In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mma Ramotswe let out a cry of delight. “You’ve found him? Where is he?”

  Mma Makutsi held up a hand. “Not exactly found him,” she said. “But I’ve found out that he’s no longer here. He’s in Johannesburg.”

  She explained to Mma Ramotswe about the telephone call to the minister and about his inadvertent disclosure of the whereabouts of their quarry.

  “You assume that it was inadvertent,” corrected Mma Ramotswe. “But I rather think that the minister may have known exactly what he was saying. He did know that you were looking for somebody who had probably stolen a very large amount of other people’s money? He did know that?”

  “He did,” said Mma Makutsi. “He knew all about that.”

  “Well,” said Mma Ramotswe, “I think that this minister is not as stupid as you think he is. It sounds to me as if he was looking for a way of telling you something without running up problems with his own conscience. He knew that he should not break any confidences, but if he could do it indirectly, as he obviously has done, then perhaps he would not feel so bad about it.”

  “But is that the way that ministers think?” asked Mma Makutsi.

  “It certainly is,” said Mma Ramotswe. “One thing I have learned in this job is that everybody, even ministers, find ways of telling you things that they feel they should not tell you directly. And in the case of this minister, he probably thinks that it would be a very good thing for somebody to catch up with this man. So he has told you all that he knew, but he has done it in a special, roundabout way.”

  Mma Makutsi was thoughtful. “So, what should we do now, Mma? Is that enough?”

  “What would Clovis Andersen suggest?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Makutsi looked at the well-thumbed copy of The Principles of Private Detection. She had never actually read the book from cover to cover, although she knew that one day she should do this.

  “He would say that you should always remember when to stop asking questions,” she ventured. “I think he says that, doesn’t he?”

  “Exactly!” exclaimed Mma Ramotswe, adding, “I don’t think we even need that book any more. I think we know enough to start writing our own book, Mma. Do you agree?”

  “I do,” said Mma Makutsi. “Private Detection for Ladies by Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi. I can see that book already.”

  “So can I,” said Mma Ramotswe, taking a further sip of her tea. “It will be a very good book, Mma. I am sure of that.”

  TO REWARD MMA MAKUTSI for her success, Mma Ramotswe gave her the rest of the day off.

  “You have worked very hard,” she said to her assistant. “Now you can go and spend the bonus I am going to give you.”

  Mma Makutsi could not hide her surprise. No mention had ever been made of bonuses, but she had heard people who worked for large companies talk about them.

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe, smiling, and reaching for the cash box which she kept in the top drawer of her desk. “We shall get a very good fee for this Zambian work. I think that it will be about ten thousand pula altogether.” She paused, watching the effect of her words on Mma Makutsi. “So your bonus will be twenty-five per cent of that, which is …”

  “Two thousand five hundred pula,” said Mma Makutsi quickly.

  “That much?” said Mma Ramotswe absent-mindedly. “Well, yes, I suppose it will be two thousand five hundred pula. Of course you’ll have to wait until we’re paid before you get all of that, but here is five hundred pula to be going on with.”

  Mma Makutsi accepted the notes gratefully and tucked them into the top of her blouse. She had already decided what she would do with her bonus, or this portion of it, and it seemed to her that this was exactly the time to do it. She looked down at her shoes, her work shoes, and shook a finger at them.

  “More new shoes?” asked Mma Ramotswe, smiling.

  “Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “New shoes and some new handkerchiefs.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded her approval. The tiny white van had crossed her mind again, and the thought threatened to darken the mood of joy. But she said nothing to Mma Makutsi, who was now preparing to leave the office and catch a minibus to the shops. She deserves this happiness, thought Mma Ramo-tswe. She has had so many years in which there has been little for her. Now with her typing school and her new house, and this bonus of course, her life must be taking a marked turn for the better. Perhaps she would find a man too, although that might be too much to ask for at the moment. Still, it would be good for her to find a nice man, if there were any left, which was a matter about which Mma Ramotswe was beginning to feel some doubt. The tiny white van would not have been stolen by a woman, would it? That would have been a man. And this dishonest Zambian financier—he was a man too, was he not? Men had a lot to answer for, she thought; except for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, of course, and Mr Polopetsi, and her late father. So there were good men around, if one looked hard enough. But where, she wondered, were these good men when one was looking for a husband? Where could Mma Makutsi find a good man at her age, with her large spectacles and her difficult complexion? It would not be easy, thought Mma Ramotswe, and there really was very little that she, or anybody else, could do to help.

  THE BUYING OF THE NEW SHOES took remarkably little time. She had already seen the pair that she wanted—the red shoes with the gold buckles—and to her delight they were still prominently displayed in the shop window when she reached it. There was a moment of anxiety while the assistant searched for her size, but the shoes were soon produced and they fitted perfectly.

  “You look very good in those,” said the assistant admiringly. “Those buckles, Mma! They will dazzle the men all right!”

  Mma Makutsi looked at her anxiously. “I am not always trying to dazzle men, you know.”

  “Oh, I can tell that,” the assistant corrected herself. “Those shoes would be good for work too. They are very good shoes for all sorts of things.”

  Mma Makutsi decided to wear the shoes immediately, and as she walked along the pavement she felt that extraordinary pleasure that comes from having fresh leather soles beneath your feet. It was a feeling of satisfaction, of security, and in this case it was compounded by the flashing of the buckles in the sunlight. This is what it must feel like to be a rich person, she thought. And rich people would feel like this all the time, as they walked about in their fine clothes and their new shoes. Well, at least she had a bit of that feeling, as long as the shoes were new and the leather unscuffed.

  She decided to walk a bit further down the line of shops. Not only would this give her the chance to wear in her new shoes, but she had a bit of money left over from the purchase of the shoes and she might find something else which would take her fancy. So she set off, walking past a small radio shop of no interest, and a shop that sold garden equipment. None of this seemed at all promising, and she wondered whether she should catch a minibus that would take her to the shopping centre where Mma Ramotswe liked to sit and have tea. There were shops there that might have something tempting.

  Mma Makutsi stopped. She was in front of a shop which sold furniture, the Double Comfort Furniture Shop, and standing inside the shop, looking out at her through the plateglass window, was Phuti Radiphuti.

  Mma Makutsi smiled and waved. Yes, of course: he worked in a furniture store, and here he was, selling furniture. Well, it would be interesting to see his shop, even if she had not been planning to buy any furniture.

  Phuti Radiphuti waved back and moved towards the door to open it for her. As she went in, he greeted her warmly, stumbling over the words, but making his pleasure at seeing her clear enough.

  “And look at your sh … sh … sh … shoes,” he said. “They are very pr … pr …”

  “Thank you,” said Mma Makutsi. “Yes, they are very pretty. I have just bought them with my bonus.”

  Phuti Radiphuti smiled and wrung his hands together.

  “This is my shop,” he said. “This is where I work.”

  Mma Makutsi looked ar
ound. It was a large furniture shop, with all sorts of inviting-looking sofas and chairs. There were also tables and desks, set out in serried ranks.

  “It is a very big place,” she said. “Are there many people who work here?”

  “I have about ten people working here,” he said, the words now coming more easily. She had noticed that his stammer was most pronounced when he started a conversation and that it became less marked when he got into his stride.

  She thought for a moment. He had said that he had ten people working here; this sounded rather as if he was the manager, which seemed a little bit unlikely.

  “Are you the manager then?” she asked jokingly.

  “Yes,” he said. “My father owns the store and I am the manager. He is mostly retired these days. He likes to spend his time with his cattle, you know, but he still comes here. He is in the office back there now.”

  For a few moments Mma Makutsi said nothing. The knowledge that Phuti Radiphuti effectively owned a store should have made no difference to how she viewed him, but it did. He was no longer the inept dancer, the likeable, but rather vulnerable man with whom she danced at the dance academy. Here he was an important man, a man of wealth. The money did not matter. It did not matter.

  The silence was broken by Phuti Radiphuti. “You must meet my father,” he said. “Come to the office and meet him.”

  They walked to the back of the showroom, past the tables and chairs and into a large room with a blue carpet and a couple of cluttered desks. As they entered, an elderly man who had been sitting behind one of the desks looked up from behind a pile of invoices. Mma Makutsi moved forward to greet him, using the traditional and respectful greeting appropriate for an older man.

  “This is my friend from the dancing class,” said Phuti Radiphuti. There was pride in his voice, and Mma Makutsi noticed it.

  The old man looked up at Mma Makutsi and rose slowly to his feet. He grimaced as he did so, as if he was in pain.

  “It is very good to see you, Mma,” said Mr Radiphuti. Then, turning to his son, he told him that he could see a customer in the showroom waiting for attention. He should not be kept waiting, he said.

  With Phuti Radiphuti out of the room, the old man gestured for Mma Makutsi to sit down on a chair beside his desk.

  “You have been very kind to dance with my son,” he said quietly. “He is a shy boy. He does not have many friends.”

  “He is a good person,” said Mma Makutsi. “And his dancing is getting better. It was not so good to begin with, but now it is getting better.”

  The old man nodded. “He speaks more clearly too, when he is with people he knows,” he said. “I am sure that you have helped him in that way too.”

  Mma Makutsi smiled. “Yes, he is less shy now.” She looked down at her new shoes, wondering what this old man would make of them. Would he think her flashy to be wearing shoes with such large buckles?

  Mr Radiphuti did not seem to notice her shoes. “What do you do, Mma? Do you have a job? My son has spoken about you many times, but he has not told me what you do.”

  “I work at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” said Mma Makutsi. “I am an assistant there. There is a lady …”

  “Called Mma Ramotswe,” said Mr Radiphuti.

  “You know her?”

  “Of course I do,” said the old man. “And I knew her father too. He was called Obed Ramotswe and he was a very good man. I bought cattle from him, you know, and I still have some of the descendants of those cattle down on my farm near Lobatse. They are fine beasts.” He paused. “So you work with Precious Ramotswe. Well, that is very interesting. Do you solve many cases?”

  “I solved one today,” said Mma Makutsi lightly. “I almost found a man who had taken a lot of money.”

  “Almost? Did he get away?”

  Mma Makutsi laughed, and explained about the information that she had obtained which would enable people in Johannesburg to track him down. The old man listened carefully and smiled with pleasure.

  “I can tell that you are very clever,” he said. “That is good.”

  Mma Makutsi did not know how to take this remark. Why was it good that she was clever? Why would it make any difference to this old man? For a brief moment she wondered whether she should tell him about her ninety-seven per cent at the Botswana Secretarial College, but eventually decided against it: one should not speak too often about these things.

  They talked for a few minutes more, mostly about the shop and the furniture which it sold. Then Phuti Radiphuti returned with a tray on which three cups of tea were balanced, and they drank this before he offered to run her back to her house in his car, and she accepted. It would be good, she thought, not to have to walk too far in these new red shoes, which were beginning to pinch a little bit on the right foot—not a great deal, but noticeable nonetheless.

  When they arrived at her house, Phuti Radiphuti stopped the engine of his car. Then he reached into the back and took out a large parcel, which he gave to Mma Makutsi.

  “This is a present for you, Mma,” he said. “I hope that you like it.”

  Mma Makutsi looked at the carefully wrapped gift. “May I open it now?” she asked.

  Phuti Radiphuti nodded proudly. “It is from the shop,” he said.

  Mma Makutsi tore open the paper. Inside was a cushion, an ornate gold velvet cushion. It was the most beautiful thing she had seen for a good while, and she struggled with her tears. He was a fine man this, a good man, who liked her enough to give her this beautiful cushion.

  She looked at him and smiled. “You are very kind to me,” she said. “You are very kind.”

  Phuti Radiphuti looked at the steering wheel. He could not speak.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DOING THE DONKEY WORK

  M R POLOPETSI stood under the empty sky, beside the track and a half-dead acacia tree. His excitement was making itself felt physically: a pulse that was becoming more rapid and a prickling in his skin at the back of his neck. He had watched Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck make its bumpy way up the track in the direction of the main road, a small cloud of dust being thrown up behind it as the heavily treaded tyres engaged with the surface dirt. Now it had disappeared and he was alone in the middle of the bush, looking down at the stain on the ground where Mma Ramotswe’s van had bled its final drops of oil. He smiled. If his father could see him now, how proud he would be. He would never have dreamed, of course, that the skills which he had taught his son would be put to this use, nor would he have dreamed that his son would end up in prison, nor work as a mechanic at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, nor be, if he dared to think of it, an assistant private detective at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. He could not really claim that last title, of course, but if only they gave him the chance to prove himself then there was surely no reason why he should not be every bit as good as Mma Makutsi. He would not aspire to become another Mma Ramotswe—nobody could do that—but at least he might be able to do the things that Mma Makutsi did, ninety-seven per cent or no ninety-seven per cent.

  Mr Polopetsi’s father, Ernest Polopetsi, had been a small-scale farmer who had enjoyed hunting in his spare time. He had rarely shot any game, as he had no rifle and relied on others for that, but he had been adept at following animal spoor and had taught his son how to do it too. He had shown him the prints made by the different animals—by civet cats, by duiker, by rock rabbits—and he had shown him how to tell how long ago an animal had passed by. There was the wind, which blew small grains of sand into the indentations made by the animal hoof or pads; there was rain, which washed everything away; there was the sun which dried out freshly turned soil. Then there was the bending of the grass, which could spring back, but slowly and in a time that could be read as a person might read the hands of a clock. This knowledge had been passed on to Mr Polopetsi as a boy and now, so unexpectedly, he was presented with the chance to use it.

  He looked down at the ground and began his examination. There were prints which he could ru
le out at the outset: his own, to begin with; the marks of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s veldschoens—a flat footprint reflecting soft rubber soles; then there were Mma Ramotswe’s footprints, one set more recent than the other, because she had walked around the van the night before, immediately after it had broken down. Then there were other prints—a pair of boots that had walked along a path that joined the track from the right. The boots had been accompanied by a set of bare feet, small in size and therefore the feet of a child, perhaps, or of a small woman. That pair of boots had walked round and round in a circle and had then stopped and done something near the oil stain. After that, the boots had gone off and, yes, they had come back with another set of prints. Mr Polopetsi bent down and looked at the confusion of spoor: boots, tyres (small tyre prints—the prints of the tiny white van itself), and then, quite unmistakably, the prints of donkey hoofs. Yes! thought Mr Polopetsi. And then, yes! again.

  He stood up and stretched. It was uncomfortable bending down like that, but it was the only thing to do when one was tracking. One had to get down to that level, to see the world from the point of view of the grains of sand and the blades of grass. It was another world down there, a world of ants and tiny crusts of earth, like miniature mountain ridges, but it was a world that could tell you a great deal about the world of a few feet up; all you had to do was ask it.

  He stooped down again and began to move off, following the donkey spoor. This went up the road a short way and then turned off to the right, in the same direction as the path down which the pair of boots had walked. Now, in the ground between the shrubs, the picture was becoming much clearer. There had been much activity on the track itself; now the donkeys, inspanned to the tiny white van, had pulled their burden across undisturbed ground and the tracks were tell-tale. The donkeys—and there had been four of them, concluded Mr Polopetsi—had been led, whipped no doubt, by the man in boots and behind them, moving over at least some of the donkey tracks and obliterating them—had come the tiny white van itself. There must have been somebody else sitting at the wheel and steering the van as it was pulled along. Of course that was the pair of bare feet—a boy no doubt. Yes, the boy had steered while his father drove the donkeys. That is what had happened.