The No. 2 Global Detective (6 page)

But lessons were there to be learned, were they not, and once her old assistant, Mma Pollosopresso, had revealed herself to be a bad woman, who would go so far as to blow up her employer's tiny white van with explosives made from a half cup of sugar which she must have hoarded while she had been working at the Detective Agency and some fertiliser that she would have borrowed from the orphan farm, well then Mma Ontoaste had had no choice but to ask her to leave the Detective Agency and employ Mma Murakami in her place.

And it was just as Mma Ontoaste was sitting on the chair on the veranda of the grass hut, sipping more bush tea, and looking out across the yard at the pumpkin patch and the melons and the other nameless shrubs that filled the space, thinking of how much she loved it all, that the man wearing the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service, a smart uniform, with blue shorts and a white shirt, had knocked at the gate of the stock fence and greeted her modestly.

‘Mma.'

‘Rra,' she had said, getting to her feet to meet her visitor and to show him to a chair in the old Botswana custom. The man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service had looked puzzled for a second, but he had readily accepted her offer of bush tea and a slice of cake and this pleased Mma Ontoaste. So few people these days had time to stop and talk. Her beloved father, Pepe, was of the mind that anything that could not be solved over a cup of bush tea was probably not worth solving anyway. In this he was probably right, if you believed, as Mma Ontoaste did, that people were basically good, but, sadly, just a little bit thick. They needed to be told what to think and what to do and here they were in luck, because, apart from bush tea, thick slices of richly fruited cake and her husband, Mr JPS Spagatoni, that good man, as well as numerous friends and the cows that her father – that other good man – had left her in his will, Mma Ontoaste loved nothing more than telling people what to do.

‘Now, Rra,' she said. ‘What can I do for you?'

‘Mma,' he replied, using the respectful greeting that, along with his polite acceptance of her offer of the chair and the thick slice of cake and the bush tea, confirmed him to be a good man, ‘I have a telegram for you.'

In one hand he held out a brown envelope with Mma Ontoaste's name and address written upon it.

‘Oh Rra, a telegram!' Mma Ontoaste clapped her hands together. ‘I am so happy! You are so clever! However did you find me?'

The man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service pointed to the name and the address written on the envelope in black ink. True it was not handwritten, but printed rather, which was a pity. Mma Ontoaste was not against progress or change, of course. Just look at Botswana. Had not that good country changed since that hot night all those years ago when the fireworks failed to ignite and which seemed to augur ill for Independence, etc etc?

And yet change was not always a good thing, Mma Ontoaste sometimes thought, especially if it led to people becoming cold and selfish as they were in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Malawi and, of course, the Democratic Republic of Congo. She could have gone on listing the countries where people were also lazy and stupid, and full of malevolence, but Mma Ontoaste was one of those people who preferred to emphasise the positive.

‘Oh Rra!' she exclaimed. ‘I must show this to Mma Murakami. She will be so excited. She is my new assistant. She passed her exams at the Napier Secretarial College with 98 per cent.'

‘Oh, that is good, Mma. Napier Secretarial College is a very fine college. Your new assistant must be very clever. Ninety-eight per cent is better than 97 per cent.'

‘Exactly, Rra. I am glad to hear you say that. I had to ask my last assistant to leave because she only got 97 per cent in her final exams. And then she blew up my tiny white van. Can you imagine that?'

‘Oh, Mma. Are you sure it was her?'

With that the man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service wiped the cake crumbs from his lips with the back of his hand. Mma Ontoaste was taken aback. This was not the old Botswana way. Wiping one's mouth with the back of one's hand was the rudest thing a man could do and it occurred to Mma Ontoaste that the man who was dressed in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service was not perhaps from Botswana, but rather Nigeria, where they were known to be very rude and selfish and constantly wiping crumbs from their mouths with the backs of their hands. Yes. The more she thought of it, the more certain Mma Ontoaste became that this man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service was not from Botswana but from some other country, somewhere else. The question then was why had he got a job in the Botswana Postal Service in the first place?

‘Rra?' Mma Ontoaste started. ‘May I ask you a question?'

For a second the man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service stared at her but then, before Mma Ontoaste could ask her question, he snatched up the remaining slice of cake and jammed it in his mouth before bolting across the yard and out through the gate in the stock fence, his postal bag swinging wildly behind him.

Well, thought Mma Ontoaste, still sitting in her chair, does that not take the biscuit!

Mma Delicious Ontoaste took the envelope that the man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service had left on the table and she opened it with a letter knife that her father – that dear good man – had left her, commemorating his visit to Las Vegas. She was surprised by the contents. A single sheet of thin paper stamped in a long line of capital letters. Mma Ontoaste read the letters that together made up a series of words:

TO MMA ONTOASTE STOP OWNER OF THE BEST DETECTIVE AGENCY IN THE WORLD EVER EXCLAMATION MARK NO. 2 STOP TOM HURST LECTURER IN TRAN AND PATH ON WAY TO BOTSWANA STOP URGENT HELP NEEDED STOP SENSITIVE MATTER STOP MURDER MOST FOUL STOP MALICE AFORETHOUGHT STOP ARRIVES GABORONE FLIGHT SA 235/1763 06/01 STOP. DEAN CUFF COLLEGE

‘Well,' exclaimed Mma Ontoaste. ‘What can that be about, I wonder?'

Mma Murakami does not answer the door when Mma Ontoaste knocks on it and Mma Ontoaste thinks this is very rude. Then, a bit later, she has a disagreeable surprise as a new bride loses and then, to be fair, finds, her new husband but not without having had a fright on the way.

Mma Ontoaste sat for a second on the veranda and she thought that this would be the perfect thing to talk to Mma Murakami about over a cup of bush tea. It would be their first case together and it promised to be an especially interesting case too, and so Mma Ontoaste knocked on the door of Mma Murakami's office, the implication of this being that she wanted to come in. But Mma Murakami was typing loudly and still listening to jazz music on her new transistor radio and so she did not hear the owner of
The Best Detective Agency in the World Ever! No. 2
knocking on the door and, after a minute, Mma Ontoaste returned to her own desk, a frown on her face.

Mma Ontoaste would be able to think about Mma Murakami's curious behaviour only after she had spoken to her husband, that good man, Mr JPS Spagatoni, over lunch at his the Salt-'n'-Sauce Scotch Chip Supper Shop on Murieston Road, or perhaps later, when the children were in bed and the sun had sunk behind the red hills and the moon hung in the old acacia tree, a time when the air was cool, a time when it was proper to sit on the veranda with a foaming mug of bush tea and talk about the events of the day.

First, though, she must go to the loo.

After that her next task would be to find out why a man who had wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and who was probably a Nigerian in the first place should have been given a job representing that fine old institution the Botswana Postal Service. Mma Ontoaste knew that in some countries, such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique and Malawi, and not forgetting of course the Democratic Republic of Congo, there was such a thing as corruption, where a man such as the man who had so recently been to see her to deliver that telegram might wangle himself a job that he did not deserve simply because he had connections in high places. This would never happen in Botswana, of course, but constant vigilance was the price that needed to be paid, and so Mma Ontoaste made up her mind to go and see whomever it was in charge of the Botswana Postal Service and have the impostor exposed.

‘That will be a nice job to do,' she said aloud.

It was nice to hear a voice; even if it was her own, and for a second Mma Ontoaste found that she missed the company of her former assistant, Mma Pollosopresso, whom she had had to replace with Mma Murakami after Mma Ontoaste had read of that good lady's score in her final examination from the Napier Secretarial College. Mma Ontoaste had now twice been given cause to regret her decision to let her former assistant leave. The first time had been when she had been walking along the road and seen a painter painting a sign for a new Detective Agency –
The Only Detective Agency You Will Ever Need Ever! No. 3
, – that Mma Pollosopresso was trying to set up in Gaborone.

Mma Ontoaste put the telegram aside and thought back to her time at Cuff College, from which she had graduated without any great expectations many years before. Although she had not enjoyed the cold
⁵
of that far-off country, and had missed Botswana and its people while she had been away, she knew that she would be happy to help this man whom the Dean was sending. She would be able to show him the glories of Botswana: the bush, the grass huts, the other stuff, but most of all she would show him the simple decency of the people of Botswana. He would find that there were still parts of the world where people were in touch with the earth and their own souls.

The rest of the day was rather quiet at
The Best Detective Agency in the World Ever! No. 2
and there were no appointments booked at all. All that Mma Ontoaste had in mind was to sit on her veranda and sip bush tea until the afternoon was sufficiently cool enough for her to consider walking to the main telegram office in Gaborone to see if she could not get to the bottom of the mystery of the man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service. She hoped that the man would be sent back to where he came from: Nigeria. Yes. It was definitely Nigeria. Only a Nigerian would wipe away crumbs with the back of his hand. Mma Ontoaste thought to herself that the man probably hawked and spat occasionally and that he probably practised witchcraft or played football.

But it was when Mma Ontoaste awoke from her afternoon nap, thinking it might be cool enough for her to go and get the Nigerian, as she had come to think of him, sacked that she found an unwelcome surprise: a woman was sitting on the veranda with her head in her hands, weeping. She was a young woman of about 35, in a red dress and some other things such as shoes that she believed women wore.

Mma Ontoaste studied the Botswana sky and guessed that it must be about now that a client with a human-interest case was due and so here she was. Ordinarily in a situation such as this, Mma Ontoaste and Mma Pollosopresso might offer the lady a mug of bush tea and sit and listen to her as she told them all about her problems. After that they would have a think about what the lady had said and then, drawing on a little common sense and a modicum of human understanding, they would tell the woman what they thought she ought to do. Sometimes they did not even have to think very hard about what their client ought to do. In fact, it was often very obvious what their client ought to do from the very beginning, and that was the way that Mma Ontoaste liked it. It was, after all, why she lived in Botswana. That and all the other stuff, of course, such as the easy access to pumpkins.

‘Mma, can I help you?' asked Mma Ontoaste. The lady briefly stopped sobbing to wipe her eyes and look at Mma Ontoaste.

‘Oh, Mma,' she said. ‘It is my husband. He has disappeared.'

‘Disappeared! Oh, Mma! That is bad. Can you tell me about him? What is his name?'

‘My husband's name is Machende Arimuhapwa. We have been married for only a very short time, just over a week in fact, Mma, and we live in a house further along this road towards Lobatse.'

The woman, Mma Arimuhapwa, pointed at the road that passed Mma Ontoaste's yard, the one that joined Lobatse to Gaborone.

‘Oh, that is a nice address,' said Mma Ontoaste. ‘Your husband sounds like a nice man, Mma.'

‘Oh, he is, Mma,' replied the Mma Arimuhapwa. ‘After our wedding we travelled to see his people in a village near Molepolololopole and we enjoyed ourselves very very much. His people are very kind, Mma, and we were sad to leave, but my husband has a job at a government office here in Gaborone and he does not get very much holiday.'

‘I see,' said Mma Ontoaste.

‘We got back from his people's place just yesterday and then this morning my husband got up and he put on a suit and a shirt and a tie, Mma, and then he took a small case with him and he kissed me on each cheek and then he left our grass hut and I have not seen him since.'

The woman started sobbing again. This was a mystery indeed.

‘And was he acting strangely before he left?'

‘Not at all, Mma. It was as if it were the most natural thing in the world.'

‘Did you see which way he went after he had left your grass hut?'

The woman's eyes flew open and Mma Ontoaste felt she was on to something here.

‘Oh Mma! That was the strange thing. I forgot about that. My husband stood for a while with three or four other men by a metal post stuck in the side of the road and they were talking only half-heartedly, as if they were waiting for something, or as if they did not know each other very well, you know, Mma? And then this great big grey motor car came along and stopped in front of them and a door opened and one by one the men went into it and then the door closed behind them with a strange hissing sound and then the car drove off.'

‘I think I have seen such a vehicle,' said Mma Ontoaste.