The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A DUSTY track, hardly in use, enough to break the springs; a hill, a tumble of boulders, just as the sketch map drawn by Mr Charlie Gotso had predicted; and above, stretching from horizon to horizon, the empty sky, singing in the heat of noon. Mma Ramotswe steered the tiny white van cautiously, avoiding the rocks that could tear the sump from the car, wondering why nobody came this way. This was dead country; no cattle, no goats; only the bush and the stunted thorn trees. That anybody should want to live here, away from a village, away from human contact, seemed inexplicable. Dead country.

Suddenly she saw the house, tucked away behind the trees, almost in the shadow of the hill. It was a bare earth house in the traditional style; brown mud walls, a few glassless windows, with a knee-height wall around the yard. A previous owner, a long time ago, had painted designs on the wall, but neglect and the years had scaled them off and only their ghosts remained.

She parked the van and drew in her breath. She had faced down fraudsters; she had coped with jealous wives; she had even stood up to Mr Gotso; but this meeting would be different. This was evil incarnate, the heart of darkness, the root of shame. This man, for all his mumbo-jumbo and his spells, was a murderer.

She opened the door and eased herself out of the van. The sun was riding high and its light prickled at her skin. They were too far west here, too close to the Kalahari, and her unease increased. This was not the comforting land she had grown up with; this was the merciless Africa, the waterless land.

She made her way towards the house, and as she did so she felt that she was being watched. There was no movement, but eyes were upon her, eyes from within the house. At the wall, in accordance with custom, she stopped and called out, announcing herself.

"I am very hot," she said. "I need water." There was no reply from within the house, but a rustle to her left, amongst the bushes. She turned round, almost guiltily, and stared. It was a large black beetle, a setotojane, with its horny neck, pushing at a minute trophy, some insect that had died of thirst perhaps. Little disasters, little victories; like ours, she thought; when viewed from above we are no more than setotojane. "Mma?"

She turned round sharply. A woman was standing in the doorway, wiping her hands on a cloth.

Mma Ramotswe stepped through the gateless break in the wall.

"Dumela Mma," she said. "I am Mma Ramotswe." The woman nodded. "Eee. I am Mma Notshi." Mma Ramotswe studied her. She was a woman in her late fifties, or thereabouts, wearing a long skirt of the sort which the Herero women wore; but she was not Herero-she could tell.

"I have come to see your husband," she said. "I have to ask him for something."

The woman came out from the shadows and stood before Mma Ramotswe, peering at her face in a disconcerting way.

"You have come for something? You want to buy something from him?"

Mma Ramotswe nodded. "I have heard that he is a very good doctor. I have trouble with another woman. She is taking my husband from me and I want something that will stop her."

The older woman smiled. "He can help you. Maybe he has something. But he is away. He is in Lobatse until Saturday. You will have to come back some time after that."

Mma Ramotswe sighed. "This has been a long trip, and I am thirsty. Do you have water, my sister?"

"Yes, I have water. You can come and sit in the house while you drink it."

IT WAS a small room, furnished with a rickety table and two chairs. There was a grain bin in the corner, of the traditional sort, and a battered tin trunk. Mma Ramotswe sat on one of the chairs while the woman fetched a white enamel mug of water, which she gave to her visitor. The water was slightly rancid, but Mma Ramotswe drank it gratefully.

Then she put the mug down and looked at the woman.

"I have come for something, as you know. But I have also come to warn you of something."

The woman lowered herself onto the other chair.

"To warn me?"

"Yes," said Mma Ramotswe. "I am a typist. Do you know what that is?"

The woman nodded.

"I work for the police," went on Mma Ramotswe. "And I have typed out something about your husband. They know that he killed that boy, the one from Katsana. They know that he is the man who took him and killed him for muti. They are going to arrest your husband soon and then they will hang him. I came to warn you that they will hang you also, because they say that you are involved in it too. They say that you did it too. I do not think they should hang women. So I came to tell you that you could stop all this quickly if you came with me to the police and told them what happened. They will believe you and you will be saved. Otherwise, you will die very soon. Next month, I think."

She stopped. The other woman had dropped the cloth she had been carrying and was staring at her, wide-eyed. Mma Ramotswe knew the odour of fear-that sharp, acrid smell that people emit through the pores of their skin when they are frightened; now the torpid air was heavy with that smell.

"Do you understand what I have said to you?" she asked.

The witch doctor's wife closed her eyes. "I did not kill that boy."

"I know," said Mma Ramotswe. "It is never the women who do it. But that doesn't make any difference to the police. They have evidence against you and the Government wants to hang you too. Your husband first; you later. They do not like witchcraft, you know. They are ashamed. They think it's not modern."

"But the boy is not dead," blurted out the woman. "He is at the cattle post where my husband took him. He is working there. He is still alive."

MMA RAMOTSWE opened the door for the woman and slammed it shut behind her. Then she went round to the driver's door, opened it, and eased herself into the seat. The sun had made it burning hot-hot enough to scorch through the cloth of her dress-but pain did not matter now. All that mattered was to make the journey, which the woman said would take four hours. It was now one o'clock. They would be there just before sunset and they could start the journey back immediately. If they had to stop overnight because the track was too bad, well, they could sleep in the back of the van. The important thing was to get to the boy.

The journey was made in silence. The other woman tried to talk, but Mma Ramotswe ignored her. There was nothing she could say to this woman; nothing she wanted to say to her.

"You are not a kind woman," said the witch doctor's wife finally. "You are not talking to me. I am trying to talk to you, but you ignore me. You think that you are better than me, don't you."

Mma Ramotswe half-turned to her. "The only reason why you are showing me where this boy is is because you are afraid.

You are not doing it because you want him to go back to his parents. You don't care about that, do you? You are a wicked woman and I am warning you that if the police hear that you and your husband practise any more witchcraft, they will come and take you to prison. And if they don't, I have friends in Gaborone who will come and do it for them. Do you understand what I am saying?"

The hours passed. It was a difficult journey, out across open veld, on the barest of tracks, until there, in the distance, they saw cattle stockades and the cluster of trees around a couple of huts.

"This is the cattle post," said the woman. "There are two Basarwa there-a man and a woman-and the boy who has been working for them."

"How did you keep him?" asked Mma Ramotswe. "How did you know that he would not run away?"

"Look around you," said the woman. "You see how lonely this place is. The Basarwa would catch him before he could get far."

Something else occurred to Mma Ramotswe. The bone-if the boy was still alive, then where did the bone come from?

"There is a man in Gaborone who bought a bone from your husband," she said. "Where did you get that?"

The woman looked at her scornfully "You can buy bones in Johannesburg. Did you not know that? They are not expensive."

THE BASARWA were eating a rough porridge, seated on two stones outside one of the huts. They were tiny, wizened people, with the wide eyes of the hunter, and they stared at the intruders. Then the man rose to his feet and saluted the witch doctor's wife.

"Are the cattle all right?" she asked sharply.

The man made a strange, clicking noise with his tongue. "All right. They are not dead. That cow there is making much milk."

The words were Setswana words, but one had to strain to understand them. This was a man who spoke in the clicks and whistles of the Kalahari.

"Where is the boy?" snapped the woman.

"That side," replied the man. "Look."

And then they saw the boy, standing beside a bush, watching them uncertainly. A dusty little boy, in torn pants, with a stick in his hand.

"Come here," called the witch doctor's wife. "Come here."

The boy walked over to them, his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. He had a scar on his forearm, a thick weal, and Mma Ramotswe knew immediately what had caused it. That was the cut of a whip, a sjambok.

She reached forward and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"What is your name?" she asked gently. "Are you the teacher's son from Katsana Village?"

The boy shivered, but he saw the concern in her eyes and he spoke.

"I am that boy. I am working here now. These people are making me look after the cattle."

"And did this man strike you?" whispered Mma Ramotswe. "Did he?"

"All the time," said the boy. "He said that if I ran away he would find me in the bush and put a sharpened stick through me."

"You are safe now," said Mma Ramotswe. "You are coming with me. Right now. Just walk in front of me. I will look after you."

The boy glanced at the Basarwa and began to move towards the van.

"Go on," said Mma Ramotswe. "I am coming too."

She put him in the passenger seat and closed the door. The witch doctor's wife called out.

"Wait a few minutes. I want to talk to these people about the cattle. Then we can go."

Mma Ramotswe moved round to the driver's door and let herself in.

"Wait," called the woman. "I am not going to be long."

Mma Ramotswe leaned forward and started the engine. Then, slipping the van into gear, she spun the wheel and pressed her foot on the accelerator. The woman shouted out and began to run after the van, but the dust cloud soon obscured her and she tripped and fell.

Mma Ramotswe turned to the boy, who was looking frightened and confused beside her.

"I am taking you home now," she said. "It will be a long journey and I think we shall have to stop for the night quite soon. But we will set off again in the morning and then it should not be too long."

She stopped the van an hour later, beside a dry riverbed. They were completely alone, with not even a fire from a remote cattle post to break the darkness of the night. Only the starlight fell on them, an attenuated, silver light, falling on the sleeping figure of the boy, wrapped in a sack which she had in the back of the van, his head upon her arm, his breathing regular, his hand resting gently in hers, and Mma Ramotswe herself, whose eyes were open, looking up into the night sky until the sheer immensity of it tipped her gently into sleep.

AT KATSANA Village the next day, the schoolmaster looked out of the window of his house and saw a small white van draw up outside. He saw the woman get out and look at his door, and the child-what about the child-was she a parent who was bringing her child to him for some reason?

He went outside and found her at the low wall of his yard. "You are the teacher, Rra?"

"I am the teacher, Mma. Can I do anything for you?" She turned to the van and signalled to the child within. The door opened and his son came out. And the teacher cried out, and ran forward, and stopped and looked at Mma Ramotswe as if for confirmation. She nodded, and he ran forward again, almost stumbling, an unlaced shoe coming off, to seize his son, and hold him, while he shouted wildly, incoherently, for the village and the world to hear his joy.

Mma Ramotswe walked back towards her van, not wanting to intrude upon the intimate moments of reunion. She was crying; for her own child, too-remembering the minute hand that had grasped her own, so briefly, while it tried to hold on to a strange world that was slipping away so quickly. There was so much suffering in Africa that it was tempting just to shrug your shoulders and walk away. But you can't do that, she thought. You just can't.