She had seen Mr Patel before, of course, and knew that he had an artificial leg, but she had never seen him at really close quarters and had not expected him to be so small. Mma Ramotswe was not tall—being blessed with generous girth, rather than height—but Mr Patel still found himself looking up at her when he shook her hand and gestured for her to come inside.
“Have you been in my house before?” he asked, knowing, of course, that she had not. “Have you been at one of my parties?”
This was a lie as well, she knew. Mr Patel never gave parties, and she wondered why he should pretend to do so.
“No,” she said simply. “You have never asked me.”
“Oh dear,” he said, chuckling as he spoke. “I have made a big mistake.”
He led her through an entrance hall, a long room with a shiny black and white marble floor. There was a lot of brass in this room—expensive, polished brass—and the overall effect was one of glitter.
“We shall go through to my study,” he said. “That is my private room in which none of the family are ever allowed. They know not to disturb me there, even if the house is burning down.”
The study was another large room, dominated by a large desk on which there were three telephones and an elaborate pen and ink stand. Mma Ramotswe looked at the stand, which consisted of several glass shelves for the pens, the shelves being supported by miniature elephant tusks, carved in ivory.
“Sit down, please,” said Mr Patel, pointing to a white leather armchair. “It takes me a little time to sit because I am missing one leg. There, you see. I am always on the lookout for a better leg. This one is Italian and cost me a lot of money, but I think there are better legs to be had. Maybe in America.”
Mma Ramotswe sank into the chair and looked at her host.
“I’ll get straight to the point,” said Mr Patel. “There’s no point in beating about the bush and chasing all sorts of rabbits, is there? No, there isn’t.”
He paused, waiting for Mma Ramotswe’s confirmation. She nodded her head slightly.
“I am a family man, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “I have a happy family who all live in this house, except for my son, who is a gentleman dentist in Durban. You may have heard of him. People call him Pate these days.”
“I know of him,” said Mma Ramotswe. “People speak highly of him, even here.”
Mr Patel beamed. “Well, my goodness, that’s a very pleasing thing to be told. But my other children are also very important to me. I make no distinction between my children. They are all the same. Equal-equal.”
“That’s the best way to do it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “If you favour one, then that leads to a great deal of bitterness.”
“You can say that again, oh yes,” said Mr Patel. “Children notice when their parents give two sweets to one and one to another. They can count same as us.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded again, wondering where the conversation was leading.
“Now,” said Mr Patel. “My big girls, the twins, are well married to good boys and are living here under this roof. That is all very excellent. And that leaves just one child, my little Nandira. She is sixteen and she is at Maru-a-Pula. She is doing well at school, but …”
He paused, looking at Mma Ramotswe through narrowed eyes. “You know about teenagers, don’t you? You know how things are with teenagers in these modern days?”
Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “They are often bad trouble for their parents. I have seen parents crying their eyes out over their teenagers.”
Mr Patel suddenly lifted his walking stick and hit his artificial leg for emphasis. The sound was surprisingly hollow and tinny.
“That’s what is worrying me,” he said vehemently. “That’s what is happening. And I will not have that. Not in my family.”
“What?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Teenagers?”
“Boys,” said Mr Patel bitterly. “My Nandira is seeing some boy in secret. She denies it, but I know that there is a boy. And this cannot be allowed, whatever these modern people are saying about the town. It cannot be allowed in this family—in this house.”
AS MR Patel spoke, the door to his study, which had been closed behind them when they had entered, opened and a woman came into the room. She was a local woman and she greeted Mma Ramotswe politely in Setswana before offering her a tray on which various glasses of fruit juice were set. Mma Ramotswe chose a glass of guava juice and thanked the servant. Mr Patel helped himself to orange juice and then impatiently waved the servant out of the room with his stick, waiting until she had gone before he continued to speak.
“I have spoken to her about this,” he said. “I have made it very clear to her. I told her that I don’t care what other children are doing—that is their parents’ business, not mine. But I have made it very clear that she is not to go about the town with boys or see boys after school. That is final.”
He tapped his artificial leg lightly with his walking stick and then looked at Mma Ramotswe expectantly.
Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. “You want me to do something about this?” she said quietly. “Is this why you have asked me here this evening?”
Mr Patel nodded. “That is precisely why. I want you to find out who this boy is, and then I will speak to him.”
Mma Ramotswe stared at Mr Patel. Had he the remotest idea, she wondered, how young people behaved these days, especially at a school like Maru-a-Pula, where there were all those foreign children, even children from the American Embassy and such places? She had heard about Indian fathers trying to arrange marriages, but she had never actually encountered such behaviour. And here was Mr Patel assuming that she would agree with him; that she would take exactly the same view.
“Wouldn’t it be better to speak to her?” she asked gently. “If you asked her who the young man was, then she might tell you.”
Mr Patel reached for his stick and tapped his tin leg.
“Not at all,” he said sharply, his voice becoming shrill. “Not at all. I have already been asking her for three weeks, maybe four weeks. And she gives no answer. She is dumb insolent.”
Mma Ramotswe sat and looked down at her feet, aware of Mr Patel’s expectant gaze upon her. She had decided to make it a principle of her professional life never to turn anybody away, unless they asked her to do something criminal. This rule appeared to be working; she had already found that her ideas about a request for help, about its moral rights and wrongs, had changed when she had become more aware of all the factors involved. It might be the same with Mr Patel; but even if it were not, were there good enough reasons for turning him down? Who was she to condemn an anxious Indian father when she really knew very little about how these people ran their lives? She felt a natural sympathy for the girl, of course; what a terrible fate to have a father like this one, intent on keeping one in some sort of gilded cage. Her own Daddy had never stood in her way over anything; he had trusted her and she, in turn, had never kept anything from him—apart from the truth about Note perhaps.
She looked up. Mr Patel was watching her with his dark eyes, the tip of his walking stick tapping almost imperceptibly on the floor.
“I’ll find out for you,” she said. “Although I must say I don’t really like doing this. I don’t like the idea of watching a child.”
“But children must be watched!” expostulated Mr Patel. “If parents don’t watch their children, then what happens? You answer that!”
“There comes a time when they must have their own lives,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We have to let go.”
“Nonsense!” shouted Mr Patel. “Modern nonsense. My father beat me when I was twenty-two! Yes, he beat me for making a mistake in the shop. And I deserved it. None of this modern nonsense.”
Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet.
“I am a modern lady,” she said. “So perhaps we have different ideas. But that has nothing to do with it. I have agreed to do as you have asked me. Now all that you need to do is to let me see a photograph of this girl, so that I can know who it is I
am going to be watching.”
Mr Patel struggled to his feet, straightening the tin leg with his hands as he did so.
“No need for a photograph,” he said. “I can produce the girl herself. You can look at her.”
Mma Ramotswe raised her hands in protest. “But then she will know me,” she said. “I must be able to be unobserved.”
“Ah!” said Mr Patel. “A very good idea. You detectives are very clever men.”
“Women,” said Mma Ramotswe.
Mr Patel looked at her sideways, but said nothing. He had no time for modern ideas.
As she left the house, Mma Ramotswe thought: He has four children; I have none. He is not a good father this man, because he loves his children too much—he wants to own them. You have to let go. You have to let go.
And she thought of that moment when, not even supported by Note, who had made some excuse, she had laid the tiny body of their premature baby, so fragile, so light, into the earth and had looked up at the sky and wanted to say something to God, but couldn’t because her throat was blocked with sobs and no words, nothing, would come.
IT SEEMED to Mma Ramotswe that it would be a rather easy case. Watching somebody could always be difficult, as you had to be aware of what they were doing all the time. This could mean long periods of waiting outside houses and offices, doing nothing but watching for somebody to appear. Nandira would be at school for most of the day, of course, and that meant that Mma Ramotswe could get on with other things until three o’clock came round and the school day drew to an end. That was the point at which she would have to follow her and see where she went.
Then the thought occurred to Mma Ramotswe that following a child could be problematic. It was one thing to follow somebody driving a car—all you had to do was tail them in the little white van. But if the person you were watching was riding a bicycle—as many children did on their way home from school—then it would look rather odd if the little white van were to be seen crawling along the road. If she walked home, of course, then Mma Ramotswe could herself walk, keeping a reasonable distance behind her. She could even borrow one of her neighbour’s dreadful yellow dogs and pretend to be taking that for a walk.
On the day following her interview with Mr Patel, Mma Ramotswe parked the tiny white van in the school car park shortly before the final bell of the day sounded. The children came out in dribs and drabs, and it was not until shortly after twenty past three that Nandira walked out of the school entrance, carrying her schoolbag in one hand and a book in the other. She was by herself, and Mma Ramotswe was able to get a good look at her from the cab of her van. She was an attractive child, a young woman really; one of those sixteen-year-olds who could pass for nineteen, or even twenty.
She walked down the path and stopped briefly to talk to another girl, who was waiting under a tree for her parents to collect her. They chatted for a few minutes, and then Nandira walked off towards the school gates.
Mma Ramotswe waited a few moments, and then got out of the van. Once Nandira was out on the road, Mma Ramotswe followed her slowly. There were several people about, and there was no reason why she should be conspicuous. On a late winter afternoon it was quite pleasant to walk down the road; a month or so later it would be too hot, and then she could well appear out of place.
She followed the girl down the road and round the corner. It had become clear to her that Nandira was not going directly home, as the Patel house was in the opposite direction to the route she had chosen. Nor was she going into town, which meant that she must be going to meet somebody at a house somewhere. Mma Ramotswe felt a glow of satisfaction. All she would probably have to do was to find the house and then it would be child’s play to get the name of the owner, and the boy. Perhaps she could even go to Mr Patel this evening and reveal the boy’s identity. That would impress him, and it would be a very easily earned fee.
Nandira turned another corner. Mma Ramotswe held back a little before following her. It would be easy to become over-confident following an innocent child, and she had to remind herself of the rules of pursuit. The manual on which she relied, The Principles of Private Investigation by Clovis Andersen, stressed that one should never crowd one’s subject. “Keep a long rein,” wrote Mr Andersen, “even if it means losing the subject from time to time. You can always pick up the trail later. And a few minutes of non-eye contact is better than an angry confrontation.”
Mma Ramotswe judged that it was now time to go round the corner. She did so, expecting to see Nandira several hundred yards down the road, but when she looked down it, the road was empty—non-eye contact, as Clovis Andersen called it, had set in. She turned round, and looked in the other direction. There was a car in the distance, coming out of the driveway of a house, and nothing else.
Mma Ramotswe was puzzled. It was a quiet road, and there were not more than three houses on either side of it—at least in the direction in which Nandira had been going. But these houses all had gates and driveways, and bearing in mind that she had only been out of view for a minute or so, Nandira would not have had time to disappear into one of these houses. Mma Ramotswe would have seen her in a driveway or going in through a front door.
If she has gone into one of the houses, thought Mma Ramotswe, then it must be one of the first two, as she would certainly not have been able to reach the houses farther along the road. So perhaps the situation was not as bad as she had thought it might be; all she would have to do would be to check up on the first house on the right-hand side of the road and the first house on the left.
She stood still for a moment, and then she made up her mind. Walking as quickly as she could, she made her way back to the tiny white van and drove back along the route on which she had so recently followed Nandira. Then, parking the van in front of the house on the right, she walked up the driveway towards the front door.
When she knocked on the door, a dog started to bark loudly inside the house. Mma Ramotswe knocked again, and there came the sound of somebody silencing the dog. “Quiet, Bison; quiet, I know, I know!” Then the door opened and a woman looked out at her. Mma Ramotswe could tell that she was not a Motswana. She was a West African, probably a Ghanaian, judging by the complexion and the dress. Ghanaians were Mma Ramotswe’s favourite people; they had a wonderful sense of humor and were almost inevitably in a good mood.
“Hallo Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m looking for Sipho.”
The woman frowned.
“Sipho? There’s no Sipho here.”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head.
“I’m sure it was this house. I’m one of the teachers from the secondary school, you see, and I need to get a message to one of the form four boys. I thought that this was his house.”
The woman smiled. “I’ve got two daughters,” she said. “But no son. Could you find me a son, do you think?”
“Oh dear,” said Mma Ramotswe, sounding harassed. “Is it the house over the road then?”
The woman shook her head. “That’s that Ugandan family,” she said. “They’ve got a boy, but he’s only six or seven, I think.”
Mma Ramotswe made her apologies and walked back down the drive. She had lost Nandira on the very first afternoon, and she wondered whether the girl had deliberately shrugged her off. Could she possibly have known that she was being followed? This seemed most unlikely, which meant that it was no more than bad luck that she had lost her. Tomorrow she would be more careful. She would ignore Clovis Andersen for once and crowd her subject a little more.
At eight o’clock that night she received a telephone call from Mr Patel.
“You have anything to report to me yet?” he asked. “Any information?”
Mma Ramotswe told him that she unfortunately had not been able to find out where Nandira went after school, but that she hoped that she might be more successful the following day.
“Not very good,” said Mr Patel. “Not very good. Well, I at least have something to report to you. She came
home three hours after school finished—three hours—and told me that she had just been at a friend’s house. I said: what friend? and she just answered that I did not know her. Her. Then my wife found a note on the table, a note which our Nandira must have dropped. It said: “See you tomorrow, Jack.” Now who is this Jack, then? Who is this person? Is that a girl’s name, I ask you?”
“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It sounds like a boy.”
“There!” said Mr Patel, with the air of one producing the elusive answer to a problem. “That is the boy, I think. That is the one we must find. Jack who? Where does he live? That sort of thing—you must tell me it all.”
Mma Ramotswe prepared herself a cup of bush tea and went to bed early. It had been an unsatisfactory day in more than one respect, and Mr Patel’s crowing telephone call merely set the seal on it. So she lay in bed, the bush tea on her bedside table, and read the newspaper before her eyelids began to droop and she drifted off to sleep.
THE NEXT afternoon she was late in reaching the school car park. She was beginning to wonder whether she had lost Nandira again when she saw the girl come out of the school, accompanied by another girl. Mma Ramotswe watched as the two of them walked down the path and stood at the school gate. They seemed deep in conversation with one another, in that exclusive way which teenagers have of talking to their friends, and Mma Ramotswe was sure that if only she could hear what was being said, then she would know the answers to more than one question. Girls talked about their boyfriends in an easy, conspiratorial way, and she was certain that this was the subject of conversation between Nandira and her friend.