To the Land of Long Lost Friends

by Alexander McCall Smith

“Somebody will knock on the door,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Somebody will come in and say that her husband is spending too much time in the office with his secretary, or the petty cash is disappearing in a mysterious way, or their daughter is seeing a suspicious boyfriend who won’t give anybody his real name and insists on simply being called Joe.”

  Mma Makutsi laughed at that, remembering a case where that was exactly what had happened, and she and Mr. Polopetsi had discovered that Joe, as he called himself, was wanted by the police on several charges of handling stolen property. “I think you are right, Mma,” she said. “Any moment now a new client will turn up.”

  But no new client arrived, and when they closed the office at five that evening, there had not been so much as a telephone enquiry. The only call, in fact, had been a wrong number. Mma Makutsi had answered that, and when it became apparent that the call was really intended for the office of a local refrigeration company, she had nonetheless tried to interest the caller in the agency’s services. After all, one never knew what might be going on in the private life of an unexpected and misdialling stranger.

  “You’ve come through to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” she announced. “I know that this is not the number you wanted, but since you’re on the line, are you sure that you do not have a problem that we can help you with?”

  This had not been well received by the woman at the other end, who took umbrage at the suggestion that she might be in need of a private detective. “I am not that sort of person,” she said, slamming down the receiver in a way that suggested to Mma Makutsi that she was precisely the sort of person who might need the agency’s help.

  “People can be very rude,” said Mma Makutsi. “If you dial the wrong number, the least you should do is listen politely to the person who answers.”

  That was a Tuesday, and the Wednesday seemed to be heading in much the same direction. By the time mid-morning tea was served, Mma Ramotswe had decided that if nothing came up within the next half an hour she would yield to the promptings of her conscience to do something for Calviniah. She would find Nametso and have a word with her about her mother’s feelings. It was possible that she would get nowhere, but there was no harm in trying. It was possible that Nametso might simply not realise the hurt she was causing her mother and respond accordingly; alternatively, she might resent and rebuff any outside attempt to broach the subject. Either way, Mma Ramotswe felt that there was nothing to lose.

  She mentioned her intention to Mma Makutsi, who agreed that helping an old friend in this way was the right thing to do. “If you go out, Mma,” she said, “then I shall go out too and investigate this husband case—the one who appears to be so keen on studying mathematics.”

  Mma Ramotswe smiled. “By all means, Mma. It will be better than sitting in the office twiddling our thumbs.” She paused. “Mind you, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, Mma, if I may say so.”

  “We shall see, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “Sometimes, you know, it’s a question of finding the right tree by barking up a whole lot of trees, some of which may be the wrong ones. You never know. The tree knows, of course, but you don’t.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked at her assistant as she tried to make sense of this remark. She was not quite sure what Mma Makutsi meant, but then that was not all that unusual. There were many occasions on which Mma Makutsi made a pronouncement that seemed to be full of meaning and yet, on close examination, meant nothing at all. This might be one of those, she thought; or it might not be, which left her none the wiser about anything, and so she rose from her chair without further ado and proceeded, as Mma Makutsi might put it, to her tiny white van. She had a plan—not much of a plan, but then investigations had to start somewhere, and shaky grounds were better than no grounds at all. She would go to the diamond-sorting building and speak to the receptionist—if there was one. Receptionists usually knew more about what was going on than anybody else, including general managers, deputy general managers, and managers of any description. From the point of view of a private detective, indiscreet receptionists were gold mines of information, provided, of course, they could be persuaded to reveal what they knew. In general, Mma Ramotswe had found that people wanted to confide, and that all that was necessary was the provision of a sympathetic ear.

  * * *

  —

  NOW SHE STOOD OUTSIDE the discreet building that was the headquarters of the Botswana Diamond Sorting Consortium. Into this building, with its modest four floors, were delivered the gems wrested from the great open-cast mines of the Kalahari, the end result of the reduction of millions of tons of ore into pellets, and the extraction from those pellets of the diamonds themselves. These arrived in sealed safe-boxes, packed by machine and unexposed to any human hand. Only once they were in the diamond-sorting building would they be opened and the stones within spread out on large sorting tables. At that point, the sorters began their work, expertly flicking stones into piles according to size and brilliance.

  Mma Ramotswe had read about the process in an article in the Botswana Daily News. This had explained the training of the sorters, and the strict security measures surrounding the diamonds. Botswana’s diamonds were clean, the paper pronounced, and elaborate steps were taken to keep them that way. Temptation, of course, was the enemy, and everything possible was done to remove the occasions for that. Mma Ramotswe had stared at the photograph in the paper of a pile of diamonds on a sorting table. A pile of diamonds—and to think that these were handled by ordinary people whose lives could be changed beyond recognition by just one of these glittering stones. Such a small thing, a diamond, and yet a thing of such power.

  The sorters were allocated parcels of raw stones. These were weighed to the last fraction of an ounce, and signed for on the basis of weight. The slightest discrepancy, the smallest whisker of difference between weight signed for and weight later returned to a supervisor, would set in motion a process of rigorous searches and revealing X-rays. It was no use trying to swallow a diamond; an X-ray would show exactly where in the human body the stone was concealed. Nobody, it was said, had ever succeeded in smuggling so much as a single carat out of the high-security sorting area.

  She parked her van in the parking place beside the building. There were no trees there, she noted—this was too grand a place, too modern for such things. She disapproved: some people thought that progress was synonymous with the cutting down of trees and the planting, instead, of concrete. They were wrong, she felt: concrete cut you off from the land and stopped the earth from breathing. Concrete was hardness and silence; it had no voice, as other building materials had. Wood brought a memory of trees, thatch of reed bed, mud of the place from which the earth had been taken. The people who commissioned and built large buildings thought nothing of that, but ordinary people, people who did not think always of money, had always turned to trees for shade, and she saw no reason for that to change. If that was progress, then she would have none of it. And yet, she thought, I am a modern lady and have no desire to go backwards rather than forwards. It all depended, she felt, on where you thought forwards was.

  She sighed as she left her tiny white van out in the full glare of the sun. She knew that when she came back to it—even only a few minutes later—the burning rays would have heated the interior to the point of discomfort. She would have to open both doors and wait for the seats and the steering wheel to cool. If only they had kept a few trees…

  A man was walking towards her—a man in a blue uniform with a badge on each shoulder. This badge, the same on each side, said Security Consultant, and now, reaching Mma Ramotswe, he looked at her over the rim of a pair of rectangle-framed glasses.

  His greeting was polite, in spite of his stern expression. Following the old Botswana custom, he enquired about her health and whether she had slept well. On both of these matters, she gave a positive report.

  “So, Mma, what are you doing with your van?�
�

  He gestured to the van, which looked distinctly out of place among the opulent vehicles on either side of it.

  “I am parking it, Rra,” Mma Ramotswe replied. She hesitated. She did not want a confrontation with somebody described as a security consultant, but in her experience a firm response to officialdom could set a more positive tone for any subsequent encounter. This was a parking place—there was a notice that made that clear—and she had availed herself of it. There was nothing to say that only important people, or expensive modern cars, could use this space. This was a small square of Botswana, and she was a citizen of Botswana. Her van, although old and small, was a duly licensed Botswana car that had the same rights as any vehicle.

  The security consultant continued to look at her over the top of his spectacles. “I can see that you have parked, Mma. I can see that.”

  Mma Ramotswe waited.

  “Why have you parked here?” he asked.

  “I have come to speak to somebody in the sorting office,” she said, nodding in the direction of the building’s front door.

  He frowned. “Who is this person, Mma? And what is it about?”

  “It is a personal matter,” she replied, and knew immediately that this, although the truthful answer, was the wrong one to have given.

  The guard’s frown deepened. “It is not possible to talk to people here about personal matters,” he said. “It is not allowed. You must go away.”

  Mma Ramotswe studied his uniform. The buttons, which were cast in brass, had the symbol of a diamond incised on them. The shirt, buttoned down at the collar, had been impeccably starched.

  “I must say that your uniform is very smart, Captain.”

  The effect of this was instantaneous, just as she thought it would be. It was her practice, developed over years of experience of dealing with people who occupied junior rungs in any hierarchy, to promote the holder with a rank above that which they held or were ever likely to have held. Thus a sergeant of police, immediately and unambiguously distinguishable by the chevrons of his office, became a sub-inspector or even a full inspector, while an inspector became a superintendent. Even those at heady levels—those who were real superintendents—were susceptible to the tactic, and could be seen to swell visibly when addressed as Deputy Commissioner. Flattery, perhaps, but there was a wrong sort of flattery and a right sort, and this was the latter because it gave somebody a boost and it was always deployed for a good reason—not to curry favour, but to help a good cause. And the good cause in this case was clear enough: a mother wanted her daughter back from a puzzling and needless estrangement that had sprung up between them; what could be more defensible than that?

  Captain! A smile played about the security guard’s lips—a smile of pleasure rather than bemusement. Here was one who might be to the outside world a mere security consultant, but who, in his inner heart, was on the frontline of a worldwide battle against the forces of disorder and chaos. Those forces were ubiquitous and cunning; they took no hostages and struck in a way that was as underhand as they were ruthless. Ranged against them were men and women in a rainbow array of uniforms, each battling in his or her particular way a common enemy: people who challenged the accepted order in ways small and large. Here was one of them—a person who thought she could park in a dedicated parking place as casually as if she were by some roadside in a dusty village in the back of beyond, and who then explained that she wanted to talk to some employee about a purely personal matter. And what would that be?, he wondered. An arrangement for a wedding, perhaps, or for a church bazaar—something as petty and inconsequential as that. Really! That was the trouble with some people: they loved talking at great length about these small things, and all the while, elsewhere, people were working hard without any of these silly discussions. How could people complain if all the strides that were being taken in so many fields were being taken in places where wasting time like this was not permitted, where nobody parked where they shouldn’t?

  Those were the thoughts that crossed his mind, and yet this was a traditionally minded Botswana woman of well-kept appearance and respectful demeanour. And she had called him “Captain,” which was the rank that he should really have held if the diamond authorities had given proper thought to the matter. She clearly understood how demanding his job was, and how vital. He could not be severe with her; firm, yes, but not severe. She was a sort of auntie, really, and he would treat her with the courtesy with which an auntie should be treated.

  The instruction to go away was rescinded. “I’m sorry, Mma, I didn’t mean that you should go away right now—I did not mean that.”

  Mma Ramotswe was gracious. “I could tell that you didn’t, Rra. I could see that you were not the sort of officer to tell a lady to go away just like that when all she wanted to do was to speak to somebody.”

  Officer! He had served for four years in the Botswana Defence Force and knew that the term officer should not be used lightly. He had been promoted to corporal and had served honourably in that role in the days when that great man, General Khama, had been there, and the general had once singled him out for praise. He had said, “That NCO is doing good work,” and the reference had been to him; there was no doubt about that because the general had been pointing at him as he spoke the words. His platoon commander had heard them, and nodded in his direction—a nod of encouragement and congratulation. That was not the sort of thing one easily forgets. That NCO is doing good work.

  “No, Mma, I did not mean go away right now. I meant you cannot stay there, but you need not go immediately.”

  “Thank you, Rra. And can I speak to the person I want to speak to?”

  That was another matter—not one in which discretion could be exercised. “That is more difficult, Mma. They…” He cast his eyes up towards the top floor of the building, where dwelt the senior management. “They don’t allow that, Mma. This building, you see, is very secure. Even now they are watching us with their cameras. All the time, there are people watching, watching.”

  “They have to be careful,” said Mma Ramotswe. “If nobody was watching, then what would happen? There would be people coming around all the time hoping to pick up a few diamonds.”

  He nodded his agreement. “Exactly, Mma. That is why we have these rules.” He paused. “Could you tell me who this person is? Perhaps I could leave a note for him.”

  “It is a her,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Her name is Nametso. She is one of the sorters. She is the daughter of an old friend of mine, Calviniah, from the old days in Mochudi.”

  The guard relaxed even more. “Mochudi,” he said, savouring the word in his mouth, lingering over it, as one might a culinary treat. “I had an uncle who lived there. He was a porter in the hospital. He worked with Dr. Moffat back in those days.”

  Mma Ramotswe clapped her hands together. “Dr. Moffat, Rra! My father knew Dr. Moffat—and I did too. Mrs. Moffat—I used to visit her when she lived in the Village here in Gaborone.”

  The guard shook his head with pleasure at the memory, and at the connection this conversation had established.

  “My uncle said that Dr. Moffat never lost his temper with anybody. Sometimes a doctor or a nurse could do that, you know. But he did not. He just said, ‘Please don’t do that,’ or, ‘That’s not a good thing to do.’ Something like that.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “That is often the best way of dealing with such things,” she said. “I have heard people say that you don’t change others by shouting at them.”

  The security guard hesitated. In his days in the Botswana Defence Force he had done a great deal of shouting. Indeed, he had enjoyed a reputation of having one of the loudest voices in the entire army, but he was younger then, and you might change your views as you became older and more aware of the complexities of the world. And so he said, “That is very right, Mma. You do not change people in that way.”

  It w
as a pity, he thought. There were so many who were crying out to be changed and who would benefit from a few pieces of advice delivered at maximum volume. It was a pity.

  “This Nametso,” he said. “I think I know her. I know all the sorters because they are given permits to park in this car park. There is only one of them called Nametso.”

  Mma Ramotswe listened. “So you know her, Rra?”

  “Yes.” He turned around and gestured to a section of the car park immediately behind him. “That is where she used to park her car. Every day, she would park in the same place—right over there.”

  Mma Ramotswe followed his gaze. “Used to, Rra? Is she no longer working here?”

  “Oh, yes, she is still working here. If you have a job as a diamond sorter, you don’t give that up too readily, I can tell you.”

  “I don’t suppose you do,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But now she’s parking somewhere else? Or is she coming into work by bus, maybe?”

  He turned back to face her. “No, nothing like that. She’s still driving in. You mentioned the Village earlier on. That is where she lives. You know those flats near the university?”

  She did. “They aren’t too far from my business.” She bit her tongue. She had not intended to reveal what she did; it could only complicate matters.

  It was too late. “Your business, Mma? What business is that?”

  “I work in an office,” Mma Ramotswe said vaguely. “Not a big office—just a couple of people. But tell me, Rra: Why is Nametso not parking here any longer?” She assumed that it was a shade issue, and felt that here at least was something on which she and Nametso would agree—too much concrete and too little respect for trees. Our natural umbrellas, she thought. That’s what trees were: our natural umbrellas.

  But this was not the reason. The security guard thought for a moment, and then, with what Mma Ramotswe thought was a rather condescending smile, gave his answer: “Envy, Mma. You know what envy is. It is our big problem here, although we don’t like to talk about it. Envy.”