The Good Husband of Zebra Drive tn1lda-8

by Alexander McCall Smith

  From the moment that Teenie mentioned staff, Mma Makutsi had anticipated this. It was one of the commonest complaints that clients brought to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, although not quite as common as the errant husband complaint. Botswana was not a dishonest country—quite the contrary, really—but it was inevitable that there would be some who would cheat and steal and do all the unhelpful and unpleasant things that humanity was heir to. That had started a long time back, at the point at which some Eden somewhere had gone wrong, and somebody had picked up a stone and hurled it at another. It was in us, thought Mma Makutsi; it was in all of us, somewhere deep down in our very nature. When we were children we had to be taught to hold it in check, to banish it; we had to be taught to be concerned with the feelings of others. And that, she thought, was where things went wrong. Some children were just not taught, or would not learn, or were governed by some impulse within them that stopped them from feeling and understanding. Later on, there was very little one could do about these people, other than to thwart them. Mma Ramotswe, of course, said that you could be kind to them, to show them the way, but Mma Makutsi had her doubts about that; one could be too kind, she thought.

  “People steal,” said Mma Makutsi. “No matter how kind you are to them, there are some people who will steal. Even from their own family, in their own house. That happens, you know.”

  Teenie fixed her pleading eyes on Mma Makutsi. It occurred to Mma Makutsi that the woman in front of her wanted her to say that people did not steal, that the world was not a place where this sort of thing happened. She could not give her that reassurance, because, well, because it would be absurd. One could not say the world was other than it was.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Mma Makutsi went on. “It obviously makes you unhappy, Mma.”

  Teenie was quick to agree. “It’s like being hurt somewhere here,” she said, moving her hand to her chest and placing it above the sternum. “It’s a horrible feeling. This thief is not a person who comes at night and takes from you—it’s somebody you see every day, who smiles at you, who asks how you have slept; all of that. It is one of your brothers or sisters.”

  Mma Makutsi could see that. She had been stolen from when she was at the Botswana Secretarial College. Somebody in the class had taken her purse, which contained all her money for that week, which was not very much anyway, but which was needed, every thebe of it. Once that was gone, there was no money for food, and she would have to depend on the help of others. Did the person who took the purse know that? Would that person care if he or she knew that the loss of the money would mean hunger?

  “It always hurts,” she said. There had been two days of hunger because she had been too proud to ask, and then a friend, who had heard what had happened, had shared her food with her.

  Mma Makutsi folded her hands; they would have to progress from these observations on the human condition to the business in hand. “You would like me to find out who is doing this?” She paused and stared at Teenie with a serious look; it would be best for her to know that these things were far from easy. “When something is being stolen by somebody on the inside,” she said, “it is not always easy. In fact, it can be very hard to discover who is doing it. We have to look at who’s spending what, at who’s living beyond their means. That’s one way. But it can be hard…”

  Teenie interrupted her. The pleading look now became something more confident. “No, Mma,” she said. “It will not be hard. It will not be hard because I can tell you who is doing it. I know exactly who it is.”

  Mma Makutsi could not conceal her surprise. “Oh yes?”

  “Yes. I can point to the person who’s stealing. I know exactly who it is.”

  Well, thought Mma Makutsi, if she knows who is responsible, then what is there for me to do? “So, Mma,” she said. “What do you want me to do? It seems that you have already been a detective.”

  Teenie took this in her stride. “I cannot prove anything,” she said. “I know who it is, but I have no proof. That is what I want you to find for me. Proof. Then I can get rid of that person. The employment laws say: proof first, then dismissal.”

  Mma Makutsi smiled. Clovis Andersen in The Principles of Private Detection had something to say about this, she recalled—as had Mma Ramotswe. You do not know anything until you know why you know it, he had written. And Mma Ramotswe, who had read the passage out to Mma Makutsi with an admonitory wagging of her finger, had qualified this by saying that although this was generally true, sometimes she knew that she knew something because of a special feeling that she had. But what Clovis Andersen said was nonetheless correct, she felt.

  “You will have to tell me why you think you know who it is,” Mma Makutsi said to Teenie. “Have you seen this person taking something?”

  Teenie thought for a moment. “Not exactly.”

  “Ah.”

  There was a short period of silence. “Has anybody else seen this person taking something?” Mma Makutsi went on.

  Teenie shook her head. “No. Not as far as I know.”

  “So, may I ask you, Mma: How do you know who this person is?”

  Teenie closed her eyes. “Because of the way he looks, Mma. This man who is taking things, he just looks dishonest. He is not a nice man. I can tell that, Mma.”

  Mma Makutsi reached for a piece of paper and wrote down a few words. Teenie watched the pencil move across the paper, then she looked up expectantly at Mma Makutsi.

  “I shall need to come and have a look round,” said Mma Makutsi. “You must not tell the staff that I am a detective. We shall have to think of some reason for me to be visiting the works.”

  “You could be a tax inspector,” ventured Teenie.

  Mma Makutsi laughed. “That is a very bad idea,” she said. “They will think that I am after them. No, you can say that I am a client who is interested in giving the firm a big job but who wants to have a good look at how things are run. That will be a good story.”

  Teenie agreed with this. And would Mma Makutsi be available that afternoon? Everybody, including the man under suspicion, would be there and she could meet them all.

  “How will I know which is the one you suspect?” asked Mma Makutsi.

  “You’ll know,” said Teenie. “The moment you see him. You’ll know.”

  She looked at Mma Makutsi. Still pleading.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DR CRONJE

  WHILE MMA MAKUTSI dealt with her diminutive client, Mma Ramotswe made the brief drive out to Mochudi; forty minutes if one rushed, an hour if one meandered. And she did meander, slowing down to look at some cattle who had strayed onto the verge of the road. She was her father’s daughter after all, and Obed Ramotswe had never been able to pass by cattle without casting his expert eye over them. She had inherited some of that ability, a gift really, even if her eye would never be as good as his had been. He had cattle lineages embedded in his memory, like a biblical narrative setting out who begat whom; he knew every beast and their qualities. And she had always dreamed that when he died, at the very moment at which that bit of the old Botswana went, the cattle had somehow known. She understood that this was impossible, that it was sentimental, but the thought had given her comfort. When we die there are many farewells, spoken and unspoken—and the imagined farewell of the cattle was one of these.

  The cattle by the roadside were not in particularly good condition, Mma Ramotswe thought. There was little grazing for them at this time of the year, with the rains a few months away and such grass as there was dry and brittle. The cattle would find something, of course, leaves, bits and pieces of vegetation that would provide some sustenance; but these beasts looked defeated and listless. They would not have a good owner, Mma Ramotswe concluded as she continued on her journey. To start with, they should not be out on the verge like that. Not only was that a risk to the cattle themselves, but it was a terrible danger to anybody driving on the road at night. Some cattle were the colour of night and seemed to merge perfectly into t
he darkness; a driver coming round a corner or surmounting a hump in the road might suddenly find himself face-to-face with one of these cattle and be unable to stop in time. If that happened, then those in the car could be impaled on the horns of the cow as it was hurled through the windscreen—that had happened, and often. Mma Ramotswe shuddered, and concentrated on the winding strip of tar ahead. Cattle, goats, children, other drivers—there were so many perils on the road.

  By the time she arrived in Mochudi, her dawdling on the road had made her late. She looked at her watch. It was twelve o’clock and she had arranged to meet the doctor at a restaurant on the edge of the town fifteen minutes earlier; he had to have an early lunch, he explained, as he would be on duty at the hospital at two. She wondered if he would wait; she had telephoned him out of the blue and asked to see him—there were many who would decline an invitation of that sort, but he had agreed without any probing into what her business with him might be. All she had said was that she was a friend of Tati Monyena; that, it seemed, was enough.

  Mochudi had a number of restaurants, most of them very small affairs, one small room at the most, or a rickety bench outside a lean-to shack serving braised maize cobs and plates of pap; simple fare, but filling and delicious. Then there were the liquor restaurants, which were larger and noisier. Some of these stayed one step ahead of the police and the tribal authorities, and were regularly being closed down for the disturbance they created and their cavalier attitude to licencing hours. Mma Ramotswe did not like these, with their dark interiors and their groups of drinkers engaged in endless and heated debates over their bottles of beer; that was not for her.

  There was one good restaurant, though, one that she liked, which had a garden and tables in that garden. The kitchens were clean, the food wholesome, and the waitresses adept at friendly conversation. She went there from time to time when she felt that she needed to catch up on Mochudi news, and she would spin out her lunch to two or three hours, talking or just sitting under one of the trees and looking up at the birds on the branches above. It was a good place for birds, a bird restaurant, and the more confident amongst their number would flutter down to the ground to peck at the crumbs of food under the tables, minute zebra finches, bulbuls, plain birds that had no name as far as she knew.

  The tiny white van drew up in front of the restaurant and Mma Ramotswe alighted. A wide acacia tree stood at the entrance to the restaurant garden, an umbrella against the sun, and a dog sat just outside the lacy shadow of the tree, his eyes half closed, soaking up the winter sun. A couple of flies walked across the narrow part of his nose, but he did not flinch. Mma Ramotswe saw that only one of the outside tables was occupied, and she knew immediately that it was the doctor. Half Xhosa, half Afrikaner. It could only be him.

  “Dr Cronje?”

  The doctor looked up from the photocopied article he had been reading. Mma Ramotswe noticed the graphs across the page, the tables of results. Behind the things that happened to one, the coughs and pains, the human fevers, there were these cold figures.

  He started to rise to his feet, but Mma Ramotswe urged him not to. “I am sorry to be late. It is my fault. I drove very slowly.” She noticed that the doctor had green eyes; green eyes and a skin that was very light brown, the colour of chocolate milk, a mixture of Africa and Europe.

  “Drive slowly,” he mused. “If only everyone would do that, we’d be less busy in the hospital, Mma Ramotswe.”

  A waitress appeared and took their order. He put his papers away in a small folder and then turned his gaze to Mma Ramotswe. “Mr Monyena told us that you might want to speak to people,” he said. “So here I am. He’s the boss.”

  He spoke politely enough, but there was a flatness in his tone. That explains it, thought Mma Ramotswe. That explains why he came.

  “So he told you that I have been asked to look into those unexplained deaths,” she said. “Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Though why we need anybody else to do that beats me. We had an internal enquiry, you know. Mr Monyena was on that himself. Why have another one?”

  Mma Ramotswe was interested. Tati Monyena had not told her about an internal enquiry, which must have been an oversight on his part.

  “And what did it conclude?” she asked.

  Dr Cronje rolled his eyes up in a gesture which indicated contempt for internal enquiries. “Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing. The trouble was that some people could not bring themselves to admit the obvious. So the enquiry petered out. Technically it hasn’t been wound up.”

  The waitress now brought them their drinks: a pot of bush tea for Mma Ramotswe and a cup of coffee for the doctor. Mma Ramotswe poured her tea and took a first sip.

  “What do you think it should have decided?” she asked. “What if you had been on it?”

  The doctor smiled—for the first time, thought Mma Ramotswe—and it was not a smile that lasted long.

  “I was,” he said.

  “You were?”

  “I was a member of the enquiry. It was the hospital superintendant, Mr Monyena, one of the senior staff nurses, somebody nominated by Chief Linchwe, and me. That was it.”

  Mma Ramotswe took another sip of tea. Somebody had started to play music inside the restaurant, and for a few seconds she thought she recognised the tune as one that had been played by Note Mokoti, her former husband. She caught her breath; Note was over, gone, but when she heard his music, the tunes he liked to play, which she sometimes did, a tinge of pain could come. But it was a different tune, something like one that he played, but different.

  “When you say that there was something very obvious that people could not admit, what was that, Rra?”

  The doctor reached out and touched the rim of his coffee cup, idly drawing a finger round it. “Natural causes,” he said. “Cardiac and pulmonary failure in two of the cases. Renal in the other. Case closed, Mma…Mma…”

  He had already used her name, but she supplied it again. “Ramotswe.”

  “Ramotswe. Sorry.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Then the doctor looked up into the tree, as if trying to find something. She saw the green eyes moving, searching. The green eyes were from the Afrikaner, but the softness of his face, a masculine softness but a softness nonetheless, came from the mother, came from Africa.

  “So there’s really nothing further to be done about it,” Mma Ramotswe said gently.

  The doctor did not reply for a moment; he was still looking up into the tree above them. “In my view, no,” he said. “But that won’t stop the talk, the pointing of fingers.”

  “At?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “Me,” he said. He looked down again and their eyes met. “Yes, me. There are people in the hospital who say that I’m bad luck. They look at me in that way…you know, that way which people use here. As if they’re a bit frightened of you. They say nothing, but they look.”

  It was hard for Mma Ramotswe to respond to this. She had a sense that Dr Cronje was one of those people who did not fit in—wherever they were. They were outsiders, treated with a reserve which could easily become suspicion, and that suspicion could easily blossom into a whispering campaign of ugly rumours. But what puzzled her was why she herself should have this uneasy feeling about him, which she did. Why should she feel this discomfort in his presence when she knew next to nothing about him? It was intuition again; useful sometimes but on other occasions a doubtful benefit.

  “People are like that,” she said at last. “If you come from somewhere else, they can be like that. It is not easy to be a stranger, is it?”

  He looked at her as she spoke; it seemed to her that he was surprised that she should speak like this, with such frankness. “No,” he said, and then paused before he continued. “And that is what I have been all my life. All of it.”

  The waitress arrived with their plates. There was stew, and a plate of vegetables for each of them.

  He looked at his plate. “I shouldn’t talk like t
his, Mma. I have nothing to complain about, really. This is a good place.”

  Mma Ramotswe lifted up her fork, and then put it down again. She reached across and laid a hand upon his wrist. He looked down at where her hand rested.

  “You mustn’t be sad, Rra,” she said.

  He frowned, and laid down his knife.

  “I wish I could go home,” he said. “I love this country. I love it. But it’s not home for me.”

  “Well you could go home,” Mma Ramotswe said. She nodded in the direction of the border, not far across a few miles of scrub bush, behind the hills. “You could go home now, couldn’t you? There’s nothing stopping you.”

  “That place is not home any more,” he said. “I left it so long ago, I don’t feel at home there.”

  “And this place? Here?”

  “It’s where I live. But I can’t ever belong here, can I? I will never be from this place. I will never be one of these people, no matter how long I stay. I’ll always be an outsider.”

  She knew what he meant. It was all very well for her, she thought; she knew exactly where she came from and where she belonged, but there were many people who did not, who had been uprooted, forced out by need or victimisation, by being simply the wrong people in the wrong place. There were many such people in Africa, and they ate a very bitter fruit; they were extra, unwanted persons, like children who are not loved.

  She wanted to say something to this man, this lonely doctor, but she realised there was little comfort she could give him. Yet she could try.

  “Don’t think, Rra,” she said, “that what you are doing, your work in the hospital up there, is not appreciated. Nobody might ever have said thank you to you, but I do now, Rra. I say thank you for what you do.”

  He had lowered his gaze, but now he looked at her, and she found herself staring into those unnerving green eyes.

  “Thank you, Mma,” he said. And then he picked up his knife and fork and began to eat.