Then there was Mma Makutsi. She at least had a number of different outfits, but there were always her shoes. Again, there were many pairs now, but they all had a certain look to them and, if mentioned alongside her characteristic round glasses, would provide a perfectly adequate description. A lady in large round glasses (very large) and brightly coloured shoes, often with bows. That would point very well to Mma Makutsi, and one need not even mention her slightly troublesome complexion or her general air of having come from Bobonong. It was difficult to put one’s finger on the Bobonong factor, but it could always be spotted if one were attuned to such things. Nor would one have to mention that the shoes had a tendency to speak – a very unusual attribute, and one that defied rational explanation, but nonetheless one that set Mma Makutsi apart from most people; from everybody, in fact.
But now the woman, whoever she was, had returned inside and Charlie, sitting in the increasingly hot and stuffy cab, was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He opened the door, hoping to cool the cab that way, but found that this simply let the sun beat directly down on his Cool Jules jeans, making his legs unpleasantly warm.
He got out of the van altogether and made for the shade of a nearby tree. At the foot of this tree was a stone, and Charlie sat down on that, stretching out his legs before him. From his seated position he could no longer see into the Sengupta garden but he still had a good view of the gate, and he watched that from his new position.
The street was quiet, and because it led nowhere, only the occasional car passed by. Nobody took any notice of the young man under the tree or of his half-concealed van – why would they? Botswana was a country where people could still sit under a tree and look up at the sky if they so wished, or watch cattle as they moved slowly across the veld, or even just close their eyes and look at nothing because they had seen everything there was to see on their local patch of earth and did not need to see anything more. And even if the young man was dressed a bit loudly, that did not matter, as people could dress loudly if they wanted to, and it was no business of others to pass comment on what they were wearing.
An elderly man came past, and he paused and studied Charlie for a full minute or two before he spoke. ‘Are you well, young man?’
‘I am very well, Rra. And you are well too?’
‘Oh, I am well. I used to be more well than I am now, but I am still well. And we should always remember that there are some people who are not well. We must remember them.’
Charlie nodded. ‘Yes, Rra, we must remember them. I do not forget them, I can tell you.’
‘Good.’
There was a silence. Then the man spoke again. ‘Where is your village, Rra?’
Charlie pointed over towards the east. ‘I come from that side. It is not a big place and I never go there any more. My father is late, and so I live with my uncle here in Gaborone.’
The man lowered his eyes. ‘I am sorry that your father is late. There are many people who are late these days.’ He paused. ‘But then, we all become late when it is time for us to go. Do I know your uncle?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘It’s possible, Rra. He is working at that supermarket, that Pick and Pay. He works with the vegetables there.’
The man knew the place. ‘I have been inside, but I did not buy anything.’
‘That is a pity, Rra. It has very good food, that place…’
They looked at one another. It seemed to Charlie that the man wanted to tell him something but could not find the words. What was it? That he was lonely? That the world he knew had somehow been lost. Old people could be like that, Charlie thought, but there was nothing he could do to bring their world back; they shouldn’t look at him and hope.
The old man suddenly seemed to remember something. ‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘I shall be late getting to the house of my son.’
‘Then you must go,’ said Charlie. ‘Go well, father.’
Now he was alone again under this hot sun and with the sweat beginning to make his Cool Jules outfit damp and rumpled. He was no longer sure whether he really wanted to train as a detective now that he saw how mundane the work was. Anybody, he said to himself, could sit in a car and wait for somebody to come out of a house; anybody could follow another car and note where it stopped and who got out of it. There was no special expertise in that – indeed there was far less skill involved than in changing the oil filter on a car. And to think that Mma Makutsi sat there and put on airs and graces about how complicated her work was and how you needed to have ninety-seven per cent, or whatever it was, to do it. Nonsense! You could do this sort of work even if you didn’t have your school certificate – a twelve-year-old could do it. And you didn’t need to be smartly dressed either. It was all very well putting on your best clothes, your Cool Jules jeans and the like, but nobody saw you and anybody who did would be indifferent to what you wore. It was all a waste of time – a complete waste of time, and he would hand in his notice if it continued like this… No, he would not do that. He had to live. He had to pay rent for his room – or his bit of a room. And that was another thing: how could you be taken seriously as a detective if you had to share a room with your cousins, including one who was a small boy who sometimes had nightmares and woke you up with his crying? How could a detective entertain the ladies that detectives needed to entertain if you had a small boy in the room who would want to cuddle up with the lady in question and thereby prevent the detective from having the discussions that he needed to have? It was all very upsetting, and all the more so because Charlie saw no way out. He would never get anywhere as a detective with those ladies sitting on all the available work.
He suddenly became aware that in the distance somebody was walking down the road towards him, and almost at the same time realised that this was a woman. It was the walk: Charlie was an expert in the way women walked – or so he believed.
He waited. As the figure came closer, he realised that not only was she indeed a woman, but she was a young woman – and smartly dressed.
He took his sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. He adjusted the crease of his Cool Jules trousers so that it ran straight down the middle of the leg. When the young woman drew level with him, he cleared his throat. She had been studiously avoiding looking at him, but now she could hardly ignore him.
‘Going anywhere special, honey?’
She gave him a scornful glance. ‘I am not your honey.’
He laughed. ‘Just an expression. I didn’t know your name, you see. Honey is friendly.’
He could see that she was scrutinising him, as if weighing something up.
‘My name is Charles,’ he said. ‘They call me Charlie.’
She allowed herself a flicker of a smile. ‘Hello, Mr Charlie.’
‘Not Mr Charlie – just Charlie. And you… your name?’
She hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘I am Alice.’
He gave a soft whistle of admiration. ‘That is very nice. Alice… Alice. That is a really good name.’
They regarded one another. He could tell that she was interested in him – and who wouldn’t be, he thought, with the Cool Jules look?
‘Alice who?’ he asked.
‘Alice Bombwe.’
He let out another low whistle. ‘That’s some name!’
She looked at her watch. ‘I’m glad you like it.’
‘Alice, can I help you to get where you want to go? If you’re going to see your husband…’
‘There is no husband,’ she snapped. ‘I am going shopping.’
Charlie smiled. ‘Shopping? I am a big expert in shopping. Let me take you.’
She hesitated once more, but again not for long. She named a collection of stores near Kgale Hill. ‘Could you drive me there?’
‘Alice, I could take you wherever you wanted to go. Johannesburg, even. You name it – I can go there.’
They moved towards the van. Alice opened the door and lowered herself into the passenger seat. From behind his dark glasses, Charlie inspected
his new friend. She was about his age – perhaps slightly younger. The perfume she was wearing was quite strong, even after she had been walking out in the sun. He breathed it in – he knew that scent. It was called Miss Glamour, or something like that; he had seen it being promoted outside one of the clothes shops and he and his friends had laughingly insisted that a sample be dabbed on their wrists.
‘You’re wearing Miss Glamour,’ he said. ‘That is very good.’
She did not conceal her surprise. ‘Ow! How can you tell that?’
Charlie affected a careless sophistication. ‘That is what I am trained to do. You see… I shouldn’t really tell you this, but I’m a detective – a private investigator.’
Her expression was one of complete admiration. ‘A detective!’
‘Yes. I’m on a case at the moment, actually. Surveillance, you know.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Surveillance?’
‘That means watching somebody. An international criminal.’
Her eyes widened even further. ‘There are international criminals right here in Gaborone?’
‘You better believe it, doll,’ said Charlie. ‘You want to watch with me? We can go to the shops a bit later.’
She nodded enthusiastically.
‘You keep your head down,’ he said. ‘If things get tough, just do as I say, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘I use this van for cover. Nobody pays attention to it, you see. If I drove my Mercedes they’d look at me.’
Alice was impressed. ‘A sort of disguise, I suppose.’
‘Exactly,’ said Charlie. ‘A disguise. You see, one of the things you learn when you’re a detective —’ He broke off. The gate of the Sengupta house, operated by remote control, was beginning to slide open. A car was nosing out of the driveway – a green Mercedes-Benz. There was a woman at the wheel, and another woman beside her in the passenger seat. It could only be Miss Rose and Mrs.
‘Something’s happening,’ he said to Alice.
She gave a muffled gasp. ‘It’s them?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘We’re going to start following. Hold on tight, okay?’
Swinging out onto the road, he began to follow the other car, his heart thumping within him at the thought of what he was doing. Those women in the office had said no car chases – well, what was this? This was a car chase, and he was participating in it! He adjusted his sunglasses and took a quick glance at Alice. It was clear that she was impressed.
‘We just drive normally,’ he said. ‘We never draw attention to ourselves – never. You see these guys in the movies driving like they are crazy but that would alert the suspect. Easy does it – that’s what we pros say.’
But the car carrying the two women had accelerated rapidly, and Charlie was obliged to speed up to ensure that he kept them in sight. The van’s engine strained as it was pushed to its limits and an alarming rattle developed somewhere under the floor.
‘They’re going to get away,’ said Alice. ‘We’re going to lose them.’
‘No chance,’ said Charlie. ‘You haven’t seen anything yet, let me tell you.’
At the end of the road, the other car slowed, but did not stop altogether. Charlie slowed down too, and then followed his quarry into its left turn. After a few hundred yards the car turned again, into another long residential road of whitewashed garden walls and high gates. He was aware of the fact that the brake lights of the car ahead were signalling another slowing down, this time before a driveway. He accelerated to keep up and did not see the large black car suddenly appear from a side road.
‘Watch out!’ shouted Alice.
He swerved and applied the brakes as hard as he could. The van jolted and came to a halt, but not before it had been dealt a glancing blow by the car. Now both vehicles were stationary.
‘We’ve crashed,’ said Alice.
Charlie sat quite still as he struggled to reconstruct in his mind what had happened. The other car seemed to have come from nowhere; he should have stopped – wasn’t there a stop sign there? He turned his head to look. Yes, there was a sign: the other driver was in the wrong. Not my fault, he thought. Not my fault.
The other driver had opened his door and was coming towards the van. Charlie took a deep breath and got out of the cab. He looked at the man, trying to judge whether he was angry. People could become violent in such circumstances, even if they had caused the accident; he had seen it happen before.
There was no question of that here, though. The other driver looked at Charlie anxiously. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Charlie nodded, but said nothing.
‘I’m very sorry,’ said the man. ‘I know I should have stopped. I wasn’t thinking.’
Charlie took a deep breath as he felt his anxiety evaporate. ‘That’s okay, Rra,’ he said. ‘I don’t think the van is damaged very much. Just this dent here. Oh, and that dent over there, but that is a historical dent, that is not a new dent. And your car…’ He peered over the man’s shoulder to take in the damage: it was negligible.
The man bent down to examine the side of the van. ‘This is quite a dent,’ he said. ‘I’ll get my insurance.’
He turned round and went back to his car. A few moments later he came back with a blue plastic document. As he opened the folder, he looked towards Alice. ‘Is the young lady all right?’ he asked.
‘She’s fine,’ said Charlie.
‘I’m sorry about your van,’ said the man.
In his euphoria over the fact that he was not being blamed for anything, Charlie spoke freely. ‘Actually, it isn’t mine,’ he said. ‘It belongs to my boss, Mma Ramotswe.’
He knew the moment he spoke that he had said something he should not have. The man looked up sharply. ‘Mma Ramotswe? The detective lady?’
Charlie swallowed. It was too late to retract. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That is her.’
‘I know her,’ said the man, straightening up. He extended a hand towards Charlie. ‘My name is Sengupta.’
Charlie froze. ‘You are Mr Sengupta?’
‘That’s what I said. And your name, Rra?’
‘I’m Charlie. I work for Mma Ramotswe.’
Mr Sengupta nodded. ‘If you let me know what the cost of fixing that dent is, I’ll pay Mma Ramotswe directly. I can claim it back from my insurance later – if it’s above my excess.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes it’s cheaper not to get the insurance people involved at all – bunch of crooks.’
‘I shall let you know,’ said Charlie. He was on dangerous ground. What if Mr Sengupta told Mma Ramotswe that there had been a young woman in the van with him at the time of the accident? He might let this information slip casually, and then she would think that he had been picking up girls rather than carrying out his task of surveillance. And then Mma Makutsi would add her contribution, and he would have his knuckles rapped in front of everybody, Cool Jules or not. He could hardly keep the incident from Mma Ramotswe – the dent was too obvious for that – but he would have to try to handle the matter himself as much as possible without bringing Mma Ramotswe and Mr Sengupta together. It was so unfair! Everything was unfair, he felt – everything, without exception.