The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ALICE BUSANG was ushered out of the agency still shouting her insults at Mma Ramotswe.

"You fat tart! You think you're a detective! You're just man hungry, like all those bar girls! Don't be taken in everyone! This woman isn't a detective. No. 1 Husband Stealing Agency, that's what this is!"

When the row had died away, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi looked at one another. What could one do but laugh? That woman had known all along what her husband was up to, but had insisted on proof. And when she got the proof, she blamed the messenger.

"Look after the office while I go off to the garage," said Mma Ramotswe. "I just have to tell Mr J.L.B. Matekoni about this."

He was in his glass-fronted office cubicle, tinkering with a distributor cap.

"Sand gets everywhere these days," he said. "Look at this."

He extracted a fragment of silica from a metal duct and showed it triumphantly to his visitor.

"This little thing stopped a large truck in its tracks," he said. "This tiny piece of sand."

"For want of a nail, the shoe was lost," said Mma Ramotswe, remembering a distant afternoon in the Mochudi Government School when the teacher had quoted this to them. ''For want of a shoe, the…" She stopped. It refused to come back.

"The horse fell down," volunteered Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "I was taught that too."

He put the distributor cap down on his table and went off to fill the kettle. It was a hot afternoon, and a cup of tea would make them both feel better.

She told him about Alice Busang and her reaction to the proof of Kremlin's activities.

"You should have seen him," she said. "A real ladies' man. Stuff in his hair. Dark glasses. Fancy shoes. He had no idea how funny he looked. I much prefer men with ordinary shoes and honest trousers."

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni cast an anxious glance down at his shoes-scruffy old suede boots covered with grease-and at his trousers. Were they honest?

"I couldn't even charge her a fee," Mma Ramotswe went on. "Not after that."

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. He seemed preoccupied by something. He had not picked up the distributor cap again and was staring out of the window.

"You're worried about something?" She wondered whether her refusal of his proposal had upset him more than she imagined. He was not the sort to bear grudges, but did he resent her? She did not want to lose his friendship-he was her best friend in town, in a way, and life without his comforting presence would be distinctly the poorer. Why did love-and sex- complicate life so much? It would be far simpler for us not to have to worry about them. Sex played no part in her life now and she found that a great relief. She did not have to worry how she looked; what people thought of her. How terrible to be a man, and to have sex on one's mind all the time, as men are supposed to do. She had read in one of her magazines that the average man thought about sex over sixty times a day! She could not believe that figure, but studies had apparently revealed it. The average man, going about his daily business, had all those thoughts in his mind; thoughts of pushing and shoving, as men do, while he was actually doing something else! Did doctors think about it as they took your pulse? Did lawyers think about it as they sat at their desks and plotted? Did pilots think about it as they flew their aeroplanes? It simply beggared belief.

And Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, with his innocent expression and his plain face, was he thinking about it while he looked into distributor caps or heaved batteries out of engines? She looked at him; how could one tell? Did a man thinking about sex start to leer, or open his mouth and show his pink tongue, or… No. That was impossible.

"What are you thinking about, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni?" The question slipped out, and she immediately regretted it. It was as if she had challenged him to confess that he was thinking about sex.

He stood up and closed the door, which had been slightly ajar. There was nobody to overhear them. The two mechanics were at the other end of the garage, drinking their afternoon tea, thinking about sex, thought Mma Ramotswe.

"If you hadn't come to see me, I would have come to see you," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "I have found something, you see."

She felt relieved; so he was not upset about her turning him down. She looked at him expectantly.

"There was an accident," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "It was not a bad one. Nobody was hurt. Shaken a bit, but not hurt. It was at the old four-way stop. A truck coming along from the roundabout didn't stop. It hit a car coming from the Village. The car was pushed into the storm ditch and was quite badly dented. The truck had a smashed headlight and a little bit of damage to the radiator. That's all."

"And?"

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sat down and stared at his hands.

"I was called to pull the car out of the ditch. I took my rescue truck and we winched it up. Then we towed it back here and left it round the back. I'll show it to you later."

He paused for a moment before continuing. The story seemed simple enough, but it appeared to be costing him a considerable effort to tell it.

"I looked it over. It was a panel-beating job and I could easily get my panel-beater to take it off to his workshop and sort it out. But there were one or two things I would have to do first. I had to check the electrics, for a start. These new expensive cars have so much wiring that a little knock here or there can make everything go wrong. You won't be able to lock your doors if the wires are nicked. Or your antitheft devices will freeze everything solid. It's very complicated, as those two boys out there drinking their tea on my time are only just finding out." "Anyway, I had to get at a fuse box under the dashboard, and while I was doing this, I inadvertently opened the glove compartment. I looked inside-I don't know why-but something made me do it. And I found something. A little bag."

Mma Ramotswe's mind was racing ahead. He had stumbled upon illicit diamonds-she was sure of it.

"Diamonds?"

"No," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "Worse than that."

SHE LOOKED at the small bag which he had taken out of his safe and placed on the table. It was made of animal skin-a pouch really-and was similar to the bags which the Basarwa ornamented with fragments of ostrich shell and used to store herbs and pastes for their arrows.

"I'll open it," he said. "I don't want to make you touch it."

She watched as he untied the strings that closed the mouth of the bag. His expression was one of distaste, as if he were handling something with an offensive smell.

And there was a smell, a dry, musty odour, as he extracted the three small objects from the bag. Now she understood. He need say nothing further. Now she understood why he had seemed so distracted and uncomfortable. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had found muti. He had found medicine.

She said nothing as the objects were laid out on the table. What could one say about these pitiful remnants, about the bone, about the piece of skin, about the little wooden bottle, stoppered, and its awful contents?

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, reluctant to touch the objects, poked at the bone with a pencil.

"See," he said simply. "That's what I found."

Mma Ramotswe got up from her chair and walked towards the door. She felt her stomach heave, as one does when confronted with a nauseous odour, a dead donkey in a ditch, the overpowering smell of carrion.

The feeling passed and she turned round.

"I'm going to take that bone and check," she said. "We could be wrong. It could be an animal. A duiker. A hare."

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head. "It won't be," he said. "I know what they'll say."

"Even so," said Mma Ramotswe. "Put it in an envelope and I'll take it."

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. He was going to warn her, to tell her that it was dangerous to play around with these things, but that would imply that one believed in their power, and he did not. Did he?

She put the envelope in her pocket and smiled.

"Nothing can happen to me now," she said. "I'm protected."

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni tried to laugh at her joke, but found that he could not. It was tempting Providence to use those words and he hoped that she would not have cause to regret them.

"There's one thing I'd like to know," said Mma Ramotswe, as she left the office. "That car-who owned it?"

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni glanced at the two mechanics. They were both out of earshot, but he lowered his voice nonetheless while he told her.

"Charlie Gotso," he said. "Him. That one."

Mma Ramotswe's eyes widened.

"Gotso? The important one?"

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. Everyone knew Charlie Gotso. He was one of the most influential men in the country. He had the ear of… well, he had the ear of just about everyone who counted. There was no door in the country closed to him, nobody who would turn down a request for a favour. If Charlie Gotso asked you to do something for him, you did it. If you did not, then you might find that life became more difficult later on. It was always very subtly done-your application for a licence for your business may encounter unexpected delays; or you may find that there always seemed to be speed traps on your particular route to work; or your staff grew restless and went to work for somebody else. There was never anything you could put your finger on-that was not the way in Botswana, but the effect would be very real.

"Oh dear," said Mma Ramotswe.

"Exactly," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "Oh dear."