The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

CHAPTER TEN A SMALL BUSINESSWOMAN

WITH MMA MAKUTSI back in her usual place, the heavy atmosphere that had prevailed that morning lifted. The emotional reunion, as demonstrative and effusive as if Mma Makutsi had been away for months, or even years, had embarrassed the men, who had exchanged glances, and then looked away, as if in guilt at an intrusion into essentially female mysteries. But when the ululating from Mma Ramotswe had died down and the tea had been made, everything returned to normal.

“Why did she bother to leave if she was going to be away five minutes?” asked the younger apprentice.

“It’s because she doesn’t think like anybody else,” said Charlie. “She thinks backwards.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who overheard this, shook his head. “It’s a sign of maturity to be able to change your mind when you realise that you’re wrong,” he explained. “It’s the same with fixing a car. If you find out that you’re going along the wrong lines, then don’t hesitate to stop and correct yourself. If, for example, you’re changing the oil seal at the back of a gearbox, you might try to save time by doing this without taking the gearbox out. But it’s always quicker to take the gearbox out. If you don’t, you end up taking the floor out and anyway you have to take the top of the gearbox off, and the prop shaft too. So it’s best to stop and admit your mistake before you go any further and damage things.”

Charlie listened to this—it was a long speech for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni—and then looked away. He wondered if this was a random example seized upon by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, or if he knew about that seal he had tried to install in the old rear-wheel-drive Ford. Could he have found out somehow?

There was little work done in the agency that afternoon. Mma Makutsi restored her desk to the way she liked it to be: papers reappeared, pencils were resharpened and arranged in the right fashion, and files were extracted from the cabinet and placed back on the desk for further attention. Mma Ramotswe watched all this with utter satisfaction and, after she had offered to make the tea—an offer which Mma Makutsi politely declined, pointing out that she had not forgotten her role altogether—she asked her assistant if she would care to have the rest of the afternoon off.

“You may have shopping to do, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You know that you can have the time off whenever you want for things like that.”

Mma Makutsi had clearly been pleased by this, but again declined. There was filing to do, she insisted; it was extraordinary how quickly filing accumulated; one turned one’s back for a few hours and there it was—piled up. Mma Ramotswe thought that this was also true of detection work. “No sooner do you deal with one case,” she said, “than another turns up. There is somebody coming tomorrow morning. I should really be seeing people about that hospital matter, but I am going to have to be here to see this other person. Unless…”

She glanced across the room at Mma Makutsi, who was polishing her spectacles with that threadbare lace handkerchief of hers. You would think, Mma Ramotswe said to herself, that she would buy herself a new handkerchief now that she had the money, but people held on to things they loved; they just did.

Mma Makutsi finished with her polishing and replaced her large round spectacles. She looked straight at Mma Ramotswe. “Unless?”

Mma Ramotswe had always insisted that she see the client first, even if the matter was subsequently to be delegated to Mma Makutsi. But things had to change, and perhaps this was the time to do it. Mma Makutsi could be made an associate detective and given the chance to deal with clients herself, right from the beginning of a case. All that would be required would be that the client’s chair be turned round to face Mma Makutsi’s desk rather than hers.

“Unless you, as…as associate detective were to interview the client yourself and look after the whole matter.” Mma Ramotswe paused. The afternoon sun was slanting in through the window and had fallen on Mma Makutsi’s head, glinting off her spectacles.

“Of course,” said Mma Makutsi quietly. Associate detective. Whole matter. Herself. “Of course,” she repeated. “That would be possible. Tomorrow morning? Of course, Mma. You leave it to me.”

THE SMALL WOMAN sitting in the re-oriented client’s chair looked at Mma Makutsi. “Mma?”

“Makutsi. I am Grace Makutsi.”

“I had heard that there was a woman called Mma Ramotswe. People have spoken of her. I heard very good things.”

“There is a woman of that name,” said Mma Makutsi. “She is my colleague.” She faltered briefly at the word colleague. Of course Mma Ramotswe was her colleague; she was also her employer, but there was nothing to say that an employer could not also be a colleague. She went on, “We work very closely together. As associates. So that is why you are seeing me. She is out on another case.”

The small woman hesitated for a moment, but then appeared to accept that situation. She leaned forward in her chair, and Mma Makutsi noticed how her expression seemed to be a pleading one, the expression of one who wanted something very badly. “My name, Mma, is Mma Magama, but nobody calls me that very much. They call me Teenie.”

“That is because…” Mma Makutsi stopped herself.

“That is because I have always been called that,” said Teenie. “Teenie is a good name for a small person, you see, Mma.”

“You are not so small, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. But you are, she thought; you’re terribly small.

“I have seen some smaller people,” said Teenie appreciatively.

“Where did you see them?” asked Mma Makutsi. She had not intended to ask the question, but it slipped out.

Teenie pointed vaguely out of the window, but said nothing.

“Anyway, Mma,” Mma Makutsi went on. “Perhaps you will tell me why you have come to see us.”

Mma Makutsi watched Teenie’s eyes as she spoke. The pleading look that accompanied each sentence was disconcerting.

“I have a business, you see, Mma,” Teenie said. “It is a good business. It is a printing works. There are ten people who work there. Ten. People look at me and think that I am too small to have a business like that—they look surprised. But what difference does it make, Mma? What difference?”

Mma Makutsi shrugged. “No difference at all, Mma. Some people are very stupid.”

Teenie agreed with this. “Very,” she said. “What matters is what’s up here.” She tapped her head. Mma Makutsi could not help but notice that her head was very small too. Did the size of a brain have any bearing on its ability? she wondered. Chickens had very small brains but elephants had much bigger ones, and there was a difference.

“I started the business with my late husband,” Teenie went on. “He was run over on the Lobatse Road eleven years ago.”

Mma Makutsi lowered her eyes. He must have been small too; perhaps the driver just did not see him. “I am sorry, Mma. That was very sad.”

“Yes,” said Teenie. “But I had to get on with my life and so I carried on with the business. I built it up. I bought a new German printing machine which made us one of the cheapest places in the country to print anything. Full colour. Laminates. Everything, Mma.”

“That is very good,” said Mma Makutsi.

“We could do you a calendar for yourselves next year,” said Teenie, looking at the almost bare walls, but noticing, appreciatively, the display of her own calendar. “I see that somebody has given you our calendar up there. You will see how well printed it is. Or we could do some business cards. Have you got a business card, Mma?”

The answer was no, but the idea was implanted. If one was an associate detective, then perhaps one was expected to have a business card. Mma Ramotswe herself did not have one, but that was more to do with her traditional views than with cost.

“I would like to have one,” said Mma Makutsi. “And I would like you to print it for me.”

“We shall do that,” said Teenie. “We can take the cost off your fee.”

That was not what Mma Makutsi had intended, but now she was committed. She indicated to Teenie that she should continue with her story.

Teenie moved forward in her seat. Mma Makutsi saw that her client’s feet barely touched the floor in front of her. “I look after the people who work for me very well,” said Teenie. “I never ask people to work longer hours than they want to. Everybody gets three weeks’ holiday on full pay. After two years, everybody gets a bonus. Two years only, Mma! In some places you wait ten years for a bonus.”

“Your people must be very happy,” said Mma Makutsi. “It’s not everybody who is as good to their staff as you are.”

“That is true,” said Teenie. She frowned before continuing. “But then if they are so happy, why do I have somebody who is stealing from me? That is what I cannot understand—I really can’t. They are stealing supplies. Paper. Inks. The supply cupboards are always half-empty.”

From the moment that Teenie mentioned staff, Mma Makutsi had anticipated this. It was one of the commonest complaints that clients brought to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, although not quite as common as the errant husband complaint. Botswana was not a dishonest country—quite the contrary, really—but it was inevitable that there would be some who would cheat and steal and do all the unhelpful and unpleasant things that humanity was heir to. That had started a long time back, at the point at which some Eden somewhere had gone wrong, and somebody had picked up a stone and hurled it at another. It was in us, thought Mma Makutsi; it was in all of us, somewhere deep down in our very nature. When we were children we had to be taught to hold it in check, to banish it; we had to be taught to be concerned with the feelings of others. And that, she thought, was where things went wrong. Some children were just not taught, or would not learn, or were governed by some impulse within them that stopped them from feeling and understanding. Later on, there was very little one could do about these people, other than to thwart them. Mma Ramotswe, of course, said that you could be kind to them, to show them the way, but Mma Makutsi had her doubts about that; one could be too kind, she thought.

“People steal,” said Mma Makutsi. “No matter how kind you are to them, there are some people who will steal. Even from their own family, in their own house. That happens, you know.”

Teenie fixed her pleading eyes on Mma Makutsi. It occurred to Mma Makutsi that the woman in front of her wanted her to say that people did not steal, that the world was not a place where this sort of thing happened. She could not give her that reassurance, because, well, because it would be absurd. One could not say the world was other than it was.

“I’m sorry about that,” Mma Makutsi went on. “It obviously makes you unhappy, Mma.”

Teenie was quick to agree. “It’s like being hurt somewhere here,” she said, moving her hand to her chest and placing it above the sternum. “It’s a horrible feeling. This thief is not a person who comes at night and takes from you—it’s somebody you see every day, who smiles at you, who asks how you have slept; all of that. It is one of your brothers or sisters.”

Mma Makutsi could see that. She had been stolen from when she was at the Botswana Secretarial College. Somebody in the class had taken her purse, which contained all her money for that week, which was not very much anyway, but which was needed, every thebe of it. Once that was gone, there was no money for food, and she would have to depend on the help of others. Did the person who took the purse know that? Would that person care if he or she knew that the loss of the money would mean hunger?

“It always hurts,” she said. There had been two days of hunger because she had been too proud to ask, and then a friend, who had heard what had happened, had shared her food with her.

Mma Makutsi folded her hands; they would have to progress from these observations on the human condition to the business in hand. “You would like me to find out who is doing this?” She paused and stared at Teenie with a serious look; it would be best for her to know that these things were far from easy. “When something is being stolen by somebody on the inside,” she said, “it is not always easy. In fact, it can be very hard to discover who is doing it. We have to look at who’s spending what, at who’s living beyond their means. That’s one way. But it can be hard…”

Teenie interrupted her. The pleading look now became something more confident. “No, Mma,” she said. “It will not be hard. It will not be hard because I can tell you who is doing it. I know exactly who it is.”

Mma Makutsi could not conceal her surprise. “Oh yes?”

“Yes. I can point to the person who’s stealing. I know exactly who it is.”

Well, thought Mma Makutsi, if she knows who is responsible, then what is there for me to do? “So, Mma,” she said. “What do you want me to do? It seems that you have already been a detective.”

Teenie took this in her stride. “I cannot prove anything,” she said. “I know who it is, but I have no proof. That is what I want you to find for me. Proof. Then I can get rid of that person. The employment laws say: proof first, then dismissal.”

Mma Makutsi smiled. Clovis Andersen in The Principles of Private Detection had something to say about this, she recalled—as had Mma Ramotswe. You do not know anything until you know why you know it, he had written. And Mma Ramotswe, who had read the passage out to Mma Makutsi with an admonitory wagging of her finger, had qualified this by saying that although this was generally true, sometimes she knew that she knew something because of a special feeling that she had. But what Clovis Andersen said was nonetheless correct, she felt.

“You will have to tell me why you think you know who it is,” Mma Makutsi said to Teenie. “Have you seen this person taking something?”

Teenie thought for a moment. “Not exactly.”

“Ah.”

There was a short period of silence. “Has anybody else seen this person taking something?” Mma Makutsi went on.

Teenie shook her head. “No. Not as far as I know.”

“So, may I ask you, Mma: How do you know who this person is?”

Teenie closed her eyes. “Because of the way he looks, Mma. This man who is taking things, he just looks dishonest. He is not a nice man. I can tell that, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi reached for a piece of paper and wrote down a few words. Teenie watched the pencil move across the paper, then she looked up expectantly at Mma Makutsi.

“I shall need to come and have a look round,” said Mma Makutsi. “You must not tell the staff that I am a detective. We shall have to think of some reason for me to be visiting the works.”

“You could be a tax inspector,” ventured Teenie.

Mma Makutsi laughed. “That is a very bad idea,” she said. “They will think that I am after them. No, you can say that I am a client who is interested in giving the firm a big job but who wants to have a good look at how things are run. That will be a good story.”

Teenie agreed with this. And would Mma Makutsi be available that afternoon? Everybody, including the man under suspicion, would be there and she could meet them all.

“How will I know which is the one you suspect?” asked Mma Makutsi.

“You’ll know,” said Teenie. “The moment you see him. You’ll know.”

She looked at Mma Makutsi. Still pleading.