The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency tnlda-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  "I can't see what mistakes you've made," she said. "Unlike me."

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked surprised.

  "I can't imagine you making any mistakes," she said. "You're too clever for that. You would look at all the possibilities and then choose the right one. Every time."

  Mma Ramotswe snorted.

  "I married Note," she said simply.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked thoughtful.

  "Yes," he said. "That was a bad mistake."

  They were silent for a moment. Then he rose to his feet. He was a tall man, and he had to be careful not to bump his head when he stood erect. Now, with the calendar behind him and the fly paper dangling down from the ceiling above, he cleared his throat and spoke.

  "I would like you to marry me," he said. "That would not be a mistake."

  Mma Ramotswe hid her surprise. She did not give a start, nor drop her mug of tea, nor open her mouth and make no sound. She smiled instead, and stared at her friend.

  "You are a good kind man," she said. "You are like my Daddy ... a bit. But I cannot get married again. Ever. I am happy as I am. I have got the agency, and the house. My life is full."

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sat down. He looked crestfallen, and Mma Ramotswe reached out to touch him. He moved it away instinctively, as a burned man will move away from fire.

  "I am very sorry," she said. "I should like you to know that if I were ever to marry anybody, which I shall not do, I would choose a man like you. I would even choose you. I am sure of this."

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni took her mug and poured her more tea. He was silent now—not out of anger, or resentment—but because it had cost him all his energy to make his declaration of love and he had no more words for the time being.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HANDSOME MAN

  ALICE BUSANG was nervous about consulting Mma Ramotswe, but was soon put at ease by the comfortable, overweight figure sitting behind the desk. It was rather like speaking to a doctor or a priest, she thought; in such consultations nothing that one could possibly say would shock.

  "I am suspicious of my husband," she said. "I think that he is carrying on with ladies."

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. All men carried on with ladies, in her experience. The only men who did not were ministers of religion and headmasters.

  "Have you seen him doing this?" she asked.

  Alice Busang shook her head. "I keep watching out but I never see him with other women. I think he is too cunning."

  Mma Ramotswe wrote this down on a piece of paper.

  "He goes to bars, does he?"

  "Yes."

  "That's where they meet them. They meet these women who hang about in bars waiting for other women's husbands. This city is full of women like that."

  She looked at Alice, and there flowed between them a brief current of understanding. All women in Botswana were the victims of the fecklessness of men. There were virtually no men these days who would marry a woman and settle down to look after her children; men like that seemed to be a thing of the past.

  "Do you want me to follow him?" she said. "Do you want me to find out whether he picks up other women?"

  Alice Busang nodded. "Yes," she said. "I want proof. Just for myself. I want proof so that I can know what sort of man I married."

  MMA RAMOTSWE was too busy to take on the Busang case until the following week. That Wednesday, she stationed herself in her small white van outside the office in the Diamond Sorting Building where Kremlin Busang worked. She had been given a photograph of him by Alice Busang and she glanced at this on her knee; this was a handsome man, with broad shoulders and a wide smile. He was a ladies' man by the look of him, and she wondered why Alice Busang had married him if she wanted a faithful husband. Hopefulness, of course; a naive hope that he would be unlike other men. Well, you only had to look at him to realise that this would not be so.

  She followed him, her white van trailing his old blue car through the traffic to the Go Go Handsome Man's Bar down by the bus station. Then, while he strolled into the bar, she sat for a moment in her van and put a little more lipstick on her lips and a dab of cream on her cheeks. In a few minutes she would go in and begin work in earnest.

  IT WAS not crowded inside the Go Go Handsome Man's Bar and there were only one or two other women there. Both of them she recognised as bad women. They stared at her, but she ignored them and took a seat at the bar, just two stools from Kremlin Busang.

  She bought a beer and looked about her, as if taking in the surroundings of the bar for the first time.

  "You've not been here before, my sister," said Kremlin Busang. "It's a good bar, this one."

  She met his gaze. "I only come to bars on big occasions," she said. "Such as today."

  Kremlin Busang smiled. "Your birthday?"

  "Yes," she said. "Let me buy you a drink to celebrate."

  She bought him a beer, and he moved over to the stool beside her. She saw that he was a good-looking man, exactly as his photograph had revealed him, and his clothes were well chosen. They drank their beers together, and then she ordered him another one. He began to tell her about his job.

  "I sort diamonds," he said. "It's a difficult job, you know. You need good eyesight."

  "I like diamonds," she said. "I like diamonds a lot."

  "We are very lucky to have so many diamonds in this country," he said. "My word! Those diamonds!"

  She moved her left leg slightly, and it touched his. He noticed this, as she saw him glance down, but he did not move his leg away.

  "Are you married?" she asked him quietly.

  He did not hesitate. "No. I've never been married. It's better to be single these days. Freedom, you know."

  She nodded. "I like to be free too," she said. "Then you can decide how to spend your own time."

  "Exactly," he said. "Dead right."

  She drained her glass.

  "I must go," she said, and then, after a short pause: "Maybe you'd like to come back for a drink at my place. I've got some beer there."

  He smiled. "Yes. That's a good idea. I had nothing to do either."

  He followed her home in his car and together they went into her house and turned on some music. She poured him a beer, and he drank half of it in one gulp. Then he put his arm around her waist, and told her that he liked good, fat women. All this business about being thin was nonsense and was quite wrong for Africa.

  "Fat women like you are what men really want," he said.

  She giggled. He was charming, she had to admit it, but this was work and she must be quite professional. She must remember that she needed evidence, and that might be more difficult to get.

  "Come and sit by me," she said. "You must be tired after standing up all day, sorting diamonds."

  SHE HAD her excuses ready, and he accepted them without protest. She had to be at work early the next morning and he could not stay. But it would be a pity to end such a good evening and have no memento of it.

  "I want to take a photograph of us, just for me to keep. So that I can look at it and remember tonight."

  He smiled at her and pinched her gently.

  "Good idea."

  So she set up her camera, with its delayed switch, and leapt back on the sofa to join him. He pinched her again and put his arm around her and kissed her passionately as the flash went off.

  "We can publish that in the newspapers if you like," he said. "Mr Handsome with his friend Miss Fatty."

  She laughed. "You're a ladies' man all right, Kremlin. You're a real ladies' man. I knew it first time I saw you."

  "Well somebody has to look after the ladies," he said.

  ALICE BUSANG returned to the office that Friday and found Mma Ramotswe waiting for her.

  "I'm afraid that I can tell you that your husband is unfaithful," she said. "I've got proof."

  Alice closed her eyes. She had expected this, but she had not wanted it. She would kill him, she thought; but no, I still love him. I hate him. No, I love him.

 
Mma Ramotswe handed her the photograph. "There's your proof," she said.

  Alice Busang stared at the picture. Surely not! Yes, it was her! It was the detective lady.

  "You . . ." she stuttered. "You were with my husband?"

  "He was with me," said Mma Ramotswe. "You wanted proof, didn't you? I got the best proof you could hope for."

  Alice Busang dropped the photograph.

  "But you . . . you went with my husband. You . . ."

  Mma Ramotswe frowned. "You asked me to trap him, didn't you?"

  Alice Busang's eyes narrowed. "You bitch!" she screamed. "You fat bitch! You took my Kremlin! You husband-stealer! Thief!"

  Mma Ramotswe looked at her client with dismay. This would be a case, she thought, where she might have to waive the fee.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MR J.L.B. MATEKONI'S DISCOVERY

  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.