Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (8 page)

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“Maybe.” Adding, “Your zip, Rra. I think you may not have
noticed …”

SHE FOUND the house
first, on a corner plot in Zebra Drive. It was expensive, and she decided to
take out a bond on part of it, so that she could afford to buy somewhere for
the business too. That was more difficult, but at last she found a small place
near Kgale Hill, on the edge of town, where she could set up. It was a good
place, because a lot of people walked down that road every day and would see
the sign. It would be almost as effective as having an advertisement in the
Daily News
or the
Botswana Guardian
. Everybody would soon
know about her.

The building she bought had originally been a general
dealer’s shop, but had been converted into a dry cleaners and finally a
bottle store. For a year or so it had lain empty, and had been lived in by
squatters. They had made fires inside, and in each of the rooms there was a
part of the wall where the plaster had been charred and burned. The owner had
eventually returned from Francistown and had driven out the squatters and
placed the dejected-looking building on the market. There had been one or two
prospective purchasers, but they had been repelled by its condition and the
price had dropped. When Mma Ramotswe had offered cash, the seller had leapt at
her offer and she received the deeds within days.

There was a lot to
do. A builder was called in to replace the damaged plaster and to repair the
tin roof and, again with the offer of cash, this was accomplished within a
week. Then Mma Ramotswe set to the task of painting, and she had soon completed
the outside in ochre and the inside in white. She bought fresh yellow curtains
for the windows and, in an unusual moment of extravagance, splashed out on a
brand new office set of two desks and two chairs. Her friend, Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, brought her an old
typewriter which was surplus to his own requirements and which worked quite
well, and with that the office was ready to open—once she had a
secretary.

This was the easiest part of all. A telephone call to the
Botswana College of Secretarial and Office Skills brought an immediate
response. They had just the woman, they said. Mma Makutsi was the widow of a
teacher and had just passed their general typing and secretarial examinations
with an average grade of 97 percent; she would be ideal—they were certain
of it.

Mma Ramotswe liked her immediately. She was a thin woman with a
rather long face and braided hair in which she had rubbed copious quantities of
henna. She wore oval glasses with wide plastic frames, and she had a fixed, but
apparently quite sincere smile.

They opened the office on a Monday. Mma
Ramotswe sat at her desk and Mma Makutsi sat at hers, behind the typewriter.
She looked at Mma Ramotswe and smiled even more broadly.

“I am
ready for work,” she said. “I am ready to start.”

“Mmm,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It’s early days yet.
We’ve only just opened. We will have to wait for a client to
come.”

In her heart of hearts, she knew there would be no
clients. The whole idea was a ghastly mistake. Nobody wanted a private
detective, and certainly nobody would want her. Who was she, after all? She was
just Precious Ramotswe from Mochudi. She had never been to London or wherever
detectives went to find out how to be private detectives. She had never even
been to Johannesburg. What if somebody came in and said “You know
Johannesburg of course,” she would have to lie, or just say nothing.

Mma Makutsi looked at her, and then looked down at the typewriter keyboard.
She opened a drawer, peered inside, and then closed it. At that moment a hen
came into the room from the yard outside and pecked at something on the
floor.

“Get out,” shouted Mma Makutsi. “No chickens
in here!”

At ten o’clock Mma Makutsi got up from her desk
and went into the back room to make the tea. She had been asked to make bush
tea, which was Mma Ramotswe’s favourite, and she soon brought two cups
back. She had a tin of condensed milk in her handbag, and she took this out and
poured a small amount into each cup. Then they drank their tea, watching a
small boy at the edge of the road throwing stones at a skeletal dog.

At
eleven o’clock they had another cup of tea, and at twelve Mma Ramotswe
rose to her feet and announced that she was going to walk down the road to the
shops to buy herself some perfume. Mma Makutsi was to stay behind and answer
the telephone and welcome any clients who might come. Mma Ramotswe smiled as
she said this. There would be no clients, of course, and she would be closed at
the end of the month. Did Mma Makutsi understand what a parlous job she had
obtained for herself? A woman with an average of 97 percent deserved better
than this.

Mma Ramotswe was standing at the counter of the shop looking
at a bottle of perfume when Mma Makutsi hurtled through the door.

“Mma Ramotswe,” she panted. “A client. There is a client
in the office. It is a big case. A missing man. Come quickly. There is no time
to lose.”

THE WIVES of missing men are
all the same, thought Mma Ramotswe. At first they feel anxiety, and are
convinced that something dreadful has happened. Then doubt begins to creep in,
and they wonder whether he’s gone off with another woman (which he
usually has), and then finally they become angry. At the anger stage, most of
them don’t want him back anymore, even if he’s found. They just
want to have a good chance to shout at him.

Mma Malatsi was in the
second stage, she thought. She has begun to suspect that he is off somewhere
having a good time, while she’s left at home, and of course it’s
beginning to rankle. Perhaps there are debts to be paid, even if she looks as
if she’s got a fair bit of money.

“Maybe you should tell me
a little bit more about your husband,” she said, as Mma Malatsi began to
drink the cup of strong bush tea which Mma Makutsi had brewed for her.

“His name is Peter Malatsi,” Mma Malatsi said.
“He’s forty and he has—had—has a business selling
furniture. It’s a good business and he did well. So he hasn’t run
away from any creditors.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “There must
be another reason,” she began, and then, cautiously: “You know what
men are like, Mma. What about another woman? Do you think …”

Mma Malatsi shook her head vigorously.

“I don’t think
so,” she said. “Maybe a year ago that would have been possible, but
then he became a Christian and took up with some Church that was always singing
and marching around the place in white uniforms.”

Mma Ramotswe
noted this down. Church. Singing. Got religion badly? Lady preacher lured him
away?

“Who were these people?” she said. “Maybe they
know something about him?”

Mma Malatsi shrugged. “I’m
not sure,” she said, slightly irritably. “In fact, I don’t
know. He asked me to come with him once or twice, but I refused. So he just
used to go off by himself on Sundays. In fact, he disappeared on a Sunday. I
thought he’d gone off to his Church.”

Mma Ramotswe looked
at the ceiling. This was not going to be as hard as some of these cases. Peter
Malatsi had gone off with one of the Christians; that was pretty clear. All she
had to do now was find which group it was and she would be on his trail. It was
the old predictable story; it would be a younger Christian, she was sure of
that.

BY THE end of the following day, Mma
Ramotswe had compiled a list of five Christian groups which could fit the
description. Over the next two days she tracked down the leaders of three of
them, and was satisfied that nothing was known of Peter Malatsi. Two of the
three tried to convert her; the third merely asked her for money and received a
five-pula note.

When she located the leader of the fourth group, the
Reverend Shadreck Mapeli, she knew that the search was over. When she mentioned
the Malatsi name, the Reverend gave a shudder and glanced over his shoulder
surreptitiously.

“Are you from the police?” he asked.
“Are you a policeman?”

“Policewoman,” she
said.

“Ah!” he said mournfully. “Aee!”

“I mean, I’m not a policewoman,” she said quickly.
“I’m a private detective.”

The Reverend appeared to
calm down slightly.

“Who sent you?”

“Mma
Malatsi.”

“Ooh,” said the Reverend. “He told us
that he had no wife.”

“Well, he did,” said Mma
Ramotswe. “And she’s been wondering where he is.”

“He’s dead,” said the Reverend. “He’s gone to
the Lord.”

Mma Ramotswe sensed that he was telling the truth, and
that the enquiry was effectively at an end. Now all that remained to be done
was to find out how he had died.

“You must tell me,” she
said. “I won’t reveal your name to anybody if you don’t want
me to. Just tell me how it happened.”

They drove to the river in
Mma Ramotswe’s small white van. It was the rainy season, and there had
been several storms, which made the track almost impassable. But at last they
reached the river’s edge and parked the van under a tree.

“This is where we have our baptisms,” said the Reverend,
pointing to a pool in the swollen waters of the river. “This is where I
stood, here, and this is where the sinners entered the water.”

“How many sinners did you have?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

“Six sinners altogether, including Peter. They all went in together,
while I prepared to follow them with my staff.”

“Yes?” said Mma Ramotswe. “Then what
happened?”

“The sinners were standing in the water up to
about here.” The Reverend indicated his upper chest. “I turned
round to tell the flock to start singing, and then when I turned back I noticed
that there was something wrong. There were only five sinners in the
water.”

“One had disappeared?”

“Yes,” said the Reverend, shaking slightly as he spoke.
“God had taken one of them to His bosom.”

Mma Ramotswe
looked at the water. It was not a big river, and for much of the year it was
reduced to a few stagnant pools. But in a good rainy season, such as that
year’s, it could be quite a torrent. A nonswimmer could easily be swept
away, she reflected, and yet, if somebody were to be swept away the body would
surely be found downstream. There were plenty of people who went down to the
river for one purpose or another and who would be bound to notice a body. The
police would have been called. There would have been something in the newspaper
about an unidentified body being found in the Notwane River; the paper was
always looking for stories like that. They wouldn’t have let the
opportunity go by.

She thought for a moment. There was another
explanation, and it made her shiver. But before she went into that, she had to
find out why the Reverend had kept so quiet about it all.

“You
didn’t tell the police,” she said, trying not to sound too
accusing. “Why not?”

The Reverend looked down at the
ground, which, in her experience, was where people usually looked if they felt
truly sorry. The shamelessly unrepentant, she found, always looked up at the
sky.

“I know I should have told them. God will punish me for it.
But I was worried that I would be blamed for poor Peter’s accident and I
thought they would take me to court. They might make me pay damages for it, and
that would drive the Church into bankruptcy and put a stop to God’s
work.” He paused. “Do you understand why I kept quiet, and told all
the flock not to say anything?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded, and reached
out to touch the Reverend gently on the arm.

“I do not think that
what you did was bad,” she said. “I’m sure that God wanted
you to continue and He will not be angry. It was not your fault.”

The Reverend raised his eyes and smiled.

“Those are kind
words, my sister. Thank you.”

THAT
AFTERNOON, Mma Ramotswe asked her neighbour if she could borrow one of his
dogs. He had a pack of five, and she hated every one of them for their
incessant barking. These dogs barked in the morning, as if they were roosters,
and at night, when the moon rose in the sky. They barked at crows, and at
hammerkops; they barked at passersby; and they sometimes barked just because
they had got too hot.

“I need a dog to help me on one of my
cases,” she explained. “I’ll bring him back safe and
sound.”

The neighbour was flattered to have been asked.

“I’ll give you this dog here,” he said. “It’s
the senior dog, and he has a very good nose. He will make a good detective
dog.”

Mma Ramotswe took the dog warily. It was a large yellow
creature, with a curious, offensive smell. That night, just after sunset, she
put it in the back of her van, tying its neck to a handle with a piece of
string. Then she set off down the track that led to the river, her headlights
picking out the shapes of the thorn trees and the anthills in the darkness. In
a strange way, she felt glad of the company of the dog, unpleasant though it
was.

Now, beside the pool in the river, she took a thick stake from the
van and drove it into the soft ground near the water’s edge. Then she
fetched the dog, led it down to the pool, and tied its string firmly to the
stake. From a bag she had with her, she took out a large bone and put it in
front of the yellow dog’s nose. The animal gave a grunt of pleasure and
immediately settled down to gnaw the bone.

Mma Ramotswe waited just a
few yards away, a blanket tucked round her legs to keep off the mosquitoes and
her old rifle over her knees. She knew it could be a long wait, and she hoped
that she would not go to sleep. If she did, though, she was sure that the dog
would wake her up when the time came.

Two hours passed. The mosquitoes
were bad, and her skin itched, but this was work, and she never complained when
she was working. Then, suddenly, there came a growling noise from the dog. Mma
Ramotswe strained her eyes in the darkness. She could just make out the shape
of the dog, and she could see that it was standing now, looking towards the
water. The dog growled again, and gave a bark; then it was silent once more.
Mma Ramotswe tossed the blanket off her knees and picked up the powerful torch
at her side. Just a little bit longer, she thought.