(2/15) Tears of the Giraffe

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Motholeli raised her eyes, meeting his gaze, but still respectfully.

  “You are not cross with me, Rra?” she said. “You do not think I am a nuisance?”

  He reached forward and laid a hand gently on her arm.

  “Of course I am not cross,” he said. “I am proud. I am proud that now I have a daughter who will be a great mechanic. Is that what you want? Am I right?”

  She nodded modestly. “I have always loved engines,” she said. “I have always liked to look at them. I have loved to work with screwdrivers and spanners. But I have never had the chance to do anything.”

  “Well,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “That changes now. You can come with me on Saturday mornings and help here. Would you like that? We can make a special workbench for you—a low one—so that it is the right height for your chair.”

  “You are very kind, Rra.”

  For the rest of the day, she remained at his side, watching each procedure, asking the occasional question, but taking care not to intrude. He tinkered and coaxed, until eventually the minibus engine, reinvigorated, was secured back in place and, when tested, produced no acrid black smoke.

  “You see,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni proudly, pointing to the clear exhaust. “Oil won’t burn off like that if it’s kept in the right place. Tight seals. Good piston rings. Everything in its proper place.”

  Motholeli clapped her hands. “That van is happier now,” she said.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. “Yes,” he agreed. “It is happier now.”

  He knew now, beyond all doubt, that she had the talent. Only those who really understood machinery could conceive of happiness in an engine; it was an insight which the non-mechanically minded simply lacked. This girl had it, while the younger apprentice did not. He would kick an engine, rather than talk to it, and he had often seen him forcing metal. You cannot force metal, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had told him time after time. If you force metal, it fights back. Remember that if you remember nothing else I have tried to teach you. Yet the apprentice would still strip bolts by turning the nut the wrong way and would bend flanges if they seemed reluctant to fall into proper alignment. No machinery could be treated that way.

  This girl was different. She understood the feelings of engines, and would be a great mechanic one day—that was clear.

  He looked at her proudly, as he wiped his hands on cotton lint. The future of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors seemed assured.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  WHAT HAPPENED

  MMA RAMOTSWE felt afraid. She had experienced fear only once or twice before in her work as Botswana’s only lady private detective (a title she still deserved; Mma Makutsi, it had to be remembered, was only an assistant private detective). She had felt this way when she had gone to see Charlie Gotso, the wealthy businessman who still cultivated witch doctors, and indeed on that meeting she had wondered whether her calling might one day bring her up against real danger. Now, faced with going to Dr Ranta’s house, the same cold feeling had settled in her stomach. Of course, there were no real grounds for this. It was an ordinary house in an everyday street near Maru-a-Pula School. There would be neighbours next door, and the sound of voices; there would be dogs barking in the night; there would be the lights of cars. She could not imagine that Dr Ranta would pose any danger to her. He was an accomplished seducer perhaps, a manipulator, an opportunist, but not a murderer.

  On the other hand, the most ordinary people can be murderers. And if this were to be the manner of one’s death, then one was very likely to know one’s assailant and meet him in very ordinary circumstances. She had recently taken out a subscription to the Journal of Criminology (an expensive mistake, because it contained little of interest to her) but among the meaningless tables and unintelligible prose she had come across an arresting fact: the overwhelming majority of homicide victims know the person who kills them. They are not killed by strangers, but by friends, family, work acquaintances. Mothers killed their children. Husbands killed their wives. Wives killed their husbands. Employees killed their employers. Danger, it seemed, stalked every interstice of day-to-day life. Could this be true? Not in Johannesburg, she thought, where people fell victim to tsostis who prowled about at night, to car thieves who were prepared to use their guns, and to random acts of indiscriminate violence by young men with no sense of the value of life. But perhaps cities like that were an exception; perhaps in more normal circumstances homicide happened in just this sort of surrounding—a quiet talk in a modest house, while people went about their ordinary business just a stone’s throw away.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sensed that something was wrong. He had come to dinner, to tell her of his visit earlier that evening to his maid in prison, and had immediately noticed that she seemed distracted. He did not mention it at first; there was a story to tell about the maid, and this, he thought, might take Mma Ramotswe’s mind off whatever it was that was preoccupying her.

  “I have arranged for a lawyer to see her,” he said. “There is a man in town who knows about this sort of case. I have arranged for him to go and see her in her cell and to speak for her in court.”

  Mma Ramotswe piled an ample helping of beans on Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s plate.

  “Did she explain anything?” she asked. “It can’t look good for her. Silly woman.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni frowned. “She was hysterical when I first arrived. She started to shout at the guards. It was very embarrassing for me. They said: ‘Please control your wife and tell her to keep her big mouth shut.’ I had to tell them twice that she was not my wife.”

  “But why was she shouting?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Surely she understands that she can’t shout her way out of there.”

  “She knows that, I think,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “She was shouting because she was so cross. She said that somebody else should be there, not her. She mentioned your name for some reason.”

  Mma Ramotswe placed the beans on her own plate. “Me? What have I got to do with this?”

  “I asked her that,” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni went on. “But she just shook her head and said nothing more about it.”

  “And the gun? Did she explain the gun?”

  “She said that the gun didn’t belong to her. She said that it belonged to a boyfriend and that he was coming to collect it. Then she said that she didn’t know that it was there. She thought the parcel contained meat. Or so she claims.”

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “They won’t believe that. If they did, then would they ever be able to convict anybody found in possession of an illegal weapon?”

  “That’s what the lawyer said to me over the telephone,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “He said that it was very hard to get somebody off one of these charges. The courts just don’t believe them if they say that they didn’t know there was a gun. They assume that they are lying and they send them to prison for at least a year. If they have previous convictions, and there usually are, then it can be much longer.”

  Mma Ramotswe raised her teacup to her lips. She liked to drink tea with her meals, and she had a special cup for the purpose. She would try to buy a matching one for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, she thought, but it might be difficult, as this cup had been made in England and was very special.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked sideways at Mma Ramotswe. There was something on her mind. In a marriage, he thought, it would be important not to keep anything from one’s spouse, and they might as well start that policy now. Mind you, he recalled that he had just kept the knowledge of two foster children from Mma Ramotswe, which was hardly a minor matter, but that was over now and a new policy could begin.

  “Mma Ramotswe,” he ventured. “You are uneasy tonight. Is it something I have said?”

  She put down her teacup, glancing at her watch as she did so.

  “It’s nothing to do with you,” she said. “I have to go and speak to somebody tonight. It’s about Mma Curtin’s son. I am worried about this person I have to see.”

  She told him of her fears. She explai
ned that although she knew that it was highly unlikely that an economist at the University of Botswana would turn to violence, nonetheless she felt convinced of the evil in his character, and this made her profoundly uneasy.

  “There is a word for this sort of person,” she explained. “I read about them. He is called a psychopath. He is a man with no morality.”

  He listened quietly, his brow furrowed with concern. Then, when she had finished speaking, he said: “You cannot go. I cannot have my future wife walking into danger like that.”

  She looked at him. “It makes me very pleased to know that you are worried about me,” she said. “But I have my calling, which is that of a private detective. If I was going to be frightened, I should have done something else.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked unhappy. “You do not know this man. You cannot go to his house, just like that. If you insist, then I shall come too. I shall wait outside. He need not know I am there.”

  Mma Ramotswe pondered. She did not want Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to fret, and if his presence outside would relieve his anxiety, then there was no reason why he should not come. “Very well,” she said. “You wait outside. We’ll take my van. You can sit there while I am talking to him.”

  “And if there is any emergency,” he said, “you can shout. I shall be listening.”

  They both finished the meal in a more relaxed frame of mind. Motholeli was reading to her brother in his bedroom, the children having had their evening meal earlier. Dinner over, while Mr J.L.B. Matekoni took the plates through to the kitchen, Mma Ramotswe went down the corridor to find the girl half-asleep herself, the book resting on her knee. Puso was still awake, but drowsy, one arm across his chest, the other hanging down over the edge of the bed. She moved his arm back onto the bed and he smiled at her sleepily.

  “It is time for you to go to bed too,” she said to the girl. “Mr J.L.B. Matekoni tells me that you have had a busy day repairing engines.”

  She wheeled Motholeli back to her own room, where she helped her out of the chair and onto the side of the bed. She liked to have her independence, and so she allowed her to undress herself unaided and to get into the new nightgown that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had bought for her on the shopping trip. It was the wrong colour, thought Mma Ramotswe, but then it had been chosen by a man, who could not be expected to know about these things.

  “Are you happy here, Motholeli?” she asked.

  “I am so happy,” said the girl. “And every day my life is getting happier.”

  Mma Ramotswe tucked the sheet about her and planted a kiss on her cheek. Then she turned out the light and left the room. Every day I am getting happier. Mma Ramotswe wondered whether the world which this girl and her brother would inherit would be better than the world in which she and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had grown up. They had grown happier, she thought, because they had seen Africa become independent and take its own steps in the world. But what a troubled adolescence the continent had experienced, with its vainglorious dictators and their corrupt bureaucracies. And all the time, African people were simply trying to lead decent lives in the midst of all the turmoil and disappointment. Did the people who made all the decisions in this world, the powerful people in places like Washington and London, know about people like Motholeli and Puso? Or care? She was sure that they would care, if only they knew. Sometimes she thought that people overseas had no room in their heart for Africa, because nobody had ever told them that African people were just the same as they were. They simply did not know about people like her Daddy, Obed Ramotswe, who stood, proudly attired in his shiny suit, in the photograph in her living room. You had no grandchildren, she said to the photograph, but now you have. Two. In this house.

  The photograph was mute. He would have loved to have met the children, she thought. He would have been a good grandfather, who would have shown them the old Botswana morality and brought them to an understanding of what it is to live an honourable life. She would have to do that now; she and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. One day soon she would drive out to the orphan farm and thank Mma Silvia Potokwane for giving them the children. She would also thank her for everything that she did for all those other orphans, because, she suspected, nobody ever thanked her for that. Bossy as Mma Potokwane might be, she was a matron, and it was a matron’s job to be like that, just as detectives should be nosy, and mechanics … Well, what should mechanics be? Greasy? No, greasy was not quite right. She would have to think further about that.

  “I WILL be ready,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, his voice lowered, although there was no need. “You will know that I am here. Right here, outside the house. If you shout out, I will hear you.”

  They studied the house, in the dim light of the streetlamp, an undistinguished building with a standard red-tiled roof and unkempt garden.

  “He obviously does not employ a gardener,” observed Mma Ramotswe. “Look at the mess.”

  It was inconsiderate not to have a gardener if, like Dr Ranta, you were in a well-paid white-collar job. It was a social duty to employ domestic staff, who were readily available and desperate for work. Wages were low—unconscionably so, thought Mma Ramotswe—but at least the system created jobs. If everybody with a job had a maid, then that was food going into the mouths of the maids and their children. If everybody did their own housework and tended their own gardens, then what were the people who were maids and gardeners to do?

  By not cultivating his garden, Dr Ranta showed himself to be selfish, which did not surprise Mma Ramotswe at all.

  “Too selfish,” remarked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  She opened the door of the van and manoeuvred herself out. The van was slightly too small for a lady like herself, of traditional build, but she was fond of it and dreaded the day when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would be able to fix it no longer. No modern van, with all its gadgets and sophistication, would be able to take the place of the tiny white van. Since she had acquired it eleven years previously, it had borne her faithfully on her every journey, putting up with the heights of the October heat, or the fine dust which at certain times of year drifted in from the Kalahari and covered everything with a red-brown blanket. Dust was the enemy of engines, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had explained—on more than one occasion—the enemy of engines, but the friend of the hungry mechanic.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni watched Mma Ramotswe approach the front door and knock. Dr Ranta must have been waiting for her, as she was quickly admitted and the door was closed behind her.

  “Is it just yourself, Mma?” said Dr Ranta. “Is your friend out there coming in?”

  “No,” she said. “He will wait for me outside.”

  Dr Ranta laughed. “Security? So you feel safe?”

  She did not answer his question. “You have a nice house,” she said. “You are fortunate.”

  He gestured for her to follow him into the living room. Then he pointed to a chair and he himself sat down.

  “I don’t want to waste my time talking to you,” he said. “I will speak only because you have threatened me and I am experiencing some difficulty with some lying women. That is the only reason why I am talking to you.”

  His pride was hurt, she realised. He had been cornered—and by a woman, too; a stinging humiliation for a womaniser. There was no point in preliminaries, she thought, and so she went straight to the point.

  “How did Michael Curtin die?” she asked.

  He sat in his chair, directly opposite her, his lips pursed.

  “I worked there,” he said, appearing to ignore her question. “I was a rural economist and they had been given a grant by the Ford Foundation to employ somebody to do studies of the economics of these small-scale agricultural ventures. That was my job. But I knew that things were hopeless. Right from the start. Those people were just idealists. They thought that you could change the way things had always been. I knew it wouldn’t work.”

  “But you accepted the money,” said Mma Ramotswe.


  He stared at her contemptuously. “It was a job. I am a professional economist. I study things that work and things that don’t work. Maybe you don’t understand that.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “Well,” he went on. “We—the management, so to speak—lived in one large house. There was a German who was in charge of it—a man from Namibia, Burkhardt Fischer. He had a wife, Marcia, and then there was a South African woman, Carla Smit, the American boy and myself.

  “We all got on quite well, except that Burkhardt did not like me. He tried to get rid of me shortly after I arrived, but I had a contract from the Foundation and they refused. He told lies about me, but they didn’t believe him.

  “The American boy was very polite. He spoke reasonable Setswana and people liked him. The South African woman took to him and they started to share the same room. She did everything for him—cooked his food, washed his clothes, and made a great fuss of him. Then she started to get interested in me. I didn’t encourage her, but she had an affair with me, while she was still with that boy. She said to me that she was going to tell him, but that she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. So we saw one another secretly, which was difficult to do out there, but we managed.

  “Burkhardt suspected what was happening and he called me into his office and threatened that he would tell the American boy if I did not stop seeing Carla. I told him that it was none of his business, and he became angry. He said that he was going to write to the Foundation again and say that I was disrupting the work of the collective. So I told him that I would stop seeing Carla.