Alexander McCall Smith - No 1 LDA 2 - Tears of the Giraffe
Page 16
BUT THERE were other matters which required attention. There had been a letter from Mrs Curtin in which she asked whether Mma Ramotswe had unearthed anything. "I know it's early to be asking," she wrote, "but ever since I spoke to you, I have had the feeling that you would discover something for me. I don't wish to flatter you, Mma, but I had the feeling that you were one of these people who just knew. You don't have to reply to this letter; I know I should not be writing it at this stage, but I have to do something. You'll understand, Mma Ramotswe-I know you will."
The letter had touched Mma Ramotswe, as did all the pleas that she received from troubled people. She thought of the progress that had been made so far. She had seen the place and she had sensed that that was where that young man's life had ended. In a sense, then, she had reached the conclusion right at the beginning. Now she had to work backwards and find out why he was lying there-as she knew he was-in that dry earth, on the edge of the Great Kalahari. It was a lonely grave, so far away from his people, and he had been so young. How had it come to this? Wrong had been done at some point, and if one wanted to find out what wrong had occurred, then one had to find the people who were capable of doing that wrong. Mr Oswald Ranta.
THE TINY white van moved gingerly over the speed bumps which were intended to deter fast and furious driving by the university staff. Mma Ramotswe was a considerate driver and was ashamed of the bad driving which made the roads so perilous. Botswana, of course, was much safer than other countries in that part of Africa. South Africa was very bad; there were aggressive drivers there, who would shoot you if you crossed them, and they were often drunk, particularly after payday. If payday fell on a Friday night, then it was foolhardy to set out on the roads at all. Swaziland was even worse. The Swazis loved speed, and the winding road between Manzini and Mbabane, on which she had once spent a terrifying half hour, was a notorious claimant of motoring life. She remembered coming across a poignant item in an odd copy of The Times of Swaziland, which had displayed a picture of a rather mousy-looking man, small and insignificant, under which was printed the simple legend The late Mr Richard Mavuso (46). Mr Mavuso, who had a tiny head and a small, neatly trimmed moustache, would have been beneath the notice of most beauty queens and yet, unfortunately, as the newspaper report revealed, he had been run over by one.
Mma Ramotswe had been strangely affected by the report. Local man, Mr Richard Mavuso (above) was run over on Friday night by the Runner-up to Miss Swaziland. The well-known Beauty Queen, Miss Gladys Lapelala, of Manzini, ran over Mr Mavuso as he was trying to cross the road in Mbabane, where he was a clerk in the Public Works Department.
That was all that the report had said, and Mma Ramotswe wondered why she was so affected by it. People were being run over all the time, and not much was made of it. Did it make a difference that one was run over by a beauty queen? And was it sad because Mr Mavuso was such a small and insignificant man, and the beauty queen so big, and important? Perhaps such an event was a striking metaphor for life's injustices; the powerful, the glamorous, the feted, could so often with impunity push aside the insignificant, the timorous.
She nosed the tiny white van into a parking space behind the Administration Buildings and looked about her. She passed the university grounds every day, and was familiar with the cluster of white, sun-shaded buildings that sprawled across the several hundred-acre site near the old airfield. Yet she had never had the occasion to set foot there, and now, faced with a rather bewildering array of blocks, each with its impressive, rather alien name, she felt slightly overawed. She was not an uneducated woman, but she had no BA. And this was a place where everybody one came across was either a BA or BSc or even more than that. There were unimaginably learned people here; scholars like Professor Tlou, who had written a history of Botswana and a biography of Seretse Khama. Or there was Dr Bojosi Otloghile, who had written a book on the High Court of Botswana, which she had bought, but not yet read. One might come across such a person turning a corner in one of these buildings and they would look just like anybody else. But their heads would contain rather more than the heads of the average person, which were not particularly full of very much for a great deal of the time.
She looked at a board which proclaimed itself a map of the campus. Department of Physics that way; Department of Theology that way; Institute of Advanced Studies first right. And then, rather more helpfully, Enquiries. She followed the arrow for Enquiries and came to a modest, prefabricated building, tucked away behind Theology and in front of African Languages. She knocked at the door and entered.
An emaciated woman was sitting behind a desk, trying to unscrew the cap of a pen.
"I am looking for Mr Ranta," she said. "I believe he works here."
The woman looked bored. "Dr Ranta," she said. "He is not just plain Mr Ranta. He is Dr Ranta."
"I am sorry," said Mma Ramotswe. "I would not wish to offend him. Where is he, please?"
"They seek him here, they seek him there," said the woman. "He is here one moment, the next moment, he is nowhere. That's Dr Ranta."
"But will he be here at this moment?" said Mma Ramotswe. "I am not worried about the next moment."
The woman arched an eyebrow. "You could try his office. He has an office here. But most of the time he spends in his bedroom."
"Oh," said Mma Ramotswe. "He is a ladies' man, this Dr Ranta?"
"You could say that," said the woman. "And one of these days the University Council will catch him and tie him up with rope. But in the meantime, nobody dares touch him."
Mma Ramotswe was intrigued. So often, people did one's work for one, as this woman was now doing.
"Why can people not touch him?" asked Mma Ramotswe.
"The girls themselves are too frightened to speak," said the woman. "And his colleagues all have something to hide themselves. You know what these places are like."
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. "I am not a BA," she said. "I do not know."
"Well," said the woman, "I can tell you. They have a lot of people like Dr Ranta in them. You'll find out. I can speak to you about this because I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm going to a better job."
Mma Ramotswe was given instructions as to how to find Dr Ranta's office and she took her leave of the helpful receptionist. It was not a good idea on the university's part, she thought, to put that woman in the enquiry office. If she greeted any enquiry as to a member of staff with the gossip on that person, a visitor might get quite the wrong impression. Yet perhaps it was just because she was leaving the next day that she was talking like this; in which case, thought Mma Ramotswe, there was an opportunity.
"One thing, Mma," she said, as she reached the door. "It may be hard for anybody to deal with Dr Ranta because he hasn't done anything wrong. It may not be a good thing to interfere with students, but that may not be grounds for sacking him, at least it may not be these days. So maybe there's nothing that can be done."
She saw immediately that it was going to work, and that her surmise, that the receptionist had suffered at the hands of Dr Ranta, was correct.
"Oh yes, he has," she retorted, becoming suddenly animated. "He showed an examination paper to a student if she would oblige him. Yes! I'm the only one who knows it. The student was my cousin's daughter. She spoke to her mother, but she would not report it. But the mother told me."
"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.
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 American 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 k
now 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."