Mma Tafa laughed. “And you have to make an appointment before you can speak to the wife. You have to phone up the maid and say Please, Mma, may I speak to Mma Thobega? Just one minute, etc., etc.” She watched Big Man as she spoke, clearly taking pleasure from his approbation.
“That is very funny” said Big Man. “But Mmakeletso is right. The whole lot of them have let his position go to his head. It is easier to speak to the President himself than it is to speak to him, I tell you!”
“That is not at all good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I think that you are telling me that the captain, this Rops, is no good.”
“I am,” said Big Man Tafa. “And until he is replaced, then we are going to lose, lose, lose. I can tell you that, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe looked thoughtful, weighing this information carefully. “Tell me, Rra,” she asked, “how do you replace a captain? Does this happen automatically if a team does very badly for a long time?”
She thought that they both hesitated, Mmakeletso and Big Man Tafa; she thought she saw them stiffen and look at each other. She waited.
“Oh, I don't know,” Big Man said after a while. “It depends on the owner of the team. It will be up to Mr. Molofololo, I suppose.”
Mma Ramotswe tried a different tack. “Do you think it possible, Rra …” she began. “Do you think it possible that somebody in the team might try to lose on purpose? Do you think that anything like that could happen?”
Big Man Tafa closed his eyes briefly. Then he opened them and stared at Mma Ramotswe in what looked like unfeigned horror. “Never, Mma. You could tell, you see. Anybody could tell.”
Mma Ramotswe probed gently. “How?”
Big Man Tafa tapped the table with his fingers. “You can always tell when somebody is not doing his best. You can just tell.” He paused, as if thinking of something for the first time. “But now that you come to mention it, Mma, I think that there might be somebody not trying his best. Yes, I think I can say that.”
Mma Ramotswe watched him closely. His small frame, she thought, was like that of one of those creatures you see scurrying through the bush: wiry and difficult to catch. He would be a wonderful dancer, she decided. And then for a moment she pictured Big Man Tafa, dancing with his wife, lost in all that flesh, his dainty feet barely touching the ground as he was lifted up in her arms.
She tried to make the question sound unimportant—an afterthought. “Who do you think is not trying his best?”
He answered immediately. “Rops,” he said. “If anybody wants us to lose, it must be Rops.”
She affected disbelief. “Surely not, Rra. Surely not Rops. Why would he want that?”
“Because he hates Mr. Molofololo,” said Big Man Tafa, “and I believe that Mr. Molofololo put Rops's brother-in-law out of business.”
“How did he do that?” Mma Ramotswe enquired.
Big Man did not know, but he assured Mma Ramotswe that it had happened and that Rops still felt angry about it.
“I see,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But if Rops dislikes Mr. Molofololo so much, why can he not just resign? He is such a well-known man that there will be many teams who will want him to play for them. He could go to Extension Gunners. He could go anywhere.”
Big Man Tafa shook his head. “Rops is too old now. He can no longer play very well. Rops is finished.”
“But surely he wouldn't want to end his career like this,” Mma Ramotswe persisted. “Who would want to retire after a long spell of losing every game?”
“Don't ask me,” said Big Man Tafa. “You should know that sort of thing. You're the detective.”
Mma Ramotswe sat quite still. “How do you know that, Rra? How do you know that I'm a detective?”
Big Man looked at her in surprise. “Because everybody knows that, Mma Ramotswe. You are a famous lady in these parts. Mma Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Everybody knows you now.”
“Your cover is blown,” said Mma Tafa, smiling at Mma Ramotswe. “Isn't that what you detectives say?”
Big Man Tafa answered the question for her. “It is,” he said.
AS SHE WALKED back to the car, Mma Ramotswe was deep in thought. She was not quite sure what to make of her conversation with the Tafas; some things had become clearer while other things had become more obscure. Some things, indeed, were now quite unintelligible.
The small boy was sitting on duty at the van, and she fished a couple of coins out of her bag to pay him.
“You have looked after the van very well,” she said, pressing the coins into his outstretched palm.
“Thank you, Mma.”
She looked down at him, at his funny, rather serious face; he was wiser, perhaps, than most boys of his age. Boys know everything, she remembered somebody saying. Everything.
“Tell me,” she said to the boy. “Big Man Tafa: Is he a good man, do you think, or is he a bad man?”
The boy's eyes moved slightly. A fly had landed on his head and was walking slowly across the smooth expanse of his brow. He did nothing to brush it off.
“He is bad man, I think,” he said. “A very bad man. And one day God is going to punish him.”
Mma Ramotswe was taken aback. The judgement had been so swift, so clear; but it always is, she reflected, when you're that size.
“Who says he is a bad man?” she asked. “Just you?”
The boy shook his head, making the fly take off from its suddenly uncertain landing strip.
“My father,” he said. “Big Man Tafa owes my father ten thousand pula. That is this much, Mma.” He stretched out his hand to illustrate a pile of money. “He says that only bad men don't pay what they have promised to pay. That is why I think that God will get him.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “You are a very interesting boy” she said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CROCODILE SHOES
WHEN MMA RAMOTSWE arrived back at an empty office, she found on her desk a handwritten note from Mma Makutsi:
Mma Ramotswe, I am feeling a bit better now and I have decided to go shopping. I need to think about the matter I discussed with you, but I must go to the shops now. Phuti is coming for dinner and I must buy food for him. I shall talk to him, Mma. You said that it is always best to talk and that is what I shall do.
Grace Makutsi, DSP
Mma Ramotswe smiled at this note. If the way we write a letter gives us away, as people said it did, then the DSP said it all: the Diploma in Secretarial Practice that Mma Makutsi had was her proudest possession—and understandably so. But did she have to put it after her name, and do so even when she wrote a note to her employer? Mma Ramotswe herself had no letters to put after her name, unless, of course, she wrote W, for Woman. Mma Precious Ramotswe, W. That seemed a bit unnecessary because the Mma made it clear that she was a woman, as did her first name, Precious. Perhaps she could put TBW (Traditionally Built Woman) or PI (Private Investigator). The last of these sounded much better, she thought, but really was not necessary, as everybody appeared to know that she was a private detective, or so the Tafas had claimed.
She hoped that Mma Makutsi would handle her conversation with Phuti tactfully, and not say anything that she would later regret. When she had suggested to her assistant that she should talk about her concerns, Mma Ramotswe had not meant that she should talk to Phuti; she had meant that Mma Makutsi should talk to her. Discussing that sort of thing with a woman friend was one thing; discussing it with a man, and with the man under suspicion as well, was quite another, and much more hazardous. Men did not like to be suspected of unfaithfulness; indeed, she had heard of cases where men had responded to such accusations by going out and finding another girlfriend, even when there was no truth to the original accusation. It seemed that the mere mention of such a possibility could be enough to trigger the desire in a man's mind to do what he would otherwise not have done. One had to be extremely careful.
Mma Ramotswe thought it very unlikely that Phuti was entertaining the possibility of abandoning Mma Makutsi in fav
our of Violet Sephotho. Phuti had always struck her as being an unadventurous, loyal man; not the sort of man to take up with a woman like Violet, with her loud, loose ways and her utter ruthlessness. And yet, and yet … The problem was that men were weak, and sometimes the steadiest of men proved to be the weakest of all when faced with a determined onslaught. Violet probably knew that very well. She knew how to turn a man's head, as she would have done so on many occasions before, presumably leaving a trail of broken engagements and marriages behind her. She was, Mma Ramotswe believed, a husband-stealer, as she had heard this accusation levelled against her on more than one occasion. And would Phuti, for all his fine qualities, be able to resist the devastating power of one so skilled in the sinister arts of husband-stealing?
She sat down at her desk, pondering these matters, and was doing this, looking up at the ceiling, when Fanwell came in.
“I know that it is not yet tea time, Mma,” he said, looking at his watch. “But I am very thirsty. I would like to make some tea.”
“I am thirsty too,” said Mma Ramotswe. “So perhaps you will make some for me, too.”
Fanwell went off to fill the kettle and returned a few moments later. While waiting for the water to boil, he sat on top of Mma Makutsi's desk, kicking his legs against the side. He would never have dared to do that, thought Mma Ramotswe, had Mma Makutsi been present, but he could be forgiven the presumption. There were some things that she herself did when Mma Makutsi was absent that she would never have dared to do in her presence—such as using her assistant's cup if her own cup needed washing and she was too busy—or it was too hot—to do it.
“I'm very sorry,” said Fanwell suddenly.
Mma Ramotswe looked up in surprise. “What have you done?”
“No, I've done nothing, Mma. I'm very sorry about your late van.”
Mma Ramotswe sighed. “You're very kind, Fanwell. You're kind to say that.” Charlie, she had noticed, had said nothing about the end of her tiny white van, had even smiled over it, she recalled. But she was not vindictive, and there was no point in going into any of that.
“When we towed it away, I felt very sad,” Fanwell went on. “To think of all the times that van had carried you home and then back to the office. It must have been very sad for you, Mma.”
“It was,” said Mma Ramotswe. She had not seen the van being towed away, but it was no longer parked next to the garage, and she assumed that the deed had been done. She hardly dared ask about the physical fate of the van, but now she decided that perhaps she should. She had counselled Mma Makutsi that it was best to talk; well, perhaps it was best for her to talk too, in her case about the van's fate.
She asked Fanwell what had happened, and he explained. “We did it this morning,” he said. “While you were away somewhere in your new van. The boss drove the truck and I steered your van. We took it to that man who finds spare parts from scrapped cars. Harry Moloso. He has that place in the industrial site, over that side. I sometimes go and get spares there. He is a fat man who drinks a lot of beer and has a stomach that goes out like this. That is where we took it.”
Mma Ramotswe listened to this with a growing feeling of emptiness. It was not a dignified end for her tiny white van—to be handed over ignominiously to Harry Moloso with his beer belly and his oxyacetylene torch waiting in the background, every bit the cruel instrument of torture. She shuddered.
Fanwell whistled. “It's a pity about your van, Mma,” he said. “Maybe it could have been fixed after all. If one could find the parts. A big job, though.”
Mma Ramotswe was silent, and Fanwell looked at her, smiling. “Very big job. But there must be some of them somewhere. If you looked hard enough.”
Mma Ramotswe took a pencil in her hand and played with it gently between her thumb and forefinger. “Parts?”
“Yes,” said Fanwell. “You'd need to get … Oh, it's a long list, Mma. Not worth doing, which is what the boss said when we opened it up. He's right, I think.”
It was the smallest of straws, but a straw nonetheless. “But it could be done? You could find the parts somewhere, do you think?”
Fanwell nodded. “You'd start at Harry Moloso's. He must have had vans like that going through. He must have some of the parts. And Harry Moloso knows everybody in the parts business, Mma. He can phone Johannesburg if necessary and speak to somebody there. Or Francistown, Mafikeng—anywhere. He has the contacts.” He smiled. “Me—I have no contacts. None.”
Mma Ramotswe looked down at her desk. Was it worth it? She loved that van, and although the new van was very comfortable and efficient, were comfort and efficiency the only things in this life? She thought they were not. If they were, then would she and Mma Makutsi be doing what they were now doing, working for very little money in a funny little office next to a garage? She could get a far more comfortable job, she thought, and Mma Makutsi had Phuti to look after her—if she still had him, that is— and she would soon have no need to work. No, comfort was not the only thing. They worked in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency because they wanted to help people with the problems in their lives. And they sat in these old chairs because they had always sat in them and they felt loyal to the things that had served them well. The tiny white van had served her well, and it had been towed off to Harry Moloso's scrapyard; that had been its reward.
She looked up at Fanwell, who was watching her, a smile playing at the edges of his mouth. She took a deep breath. “Do you think …” she began.
The apprentice had anticipated her question. “Yes,” he said. “I could try.”
She let out her breath. “Can we go round there some time? Not today, but some time soon?”
Fanwell made a gesture that implied that whatever Mma Ramotswe wanted to do would be convenient to him. “I can't guarantee anything, Mma Ramotswe,” he said.
“Who can guarantee anything?” asked Mma Ramotswe in reply.
Fanwell laughed. “Your sign out there says satisfaction guaranteed, doesn't it? The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency—Under Personal Supervision—Satisfaction Guaranteed.”
“I suppose, that is, we'd like to guarantee,” said Mma Ramotswe. She felt that she wanted to get up and hug this young man, but she could never do that. She imagined for a moment hugging him and then Mma Makutsi coming back into the office and misinterpreting what she saw. She would have to say, But I was just hugging him for sheer joy, Mma, and Mma Makutsi would tactfully say, Of course, Mma, of course.
AT THE TIME that Fanwell and Mma Ramotswe were having their conversation about the tiny white van, Mma Makutsi was at the River Walk shops, walking through the concourse that led to the supermarket. The shops on either side of her were all tempting in their various ways—except for the outdoor clothing shop, for which she had no time at all. She had no interest in bush clothing—all those ridiculous jackets with too many pockets and slouch hats and so on. She did not like the bush very much; she was prepared to accept that there were some who did, but Mma Makutsi was one for urban comforts. There were things in the bush that could bite one—and did, if they had the chance. And of course if one ventured into the real bush, the remote tracts of land that stretched out to the northern reaches of the country, the great plains and the mopani forests, there were creatures that could make a person feel very uncomfortable indeed. Mma Makutsi knew about this because one of her forebears, her grandfather on her mother's side, had been attacked by a lion outside Maun. He was a driver for a company that carted provisions from Francistown to the Delta, and he had stopped en route in a small village where he had a cousin. As he prepared to leave before dawn, he had been set upon by a large lioness that had mauled him badly, before the villagers, hearing his screams, had come out brandishing sticks. Mma Makutsi had been deeply affected by this story when she was a small girl, and had been nervous of the bush since then.
Of course there was no danger of lions in Gaborone, in the River Walk shopping centre, but who knew what lurked just beyond the edge of the town? The dam was not fa
r away, after all, and beyond the dam there was a stretch of country where great antelopes might be seen—kudu and eland—and if they were there, then why should there not be the creatures that preyed on them—lions and leopards? And were there not crocodiles in the dam, no matter what people said about there being none? Crocodiles … She stopped. The supermarket was just round the corner but here, at her right hand, was the window of a shoe shop, and there, on a small display stand, was a pair of what looked like crocodile-leather shoes.
Mma Makutsi stopped to peer through the window. It was difficult to tell with leather—the shoes at the front of the display were definitely ostrich skin, one could see that from the tiny bumps—but those on the stand had a very different texture. Could they be hippo skin? Surely not. She had never heard of hippo hide being used to make shoes, and she doubted whether it would appeal very much. She could not imagine herself saying, These are my new hippo-hide shoes; that conveyed entirely the wrong impression. Perhaps Mma Ramotswe could wear hippo-hide shoes; perhaps it was just the right leather for the shoes of traditionally built people.
She hesitated. She had not come to the shopping centre to buy shoes; she had come to buy food, and there was a big difference between shopping for food and shopping for shoes, a difference concentrated in one word: guilt. There was no guilt at all in buying day-to-day requirements, such as food, whereas the purchase of shoes, even shoes that were intended for working use, was a process very susceptible to the onslaughts of conscience. Were the shoes necessary? Were shoes like this necessary? Would anybody believe that such shoes could possibly have been bought with functionality in mind? Such were the questions that confronted Mma Makutsi every time she entered a shoe shop. And such were the questions that she resolutely, and with admirable determination, swept aside before making a purchase.