“But you have no proof?” said Mma Ramotswe, gently. “Is that the problem?”
“Yes,” said the receptionist. “There is no proof. He would lie his way out of it.”
“And this girl, this Margaret, what did she do?”
“Margaret? Who is Margaret?”
“Your cousin’s daughter,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“She is not called Margaret,” said the receptionist. “She is called Angel. She did nothing, and he got away with it. Men get away with it, don’t they? Every time.”
Mma Ramotswe felt like saying No. Not always, but she was short of time, and so she said goodbye for the second time and began to make her way to the Department of Economics.
THE DOOR was open. Mma Ramotswe looked at the small notice before she knocked: Dr Oswald Ranta, BSc (Econ.), (UB) PhD (Duke). If I am not in, you may leave a message with the Departmental Secretary. Students wishing to have essays returned should see their tutor or go to the Departmental Office.
She listened for the sound of voices from within the room and none came. She heard the click of the keys of a keyboard. Dr Ranta was in.
He looked up sharply as she knocked and edged the door open.
“Yes, Mma,” he said. “What do you want?”
Mma Ramotswe switched from English to Setswana. “I would like to speak to you, Rra. Have you got a moment?”
He glanced quickly at his watch.
“Yes,” he said, not impolitely. “But I haven’t got forever. Are you one of my students?”
Mma Ramotswe made a self-deprecating gesture as she sat down on the chair which he had indicated. “No,” she said. “I am not that educated. I did my Cambridge Certificate, but nothing after that. I was busy working for my cousin’s husband’s bus company, you see. I could not go on with my education.”
“It is never too late, Mma,” he said. “You could study. We have some very old students here. Not that you are very old, of course, but the point is that anybody can study.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe one day.”
“You could study just about anything here,” he went on. “Except medicine. We can’t make doctors just yet.”
“Or detectives.”
He looked surprised. “Detectives? You cannot study detection at a university.”
She raised an eyebrow. “But I have read that at American universities there are courses in private detection. I have a book by …”
He cut her short. “Oh that! Yes, at American colleges you can take a course in anything. Swimming, if you like. But that’s only at some of them. At the good places, places that we call Ivy League, you can’t get away with that sort of nonsense. You have to study real subjects.”
“Like logic?”
“Logic? Yes. You would study that for a philosophy degree. They taught logic at Duke, of course. Or they did when I was there.”
He expected her to look impressed, and she tried to oblige him with a look of admiration. This, she thought, is a man who needs constant reassurance—hence all the girls.
“But surely that is what detection is all about. Logic, and a bit of psychology. If you know logic, you know how things should work; if you know psychology, you should know how people work.”
He smiled, folding his hands across his stomach, as if preparing for a tutorial. As he did so, his gaze was running down Mma Ramotswe’s figure, and she sensed it. She looked back at him, at the folded hands, and the sharp dresser’s tie.
“So, Mma,” he said. “I would like to spend a long time discussing philosophy with you. But I have a meeting soon and I must ask you to tell me what you wanted to talk about. Was it philosophy after all?”
She laughed. “I would not waste your time, Rra. You are a clever man, with many committees in your life. I am just a lady detective. I …”
She saw him tense. The hands unfolded, and moved to the arms of the chair.
“You are a detective?” he asked. The voice was colder now.
She made a self-deprecating gesture. “It is only a small agency. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. It is over by Kgale Hill. You may have seen it.”
“I do not go over there,” he said. “I have not heard of you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to have heard of me, Rra. I am not well-known, unlike you.”
His right hand moved uneasily to the knot of his tie.
“Why do you want to talk to me?” he asked. “Has somebody told you to come and speak to me?”
“No,” she said. “It’s not that.”
She noticed that her answer relaxed him and the arrogance returned.
“Well then?” he said.
“I have come to ask you to talk about something that happened a long time ago. Ten years ago.”
He stared at her. His look was guarded now, and she smelt off him that unmistakable, acrid smell of a person experiencing fear.
“Ten years is a long time. People do not remember.”
“No,” she conceded. “They forget. But there are some things that are not easily forgotten. A mother, for example, will not forget her son.”
As she spoke, his demeanour changed again. He got up from his chair, laughing.
“Oh,” he said. “I see now. That American woman, the one who is always asking questions, is paying you to go round digging up the past again. Will she never give up? Will she never learn?”
“Learn what?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
He was standing at the window, looking out on a group of students on the walkway below.
“Learn that there is nothing to be learned,” he said. “That boy is dead. He must have wandered off into the Kalahari and got lost. Gone for a walk and never come back. It’s easily done, you know. One thorn tree looks much like another, you know, and there are no hills down there to guide you. You get lost. Especially if you’re a white man out of your natural element. What do you expect?”
“But I don’t believe that he got lost and died,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I believe that something else happened to him.”
He turned to face her.
“Such as?” he snapped.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I am not sure exactly what. But how should I know? I was not there.” She paused, before adding, almost under her breath. “You were.”
She heard his breathing, as he returned to his chair. Down below, one of the students shouted something out, something about a jacket, and the others laughed.
“You say I was there. What do you mean?”
She held his gaze. “I mean that you were living there at the time. You were one of the people who saw him every day. You saw him on the day of his death. You must have some idea.”
“I told the police at the time, and I have told the Americans who came round asking questions of all of us. I saw him that morning, once, and then again at lunchtime. I told them what we had for lunch. I described the clothes he was wearing. I told them everything.”
As he spoke, Mma Ramotswe made her decision. He was lying. Had he been telling the truth, she would have brought the encounter to an end, but she knew now that her initial intuition had been right. He was lying as he spoke. It was easy to tell; indeed, Mma Ramotswe could not understand why everybody could not tell when another person was lying. In her eyes, it was so obvious, and Dr Ranta might as well have had an illuminated liar sign about his neck.
“I do not believe you, Rra,” she said simply. “You are lying to me.”
He opened his mouth slightly, and then closed it. Then, folding his hands over his stomach again, he leant back in his chair.
“Our talk has come to an end, Mma,” he announced. “I am sorry that I cannot help you. Perhaps you can go home and study some more logic. Logic will tell you that when a person says he cannot help you, you will get no help. That, after all, is logical.”
He spoke with a sneer, pleased with his elegant turn of phrase.
“Very well, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You could help me, or rather you could help that poor Americ
an woman. She is a mother. You had a mother. I could say to you, Think about that mother’s feelings, but I know that with a person like you that makes no difference. You do not care about that woman. Not just because she is a white woman, from far away; you wouldn’t care if she was a woman from your own village, would you?”
He grinned at her. “I told you. We have finished our talk.”
“But people who don’t care about others can sometimes be made to care,” she said.
He snorted. “In a minute I am going to telephone the Administration and tell them that there is a trespasser in my room. I could say that I found you trying to steal something. I could do that, you know. In fact, I think that is just what I might do. We have had trouble with casual thieves recently and they would send the security people pretty quickly. You might have difficulty explaining it all, Mrs Logician.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Rra,” she said. “You see, I know all about Angel.”
The effect was immediate. His body stiffened and again she smelled the acrid odour, stronger now.
“Yes,” she said. “I know about Angel and the examination paper. I have a statement back in my office. I can pull the chair from under you now, right now. What would you do in Gaborone as an unemployed university lecturer, Rra? Go back to your village? Help with the cattle again?”
Her words, she noted, were like axe blows. Extortion, she thought. Blackmail. This is how the blackmailer feels when he has his victim at his feet. Complete power.
“You cannot do that … I will deny … There is nothing to show …”
“I have all the proof they will need,” she said. “Angel, and another girl who is prepared to lie and say that you gave her exam questions. She is cross with you and she will lie. What she says is not true, but there will be two girls with the same story. We detectives call that corroboration, Rra. Courts like corroboration. They call it similar fact evidence. Your colleagues in the Law Department will tell you all about such evidence. Go and speak to them. They will explain the law to you.”
He moved his tongue between his teeth, as if to moisten his lips. She saw that, and she saw the damp patch of sweat under his armpits; one of his laces was undone, she noted, and the tie had a stain, coffee or tea.
“I do not like doing this, Rra,” she said. “But this is my job. Sometimes I have to be tough and do things that I do not like doing. But what I am doing now has to be done because there is a very sad American woman who only wants to say goodbye to her son. I know you don’t care about her, but I do, and I think that her feelings are more important than yours. So I am going to offer you a bargain. You tell me what happened and I shall promise you—and my word means what it says, Rra—I shall promise you that we hear nothing more about Angel and her friend.”
His breathing was irregular; short gasps, like that of a person with obstructive airways disease—a struggling for breath.
“I did not kill him,” he said. “I did not kill him.”
“Now you are telling the truth,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I can tell that. But you must tell me what happened and where his body is. That is what I want to know.”
“Are you going to go to the police and tell them that I withheld information? If you will, then I will just face whatever happens about that girl.”
“No, I am not going to go to the police. This story is just for his mother. That is all.”
He closed his eyes. “I cannot talk here. You can come to my house.”
“I will come this evening.”
“No,” he said. “Tomorrow.”
“I shall come this evening,” she said. “That woman has waited ten years. She must not wait any longer.”
“All right. I shall write down the address. You can come tonight at nine o’clock.”
“I shall come at eight,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Not every woman will do what you tell her to do, you know.”
She left him, and as she made her way back to the tiny white van she listened to her own breathing and felt her own heart thumping wildly. She had no idea where she had found the courage, but it had been there, like the water at the bottom of a disused quarry—unfathomably deep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AT TLOKWENG ROAD SPEEDY MOTORS
WHILE MMA Ramotswe indulged in the pleasures of black- mail—for that is what it was, even if in a good cause, and therein lay another moral problem which she and Mma Makutsi might chew over in due course—Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, garagiste to His Excellency, the British High Commissioner to Botswana, took his two foster children to the garage for the afternoon. The girl, Motholeli, had begged him to take them so that she could watch him work, and he, bemused, had agreed. A garage workshop was no place for children, with all those heavy tools and pneumatic hoses, but he could detail one of the apprentices to watch over them while he worked. Besides, it might be an idea to expose the boy to the garage at this stage so that he could get a taste for mechanics at an early age. An understanding of cars and engines had to be instilled early; it was not something that could be picked up later. One might become a mechanic at any age, of course, but not everybody could have a feeling for engines. That was something that had to be acquired by osmosis, slowly, over the years.
He parked in front of his office door so that Motholeli could get into the wheelchair in the shade. The boy dashed off immediately to investigate a tap at the side of the building and had to be called back.
“This place is dangerous,” cautioned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “You must stay with one of these boys over there.”
He called over the younger apprentice, the one who constantly tapped him on the shoulder with his greasy finger and ruined his clean overalls.
“You must stop what you are doing,” he said. “You watch over these two while I am working. Make sure that they don’t get hurt.”
The apprentice seemed to be relieved by his new duties and beamed broadly at the children. He’s the lazy one, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He would make a better nanny than a mechanic.
The garage was busy. There was a football team’s minibus in for an overhaul and the work was challenging. The engine had been strained from constant overloading, but that was the case with every minibus in the country. They were always overloaded as the proprietors attempted to cram in every possible fare. This one, which needed new rings, had been belching acrid black smoke to the extent that the players were complaining about shortness of breath.
The engine was exposed and the transmission had been detached. With the help of the other apprentice, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni attached lifting tackle to the engine block and began to winch it out of the vehicle. Motholeli, watching intently from her wheelchair, pointed something out to her brother. He glanced briefly in the direction of the engine, but then looked away again. He was tracing a pattern in a patch of oil at his feet.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni exposed the pistons and the cylinders. Then, pausing, he looked over at the children.
“What is happening now, Rra?” called the girl. “Are you going to replace those rings there? What do they do? Are they important?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at the boy. “You see, Puso? You see what I am doing?”
The boy smiled weakly.
“He is a drawing a picture in the oil,” said the apprentice. “He is drawing a house.”
The girl said: “May I come closer, Rra?” she said. “I will not get in the way.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded and, after she had wheeled herself across, he pointed out to her where the trouble lay.
“You hold this for me,” he said. “There.”
She took the spanner, and held it firmly.
“Good,” he said. “Now you turn this one here. You see? Not too far. That’s right.”
He took the spanner from her and replaced it in his tray. Then he turned and looked at her. She was leaning forward in her chair, her eyes bright with interest. He knew that look; the expression of one who loves engines. It could not be faked; that younger apprentice, for example, did not have i
t, and that is why he would never be more than a mediocre mechanic. But this girl, this strange, serious child who had come into his life, had the makings of a mechanic. She had the art. He had never before seen it in a girl, but it was there. And why not? Mma Ramotswe had taught him that there is no reason why women should not do anything they wanted. She was undoubtedly right. People had assumed that private detectives would be men, but look at how well Mma Ramotswe had done. She had been able to use a woman’s powers of observation and a woman’s intuition to find out things that could well escape a man. So if a girl might aspire to becoming a detective, then why should she not aspire to entering the predominantly male world of cars and engines?
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.”