It was rare for Mma Ramotswe to be without any idea of how to proceed, but it did happen, and this was one such occasion. Her philosophy of detection had always been simple; moulded, in part, by the sage and level-headed advice of Clovis Andersen – whom she and Mma Makutsi now considered a friend – and in part by common sense. To that mixture might have been added a pinch of the old Botswana morality, which could be used to good effect when appealing for help; if people were sheltering others, or were reluctant to talk, the invocation of the old Botswana morality could be just the thing to shift the log-jam. You have to help, Rra, because that is what is expected of you. What would your father/grandfather/great-grandfather have said if they saw you staying silent while some worthless person got away with his bad behaviour…?
That sort of appeal, made directly and in all sincerity, could work wonders, as it had in the case of the hotel manager who had frightened his staff into concealing his wrongful removal of guests’ lost property. That had been a difficult case until one of the maids, shamed by the reference to the old Botswana morality, blurted out the manager’s secret. She revealed that guests were always leaving their watches and earrings and such things in the bathroom of their rooms, and then phoning, in panic, from the airport or from their homes to enquire as to whether their property had been found. It had usually been dutifully handed in by the maids, but the hotel staff were instructed to deny it. This they did, although they knew full well that the missing items would soon appear on the shelves of the manager’s own second-hand goods store near the bus station.
With the maid’s statement in hand, Mma Ramotswe had confronted the manager, whose response had been to run away immediately, leaving his own property behind. This was an odd collection – a radio, a couple of pens, and a rather smart briefcase made out of zebra skin – but all of this had been handed over to the maid who had ended the manager’s lucrative scheme.
‘I hear that he has left the country,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘And so he will not be needing these things.’ She paused. ‘I suppose he has gone off to be bad somewhere else.’
‘There are many places for bad men,’ said the maid, shaking her head.
Mma Ramotswe had thought about this. There are many places for bad men… yes, the maid was right; there were many such places. But there were also good places, and if we tried hard enough we could make more of these good places, or make the places that were already good a bit larger. Botswana was a good place – it always had been – and Mma Ramotswe knew that she would fight to keep it that way. She would fight against the people who wanted to make it exactly the same as everywhere else – which meant to make it as corrupt as the rest of the world. No, she would not allow that – or, rather, she would do her utmost to prevent it happening. There was not all that much that one person could do; it was not possible for one woman to hold back the tide of greed and self-centredness that seemed to be sweeping across the world, but she would do whatever lay within her powers to do. And Mma Makutsi, she knew, felt the same and would do whatever she could – which was a bit more now that she was married to Mr Phuti Radiphuti and had the Radiphuti name and means to help her in their crusade.
Grace Radiphuti! That was the most extraordinary development, Mma Ramotswe reflected. That a person from Bobonong – a person with very little in this life – could come down to Gaborone, take the Botswana Secretarial College by storm, climb up the ranks of a business (even if the business only had one employee) and then, to top it all, marry into a furniture-selling and cattle-owning family; that was surely a miracle that defied all those who said that it was impossible to make something of one’s life if one started poor. Nonsense! she thought. One might start with nothing and end up with everything, if one had the right attitude and was prepared to work hard. It was also true, of course, that one might start off with nothing and end up with nothing; or start off with very little and end up with even less; but these were not possibilities that one should dwell on before one started. There was no point in thinking of the bottom when one wanted to get to the top.
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 enrol 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 can 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?’