“A sleeping partner?”
“That’s it. I always thought that was an odd expression, Mma. I always thought of a sleeping partner as being somebody who sat with his head on his desk and slept.”
Mma Makutsi laughed. “Some of them probably do.”
Flora resumed her story. “The business became bigger—it did quite well, Mma. After four years they took on another sales person. That was fine. She was called Bonnie. I liked that lady—she came from up north somewhere, but she was a very hard worker and would always stand in for me if I needed time off for something. We were very good friends. It was all very nice in those days.”
She became silent as she reflected on what once had been.
“And then?” asked Mma Makutsi.
“Oh, the business expanded. Mr. Gopolang employed a woman called Charity Mompoloki. I liked Charity, but shortly after she took the job, Bonnie left because her husband was in the police and he had been posted up to Maun. It was a promotion—he was made inspector—but I don’t think she was very happy going all that way up there. Anyway, she left and that was when…” Flora looked over her shoulder again before finishing the sentence. “That was when a certain person was given a job.” She inclined her head towards the other side of the sales floor, where Mma Makutsi could see Mr. Polopetsi in conversation with the other assistant. “That person, I’m afraid, Mma. She came.”
Mma Makutsi reached down to stroke the top of an office chair.
“It’s not real leather,” said Flora. “But it’s very easy to clean.”
“It must be hard to work with somebody you don’t get on with,” said Mma Makutsi.
“Oh, it is, Mma. I tried at the beginning—I did my best, but she is too ambitious, that one. You see, we get paid on commission here. We get a salary, yes, but the rest is based on our sales. And she tries to get to customers when they come in. She tries to get to them before they have a chance to speak to me. That way she gets more sales. More sales, more commission.”
Mma Makutsi clicked her tongue in disapproval. “It’s best to share these things, Mma.”
Flora gave Mma Makutsi a look whose meaning was quite clear: you understand, it said.
Mma Makutsi now ventured the question she had been hoping to ask. “And this other lady, Mma? Charity, did you say?”
Flora’s expression now became one of annoyance. “She’s gone.” She lowered her voice. “Fired.”
Mma Makutsi pretended to look surprised. “For what?”
“For nothing, Mma,” hissed Flora. “I thought you couldn’t get fired in this country for nothing—with the Labour Act or whatever they call it. I thought those days were over, but no, I was wrong.”
Mma Makutsi shook her head in disbelief. “But they must have given some reason. They must have used some excuse.”
“Oh, they did. They said she had been rude to one of our customers. That was the reason they gave.”
“And she hadn’t been rude at all?”
For a moment Flora did not reply. Then she said, “No, I wouldn’t say that.”
“Say what?”
“I wouldn’t say that she hadn’t been rude.” She paused. “Charity was a very nice woman, Mma—she was my friend. But she believed in speaking her mind. And then she could say things that people don’t expect other people to say to them.”
Mma Makutsi’s eyes opened wide. “Even to a customer, Mma?”
Flora wrinkled her nose. “He’s a very unpleasant man, that man. We’ve all been tempted to speak our minds to him. She did. But it was only once—and I don’t think she deserved to lose her job just because of that.” She paused. “We should all be allowed a second chance, Mma, don’t you think?”
Mma Makutsi did think that. But her mind was not on issues of fairness or unfairness; it was on the information she had just been given about the dismissal. So it was justified. This was not what she had wanted to find out, and she could not conceal her disappointment. “Did you see this taking place, Mma? Were there any other witnesses?”
At first Flora seemed unwilling to answer. “These things happen very quickly, Mma. Things are said and then it’s all over and the damage is done.”
“Yes, I know that,” said Mma Makutsi. “But did you see it, Mma? Were you in the shop at the time?”
Flora nodded reluctantly. “I was in the shop.”
“But did you see it?”
“I was close by…” Flora broke off. Her suspicions had been aroused, and now she was looking at Mma Makutsi through narrowed eyes. The Sunday-school teacher had disappeared, to be replaced with something more calculating. “Why are you asking all these questions, Mma? Are you here to buy a chair or are you here for some other reason?”
It was a direct challenge, and Mma Makutsi did not dodge it. “I am here in my official capacity,” she said. “I am here as Principal Investigating Officer.”
Flora repeated the title. “Principal Investigating Officer? From the Government?”
Mma Makutsi was ready for that. “No, but on behalf of an interested party.”
“On behalf of Charity?”
Mma Makutsi had not expected this, and she answered it truthfully. “You could say that.”
Flora’s suspicions seemed to melt away. “Why didn’t you tell me, Mma? Why didn’t you ask me? If she’s bringing a case, then I would be prepared to give evidence. I would be prepared to say that she was not rude to that man.”
Mma Makutsi was taken aback. “But you’ve just told me she was, Mma.”
“Yes, I told you. But I could tell a very different story to help my friend.”
Mma Makutsi drew back. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency did not tolerate lying, and still less would it be party to perjury. “That is out of the question, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi coldly. “We would never condone lying—even on behalf of our client.”
Flora pouted. “But you said you were looking for a chair,” she pointed out. “That must have been a lie. You came here to ask me questions.”
Mma Makutsi could not accept the accusation. “Detectives require cover,” she said. “And there is a big difference between cover and lying.”
“Such as?” challenged Flora.
“Cover harms nobody; lies do.”
It was just the note on which to end their conversation, and with that she turned away and went to fetch Mr. Polopetsi, who had just finished his conversation with the other assistant. They left in a silence that remained unbroken until they reached the car, where Charlie was waiting for them. As she got into the car, Mma Makutsi turned to Charlie and told him that the explanation he had advanced a short while ago was wrong. “I’m sorry to say,” she began, “but that lady was indeed rude to their client. So your idea that she was fired because the owner wanted to give the job to a girlfriend cannot be right.”
Charlie turned on the engine and looked in the driving mirror. “Unless…” He waited for another car to move out of its parking place. “Unless…”
Mma Makutsi waited. Eventually he continued, “Unless the man she was rude to—this big client of theirs—was a friend of the owner and the owner asked him, you see, to say that she was rude, you see, and she really wasn’t. You get how that works, Mma?”
Mma Makutsi dismissed this out of hand. “You have a very big imagination, Charlie. You should start writing stories. Perhaps you could get a job in films over that side, over in Johannesburg or somewhere like that.” She laughed. “Lots of girls in the film industry, Charlie. Glamorous girls.” She turned to address Mr. Polopetsi in the back of the car. “What do you think, Mr. Polopetsi? Would Charlie make a good movie director?”
Mr. Polopetsi laughed nervously. “He would be better than me, Mma. I wouldn’t make very good movies.”
Charlie looked in the mirror. He saw Mr. Polopetsi sitting in the back, too small for his seatbelt, and he smiled. “Stranger things have happened, Rra,” he said. “I can see you doing something really exciting, Rra. You could be my assistant director.”
Mr. Polopetsi smiled at the compliment. “I don’t know, Charlie. I’m not very good at telling people what to do.”
Mma Makutsi laughed. “You men,” she said. “Your time is up, I’m afraid. All the big jobs are going to be done by women soon. You just watch out—the women are coming!”
“Coming in my direction, I hope,” said Charlie. “Come on, girls—I’m over here. Kiss, kiss! That’s the way. Big kisses for Charlie: one, two, three! Ow!”
“Concentrate on your driving, Charlie,” snapped Mma Makutsi.
When they got back to the office, Mma Makutsi and Mr. Polopetsi discussed what they had been told. Mr. Polopetsi listened intently to Mma Makutsi’s account of her conversation with Flora, and told her about what the other assistant had said to him. He did not reveal, though, everything he had heard. He had decided that he would have to speak to Mma Ramotswe in private because of the nature of the information he had received—some of which bore directly on Mma Makutsi in a way that he felt she very probably would not like.
CHAPTER TEN
ONE OF THOSE WHO DID NOT HAVE THE LOOK
WHILE MR. POLOPETSI and Mma Makutsi were conducting their individual conversations in The Office Place, Mma Ramotswe was driving down the road that led from Gaborone to the southern town of Lobatse. It was a road that she knew well, and it occurred to her that her van knew it well too. Of course cars had no memory—one should not attribute human qualities to them—but even so…if cars were to know anything, then her van would know this road, and if we were talking about such a world, it would be quite capable of finding its own way down this particular highway. The landmarks were familiar: there was Kgale Hill, on the right shortly after they left the confines of the town, a great sentinel of granite pushed up by some ancient geological hiccup. That had happened when all Botswana was still a vast inland sea, and the hill would have been an island then, surrounded by the waters of that now vanished lake, a refuge from the strange aquatic creatures that must have ruled the roost in those days: crocodiles far larger and more frightening than any of the denizens of the modern Limpopo; creatures for which there would simply be no name, so terrible and so hungry as to intimidate even the crocodiles…She stopped herself. She did not like to think of such times; the world was problematic enough as it was, without dwelling on what things were like before Botswana existed.
She glanced at Kgale Hill. It was benign enough in the middle of the day, even if you could make out places where there were caves and fissures in the rock that one would have to be careful about; at night, though, it would not be a place to linger. She shivered. A long time ago, when she had first come to Gaborone, she had gone on a church picnic at the foot of the hill. It had been the afternoon, and there had been some thirty people at the event, including children from the Sunday school. The Ladies’ Guild had been responsible for the catering and had prepared baskets of sandwiches and cakes; the men had undertaken the making of a fire for the braai, and there had been chains of sizzling sausage, the boerewors, as it was called because it had been so popular with the Boers over the border in the old days; they liked their meat, those people, almost as much as the Batswana did. In fact, thought Mma Ramotswe, everyone in these parts liked their meat, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was a good example of that. Stew was his favourite, but he was very happy with chicken, ostrich, and steak of any description; bacon was another weakness of his—served with sausages, if available, and fried tomatoes. In fact, Mma Ramotswe reflected, she herself liked all of the above, as well as fat cakes, another Botswana delicacy, and pastries of every description.
At that picnic, with the smell of the braai drifting through the acacia trees, she had gone for a walk with a couple of other young women from the church. The picnic site had been at the base of the hill, and they had walked as far as the first jumble of boulders that marked the sudden ascent of a rock face. They sat down on one of the smaller boulders and surveyed the scene around them. Off in the direction from which they had come, they saw the members of the party milling about—the children running around as they played some game or other, the women talking in small groups, the men clustered about the smoking fire. And then one of the young women turned to Mma Ramotswe and asked her if she had heard something. There had been a hissing sound, she said.
Mma Ramotswe listened. From a distance she heard the sound of the children’s voices; somewhere behind, an orchestra of cicadas was striking up; but there was no hissing. Another woman heard it, though, and said that yes, there was a hissing sound. They stood up and looked around them. “We should go,” said the woman who had first heard the noise. “It’s not safe to stay here.”
They moved away, glancing behind them as they did, everyone aware of the fact that they had been in the presence of danger. It could have been a rock python—a snake that, although massive, you could usually avoid—or it could have been something even more sinister: a black mamba, the most feared and ferocious snake in Africa, capable of outstripping a galloping horse, they said; remorseless in defence of its territory, its dark head coffin-shaped—appropriately enough for a snake that could kill a large man within minutes. As they retreated, they were seized by a sudden panic and they began to run, shouting out as they did and alarming the men, who left their fire and their sizzling sausages to find out what was amiss.
The men had made a joke of it, saying that all sorts of creatures made noises like that and they could have been frightened of something as innocent as a bullfrog, or a mongoose perhaps, or any number of friendly residents of the hill. Even a monkey, it was suggested, could make a hissing sound to enjoy the sight of a group of scared young women tripping over themselves to get away.
But now, driving past the hill, she remembered the momentary terror, even after all those years. That fear was something that was always with you in the bush, and it was only the foolhardy who would ignore it. There were things that it was perfectly right to be scared of—because they were, in themselves, frightening things. Some of them you could see, others were not so visible; some you could hear; others you sensed in some other, indefinable way.
The hill falling away behind her, she drove past the turn-off to Mokolodi, and thought of her friend who lived there, who painted the plants and flowers of Botswana, and whose husband and son had worked so hard to make the animal sanctuary at the edge of their land. She smiled as she thought of her friend, Neil, who had worked there and who knew equally well, it seemed, every humble tortoise as well as every lumbering rhino.
There were other landmarks as she travelled down the road. The turn-off to the farm where she had, a few years previously, helped to solve one of those family disputes that can poison relations between those who should love one another rather than argue about who is entitled to what. And after that, another gate that marked the small farm of yet another client whose neighbour had been stealing his cattle and who had eventually turned to Mma Ramotswe for help. Both of these matters had been resolved satisfactorily, which meant, in Mma Ramotswe’s view, that all those concerned had been persuaded to see reason. That, she felt, was the key to the solution of any problem: you did not look for a winner who would take everything; you found a way of allowing people to save face; you found a way of healing rather than imposing.
And then, just before reaching Lobatse, she passed a farm that evoked a particularly poignant memory. This was not a place she had become involved in professionally; this went back to a time well before that, when as a young girl she had gone there with her father to buy a bull for their herd of cattle. It was a big purchase, as a good strong bull could cost many thousands of pula. And this one was a beauty, her father said; this one was a paramount chief among bulls, a bull in whose veins ran the blood of great bulls of the past—bulls revered among cows, the progenitors of whole lines of fine cattle.
They had seen him standing under a tree to keep out of the sun, his cow-wives all relegated to less favourable positions in the cattle enclosure. Approaching him with the breeder, they had be
en treated to a breathless account of his finer points. They would have noticed, said his owner, the size of the hump on his back—for he was Brahman; they would have seen his broad, fine face—the large eyes, the floppy ears that drooped down on either side of his head; and the evident strength, of course, of his forequarters. They would have seen all these things, the breeder said, and he hesitated to mention them to somebody as knowledgeable as Obed Ramotswe was, but he thought it might be helpful just to list them anyway.
“You see, Precious,” said Obed, drawing her aside, “this bull will be a very good daddy for hundreds of calves. He has that look about him, you see. It’s hard to say why he has that look, but he just has, and half the work in being a good judge of cattle is learning to detect that look.”
She smiled at the memory. Her father, her dearest daddy, had become late many years ago now, but she still thought of him every day. Now she remembered his words about “the look” and reminded herself that she used that expression about people too. Some people had “the look” and others did not. It was something to do with confidence, she thought. You had the look if you knew who you were, what you were doing, and why you were doing it. That bull had the look because he knew that he was good at being a Brahman bull; he knew what was expected of him, and he was not plagued by any doubts. Doubts were the enemy of the look—that was very clear. If you were not sure that you should be doing what you were doing, it showed—and you then became one of those who did not have the look.
She saw the sign pointing to the hospital, and she composed herself, putting aside the rambling thoughts that she had allowed herself to think as she drove down the road. Now was the time to concentrate on the task in hand. And that involved finding the man who had been mentioned by Sister Banjule. She had called him the No. 1 Gossip, and Mma Ramotswe would now find out whether that label was justified. She would give him the benefit of the doubt, as she always did: her experience had taught her that the names we gave to others, and the things we accused them of, often said more about us than they did about them. She liked Sister Banjule, whose work was good work, but it might be that she herself wished that she had more time to talk and could talk more freely than her job allowed. Medical people carried a lot of secrets, and by and large kept these to themselves; they could be excused if every so often they felt the desire to be able to talk to others about what they saw, to unburden themselves of the weight of confidences. Mma Ramotswe, at least, had Mma Makutsi to talk to about the secrets she learned in her job—that was perfectly permissible; but what would it be like if she had nobody with whom to discuss these things?
The House of Unexpected Sisters Page 12