In the case of the dishonest hotel manager, Mma Ramotswe had been able to deal with the issue quickly and conclusively, but now, in the Sengupta case, she simply had no idea where to begin. There was no point in interviewing Mrs. again because it seemed that she had nothing to say. And even if they imagined that she might throw some light on her situation, Mma Ramotswe was under the impression that Miss Rose did not want her guest troubled by the sort of insistent questioning that would be required to uncover it. And if she could not do that, then she wondered where on earth she could possibly start.
It was something that Clovis Andersen had said, and it came back to her rather suddenly, triggering the rush of excitement that can accompany the solution to a tricky problem. Clovis Andersen had written that in cases where there did not appear to be any obvious way forward, the best thing to do was to follow the principal suspect. If you have no leads, he wrote, watch your most likely suspect and that person will lead you to the leads. Of course this was not a case in which there was a suspect as such, but there was no doubt that Mrs. was the principal object of interest in this case. If they watched her, it was possible she might do something that could give them a clue as to who she was. This was not to suggest that she was concealing anything; it was perfectly possible that what she did would be the result of things in the back of her mind, memories that she did not know she had but which might cause her to act in a particular way. She had heard that people could go back to places they had forgotten they knew; that there was something deep in their memory that drew them back. Could this be the same with this poor woman who had lost her memory?
It would be difficult for Mma Ramotswe or Mma Makutsi to follow Mrs., as she had met them both, and would think it a bit odd if she saw Mma Ramotswe sitting in her tiny white van outside the Sengupta gates.
“Hello, Mma,” she might say. “What are you doing parked here?”
And Mma Ramotswe would have to affect surprise and answer: “Oh, I see that I am in front of Mr. Sengupta’s house—so I am! I had just parked to have a bit of a rest after a long drive—you know how it is, Mma.”
To which Mrs. might say, “But wouldn’t it be better to drive back to your own house, Mma Ramotswe? It is not far away, after all, and then you could get out of your van and go and have a rest on your comfortable bed.”
It would be difficult to argue with that, and Mma Ramotswe would have to say, “You know, Mma, that’s a sensible suggestion. I shall do that immediately.”
Of course it would be a bit different if Mma Makutsi were to be seen watching the Sengupta house. That would lead to an entirely different meeting, thought Mma Ramotswe.
“So, Mma, you are sitting outside our house.”
“And what of it, Mma?” she would reply. “Is this not a free country? Is this not a place in which people may sit exactly where they please? Perhaps I am old-fashioned—perhaps it is no longer the case that we can sit where we like on a public road; perhaps we now have to ask permission from the people who live in houses nearby and say, ‘Do you mind if we sit in the public road? Do you mind if we park near your house?’ Perhaps the sky is no longer the property of all of us, but has been sold by the government to this person and that person and we have to ask for permission to sit beneath particular bits of sky.”
No, it would not be possible for either of them to watch Mrs.—that would have to be done by somebody whom she had never seen before and would not notice. If she and Mma Makutsi had an assistant, then she could be sent to shadow Mrs.… or he could … There was Charlie—of course there was Charlie. Nobody noticed a young man—unless, naturally, you were a young woman (before you grew out of noticing young men, which, in the case of some people, took rather a long time). For most of us, thought Mma Ramotswe, young men were just … young men, and one did not pay particular attention to the question of who these young men you saw about the place were. It would never occur to Mrs. that the young man sitting in a van on the other side of the road was anything but a young man sitting in a van.
WHEN CHARLIE CAME BACK to the office, Mma Ramotswe called him over to her desk and gave him his instructions.
“We have a very delicate job for you, Charlie,” she said. “It is a bit of important detective work.”
Charlie beamed with pleasure. “That is what I am now, Mma. I am a detective. At your service.”
Mma Ramotswe could see Mma Makutsi looking disapproving. She hoped that there would not be an intervention from that quarter, but there was.
“Oh, so you’re a detective already,” said Mma Makutsi. “That’s quick.”
Charlie sniggered. “I’m a quick learner, Mma.”
Mma Makutsi shook her head. “A quick learner? I don’t think so, Charlie. No, you are an apprentice detective, Charlie—just as you were an apprentice mechanic.” She paused. “I hope that you will not be an apprentice all your life—I really hope that. It would be awful if you ended up as an apprentice old man. Hah! That would be very odd.”
Mma Ramotswe gave Mma Makutsi a look that was halfway between a warning and an imprecation. “Please,” she said. “We are all working together now. Charlie has to learn somewhere, and this is where he will start.”
“That’s fine by me,” said Mma Makutsi. “All I’m saying is that he is an apprentice detective. You cannot be a detective on the first day—just like that. That is not the way it works, Mma.”
Charlie looked at Mma Ramotswe anxiously. “I don’t mind, Mma. If she wants me to be an apprentice detective, then I am happy to be that.”
“Very well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “If everybody’s happy, then I am happy too. Now I can tell you what I want you to do.” She paused. “There is this woman, you see.”
Charlie grinned. “I know about women, Mma Ramotswe. I am the man for this job: the number one expert in women.”
Mma Makutsi’s glasses, catching the light, sent a threatening signal across the room. Mma Ramotswe closed her eyes; she did not like the bickering that sometimes took place between Mma Makutsi and Charlie. At heart they were fond of one another, but the problem was that they were too similar, at least in their tendency to make remarks that they must have known would stir people up. Charlie did it with his bright and breezy comments; Mma Makutsi did it with her sensitivity to insult—one only had to mention Bobonong in anything but tones of hushed admiration and she would accuse you of being indifferent to the people of Bobonong, or of implying that Bobonong was a backwater. And the same thing applied to any mention of the Botswana Secretarial College. There had been a very awkward incident recently when a client had made a reference to a niece of his who had failed to get into the university and had been forced to enroll in the Botswana Secretarial College. “Still,” he had said, with an air of philosophical acceptance, “half a loaf is always better than no bread at all, I suppose.” That had brought a predictable outburst from Mma Makutsi, and Mma Ramotswe had been worried that the client would simply rise to his feet and walk out of the office. He did not, as it happened, but meekly accepted the tirade directed against him and apologised profusely for the slight. Some men, thought Mma Ramotswe, become supine when faced with a strong woman.
No, Charlie and Mma Makutsi were two peas in a pod. What did people say? Put two cats in a box and they will fight? It was probably true, as so many of these popular sayings were.
Now she made an effort to smile at Charlie. “I am sure that you know a lot about women, Charlie, but now is not the time to talk about what you know—”
“Or what you don’t know,” interjected Mma Makutsi, adding, “And that will be quite a lot, I think.”
Mma Ramotswe made an effort to reassert control of the conversation. “If you are to be a detective, Charlie, it is important to listen.”
“I am listening,” said Charlie. “That is what I am doing—I am sitting here and listening to you.”
“Good. Well, there is a very unfortunate woman who does not know who she is.”
Charlie frowned. “Then her friends c
an tell her. If I didn’t know who I was, you would be able to say to me, ‘You are Charlie.’ That is all you would need to say, and then I would know.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Mma Ramotswe. “This woman has lost her memory.”
Charlie made a sympathetic sound.
“Yes,” went on Mma Ramotswe. “It is very sad for her, because she is in trouble with the immigration authorities. If she does not find out who she is, then they will send her out of the country.”
“You want me to find out who she is?” asked Charlie, rubbing his hands together with the air of one who cannot wait to get down to work. “That will be no problem.”
“Oh, really?” interjected Mma Makutsi. “So how would you find out, Charlie?”
Charlie appeared to think for a moment. “I would put her photograph on a notice and stick it on a pole somewhere. The notice would say: Who is this woman? Big prizes for identification. Contact the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency if you have the answer.”
Mma Ramotswe was about to dismiss Charlie’s idea out of hand, but stopped herself. Actually, it was a perfectly reasonable idea, and could draw a response from somebody. But then it occurred to her that her clients had asked for discreet enquiries, and this would be anything but that.
“I don’t think we can do that, Charlie,” she said. “No, what I would like you to do is to follow her. See where she goes. Then give us a report.”
Charlie’s eyes lit up. “Follow her, Mma? In a car chase?”
“There will be no need to chase her,” said Mma Ramotswe. “This lady will not be running away from you—in fact, she mustn’t know that you are there.”
Charlie nodded enthusiastically. “I can do that. I have seen that sort of thing at the cinema.”
“Be discreet,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You can borrow my van. Park it in a place that is not too obvious, and wait to see who leaves the house she is staying in. Then follow her and see where she goes.”
“What if she goes inside?” asked Charlie. “What if she goes to somebody’s house? Can I creep up and look through the window?”
“No, you may not,” said Mma Ramotswe. “What you should do is find out who lives in the house. Ask somebody. People know who lives where.”
“Then?”
“Then come back here and tell us.” Mma Ramotswe paused. “Do you think you can do that, Charlie?”
Charlie made an expansive gesture. “No problem,” he said.
Mma Ramotswe exchanged glances with Mma Makutsi. She could tell that Mma Makutsi was doubtful, but now that she had taken Charlie on in the agency, she had to put him to some use. And this, she thought, was not an unduly complicated thing to do. Following somebody, she had read in The Principles of Private Detection, was the first thing a detective should learn to do. If you can follow somebody without being spotted, wrote Clovis Andersen, then you are on your way to achieving what every private investigator wants above all else: invisibility.
She looked at Charlie. Invisibility: she would have to have a word with him about the fancy sunglasses he had put on for his new job; and the white trousers and red shirt as well. But not quite yet, she thought. Progress in learning a job was made through encouragement, not censure. Charlie would get plenty of censure, she suspected, from Mma Makutsi, and so she should take charge of the encouragement side of things.
“I am sure that you will do this very well, Charlie,” she said. “You are a quick learner.”
“Yes,” said Charlie. “I know that, Mma.”
THAT EVENING, Mma Makutsi said to Phuti Radiphuti: “There’s something bad going to happen, Phuti. You know the feeling? You realise that something bad is going to happen but there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
“A bit like when you’re being stalked by a lion and you know he’s going to pounce, but you can’t do anything about it. If you start to run, it only makes it worse: a lion will always chase you when you start to run.” He shuddered. “I hate that feeling.”
“But have you ever been stalked by a lion, Phuti?”
“Never, thank heavens. But I can imagine what it’s like.” He paused. “Anyway, what is this bad thing, Grace?”
“It’s Charlie.”
Phuti Radiphuti knew Charlie. He sighed. “This is nothing new.”
“But it is,” said Mma Makutsi. “Mma Ramotswe has taken him on because Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni couldn’t employ him any more. And now that he’s with us in the office, I can see some bad developments looming.” She shook her head. “She’s put him to work on a very sensitive case and there’s going to be big trouble.”
Phuti Radiphuti gazed out of the window into the African night. “I hope not,” he said.
“So do I,” said Mma Makutsi. “But I’m afraid it’s going to happen. Charlie is going to get himself—and the agency—into big, big trouble. Definite. Guaranteed. One hundred per cent guaranteed.”
“Oh,” said Phuti.
“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi.
“But I thought that Mma Ramotswe was usually right.”
Mma Makutsi shook her head. “She is usually right—except when she is wrong. Her problem is that she is too kind. You have to be careful about being too kind in this life, Phuti.”
“That is probably true … and yet …”
“And yet nothing. If you are too kind, then there are people waiting round every corner ready to take advantage of you. You can be kind to some people, yes, but you cannot be kind to everybody. If you are kind to everybody, then you end up being kind to nobody.”
Phuti Radiphuti was confused. “I’m not sure that I understand,” he muttered.
Mma Makutsi explained. “What I meant to say is this: Mma Ramotswe has given Charlie a job out of kindness. Charlie is hopeless, Phuti, everybody knows that—probably even his mother. They probably said to his mother: Throw this one away, Mma—he is no good and will be trouble. And she refused, which is what mothers often do, because that is what mothers are like with their boys—they do not see how bad their sons are. They are ready to see the faults in their daughters—oh yes, they see those clearly enough—but when it comes to their sons they will not see the faults.”
Phuti looked thoughtful. “Will you see Itumelang’s faults?” he asked.
Mma Makutsi fixed him with a discouraging stare. “What faults?” she asked.
CHAPTER TEN
COOL JULES IS ON THE CASE
CHARLIE HAD SPENT HIS END-OF-SERVICE PAYMENT from Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni on the purchase of new sunglasses, a blue jacket, a red shirt, and a pair of tight-fitting jeans that had not one, but two designer labels displayed on the pockets. One of these labels said Town Man and the other said Cool Jules. He liked both of these, but had a slight preference for Cool Jules, which he thought more accurately reflected his overall image. In such a pair of jeans, he felt, might anything be possible.
To have clothes like this and to be an “auxiliary detective”—which was the title he had decided on for himself, having rejected, on reflection, Mma Makutsi’s belittling title of “apprentice detective”—to be so attired and so employed was surely greater good fortune than any young man could realistically wish for. He thought of the greasy overalls that he had exchanged for this new outfit—how had he put up with those for so long? And how had he tolerated being told to do this and that all the time: fix that ignition, Charlie; change that rear tyre, Charlie; check the suspension on this car, Charlie. It had been the same thing day after day. Where was the pleasure in spending one’s time under a car, with oil dripping onto your face and the curious dusty smell of the underside of a vehicle strong in your nostrils? And all for what? For a pay packet that left very little for any purchases or entertainment after you had paid your rent and given money to your uncle’s girlfriend for the food of which your little cousins ate more than their fair share? It was true that Mma Ramotswe was proposing to pay him what he had received for his work in the garage, but at least there was the prospect of advancement in this job: being an auxilia
ry detective was just the beginning, and his likely success in the role would almost certainly lead to some more senior, better-paid post—or even to his own business. There was an idea: the No. 1 Men’s Detective Agency—that would be a name to conjure with! That would be the place where all the important investigations would be brought, because everybody knew, thought Charlie, that you could not entrust a really serious investigation to a firm made up of women, even to one led by such a kind and generous woman as Mma Ramotswe.
Of course he could invite Mma Ramotswe to join him if her agency went under as a result of the success of the No. 1 Men’s Detective Agency—he would certainly be magnanimous in that respect, although if Mma Makutsi came too she would have to content herself with the role of secretary. For a moment he imagined himself asking Mma Makutsi to take dictation; she would sit there while he strolled about the room dictating important letters to clients. I refer to yours of the twelfth inst.… That is how one should begin an official letter. And then he would say, “Am I going too fast, Mma? Perhaps you need to brush up your shorthand skills—you might have got ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College, but that was a long time ago, Mma, and nothing stands still in this world …” Hah! That would teach Mma Makutsi to push him around and belittle him with those comments of hers. But at the end of the day he would be kind. He would say to her that, although he could easily get a younger and more glamorous secretary, he would still keep her on for old times’ sake, so to speak. She would appreciate that.
Of course, fashionable clothes of the sort he was wearing deserved a better vehicle than Mma Ramotswe’s white van that she was lending him for the task of watching the Sengupta house. Even an auxiliary detective deserved something better than that, with its compromised suspension—on the driver’s side—and battered appearance. But it was better than nothing, and it would not do to have to carry out such an assignment on a bicycle.