let go.

And she thought of that moment when,
not even supported by Note, who had made some excuse, she had laid the tiny
body of their premature baby, so fragile, so light, into the earth and had
looked up at the sky and wanted to say something to God, but couldn’t
because her throat was blocked with sobs and no words, nothing, would
come.

IT SEEMED to Mma Ramotswe that it
would be a rather easy case. Watching somebody could always be difficult, as
you had to be aware of what they were doing all the time. This could mean long
periods of waiting outside houses and offices, doing nothing but watching for
somebody to appear. Nandira would be at school for most of the day, of course,
and that meant that Mma Ramotswe could get on with other things until three
o’clock came round and the school day drew to an end. That was the point
at which she would have to follow her and see where she went.

Then the
thought occurred to Mma Ramotswe that following a child could be problematic.
It was one thing to follow somebody driving a car—all you had to do was
tail them in the little white van. But if the person you were watching was
riding a bicycle—as many children did on their way home from
school—then it would look rather odd if the little white van were to be
seen crawling along the road. If she walked home, of course, then Mma Ramotswe
could herself walk, keeping a reasonable distance behind her. She could even
borrow one of her neighbour’s dreadful yellow dogs and pretend to be
taking that for a walk.

On the day following her interview with Mr
Patel, Mma Ramotswe parked the tiny white van in the school car park shortly
before the final bell of the day sounded. The children came out in dribs and
drabs, and it was not until shortly after twenty past three that Nandira walked
out of the school entrance, carrying her schoolbag in one hand and a book in
the other. She was by herself, and Mma Ramotswe was able to get a good look at
her from the cab of her van. She was an attractive child, a young woman really;
one of those sixteen-year-olds who could pass for nineteen, or even
twenty.