The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

CHAPTER TWENTY

SHE HAD the information now. She had a map to find a murderer, and she would find him. But there was still the detective agency to run, and cases which needed to be dealt with-including a case which involved a very different sort of doctor, and a hospital.

Mma Ramotswe had no stomach for hospitals; she disliked the smell of them; she shuddered at the sight of the patients sitting on benches in the sun, silenced by their suffering; she was frankly depressed by the pink day-pyjamas they gave to those who had come with TB. Hospitals were to her amemento mori in bricks and mortar; an awful reminder of the inevitable end that was coming to all of us but which she felt was best ignored while one got on with the business of life.

Doctors were another matter altogether, and Mma Ramotswe had always been impressed by them. She admired, in particular, their sense of the confidential and she took comfort in the fact that you could tell a doctor something and, like a priest, he would carry your secret to the grave. You never found this amongst lawyers, who were boastful people, on the whole, always prepared to tell a story at the expense of a client, and, when one came to think of it, some accountants were just as indiscreet in discussing who earned what. As far as doctors were concerned, though, you might try as hard as you might to get information out of them, but they were inevitably tight-lipped.

Which was as it should be, thought Mma Ramotswe. I should not like anybody else to know about my… What had she to be embarrassed about? She thought hard. Her weight was hardly a confidential matter, and anyway, she was proud of being a traditionally built African lady, unlike these terrible, stick-like creatures one saw in the advertisements. Then there were her corns-well, those were more or less on public display when she wore her sandals. Really, there was nothing that she felt she had to hide.

Now constipation was quite a different matter. It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them to form a political party-with a chance of government perhaps-but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail.

She stopped her reverie, and turned to the business in hand. Her old friend, Dr Maketsi, had telephoned her from the hospital and asked if he could call in at her office on his way home that evening. She readily agreed; she and Dr Maketsi were both from Mochudi, and although he was ten years her senior she felt extremely close to him. So she cancelled her hair-braiding appointment in town and stayed at her desk, catching up on some tedious paperwork until Dr Maketsi's familiar voice called out: Ko! Ko! and he came into the office.

They exchanged family gossip for a while, drinking bush tea and reflecting on how Mochudi had changed since their day. She asked after Dr Maketsi's aunt, a retired teacher to whom half the village still turned for advice. She had not run out of steam, he said, and was now being pressed to stand for Parliament, which she might yet do.

"We need more women in public life," said Dr Maketsi. "They are very practical people, women. Unlike us men."

Mma Ramotswe was quick to agree. "If more women were in power, they wouldn't let wars break out," she said. "Women can't be bothered with all this fighting. We see war for what it is-a matter of broken bodies and crying mothers."

Dr Maketsi thought for a moment. He was thinking of Mrs Ghandi, who had a war, and Mrs Golda Meir, who also had a war, and then there was…

"Most of the time," he conceded. "Women are gentle most of the time, but they can be tough when they need to be."

Dr Maketsi was eager to change the subject now, as he feared that Mma Ramotswe might go on to ask him whether he could cook, and he did not want a repetition of the conversation he had had with a young woman who had returned from a year in the United States. She had said to him, challengingly, as if the difference in their ages were of no consequence: "If you eat, you should cook. It's as simple as that." These ideas came from America and may be all very well in theory, but had they made the Americans any happier? Surely there had to be some limits to all this progress, all this unsettling change. He had heard recently of men who were obliged by their wives to change the nappies of their babies. He shuddered at the thought; Africa was not ready for that, he reflected. There were some aspects of the old arrangements in Africa which were very appropriate and comfortable-if you were a man, which of course Dr Maketsi was.

"But these are big issues," he said jovially. "Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow." His mother-in-law said this frequently, and although he disagreed with almost everything she said, he found himself echoing her words only too often.

Mma Ramotswe laughed. "Why have you come to see me?" she said. "Do you want me to find you a new wife, maybe?"

Dr Maketsi clicked his tongue in mock disapproval. "I have come about a real problem," he said. "Not just about a little question of wives."

Mma Ramotswe listened as the doctor explained just how delicate his problem was and she assured him that she, like him, believed in confidentiality.

"Not even my secretary will get to hear what you tell me," she said.

"Good," said Dr Maketsi. "Because if I am wrong about this, and if anybody hears about it, I shall be very seriously embarrassed-as will the whole hospital. I don't want the Minister coming looking for me."

"I understand," said Mma Ramotswe. Her curiosity was thoroughly aroused now, and she was anxious to hear what juicy matter was troubling her friend. She had been burdened with several rather mundane cases recently, including a very demeaning one which involved tracinga rich man's dog. A dog! The only lady detective in the country should not have to stoop to such depths and indeed Mma Ramotswe would not have done so, had it not been for the fact that she needed the fee. The little white van had developed an ominous rattle in the engine and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, called upon to consider the problem, had gently broken the news to her that it needed expensive repairs. And what a terrible, malodorous dog it had turned out to be; when she eventually found the animal being dragged along on a string by the group of urchins which had stolen it, the dog had rewarded its liberator with a bite on the ankle.

"I am worried about one of our young doctors," said Dr Maketsi. "He is called Dr Komoti. He's Nigerian."

"I see."

"I know that some people are suspicious of Nigerians," said Dr Maketsi.

"I believe that there are some people like that," said Mma Ramotswe, catching the doctor's eye and then looking away again quickly, almost guiltily.

Dr Maketsi drank the last of his bush tea and replaced his mug on the table.

"Let me tell you about our Dr Komoti," he said. "Starting from the time he first turned up for interview. It was my job to interview him, in fact, although I must admit that it was rather a formality. We were desperately short of people at the time and needed somebody who would be able to lend a hand in casualty. We can't really be too choosy, you know. Anyway, he seemed to have a reasonable C.V. and he had brought several references with him. He had been working in Nairobi for a few years, and so I telephoned the hospital he was at and they confirmed that he was perfectly all right. So I took him on.

"He started about six months ago. He was pretty busy in casualty. You probably know what it's like in there. Road accidents, fights, the usual Friday evening business. Of coursea lot of the work is just cleaning up, stopping the bleeding, the occasional resuscitation-that sort of thing.

"Everything seemed to be going well, but after Dr Komoti had been there about three weeks the consultant in charge had a word with me. He said that he thought that the new doctor was a bit rusty and that some of the things he did seemeda bit surprising. For example, he had sewed several wounds up quite badly and the stitching had to be redone.

"But sometimes he was really quite good. For example, a couple of weeks ago we had a woman coming in with a tension pneumothorax. That's a pretty serious matter. Air gets into the space round the lungs and makes the lung collapse, like a popped balloon. If this happens, you have to drain the air out as quickly as you can so that the lung can expand again.

"This is quite a tricky job for an inexperienced doctor. You've got to know where to put in the drain. If you get it wrong you could even puncture the heart or do all sorts of other damage. If you don't do it quickly, the patient can die. I almost lost somebody myself with one of these a few years ago. I got quite a fright over it.

"Dr Komoti turned out to be pretty good at this, and he undoubtedly saved this woman's life. The consultant turned up towards the end of the procedure and he let him finish it. He was impressed, and mentioned it to me. But at the same time, this is the same doctor who had failed to spot an obvious case of enlarged spleen the day before."

"He's inconsistent?" said Mma Ramotswe.

"Exactly," said Dr Maketsi. "One day he'll be fine, but the next day he'll come close to killing some unfortunate patient."

Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment, remembering a news item inThe Star. "I was reading the other day about a bogus surgeon in Johannesburg," she said. "He practised for almost ten years and nobody knew that he had no qualifications. Then somebody spotted something by chance and they exposed him."

"It's extraordinary," said Dr Maketsi. "These cases crop up from time to time. And these people often get away with it for a long time-for years sometimes."

"Did you check up on his qualifications?" asked Mma Ramotswe. "It's easy enough to forge documents these days with photocopiers and laser printers-anybody can do it. Maybe he's not a doctor at all. He could have been a hospital porter or something like that."

Dr Maketsi shook his head. "We went through all that," he said. "We checked with his Medical School in Nigeria -that was a battle, I can tell you-and we also checked with the General Medical Council in Britain, where he did a registrar's job for two years. We even obtained a photograph from Nairobi, and it's the same man. So I'm pretty sure that he's exactly who he says he is."

"Couldn't you just test him?" asked Mma Ramotswe. "Couldn't you try to find out how much he knows about medicine by just asking him some tricky questions?"

Dr Maketsi smiled. "I've done that already. I've taken the opportunity to speak to him about one or two difficult cases. On the first occasion he coped quite well, and he gave a fairly good answer. He clearly knew what he was talking about. But on the second occasion, he seemed evasive. He said that he wanted to think about it. This annoyed me, and so I mentioned something about the case we had discussed before.

This took him off his guard, and he just mumbled something inconsequential. It was as if he had forgotten what he'd said to me three days before."

Mma Ramotswe looked up at the ceiling. She knew about forgetfulness. Her poor Daddy had become forgetful at the end and had sometimes barely remembered her. That was understandable in the old, but not in a young doctor. Unless he was ill, of course, and in that case something could have gone wrong with his memory.

"There's nothing wrong with him mentally," said Dr Maketsi, as if predicting her question. "As far as I can tell, that is. This isn't a case of pre-senile dementia or anything like that. What I'm afraid of is drugs. I think that he's possibly abusing drugs and that half the time he's treating patients he's not exactly there."

Dr Maketsi paused. He had delivered his bombshell, and he sat back, as if silenced by the implications of what he had said. This was almost as bad as if they had been allowing an unqualified doctor to practise. If the Minister heard that a doctor was treating patients in the hospital while high on drugs, he might begin to question the closeness of supervision in the hospital.

He imagined the interview. "Now Dr Maketsi, could you not see from the way this man was behaving that he was drugged? Surely you people should be able to spot things like that. If it's obvious enough to me when I walk down the street that somebody has been smokingdagga, then surely it should be obvious enough to somebody like you. Or am I fondly imagining that you people are more perceptive than you really are…"

"I can see why you're worried," said Mma Ramotswe. "But I'm not sure whether I can help. I don't really know my way around the drug scene. That's really a police matter."

Dr Maketsi was dismissive. "Don't talk to me about the police," he said. "They never keep their mouths shut. If I went to them to get this looked into, they'd treat it as a straightforward drugs enquiry. They'd barge in and search his house and then somebody would talk about it. In no time at all word would be all about town that he was a drug addict." He paused, concerned that Mma Ramotswe should understand the subtleties of his dilemma. "And what if he isn't? What if I'm wrong? Then I would have as good as killed his reputation for no reason. He may be incompetent from time to time, but that's no reason for destroying him."

"But if we did find out that he was using drugs," said Mma Ramotswe. "And I'm not sure how we could do this, what then? Would you dismiss him?"

Dr Maketsi shook his head vigorously. "We don't think about drugs in those terms. It isn't a question of good behaviour and bad behaviour. I'd look on it as a medical problem and I'd try to help him. I'd try to sort out the problem."

"But you can't 'sort out' with those people," said Mma Ramotswe. "Smokingdagga is one thing, but using pills and all the rest is another. Show me one reformed drug addict. Just one. Maybe they exist; I've just never seen them."

Dr Maketsi shrugged. "I know they can be very manipulative people," he said. "But some of them get off it. I can show you some figures."

"Well, maybe, maybe not," said Mma Ramotswe. "The point is: what do you want me to do?"

"Find out about him," said Dr Maketsi. "Follow him for a few days. Find out whether he's involved in the drug scene. If he is, find out whether he's supplying others with drugs while you are about it. Because that will be another problem for us.

We keep a tight rein on drugs in the hospital, but things can go missing, and the last thing we want is a doctor who's passing hospital drug supplies to addicts. We can't have that."

"You'd sack him then?" goaded Mma Ramotswe. "You wouldn't try to help him?"

Dr Maketsi laughed. "We'd sack him good and proper."

"Good," said Mma Ramotswe. "And proper too. Now I have to tell you about my fee."

Dr Maketsi's face fell. "I was worried about that. This is such a delicate enquiry, I could hardly get the hospital to pay for it."

Mma Ramotswe nodded knowingly. "You thought that as an old friend…"

"Yes," said Dr Maketsi quietly. "I thought that as an old friend you might remember how when your Daddy was so ill at the end…"

Mma Ramotswe did remember. Dr Maketsi had come unfailingly to the house every evening for three weeks and eventually had arranged for her Daddy to be put in a private room at the hospital, all for nothing.

"I remember very well," she said. "I only mentioned the fee to tell you that there would be none."

SHE HAD all the information she needed to start her investigation of Dr Komoti. She had his address in Kaunda Way; she had a photograph, supplied by Dr Maketsi; and she had a note of the number of the green station wagon which he drove. She had also been given his telephone number, and the number of his postal box at the Post Office, although she could not imagine the circumstances in which she might need these. Now all she had to do was to start to watch Dr Komoti and to learn as much as she could about him in the shortest possible time.

Dr Maketsi had thoughtfully provided her with a copy of the duty rota in the casualty department for the following four months. This meant that Mma Ramotswe would know exactly when he might be expected to leave the hospital to return home and also when he might be on night duty. This would save a great deal of time and effort in sitting waiting in the street in the tiny white van.

She started two days later. She was there when Dr Komoti drove out of the staff car park at the hospital that afternoon and she followed him discreetly into town, parking a few cars away from him and waiting until he was well away from the car park before she got out of the van. He visited one or two shops and picked up a newspaper from the Book Centre. Then he returned to his car, drove straight home, and stayed there- blamelessly, she assumed-until the lights went out in the house just before ten that evening. It was a dull business sitting in the tiny white van, but Mma Ramotswe was used to it and never complained once she had agreed to take on a matter. She would sit in her van for a whole month, even more, if asked to do so by Dr Maketsi; it was the least she could do after what he had done for her Daddy.

Nothing happened that evening, nor the next evening. Mma Ramotswe was beginning to wonder whether there was ever any variety to the routine of Dr Komoti's life when suddenly things changed. It was a Friday afternoon, and Mma Ramotswe was ready to follow Dr Komoti back from work. The doctor was slightly late in leaving the hospital, but eventually he came out of the casualty entrance, a stethoscope tucked into the pocket of his white coat, and climbed into his car.

Mma Ramotswe followed him out of the hospital grounds, satisfied that he was not aware of her presence. She suspected that he might go to the Book Centre for his newspaper, but this time instead of turning into town, he turned the other way. Mma Ramotswe was pleased that something at last might be happening, and she concentrated carefully on not losing him as they made their way through the traffic. The roads were busier than usual, as it was a Friday afternoon at the end of the month, and this meant payday. That evening there would be more road accidents than normal, and whoever was taking Dr Komoti's place in casualty would be kept more than occupied stitching up the drunks and picking the shattered windscreen glass out of the road accident cases.

Mma Ramotswe was surprised to find that Dr Komoti was heading for the Lobatse Road. This was interesting. If he was dealing in drugs, then to use Lobatse as a base would be a good idea. It was close enough to the border, and he might be passing things into South Africa, or picking things up there. Whatever it was, it made him a much more interesting man to follow.

They drove down, the tiny white van straining to keep Dr Komoti's more powerful car in sight. Mma Ramotswe was not worried about being spotted; the road was busy and there was no reason why Dr Komoti should single out the tiny white van. Once they got to Lobatse of course, she would have to be more circumspect, as he could notice her in the thinner traffic there.

When they did not stop in Lobatse, Mma Ramotswe began to worry. If he was going to drive straight through Lobatse it was possible that he was visiting some village on the other side of the town. But this was rather unlikely, as there was not much on the other side of Lobatse-or not much to interest somebody like Dr Komoti. The only other thing, then, was the border, some miles down the road. Yes! Dr Komoti was going over the border, she was sure of it. He was going to Mafikeng. As the realisation dawned that Dr Komori's destination was out of the country, Mma Ramotswe felt an intense irritation with her own stupidity. She did not have her passport with her; Dr Komoti would go through, and she would have to remain in Botswana. And once he was on the other side, then he could do whatever he liked-and no doubt would-and she would know nothing about it.

She watched him stop at the border post, and then she turned back, like a hunter who has chased his prey to the end of his preserve and must now give up. He would be away for the weekend now, and she knew as little about what he did with his time as she did about the future. Next week, she would have to get back to the tedious task of watching his house by night, in the frustrating knowledge that the real mischief had taken place over the weekend. And while she was doing all this, she would have to postpone other cases-cases which carried fees and paid garage bills.

When she arrived back in Gaborone, Mma Ramotswe was in a thoroughly bad mood. She had an early night, but the bad mood was still with her the following morning when she went into the Mall. As she often did on a Saturday morning, she had a cup of coffee on the verandah of the President Hotel and enjoyed a chat with her friend Grace Gakatsla. Grace, who had a dress shop in Broadhurst, always cheered her up with her stories of the vagaries of her customers. One, a Government Minister's wife, had recently bought a dress on a Friday and brought it back the following Monday, saying that it did not really fit. Yet Grace had been at the wedding on Saturday where the dress had been worn, and it had looked perfect.

"Of course I couldn't tell her to her face she was a liar and that I wasn't a dress-hire shop," said Grace. "So I asked her if she had enjoyed the wedding. She smiled and said that she had. So I said I enjoyed it too. She obviously hadn't seen me there. She stopped smiling and she said that maybe she'd give the dress another chance."

"She's just a porcupine, that woman," said Mma Ramotswe. "A hyena," said Grace. "An anteater, with her long nose."

The laughter had died away, and Grace had gone off, allowing Mma Ramotswe's bad mood to settle back in place. It seemed to her that she might continue to feel like this for the rest of the weekend; in fact, she was worried that it could last until the Komoti case was finished-if she ever finished it.

Mma Ramotswe paid her bill and left, and it was then, as she was walking down the front steps of the hotel, that she saw Dr Komoti in the Mall.

FOR A moment Mma Ramotswe stood quite still. Dr Komoti had crossed the border last night just before seven in the evening. The border closed at eight, which meant that he could not possibly have had time to get down to Mafikeng, which was a further forty minutes' drive, and back in time to cross again before the border closed. So he had only spent one evening there and had come back first thing that morning.

She recovered from her surprise at seeing him and realised that she should make good use of the opportunity to follow him and see what he did. He was now in the hardware store, and Mma Ramotswe lingered outside, looking idly at the contents of the window until he came out again. Then he walked purposefully back to the car park and she watched him getting into his car.

Dr Komoti stayed in for the rest of the day. At six in the evening he went off to the Sun Hotel where he had a drink with two other men, whom Mma Ramotswe recognised as fellow Nigerians. She knew that one of them worked for a firm of accountants, and the other, she believed, was a primary schoolteacher somewhere. There was nothing about their meeting which seemed suspicious; there would be many such groups of people meeting right at this moment throughout the town- people thrown together in the artificial closeness of the expatriate life, talking about home.

He stayed an hour and then left, and that was the extent of Dr Komoti's social life for the weekend. By Sunday evening, Mma Ramotswe had decided that she would report to Dr Maketsi the following week and tell him that there was unfortunately no evidence of his moving in drug-abusing circles and that he seemed, by contrast, to be the model of sobriety and respectability. There was not even a sign of women, unless they were hiding in the house and never came out. Nobody had arrived at the house while she was watching, and nobody had left, apart from Dr Komoti himself. He was, quite simply, rather a boring man to watch.

But there was still the question of Mafikeng and the Friday evening dash there and back. If he had been going shopping down there in the OK Bazaars-as many people did-then he would surely have stayed for at least part of Saturday morning, which he clearly did not. He must have done, then, whatever it was he wanted to do on Friday evening. Was there a woman down there-one of those flashy South African women whom men, so unaccountably, seemed to like? That would be the simple explanation, and the most likely one too. But why the hurry back on Saturday morning? Why not stay for Saturday and take her to lunch at the Mmbabatho Hotel? There was something which did not seem quite right, and Mma Ramotswe thought that she might follow him down to Mafikeng next weekend, if he went, and see what happened. If there was nothing to be seen, then she could do some shopping and return on Saturday afternoon. She had been meaning to make the trip anyway, and she might as well kill two birds with one stone.

DR KOMOTI proved obliging. The following Friday he left the hospital on time and drove off in the direction of Lobatse, followed at a distance by Mma Ramotswe in her van. Crossing the border proved tricky, as Mma Ramotswe had to make sure that she did not get too close to him at the border post, and that at the same time she did not lose him on the other side. For a few moments it looked as if she would be delayed, as a ponderous official paged closely through her passport, looking at the stamps which reflected her coming and going to Johannesburg and Mafikeng.

"It says here, under occupation, that you are a detective," he said in a surly tone. "How can a woman be a detective?"

Mma Ramotswe glared at him. If she prolonged the encounter, she could lose Dr Komoti, whose passport was now being stamped. In a few minutes he would be through the border controls, and the tiny white van would have no chance of catching up with him.

"Many women are detectives," said Mma Ramotswe, with dignity. "Have you not read Agatha Christie?"

The clerk looked up at her and bristled.

"Are you saying I am not an educated man?" he growled. "Is that what you are saying? That I have not read this Mr Christie?"

"I am not," said Mma Ramotswe. "You people are well educated, and efficient. Only yesterday, when I was in your Minister's house, I said to him that I thought his immigration people were very polite and efficient. We had a good talk about it over supper."

The official froze. For a moment he looked uncertain, but then he reached for his rubber stamp and stamped the passport.

"Thank you, Mma," he said. "You may go now."

Mma Ramotswe did not like lying, but sometimes it was necessary, particularly when faced with people who were promoted beyond their talents. An embroidering of the truth like that-she knew the Minister, even if only very distantly- sometimes gingered people up a bit, and it was often for their own good. Perhaps that particular official would think twice before he again decided to bully a woman for no good reason.

She climbed back into the van and was waved past the barrier. There was now no sight of Dr Komoti and she had to push the van to its utmost before she caught up with him. He was not going particularly fast, and so she dropped back slightly and followed him past the remnants of Mangope's capital and its fantouche Republic of Bophuthatswana. There was the stadium in which the president had been held by his own troops when they revolted; there were the government offices that administered the absurdly fragmented state on behalf of its masters in Pretoria. It was all such a waste, she thought, such an utter folly, and when the time had come it had just faded away like the illusion that it had always been. It was all part of the farce of apartheid and the monstrous dream of Verwoerd; such pain, such long-drawn-out suffering-to be added by history to all the pain of Africa.

Dr Komoti suddenly turned right. They had reached the outskirts of Mafikeng, in a suburb of neat, well-laid-out streets and houses with large, well-fenced gardens. It was into the driveway of one of these houses that he turned, requiring Mma Ramotswe to drive past to avoid causing suspicion. She counted the number of houses she passed, though-seven- and then parked the van under a tree.

There was what used to be called a sanitary lane which ran down the back of the houses. Mma Ramotswe left the van and walked to the end of the sanitary lane. The house that Dr Komoti entered would be eight houses up-seven, and the one she had had to walk past to get to the entrance to the lane.

She stood in the sanitary lane at the back of the eighth house and peered through the garden. Somebody had once cared for it, but that must have been years ago. Now it was a tangle of vegetation-mulberry trees, uncontrolled bougainvillaea bushes that had grown to giant proportions and sent great sprigs of purple flowers skywards, paw-paw trees with rotting fruit on the stems. It would be a paradise for snakes, she thought; there could be mambas lurking in the uncut grass and boomslangs draped over the branches of the trees, all of them lying in wait for somebody like her to be foolish enough to enter.

She pushed the gate open gingerly. It had clearly not been used for a long time, and the hinge squeaked badly. But this did not really matter, as little sound would penetrate the vegetation that shielded the back fence from the house, about a hundred yards away. In fact, it was virtually impossible to see the house through the greenery, which made Mma Ramotswe feel safe, from the eyes of those within the house at least, if not from snakes.

Mma Ramotswe moved forward gingerly, placing each foot carefully and expecting at any moment to hear a hiss from a protesting snake. But nothing moved, and she was soon crouching under a mulberry tree as close as she dared to get to the house. From the shade of the tree she had a good view of the back door and the open kitchen window; yet she could not see into the house itself, as it was of the old colonial style, with wide eaves, which made the interior cool and dark. It was far easier to spy on people who live in modern houses, because architects today had forgotten about the sun and put people in goldfish bowls where the whole world could peer in through large unprotected windows, should they so desire.

Now what should she do? She could stay where she was in the hope that somebody came out of the back door, but why should they bother to do that? And if they did, then what would she do?

Suddenly a window at the back of the house opened and a man leaned out. It was Dr Komoti.

"You! You over there! Yes, you, fat lady! What are you doing sitting under our mulberry tree?"

Mma Ramotswe experienced a sudden, absurd urge to look over her shoulder, as if to imply that there was somebody else under the tree. She felt like a schoolgirl caught stealing fruit, or doing some other forbidden act. There was nothing one could say; one just had to own up.

She stood up and stepped out from the shade.

"It is hot," she called out. "Can you give me a drink of water?"

The window closed and a moment or two later the kitchen door opened. Dr Komoti stood on the step wearing, she noticed, quite different clothes from those he had on when he left Gaborone. He had a mug of water in his hand, which he gave to her. Mma Ramotswe reached out and drank the water gratefully. She was, in fact, thirsty, and the water was welcome, although she noticed that the mug was dirty.

"What are you doing in our garden?" said Dr Komoti, not unkindly. "Are you a thief?"

Mma Ramotswe looked pained. "I am not," she said.

Dr Komoti looked at her coolly. "Well, then, if you are not a thief, then what do you want? Are you looking for work? If so, we already have a woman who comes to cook in this house. We do not need anybody."

Mma Ramotswe was about to utter her reply when somebody appeared behind Dr Komoti and looked out over his shoulder. It was Dr Komoti.

"What's going on?" said the second Dr Komoti. "What does this woman want?"

"I saw her in the garden," said the first Dr Komoti. "She tells me she isn't a thief."

"And I certainly am not," she said indignantly. "I was looking at this house."

The two men looked puzzled.

"Why?" one of them asked. "Why would you want to look at this house? There's nothing special about it, and it's not for sale anyway."

Mma Ramotswe tossed her head back and laughed. "Oh,

I'm not here to buy it," she said. "It's just that I used to live here when I was a little girl. There were Boers living in it then, a Mr van der Heever and his wife. My mother was their cook, you see, and we lived in the servants' quarters back there at the end of the garden. My father kept the garden tidy…"

She broke off, and looked at the two men in reproach.

"It was better in those days," she said. "The garden was well looked after."

"Oh, I'm sure it was," said one of the two. "We'd like to get it under control one day. It's just that we're busy men. We're both doctors, you see, and we have to spend all our time in the hospital."

"Ah!" said Mma Ramotswe, trying to sound reverential. "You are doctors here at the hospital?"

"No," said the first Dr Komoti. "I have a surgery down near the railway station. My brother…"

"I work up that way," said the other Dr Komoti, pointing vaguely to the north. "Anyway, you can look at the garden as much as you like, mother. You just go ahead. We can make you a mug of tea."

"Ow!" said Mma Ramotswe. "You are very kind. Thank you."

IT WAS a relief to get away from that garden, with its sinister undergrowth and its air of neglect. For a few minutes, Mma Ramotswe pretended to inspect the trees and the shrubs-or what could be seen of them-and then, thanking her hosts for the tea, she walked off down the road. Her mind busily turned over the curious information she had obtained. There were two Dr Komotis, which was nothing terribly unusual in itself; yet somehow she felt that this was the essence of the whole matter. There was no reason, of course, why there should not be twins who both went to medical school-twins often led mirrored lives, and sometimes even went so far as to marry the sister of the other's wife. But there was something particularly significant here, and Mma Ramotswe was sure that it was staring her in the face, if only she could begin to see it.

She got into the tiny white van and drove back down the road towards the centre of town. One Dr Komoti had said that he had a surgery in town, near the railway station, and she decided to take a look at this-not that a brass plate, if he had one, would reveal a great deal.

She knew the railway station slightly. It was a place that she enjoyed visiting, as it reminded her of the old Africa, the days of uncomfortable companionship on crowded trains, of slow journeys across great plains, of the sugarcane you used to eat to while away the time, and of the pith of the cane you used to spit out of the wide windows. Here you could still see it-or a part of it-here, where the trains that came up from the Cape pulled slowly past the platform on their journey up through Botswana to Bulawayo; here, where the Indian stores beside the railway buildings still sold cheap blankets and men's hats with a garish feather tucked into the band.

Mma Ramotswe did not want Africa to change. She did not want her people to become like everybody else, soulless, selfish, forgetful of what it means to be an African, or, worse still, ashamed of Africa. She would not be anything but an African, never, even if somebody came up to her and said "Here is a pill, the very latest thing. Take it and it will make you into an American." She would say no. Never. No thank you.

She stopped the white van outside the railway station and got out. There were a lot of people about; women selling roasted maize cobs and sweet drinks; men talking loudly to their friends; a family, travelling, with cardboard suitcases and possessions bundled up in a blanket. A child pushing a homemade toy car of twisted wire bumped into Mma Ramotswe and scurried off without an apology, frightened of rebuke.

She approached one of the woman traders and spoke to her in Setswana.

"Are you well today, Mma?" she said politely.

"I am well, and you are well too, Mma?"

"I am well, and I have slept very well."

"Good."

The greeting over, she said: "People tell me that there is a doctor here who is very good. They call him Dr Komoti. Do you know where his place is?"

The woman nodded. "There are many people who go to that doctor. His place is over there, do you see, where that white man has just parked his truck. That's where he is."

Mma Ramotswe thanked her informant and bought a cob of roasted maize. Then, tackling the cob as she walked, she walked across the dusty square to the rather dilapidated tin-roofed building where Dr Komoti's surgery was to be found.

Rather to her surprise, the door was not locked, and when she pushed it open she found a woman standing directly in front of her.

"I am sorry, the doctor isn't here, Mma," said the woman, slightly testily. "I am the nurse. You can see the doctor on Monday afternoon."

"Ah!" said Mma Ramotswe. "It is a sad thing to have to tidy up on a Friday evening, when everybody else is thinking of going out."

The nurse shrugged her shoulders. "My boyfriend is taking me out later on. But I like to get everything ready for Monday before the weekend starts. It is better that way."

"Far better," Mma Ramotswe answered, thinking quickly. "I didn't actually want to see the doctor, or not as a patient. I used to work for him, you see, when he was up in Nairobi. I was a nurse on his ward. I wanted just to say hallo."

The nurse's manner became markedly more friendly.

"I'll make you some tea, Mma," she offered. "It is still quite hot outside."

Mma Ramotswe sat down and waited for the nurse to return with the pot of tea.

"Do you know the other Dr Komoti?" she said. "The brother?"

"Oh yes," said the nurse. "We see a lot of him. He comes in here to help, you see. Two or three times a week."

Mma Ramotswe lowered her cup, very slowly. Her heart thumped within her; she realised that she was at the heart of the matter now, the elusive solution within her grasp. But she would have to sound casual.

"Oh, they did that up in Nairobi too," she said, waving her hand airily, as if these things were of little consequence. "One helped the other. And usually the patients didn't know that they were seeing a different doctor."

The nurse laughed. "They do it here too," she said. "I'm not sure if it's quite fair on the patients, but nobody has realised that there are two of them. So everybody seems quite satisfied."

Mma Ramotswe picked up her cup again and passed it for refilling. "And what about you?" she said. "Can you tell them apart?"

The nurse handed the teacup back to Mma Ramotswe. "I can tell by one thing," she said. "One of them is quite good- the other's hopeless. The hopeless one knows hardly anything about medicine. If you ask me, it's a miracle that he got through medical school."

Mma Ramotswe thought, but did not say: He didn't.

SHE STAYED in Mafikeng that night, at the Station Hotel, which was noisy and uncomfortable, but she slept well nonetheless, as she always did when she had just finished an enquiry. The next morning she shopped at the OK Bazaars and found, to her delight, that there was a rail of size 22 dresses on special offer. She bought three-two more than she really needed-but if you were the owner of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency you had to keep up a certain style.

She was home by three o'clock that afternoon and she telephoned Dr Maketsi at his house and invited him to come immediately to her office to be informed of the results of her enquiry. He arrived within ten minutes and sat opposite her in the office, fiddling anxiously with the cuffs of his shirt.

"First of all," announced Mma Ramotswe, "no drugs."

Dr Maketsi breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness for that," he said. "That's one thing I was really worried about."

"Well," said Mma Ramotswe doubtfully. "I'm not sure if you're going to like what I'm going to tell you."

"He's not qualified," gasped Dr Maketsi. "Is that it?"

"One of them is qualified," said Mma Ramotswe.

Dr Maketsi looked blank. "One of them?"

Mma Ramotswe settled back in her chair with the air of one about to reveal a mystery.

"There were once two twins," she began. "One went to medical school and became a doctor. The other did not. The one with the qualification got a job as a doctor, but was greedy and thought that two jobs as a doctor would pay better than one. So he took two jobs, and did both of them part-time. When he wasn't there, his brother, who was his identical twin, you'll recall, did the job for him. He used such medical knowledge as he had picked up from his qualified brother and no doubt also got advice from the brother as to what to do. And that's it. That's the story of Dr Komoti, and his twin brother in Mafikeng."

Dr Maketsi sat absolutely silent. As Mma Ramotswe spoke he had sunk his head in his hands and for a moment she thought that he was going to cry.

"So we've had both of them in the hospital," he said at last. "Sometimes we've had the qualified one, and sometimes we've had the twin brother."

"Yes," said Mma Ramotswe simply. "For three days a week, say, you've had the qualified twin while the unqualified twin practised as a general practitioner in a surgery near Mafikeng Railway Station. Then they'd change about, and I assume that the qualified one would pick up any pieces which the unqualified one had left lying around, so to speak."

"Two jobs for the price of one medical degree," mused Dr Maketsi. "It's the most cunning scheme I've come across for a long, long time."

"I have to admit I was amazed by it," said Mma Ramotswe. "I thought that I'd seen all the varieties of human dishonesty, but obviously one can still be surprised from time to time."

Dr Maketsi rubbed his chin.

"I'll have to go to the police about this," he said. "There's going to have to be a prosecution. We have to protect the public from people like this."

"Unless…" started Mma Ramotswe. Dr Maketsi grabbed at the straw he suspected she might be offering him.

"Can you think of an alternative?" he asked. "Once this gets out, people will take fright. We'll have people encouraging others not to go to hospital. Our public health programmes rely on trust-you know how it is."

"Precisely," said Mma Ramotswe. "I suggest that we transfer the heat elsewhere. I agree with you: the public has to be protected and Dr Komoti is going to have to be struck off, or whatever you people do. But why not get this done in somebody else's patch?"

"Do you mean in Mafikeng?"

"Yes," said Mma Ramotswe. "After all, an offence is being committed down there and we can let the South Africans deal with it. The papers up here in Gaborone probably won't even pick up on it. All that people here will know is that Dr Komoti resigned suddenly, which people often do-for all sorts of reasons."

"Well," said Dr Maketsi. "I would rather like to keep the Minister's nose out of all this. I don't think it would help if he became… how shall we put it, upset?"

"Of course it wouldn't help," said Mma Ramotswe. "With your permission I shall telephone my friend Billy Pilani, who's a police captain down there. He'd love to be seen to expose a bogus doctor. Billy likes a good, sensational arrest."

"You do that," said Dr Maketsi, smiling. This was a tidy solution to a most extraordinary matter, and he was most impressed with the way in which Mma Ramotswe had handled it.

"You know," he said, "I don't think that even my aunt in Mochudi could have dealt with this any better than you have."

Mma Ramotswe smiled at her old friend. You can go through life and make new friends every year-every month practically-but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.

She reached out and touched Dr Maketsi on the arm, gently, as old friends will sometimes do when they have nothing more to say.