Alexander McCall Smith - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency


Chapter one

The dady

Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe—the only lady private detective in Botswana—brewed redbush tea. And three mugs—one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course.
But there was also the view, which again could appear on no inventory. How could any such list describe what one saw when one looked out from Mma Ramotswe's door? To the front, an acacia tree, the thorn tree which dots the wide edges of the Kalahari; the great white thorns, a warning; the olive-grey leaves, by contrast, so delicate. In its branches, in the late afternoon, or in the cool of the early morning, one might see a Go-Away Bird, or hear it, rather. And beyond the acacia, over the dusty road, the roofs of the town under a cover of trees and scrub bush; on the horizon, in a blue shimmer of heat, the hills, like improbable, overgrown termite mounds.
Everybody called her Mma Ramotswe, although if people had wanted to be formal, they would have addressed her as Mme Mma Ramotswe. This is the right thing for a person of stature, but which she had never used of herself. So it was always Mma Ramotswe, rather than Precious Ramotswe, a name which very few people employed.
She was a good detective, and a good woman. A good woman in a good country, one might say. She loved her country, Botswana, which is a place of peace, and she loved Africa, for all its trials. I am not ashamed to be called an African patriot, said Mma Ramotswe. I love all the people whom God made, but I especially know how to love the people who live in this place. They are my people, my brothers and sisters. It is my duty to help them to solve the mysteries in their lives. That is what I am called to do.
In idle moments, when there were no pressing matters to be dealt with, and when everybody seemed to be sleepy from the heat, she would sit under her acacia tree. It was a dusty place to sit, and the chickens would occasionally come and peck about her feet, but it was a place which seemed to encourage thought. It was here that Mma Ramotswe would contemplate some of the issues which, in everyday life, may so easily be pushed to one side.
Everything, thought Mma Ramotswe, has been something before. Here I am, the only lady private detective in the whole of Botswana, sitting in front of my detective agency. But only a few years ago there was no detective agency, and before that, before there were even any buildings here, there were just the acacia trees, and the riverbed in the distance, and the Kalahari over there, so close.
In those days there was no Botswana even, just the Bechua? naland Protectorate, and before that again there was Khama's Country, and lions with the dry wind in their manes. But look at it now: a detective agency, right here in Gaborone, with me, the fat lady detective, sitting outside and thinking these thoughts about how what is one thing today becomes quite another thing tomorrow.
Mma Ramotswe set up the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency with the proceeds of the sale of her father's cattle. He had owned a big herd, and had no other children; so every single beast, all one hundred and eighty of them, including the white Brahmin bulls whose grandparents he had bred himself, went to her. The cattle were moved from the cattle post, back to Mochudi where they waited, in the dust, under the eyes of the chattering herd boys, until the livestock agent came.
They fetched a good price, as there had been heavy rains that year, and the grass had been lush. Had it been the year before, when most of that southern part of Africa had been wracked by drought, it would have been a different matter. People had dithered then, wanting to hold on to their cattle, as without your cattle you were naked; others, feeling more desperate, sold, because the rains had failed year after year and they had seen the animals become thinner and thinner. Mma Ramotswe was pleased that her father's illness had prevented his making any decision, as now the price had gone up and those who had held on were well rewarded.
"I want you to have your own business," he said to her on his death bed. 'You'll get a good price for the cattle now. Sell them and buy a business. A butchery maybe. A bottle store. Whatever you like."
She held her father's hand and looked into the eyes of the man she loved beyond all others, her Daddy, her wise Daddy, whose lungs had been filled with dust in those mines and who had scrimped and saved to make life good for her.
It was difficult to talk through her tears, but she managed to say: "I'm going to set up a detective agency. Down in Gaborone. It will be the best one in Botswana. The No. 1 Agency."
For a moment her father's eyes opened wide and it seemed as if he was struggling to speak.
"But ... but .. ."
But he died before he could say anything more, and Mma Ramotswe fell on his chest and wept for all the dignity, love and suffering that died with him.

SHE HAD a sign painted in bright colours, which was then set up just off the Lobatse Road, on the edge of town, pointing to the small building she had purchased: THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY. FOR ALL CONFIDENTIAL MATTERS AND ENQUIRIES. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED FOR ALL PARTIES. UNDER PERSONAL MANAGEMENT.
There was considerable public interest in the setting up of her agency. There was an interview on Radio Botswana, in which she thought she was rather rudely pressed to reveal her qualifications, and a rather more satisfactory article in The Botswana News, which drew attention to the fact that she was the only lady private detective in the country. This article was cut out, copied, and placed prominently on a small board beside the front door of the agency.
After a slow start, she was rather surprised to find that her services were in considerable demand. She was consulted about missing husbands, about the creditworthiness of potential business partners, and about suspected fraud by employees. In almost every case, she was able to come up with at least some information for the client; when she could not, she waived her fee, which meant that virtually nobody who consulted her was dissatisfied. People in Botswana liked to talk, she discovered, and the mere mention of the fact that she was a private detective would let loose a positive outpouring of information on all sorts of subjects. It flattered people, she concluded, to be approached by a private detective, and this effectively loosened their tongues. This happened with Happy Bapetsi, one of her earlier clients. Poor Happy! To have lost your daddy and then found him, and then lost him again . . .

"I USED to have a happy life," said Happy Bapetsi. "A very happy life. Then this thing happened, and I can't say that anymore."
Mma Ramotswe watched her client as she sipped her bush tea. Everything you wanted to know about a person was written in the face, she believed. It's not that she believed that the shape of the head was what counted—even if there were many who still clung to that belief; it was more a question of taking care to scrutinise the lines and the general look. And the eyes, of course; they were very important. The eyes allowed you to see right into a person, to penetrate their very essence, and that was why people with something to hide wore sunglasses indoors. They were the ones you had to watch very carefully.
Now this Happy Bapetsi was intelligent; that was immediately apparent. She also had few worries—this was shown by the fact that there were no lines on her face, other than smile lines of course. So it was man trouble, thought Mma Ramotswe. Some man has turned up and spoilt everything, destroying her happiness with his bad behaviour.
"Let me tell you a little about myself first," said Happy Bapetsi. "I come from Maun, you see, right up on the Oka-vango. My mother had a small shop and I lived with her in the house at the back. We had lots of chickens and we were very happy.
"My mother told me that my Daddy had left a long time ago, when I was still a little baby. He had gone off to work in Bul-awayo and he had never come back. Somebody had written to us—another Motswana living there—to say that he thought that my Daddy was dead, but he wasn't sure. He said that he had gone to see somebody at Mpilo Hospital one day and as he was walking along a corridor he saw them wheeling somebody out on a stretcher and that the dead person on the stretcher looked remarkably like my Daddy. But he couldn't be certain. "So we decided that he was probably dead, but my mother did not mind a great deal because she had never really liked him very much. And of course I couldn't even remember him, so it did not make much difference to me.
"I went to school in Maun at a place run by some Catholic missionaries. One of them discovered that I could do arithmetic rather well and he spent a lot of time helping me. He said that he had never met a girl who could count so well. "I suppose it was very odd. I could see a group of figures and I would just remember it. Then I would find that I had added the figures in my head, even without thinking about it. It just came very easily—I didn't have to work at it at all.
"I did very well in my exams and at the end of the day I went off to Gaborone and learned how to be a bookkeeper. Again it was very simple for me; I could look at a whole sheet of figures and understand it immediately. Then, the next day, I could remember every figure exactly and write them all down if I needed to.
"I got a job in the bank and I was given promotion after promotion. Now I am the No. 1 subaccountant and I don't think I can go any further because all the men are worried that I'll make them look stupid. But I don't mind. I get very good pay and I can finish all my work by three in the afternoon, sometimes earlier. I go shopping after that. I have a nice house with four rooms and I am very happy. To have all that by the time you are thirty-eight is good enough, I think."
Mma Ramotswe smiled. "That is all very interesting. You're right. You've done well."
"I'm very lucky," said Happy Bapetsi. "But then this thing happened. My Daddy arrived at the house."
Mma Ramotswe drew in her breath. She had not expected this; she had thought it would be a boyfriend problem. Fathers were a different matter altogether.
"He just knocked on the door," said Happy Bapetsi. "It was a Saturday afternoon and I was taking a rest on my bed when I heard his knocking. I got up, went to the door, and there was this man, about sixty or so, standing there with his hat in his hands. He told me that he was my Daddy, and that he had been living in Bulawayo for a long time but was now back in Botswana and had come to see me.
"You can understand how shocked I was. I had to sit down, or I think I would have fainted. In the meantime, he spoke. He told me my mother's name, which was correct, and he said that he was sorry that he hadn't been in touch before. Then he asked if he could stay in one of the spare rooms, as he had nowhere else to go.
"I said that of course he could. In a way I was very excited to see my Daddy and I thought that it would be good to be able to make up for all those lost years and to have him staying with me, particularly since my poor mother died. So I made a bed for him in one of the rooms and cooked him a large meal of steak and potatoes, which he ate very quickly. Then he asked for more. "That was about three months ago. Since then, he has been living in that room and I have been doing all the work for him. I make his breakfast, cook him some lunch, which I leave in the kitchen, and then make his supper at night. I buy him one bottle of beer a day and have also bought him some new clothes and a pair of good shoes. All he does is sit in his chair outside the front door and tell me what to do for him next." "Many men are like that," interrupted Mma Ramotswe. Happy Bapetsi nodded. "This one is especially like that. He has not washed a single cooking pot since he arrived and I have been getting very tired running after him. He also spends a lot of my money on vitamin pills and biltong.
"I would not resent this, you know, except for one thing. I do not think that he is my real Daddy. I have no way of proving this, but I think that this man is an impostor and that he heard about our family from my real Daddy before he died and is now just pretending. I think he is a man who has been looking for a retirement home and who is very pleased because he has found a good one."
Mma Ramotswe found herself staring in frank wonderment at Happy Bapetsi. There was no doubt but that she was telling the truth; what astonished her was the effrontery, the sheer, naked effrontery of men. How dare this person come and impose on this helpful, happy person! What a piece of chicanery, of fraud! What a piece of outright theft in fact!
"Can you help me?" asked Happy Bapetsi. "Can you find out whether this man is really my Daddy? If he is, then I will be a dutiful daughter and put up with him. If he is not, then I should prefer for him to go somewhere else."
Mma Ramotswe did not hesitate. "I'll find out," she said. "It may take me a day or two, but I'll find out!"
Of course it was easier said than done. There were blood tests these days, but she doubted very much whether this person would agree to that. No, she would have to try something more subtle, something that would show beyond any argument whether he was the Daddy or not. She stopped in her line of thought. Yes! There was something biblical about this story. What, she thought, would Solomon have done?

MMA RAMOTSWE pic*ed up the nurse's uniform from her friend Sister Gogwe. It was a bit tight, especially round the arms, as Sister Gogwe, although generously proportioned, was slightly more slender than Mma Ramotswe. But once she was in it, and had pinned the nurse's watch to her front, she was a perfect picture of a staff sister at the Princess Marina Hospital. It was a good disguise, she thought, and she made a mental note to use it at some time in the future.
As she drove to Happy Bapetsi's house in her tiny white van, she reflected on how the African tradition of support for relatives could cripple people. She knew of one man, a sergeant of police, who was supporting an uncle, two aunts, and a second cousin. If you believed in the old Setswana morality, you couldn't turn a relative away, and there was a lot to be said for that. But it did mean that charlatans and parasites had a very much easier time of it than they did elsewhere. They were the people who ruined the system, she thought. They're the ones who are giving the old ways a bad name.
As she neared the house, she increased her speed. This was an errand of mercy, after all, and if the Daddy were sitting in his chair outside the front door he would have to see her arrive in a cloud of dust. The Daddy was there, of course, enjoying the morning sun, and he sat up straight in his chair as he saw the tiny white van sweep up to the gate. Mma Ramotswe turned off the engine and ran out of the car up to the house.
"Dumela Rra," she greeted him rapidly. ''Are you Happy Bapetsi's Daddy?"
The Daddy rose to his feet. "Yes," he said proudly. "I am the Daddy."
Mma Ramotswe panted, as if trying to get her breath back.
"I'm sorry to say that there has been an accident. Happy was run over and is very sick at the hospital. Even now they are performing a big operation on her."
The Daddy let out a wail. "Aiee! My daughter! My little baby Happy!"
A good actor, thought Mma Ramotswe, unless . . . No, she preferred to trust Happy Bapetsi's instinct. A girl should know her own Daddy even if she had not seen him since she was a baby.
"Yes," she went on. "It is very sad. She is very sick, very sick.
And they need lots of blood to make up for all the blood she's lost."
The Daddy frowned. "They must give her that blood. Lots of blood. I can pay."
"It's not the money," said Mma Ramotswe. "Blood is free. We don't have the right sort. We will have to get some from her family, and you are the only one she has. We must ask you for some blood."
The Daddy sat down heavily.
"I am an old man," he said.
Mma Ramotswe sensed that it would work. Yes, this man was an impostor.
"That is why we are asking you," she said. "Because she needs so much blood, they will have to take about half your blood. And that is very dangerous for you. In fact, you might die."
The Daddy's mouth fell open.
"Die?"
"Yes," said Mma Ramotswe. "But then you are her father and we know that you would do this thing for your daughter. Now could you come quickly, or it will be too late. Doctor Moghile is waiting."
The Daddy opened his mouth, and then closed it.
"Come on," said Mma Ramotswe, reaching down and taking his wrist. "I'll help you to the van."
The Daddy rose to his feet, and then tried to sit down again. Mma Ramotswe gave him a tug,
"No," he said. "I don't want to."
"You must," said Mma Ramotswe. "Now come on."
The Daddy shook his head. "No," he said faintly. "I won't. You see, I'm not really her Daddy. There has been a mistake."
Mma Ramotswe let go of his wrist. Then, her arms folded, she stood before him and addressed him directly.
"So you are not the Daddy! I see! I see! Then what are you doing sitting in that chair and eating her food? Have you heard of the Botswana Penal Code and what it says about people like you? Have you?"
The Daddy looked down at the ground and shook his head.
"Well," said Mma Ramotswe. "You go inside that house and get your things. You have five minutes. Then I am going to take you to the bus station and you are going to get on a bus. Where do you really live?"
"Lobatse," said the Daddy. "But I don't like it down there."
"Well," said Mma Ramotswe. "Maybe if you started doing something instead of just sitting in a chair you might like it a bit more. There are lots of melons to grow down there. How about that, for a start?"
The Daddy looked miserable.
"Inside!" she ordered. "Four minutes left now!"

WHEN HAPPY Bapetsi returned home she found the Daddy gone and his room cleared out. There was a note from Mma Ramotswe on the kitchen table, which she read, and as she did so, her smile returned.

THAT WAS not your Daddy after all. I found out the best way. I got him to tell me himself. Maybe you will find the real Daddy one day. Maybe not. But in the meantime, you can be happy again.

Chapter two

All Those  Years Ago

We Don't forget, thought Mma Ramotswe. Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which come back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are. And who am I? I am Precious Ramotswe, citizen of Botswana, daughter of Obed Ramotswe who died because he had been a miner and could no longer breathe. His life was unrecorded; who is there to write down the lives of ordinary people?

I AM Obed Ramotswe, and I was born near Mahalapye in 1930. Mahalapye is halfway between Gaborone and Francis-town, on that road that seems to go on and on forever. It was a dirt road in those days, of course, and the railway line was much more important. The track came down from Bulawayo, crossed into Botswana at Plumtree, and then headed south down the side of the country all the way to Mafikeng, on the other side.
As a boy I used to watch the trains as they drew up at the siding. They let out great clouds of steam, and we would dare one another to run as close as we could to it. The stokers would shout at us, and the station master would blow his whistle, but they never managed to get rid of us. We hid behind plants and boxes and dashed out to ask for coins from the closed windows of the trains. We saw the white people look out of their windows, like ghosts, and sometimes they would toss us one of their Rhodesian pennies—large copper coins with a hole in the middle—or, if we were lucky, a tiny silver coin we called a tickey, which could buy us a small tin of syrup. Mahalapye was a straggling village of huts made of brown, sun-baked mud bricks and a few tin-roofed buildings. These belonged to the Government or the Railways, and they seemed to us to represent distant, unattainable luxury. There was a school run by an old Anglican priest and a white woman whose face had been half-destroyed by the sun. They both spoke Setswana, which was unusual, but they taught us in English, insisting, on the pain of a thrashing, that we left our own language outside in the playground.
On the other side of the road was the beginning of the plain that stretched out into the Kalahari. It was featureless land, cluttered with low thorn trees, on the branches of which there perched the hornbills and the fluttering molopes, with their long, trailing tail feathers. It was a world that seemed to have no end, and that, I think, is what made Africa in those days so different. There was no end to it. A man could walk, or ride, forever, and he would never get anywhere.
I am sixty now, and I do not think God wants me to live much longer. Perhaps there will be a few years more, but I doubt it; I saw Dr Moffat at the Dutch Reformed Hospital in Mochudi who listened to my chest. He could tell that I had been a miner, just by listening, and he shook his head and said that the mines have many different ways of hurting a man. As he spoke, I remembered a song which the Sotho miners used to sing. They sang: "The mines eat men. Even when you have left them, the mines may still be eating you." We all knew this was true. You could be killed by falling rock or you could be killed years later, when going underground was just a memory, or even a bad dream that visited you at night. The mines would come back for their payment, just as they were coming back for me now. So I was not surprised by what Dr Moffat said.
Some people cannot bear news like that. They think they must live forever, and they cry and wail when they realise that their time is coming. I do not feel that, and I did not weep at that news which the doctor gave me. The only thing that makes me sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die. I love Africa, which is my mother and my father. When I am dead, I shall miss the smell of Africa, because they say that where you go, wherever that may be, there is no smell and no taste.
I'm not saying that I'm a brave man—I'm not—but I really don't seem to mind this news I have been given. I can look back over my sixty years and think of everything that I have seen and of how I started with nothing and ended up with almost two hundred cattle. And I have a good daughter, a loyal daughter, who looks after me well and makes me tea while I sit here in the sun and look out to the hills in the distance. When you see these hills from a distance, they are blue; as all the distances in this country are. We are far from the sea here, with Angola and Namibia between us and the coast, and yet we have this great empty ocean of blue above us and around us. No sailor could be lonelier than a man standing in the middle of our land, with the miles and miles of blue about him.
I have never seen the sea, although a man I worked with in the mines once invited me to his place down in Zululand. He told me that it had green hills that reached down to the Indian Ocean and that he could look out of his doorway and see ships in the distance. He said that the women in his village brewed the best beer in the country and that a man could sit in the sun there for many years and never do anything except make children and drink maize beer. He said that if I went with him, he might be able to get me a wife and that they might overlook the fact that I was not a Zulu—if I was prepared to pay the father enough money for the girl.
But why should I want to go to Zululand? Why should I ever want anything but to live in Botswana, and to marry a Tswana girl? I said to him that Zululand sounded fine, but that every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. I told him that in Botswana we did not have the green hills that he had in his place, nor the sea, but we had the Kalahari and land that stretched farther than one could imagine. I told him that if a man is born in a dry place, then although he may dream of rain, he does not want too much, and that he will not mind the sun that beats down and down. So I never went with him to Zululand and I never saw the sea, ever. But that has not made me unhappy, not once.
So I sit here now, quite near the end, and think of everything that has happened to me. Not a day passes, though, that my mind does not go to God and to thoughts of what it will be like to die. I am not frightened of this, because I do not mind pain, and the pain that I feel is really quite bearable. They gave me pills—large white ones—and they told me to take these if the pain in my chest became too great. But these pills make me sleepy, and I prefer to be awake. So I think of God and wonder what he will say to me when I stand before him.
Some people think of God as a white man, which is an idea which the missionaries brought with them all those years ago and which seems to have stuck in people's mind. I do not think this is so, because there is no difference between white men and black men; we are all the same; we are just people. And God was here anyway, before the missionaries came. We called him by a different name, then, and he did not live over at the Jews' place; he lived here in Africa, in the rocks, in the sky, in places where we knew he liked to be. When you died, you went somewhere else, and God would have been there too, but you would not be able to get specially close to him. Why should he want that?
We have a story in Botswana about two children, a brother and sister, who are taken up to heaven by a whirlwind and find that heaven is full of beautiful white cattle. That is how I like to think of it, and I hope that it is true. I hope that when I die I find myself in a place where there are cattle like that, who have sweet breath, and who are all about me. If that is what awaits me, then I am happy to go tomorrow, or even now, right at this moment. I should like to say goodbye to Precious, though, and to hold my daughter's hand as I went. That would be a happy way to go.

*       *       *

I LOVE our country, and I am proud to be a Motswana. There's no other country in Africa that can hold its head up as we can. We have no political prisoners, and never have had any. We have democracy. We have been careful. The Bank of Botswana is full of money, from our diamonds. We owe nothing.
But things were bad in the past. Before we built our country we had to go off to South Africa to work. We went to the mines, just as people did from Lesotho and Mozambique and Malawi and all those countries. The mines sucked our men in and left the old men and the children at home. We dug for gold and diamonds and made those white men rich. They built their big houses, with their walls and their cars. And we dug down below them and brought out the rock on which they built it all.
I went to the mines when I was eighteen. We were the Bechuanaland Protectorate then,  and the British ran our country, to protect us from the Boers (or that is what they said). There was a Commissioner down in Mafikeng, over the border into South Africa, and he would come up the road and speak to the chiefs. He would say: "You do this thing; you do that thing." And the chiefs all obeyed him because they knew that if they did not he would have them deposed. But some of them were clever, and while the British said "You do this," they would say "Yes, yes, sir, I will do that" and all the time, behind their backs, they did the other thing or they just pretended to do something. So for many years, nothing at all happened. It was a good system of government, because most people want nothing to happen. That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle.
We had left Mahalapye by then, and gone to live in Mochudi, where my mother's people lived. I liked Mochudi, and would have been happy to stay there, but my father said I should go to the mines, as his lands were not good enough to support me and a wife. We did not have many cattle, and we grew just enough crops to keep us through the year. So when the recruiting truck came from over the border I went to them and they put me on a scale and listened to my chest and made me run up and down a ladder for ten minutes. Then a man said that I would be a good miner and they made me write my name on a piece of paper. They asked me the name of my chief and asked me whether I had ever been in any trouble with the police. That was all.
I went off on the truck the next day. I had one trunk, which my father had bought for me at the Indian Store. I only had one pair of shoes, but I had a spare shirt and some spare trousers. These were all the things I had, apart from some biltong which my mother had made for me. I loaded my trunk on top of the truck and then all the families who had come to say goodbye started to sing. The women cried and we waved goodbye. Young men always try not to cry or look sad, but I knew that within us all our hearts were cold.
It took twelve hours to reach Johannesburg, as the roads were rough in those days and if the truck went too fast it could break an axle. We travelled through the Western Transvaal, through the heat, cooped up in the truck like cattle. Every hour, the driver would stop and come round to the back and pass out canteens of water which they filled at each town we went through. You were allowed the canteen for a few seconds only, and in that time you had to take as much water as you could. Men who were on their second or third contract knew all about this, and they had bottles of water which they would share if you were desperate. We were all Batswana together, and a man would not see a fellow Motswana suffer.
The older men were about the younger ones. They told them that now that they had signed on for the mines, they were no longer boys. They told us that we would see things in Johannesburg which we could never have imagined existing, and that if we were weak, or stupid, or if we did not work hard enough, our life from now on would be nothing but suffering. They told us that we would see cruelty and wickedness, but that if we stuck with other Batswana and did what we were told by the older men, we would survive. I thought that perhaps they were exaggerating. I remembered the older boys telling us about the initiation school that we all had to go to and warning us of what lay ahead of us. They said all this to frighten us, and the reality was quite different. But these men spoke the absolute truth. What lay ahead of us was exactly what they had predicted, and even worse.
In Johannesburg they spent two weeks training us. We were all quite fit and strong, but nobody could be sent down the mines until he had been made even stronger. So they took us to a building which they had heated with steam and they made us jump up and down onto benches for four hours each day. This was too much for some men, who collapsed, and had to be hauled back to their feet, but somehow I survived it and passed on to the next part of our training. They told us how we would be taken down into the mines and about the work we would be expected to do. They talked to us about safety, and how the rock could fall and crush us if we were careless. They carried in a man with no legs and put him down on a table and made us listen to him as he told us what had happened to him.
They taught us Funagalo, which is the language used for giving orders underground. It is a strange language. The Zulus laugh when they hear it, because there are so many Zulu words in it but it is not Zulu. It is a language which is good for telling people what to do. There are many words for push, take, shove, carry, load, and no words for love, or happiness, or the sounds which birds make in the morning.
Then we went down to the shafts and were shown what to do. They put us in cages, beneath great wheels, and these cages shot down as fast as hawks falling upon their prey. They had trains down there—small trains—and they put us on these and took us to the end of long, dark tunnels, which were filled with green rock and dust. My job was to load rock after it had been blasted, and I did this for seven hours a day. I grew strong, but all the time there was dust, dust, dust.
Some of the mines were more dangerous than others, and we all knew which these were. In a safe mine you hardly ever see the stretchers underground. In a dangerous one, though, the stretchers are often out, and you see men being carried up in the cages, crying with pain, or, worse still, silent under the heavy red blankets. We all knew that the only way to survive was to get into a crew where the men had what everybody called rock sense. This was something which every good miner had. He had to be able to see what the rock was doing—what it was feeling—and to know when new supports were needed. If one or two men in a crew did not know this, then it did not matter how good the others were. The rock would come down and it fell on good miners and bad.
There was another thing which affected your chances of survival, and this was the sort of white miner you had. The white miners were put in charge of the teams, but many of them had very little to do. If a team was good, then the boss boy knew exactly what to do and how to do it. The white miner would pretend to give the orders, but he knew that it would be the boss boy who really got the work done. But a stupid white miner—and there were plenty of those—would drive his team too hard. He would shout and hit the men if he thought they were not working quickly enough and this could be very dangerous. Yet when the rock came down, the white miner would never be there; he would be back down the tunnel with the other white miners, waiting for us to report that the work had been finished.
It was not unusual for a white miner to beat his men if he got into a temper. They were not meant to, but the shift bosses always turned a blind eye and let them get on with it. Yet we were never allowed to hit back, no matter how undeserved the blows. If you hit a white miner, you were finished. The mine police would be waiting for you at the top of the shaft and you could spend a year or two in prison.
They kept us apart, because that is how they worked, these white men. The Swazis were all in one gang, and the Zulus in another, and the Malawians in another. And so on. Everybody was with his people, and had to obey the boss boy. If you didn't, and the boss boy said that a man was making trouble, they would send him home or arrange for the police to beat him until he started to be reasonable again.
We were all afraid of the Zulus, although I had that friend who was a kind Zulu. The Zulus thought they were better than any of us and sometimes they called us women. If there was a fight, it was almost always the Zulus or the Basotho, but never the Batswana. We did not like fighting. Once a drunk Motswana wandered into a Zulu hostel by mistake on a Saturday night. They beat him with sjamboks and left him lying on the road to be run over. Fortunately a police van saw him and rescued him, or he would have been killed. All for wandering into the wrong hostel.
I worked for years in those mines, and I saved all my money. Other men spent it on town women, and drink, and on fancy clothes. I bought nothing, not even a gramophone. I sent the money home to the Standard Bank and then I bought cattle with it. Each year I bought a few cows, and gave them to my cousin to look after. They had calves, and slowly my herd got bigger.
I would have stayed in the mines, I suppose, had I not witnessed a terrible thing. It happened after I had been there for fifteen years. I had then been given a much better job, as an assistant to a blaster. They would not give us blasting tickets, as that was a job that the white men kept for themselves, but I was given the job of carrying explosives for a blaster and helping him with the fuses. This was a good job, and I liked the man I worked for.
He had left something in a tunnel once—his tin can in which he carried his sandwiches—and he had asked me to fetch it. So I went off down the tunnel where he had been working and looked for this can. The tunnel was lit by bulbs which were attached to the roof all the way along, so it was quite safe to walk along it. But you still had to be careful, because here and there were great galleries which had been blasted out of the rock. These could be two hundred feet deep, and they opened out from the sides of the tunnel to drop down to another working level, like underground quarries. Men fell into these galleries from time to time, and it was always their fault. They were not looking where they were walking, or were walking along an unlit tunnel when the batteries in their helmet lights were weak. Sometimes a man just walked over the edge for no reason at all, or because he was unhappy and did not want to live anymore. You could never tell; there are many sadnesses in the hearts of men who are far away from their countries.
I turned a corner in this tunnel and found myself in a round chamber. There was a gallery at the end of this, and there was a warning sign. Four men were standing at the edge of this, and they were holding another man by his arms and legs. As I came round the corner, they lifted him and threw him forwards, over the edge and into the dark. The man screamed, in Xhosa, and I heard what he said. He said something about a child, but I did not catch it all as I am not very good at Xhosa. Then he was gone.
I stood where I was. The men had not seen me yet, but one turned round and shouted out in Zulu. Then they began to run towards me. I turned round and ran back along the tunnel. I knew that if they caught me I would follow their victim into the gallery. It was not a race I could let myself lose.
Although I got away, I knew that those men had seen me and that I would be killed. I had seen their murder and could be a witness, and so I knew that I could not stay in the mines. I spoke to the blaster. He was a good man and he listened to me carefully when I told him that I would have to go. There was no other white man I could have spoken to like that, but he understood.
Still, he tried to persuade me to go to the police.
"Tell them what you saw," he said in Afrikaans. "Tell them. They can catch these Zulus and hang them."
"I don't know who these men are. They'll catch me first. I am going home to my place."
He looked at me and nodded. Then he took my hand and shook it, which is the first time a white man had done that to me. So I called him my brother, which is the first time I had done that to a white man.
"You go back home to your wife," he said. "If a man leaves his wife too long, she starts to make trouble for him. Believe me. Go back and give her more children."
So I left the mines, secretly, like a thief, and came back to Botswana in 1960. I cannot tell you how full my heart was when I crossed the border back into Botswana and left South Africa behind me forever. In that place I had felt every day that I might die. Danger and sorrow hung over Johannesburg like a cloud, and I could never be happy there. In Botswana it was different. There were no policemen with dogs; there were no totsis with knives, waiting to rob you; you did not wake up every morning to a wailing siren calling you down into the hot earth. There were not the same great crowds of men, all from some distant place, all sickening for home, all wanting to be somewhere else. I had left a prison—a great, groaning prison, under the sunlight.
When I came home that time, and got off the bus at Mochudi, and saw the kopje and the chief's place and the goats, I just stood and cried. A man came up to me—a man I did not know—and he put his hand on my shoulder and asked me whether I was just back from the mines. I told him that I was, and he just nodded and left his hand there until I had stopped weeping.
Then he smiled and walked away. He had seen my wife coming for me, and he did not want to interfere with the homecoming of a husband.
I had taken this wife three years earlier, although we had seen very little of one another since the marriage. I came back from Johannesburg once a year, for one month, and this was all the life we had had together. After my last trip she had become pregnant, and my little girl had been born while I was still away. Now I was to see her, and my wife had brought her to meet me off the bus. She stood there, with the child in her arms, the child who was more valuable to me than all the gold taken out of those mines in Johannesburg. This was my firstborn, and my only child, my girl, my Precious Ramotswe.
Precious was like her mother, who was a good fat woman. She played in the yard outside the house and laughed when I pic*ed her up. I had a cow that gave good milk, and I kept this nearby for Precious. We gave her plenty of syrup too, and eggs every day. My wife put Vaseline on her skin, and polished it, so that she shone. They said she was the most beautiful child in Bechuanaland and women would come from miles away to look at her and hold her.
Then my wife, the mother of Precious, died. We were living just outside Mochudi then, and she used to go from our place to visit an aunt of hers who lived over the railway line near the Francistown Road. She carried food there, as that aunt was too old to look after herself and she only had one son there, who was sick with sufuba and could not walk very far.
I don't know how it happened. Some people said that it was because there was a storm brewing up and there was lightning that she may have run without looking where she was going.
But she was on the railway line when the train from Bulawayo came down and hit her. The engine driver was very sorry, but he had not seen her at all, which was probably true.
My cousin came to look after Precious. She made her clothes, took her to school and cooked our meals. I was a sad man, and I thought: Now there is nothing left for you in this life but Precious and your cattle. In my sorrow, I went out to the cattle post to see how my cattle were, and to pay the herd boys. I had more cattle now, and I had even thought of buying a store. But I decided to wait, and to let Precious buy a store once I was dead. Besides, the dust from the mines had ruined my chest, and I could not walk fast or lift things.
One day I was on my way back from the cattle post and I had reached the main road that led from Francistown to Gaborone. It was a hot day, and I was sitting under a tree by the roadside, waiting for the bus that would go that way later on. I fell asleep from the heat, and was woken by the sound of a car drawing up.
It was a large car, an American car, I think, and there was a man sitting in the back. The driver came up to me and spoke to me in Setswana, although the number plate of the car was from South Africa. The driver said that there was a leak in the radiator and did I know where they might find some water. As it happened, there was a cattle-watering tank along the track to my cattle post, and so I went with the driver and we filled a can with water.
When we came back to put the water in the radiator, the man who had been sitting in the back had got out and was standing looking at me. He smiled, to show that he was grateful for my help, and I smiled back. Then I realised that I knew who this man was, and that it was the man who managed all those mines in Johannesburg—one of Mr Oppenheimer's men.
I went over to this man and told him who I was. I told him that I was Ramotswe, who had worked in his mines, and I was sorry that I had had to leave early, but that it had been because of circumstances beyond my control.
He laughed, and said that it was good of me to have worked in the mines for so many years. He said I could ride back in his car and that he would take me to Mochudi.
So I arrived back in Mochudi in that car and this important man came into my house. He saw Precious and told me that she was a very fine child. Then, after he had drunk some tea, he looked at his watch.
"I must go back now," he said. "I have to get back to Johannesburg."
I said that his wife would be angry if he was not back in time for the food she had cooked him. He said this would probably be so.
We walked outside. Mr Oppenheimer's man reached into his pocket and took out a wallet. I turned away while he opened it; I did not want money from him, but he insisted. He said I had been one of Mr Oppenheimer's people and Mr Oppenheimer liked to look after his people. He then gave me two hundred rands, and I said that I would use it to buy a bull, since I had just lost one.
He was pleased with this. I told him to go in peace and he said that I should stay in peace. So we left one another and I never saw my friend again, although he is always there, in my heart.

Chapter Three

Lessons About Boys And Goats

Obed Ramotswe installed his cousin in a room at the back of the small house he had built for himself at the edge of the village when he had returned from the mines. He had originally planned this as a storeroom, in which to keep his tin trunks and spare blankets and the supplies of paraffin he used for cooking, but there was room for these elsewhere. With the addition of a bed and a small cupboard, and with a coat of whitewash applied to the walls, the room was soon fit for occupation. From the point of view of the cousin, it was luxury almost beyond imagination; after the departure of her husband, six years previously, she had returned to live with her mother and her grandmother and had been required to sleep in a room which had only three walls, one of which did not quite reach the roof. They had treated her with quiet contempt, being old-fashioned people, who believed that a woman who was left by her husband would almost always have deserved her fate. They had to take her in, of course, but it was duty, rather than affection, which opened their door to her.
Her husband had left her because she was barren, a fate which was almost inevitable for the childless woman. She had spent what little money she had on consultations with traditional healers, one of whom had promised her that she would conceive within months of his attentions. He had administered a variety of herbs and powdered barks and, when these did not work, he had turned to charms. Several of the potions had made her ill, and one had almost killed her, which was not surprising, given its contents, but the barrenness remained and she knew that her husband was losing patience. Shortly after he left, he wrote to her from Lobatse and told her— proudly—that his new wife was pregnant. Then, a year and a half later, there came a short letter with a photograph of his child. No money was sent, and that was the last time she heard from him.

*       *       *

Now, holding Precious in her arms, standing in her own room with its four stout, whitewashed walls, her happiness was complete. She allowed Precious, now four, to sleep with her in her bed, lying awake at night for long hours to listen to the child's breathing. She stroked her skin, held the tiny hand between her fingers, and marvelled at the completeness of the child's body. When Precious slept during the afternoon, in the heat, she would sit beside her, knitting and sewing tiny jackets and socks in bright reds and blues, and brush flies away from the sleeping child.
Obed, too, was content. He gave his cousin money each week to buy food for the household and a little extra each month for herself. She husbanded resources well, and there was always money left over, which she spent on something for Precious. He never had occasion to reprove her, or to find fault in her upbringing of his daughter. Everything was perfect.
The cousin wanted Precious to be clever. She had had little education herself, but had struggled at reading, and persisted, and now she sensed the possibilities for change. There was a political party, now, which women could join, although some men grumbled about this and said it was asking for trouble. Women were beginning to speak amongst themselves about their lot. Nobody challenged men openly, of course, but when women spoke now amongst themselves, there were whispers, and looks exchanged. She thought of her own life; of the early marriage to a man she had barely met, and of the shame of her inability to bear children. She remembered the years of living in the room with three walls, and the tasks which had been imposed upon her, unpaid. One day, women would be able to sound their own voice, perhaps, and would point out what was wrong. But they would need to be able to read to do that.
She started by teaching Precious to count. They counted goats and cattle. They counted boys playing in the dust. They counted trees, giving each tree a name: crooked one; one with no leaves; one where mopani worms like to hide; one where no bird will go. Then she said: "If we chop down the tree which looks like an old man, then how many trees are there left?" She made Precious remember lists of things—the names of members of the family, the names of cattle her grandfather had owned, the names of the chiefs. Sometimes they sat outside the store nearby, the Small Upright General Dealer, and waited for a car or a truck to bump its way past on the pothole-pitted road. The cousin would call out the number on the registration plate and Precious would have to remember it the next day when she was asked, and perhaps even the day after that. They also played a variety of Kim's Game, in which the cousin would load a basket-work tray with familiar objects and a blanket would then be draped over it and one object removed.
"What has been taken from the tray?"
"An old marula pip, all gnarled and chewed up."
"And what else?"
"Nothing."
She was never wrong, this child who watched everybody and everything with her wide, solemn eyes. And slowly, without anybody ever having intended this, the qualities of curiosity and awareness were nurtured in the child's mind.
By the time Precious went to school at the age of six, she knew her alphabet, her numbers up to two hundred, and she could recite the entire first chapter of the Book of Genesis in the Setswana translation. She had also learnt a few words of English, and could declaim all four verses of an English poem about ships and the sea. The teacher was impressed and complimented the cousin on what she had done. This was virtually the first praise that she had ever received for any task she had performed; Obed had thanked her, and done so often, and generously, but it had not occurred to him to praise her, because in his view she was just doing her duty as a woman and there was nothing special about that.
"We are the ones who first ploughed the earth when Modise (God) made it," ran an old Setswana poem. "We were the ones who made the food. We are the ones who look after the men when they are little boys, when they are young men, and when they are old and about to die. We are always there. But we are just women, and nobody sees us."

Lessons About Boys
Mma Ramotswe thought: God put us on this earth. We were all Africans then, in the beginning, because man started in Kenya, as Dr Leakey and his Daddy have proved. So, if one thinks carefully about it, we are all brothers and sisters, and yet everywhere you look, what do you see? Fighting, fighting, fighting. Rich people killing poor people; poor people killing rich people. Everywhere, except Botswana. That's thanks to Sir Seretse Khama, who was a good man, who invented Botswana and made it a good place. She still cried for him sometimes, when she thought of him in his last illness and all those clever doctors in London saying to the Government: "We're sorry but we cannot cure your President."
The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.
Precious Ramotswe had learned about good and evil at Sunday School. The cousin had taken her there when she was six, and she had gone there every Sunday without fail until she was eleven. That was enough time for her to learn all about right and wrong, although she had been puzzled—and remained so—when it came to certain other aspects of religion. She could not believe that the Lord had walked on water—you just couldn't do that—nor had she believed the story about the feeding of the five thousand, which was equally impossible. These were lies, she was sure of it, and the biggest lie of all was that the Lord had no Daddy on this earth. That was untrue because even children knew that you needed a father to make a child, and that rule applied to cattle and chickens and people, all the same. But right and wrong—that was another matter, and she had experienced no difficulty in understanding that it was wrong to lie, and steal, and kill other people.
If people needed clear guidelines, there was nobody better to do this than Mma Mothibi, who had run the Sunday School at Mochudi for over twelve years. She was a short lady, almost entirely round, who spoke with an exceptionally deep voice. She taught the children hymns, in both Setswana and English, and because they learned their singing from her the children's choir all sang an octave below everybody else, as if they were frogs.
The children, dressed in their best clothes, sat in rows at the back of the church when the service had finished and were taught by Mma Mothibi. She read the Bible to them, and made them recite the Ten Commandments over and over again, and told them religious stories from a small blue book which she said came from London and was not available anywhere else in the country.
"These are the rules for being good," she intoned. "A boy must always rise early and say his prayers. Then he must clean his shoes and help his mother to prepare the family's breakfast, if they have breakfast. Some people have no breakfast because they are poor. Then he must go to school and do everything that his teacher tells him. In that way he will learn to be a clever Christian boy who will go to Heaven later on, when the Lord calls him home. For girls, the rules are the same, but they must also be careful about boys and must be ready to tell boys that they are Christians. Some boys will not understand this . . ."
Yes, thought Precious Ramotswe. Some boys do not understand this, and even there, in that Sunday School there was such a boy, that Josiah, who was a wicked boy, although he was only nine. He insisted on sitting next to Precious in Sunday School, even when she tried to avoid him. He was always looking at her and smiling encouragingly, although she was two years older than he was. He tried also to make sure that his leg touched hers, which angered her, and made her shift in her seat, away from him.
But worst of all, he would undo the buttons of his trousers and point to that thing that boys have, and expect her to look. She did not like this, as it was not something that should happen in a Sifnday School. What was so special about that, anyway? All boys had that thing.
At last she told Mma Mothibi about it, and the teacher listened gravely.
"Boys, men," she said. "They're all the same. They think that this thing is something special and they're all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is."
She told Precious to tell her next time it happened. She just had to raise her hand a little, and Mma Mothibi would see her. That would be the signal.
It happened the next week. While Mma Mothibi was at the back of the class, looking at the Sunday School books which the children had laid out before them, Josiah undid a button and whispered to Precious that she should look down. She kept her eyes on her book and raised her left hand slightly. He could not see this, of course, but Mma Mothibi did. She crept up behind the boy and raised her Bible into the air. Then she brought it down on his head, with a resounding thud that made the children start.
Josiah buckled under the blow. Mma Mothibi now came round to his front and pointed at his open fly. Then she raised the Bible and struck him on the top of the head again, even harder than before.
That was the last time that Josiah bothered Precious Ramotswe, or any other girl for that matter. For her part, Precious learned an important lesson about how to deal with men, and this lesson stayed with her for many years, and was to prove very useful later on, as were all the lessons of Sunday School.

The Cousin's Departure
The cousin looked after Precious for the first eight years of her life. She might have stayed indefinitely—which would have suited Obed—as the cousin kept house for him and never complained or asked him for money. But he recognised, when the time came, that there might be issues of pride and that the cousin might wish to marry again, in spite of what had happened last time. So he readily gave his blessing when the cousin announced that she had been seeing a man, that he had proposed, and that she had accepted.
"I could take Precious with me," she said. "I feel that she is my daughter now. But then, there is you . . ."
"Yes," said Obed. "There is me. Would you take me too?" The cousin laughed. "My new husband is a rich man, but I think that he wants to marry only one person."
Obed made arrangements for the wedding, as he was the cousin's nearest relative and it fell to him to do this. He did it readily, though, because of all she had done for him. He arranged for the slaughter of two cattle and for the brewing of enough beer for two hundred people. Then, with the cousin on his arm, he entered the church and saw the new husband and his people, and other distant cousins, and their friends, and people from the village, invited and uninvited, waiting and watching.
After the wedding ceremony, they went back to the house, where canvas tarpaulins had been hooked up between thorn trees and borrowed chairs set out. The old people sat down while the young moved about and talked to one another, and sniffed the air at the great quantities of meat that were sizzling on the open fires. Then they ate, and Obed made a speech of thanks to the cousin and the new husband, and the new husband replied that he was grateful to Obed for looking after this woman so well.
The new husband owned two buses, which made him wealthy. One of these, the Molepolole Special Express, had been pressed into service for the wedding, and was decked for the occasion with bright blue cloth. In the other, they drove off after the party, with the husband at the wheel and the new bride sitting in the seat immediately behind him. There were cries of excitement, and ululation from the women, and the bus drove off into happiness.
They set up home ten miles south of Gaborone, in an adobe-plastered house which the new husband's brother had built for him. It had a red roof and white walls, and a compound, in the traditional style, with a walled yard to the front.
At the back, there was a small shack for a servant to live in, and a lean-to latrine made out of galvanised tin. The cousin had a kitchen with a shining new set of pans and two cookers. She had a large new South African paraffin-powered fridge, which purred quietly all day, and kept everything icy cold within. Every evening, her husband came home with the day's takings from his buses, and she helped him to count the money. She proved to be an excellent bookkeeper, and was soon running that part of the business with conspicuous success.
She made her new husband happy in other ways. As a boy he had been bitten by a jackal, and had scars across his face where a junior doctor at the Scottish Missionary Hospital at Molepolole had ineptly sewn the wounds. No woman had told him that he was handsome before, and he had never dreamed that any would, being more used to the wince of sympathy. The cousin, though, said that he was the most good-looking man she had ever met, and the most virile too. This was not mere flattery—she was telling the truth, as she saw it, and his heart was filled with the warmth that flows from the well-directed compliment.
"I know you are missing me," the cousin wrote to Precious. "But I know that you want me to be happy. I am very happy now. I have a very kind husband who has bought me wonderful clothes and makes me very happy every day. One day, you will come and stay with us, and we can count the trees again and sing hymns together, as we always used to. Now you must look after your father, as you are old enough to do that, and he is a good man too. I want you to be happy, and that is what I pray for, every night. God look after Precious Ramotswe. God watch her tonight and forever. Amen."

Goats
As a girl, Precious Ramotswe liked to draw, an activity which the cousin had encouraged from an early age. She had been given a sketching pad and a set of coloured pencils for her tenth birthday, and her talent had soon become apparent. Obed Ramotswe was proud of her ability to fill the virgin pages of her sketchbook with scenes of everyday Mochudi life. Here was a sketch which showed the pond in front of the hospital— it was all quite recognisable—and here was a picture of the hospital matron looking at a donkey. And on this page was a picture of the shop, of the Small Upright General Dealer, with things in front of it which could be sacks of mealies or perhaps people sitting down—one could not tell—but they were excellent sketches and he had already pinned several up on the walls of the living room of their house, high up, near the ceiling, where the flies sat.
Her teachers knew of this ability, and told her that she might one day be a great artist, with her pictures on the cover of the Botswana Calendar. This encouraged her, and sketch followed sketch. Goats, cattle, hills, pumpkins, houses; there was so much for the artist's eye around Mochudi that there was no danger that she would run out of subjects.
The school got to hear of an art competition for children. The Museum in Gaborone had asked every school in the country to submit a picture by one of its pupils, on the theme "Life in Botswana of Today." Of course there was no doubt about whose work would be submitted. Precious was asked to draw a special picture—to take her time doing it—and then this would be sent down to Gaborone as the entry from Mochudi.
She drew her picture on a Saturday, going out early with her sketchbook and returning some hours later to fill in the details inside the house. It was a very good drawing, she thought, and her teacher was enthusiastic when she showed it to her the following Monday.
"This will win the prize for Mochudi," she said. "Everybody will be proud."
The drawing was placed carefully between two sheets of corrugated cardboard and sent off, registered post, to the Museum. Then there was a silence for five weeks, during which time everybody forgot about the competition. Only when the letter came to the Principal, and he, beaming, read it out to Precious, were they reminded.
"You have won first prize," he said. "You are to go to Gaborone, with your teacher and myself, and your father, to get the prize from the Minister of Education at a special ceremony."
It was too much for her, and she wept, but soon stopped, and was allowed to leave school early to run back to give the news to her Daddy.
They travelled down with the Principal in his truck, arriving far too early for the ceremony, and spent several hours sitting in the Museum yard, waiting for the doors to open. But at last they did, and others came, teachers, people from the newspapers, members of the Legislature. Then the Minister arrived in a black car and people put down their glasses of orange juice and swallowed the last of their sandwiches.
She saw her painting hanging in a special place, on a room divider, and there was a small card pinned underneath it. She went with her teacher to look at it, and she saw, with leaping heart, her name neatly typed out underneath the picture: PRECIOUS RAMOTSWE (10) (MOCHUDI GOVERNMENT JUNIOR SCHOOL). And underneath that, also typed, the title which the Museum itself had provided: Cattle Beside Dam.
She stood rigid, suddenly appalled. This was not true. The picture was of goats, but they had thought it was cattle! She was getting a prize for a cattle picture, by false pretences.
"What is wrong?" asked her father. "You must be very pleased. Why are you looking so sad?"
She could not say anything. She was about to become a criminal, a perpetrator of fraud. She could not possibly take a prize for a cattle picture when she simply did not deserve that.
But now the Minister was standing beside her, and he was preparing to make a speech. She looked up at him, and he smiled warmly.
"You are a very good artist," he said. "Mochudi must be proud of you."
She looked at the toes of her shoes. She would have to confess.
"It is not a picture of cattle," she said. "It is a picture of goats. You cannot give me a prize for a mistake."
The Minister frowned, and looked at the label. Then he turned back to her and said: "They are the ones who have made a mistake. I also think those are goats. I do not think they are cattle."
He cleared his throat and the Director of the Museum asked for silence.
"This excellent picture of goats," said the Minister, "shows how talented are our young people in this country. This young lady will grow up to be a fine citizen and maybe a famous artist. She deserves her prize, and I am now giving it to her."
She took the wrapped parcel which he gave her, and felt his
hand upon her shoulder, and heard him whisper: "You are the most truthful child I have met. Well done."
Then the ceremony was over, and a little later they returned to Mochudi in the Principal's bumpy truck, a heroine returning, a bearer of prizes.

Chapter Four

Living with the cousin
and the cousin's husband

At the age of sixteen, Mma Ramotswe left school ("The best girl in this school," pronounced the Principal. "One of the best girls in Botswana.") Her father had wanted her to stay on, to do her Cambridge School Certificate, and to go even beyond that, but Mma Ramotswe was bored with Mochudi. She was bored, too, with working in the Upright Small General Dealer, where every Saturday she did the stocktaking and spent hours ticking off items on dog-eared stock lists. She wanted to go somewhere. She wanted her life to start.
"You can go to my cousin," her father said. "That is a very different place. I think that you will find lots of things happening in that house."
It cost him a great deal of pain to say this. He wanted her to stay, to look after him, but he knew that it would be selfish to expect her life to revolve around his. She wanted freedom; she wanted to feel that she was doing something with her life. And of course, at the back of his mind, was the thought of marriage. In a very short time, he knew, there would be men wanting to marry her.
He would never deny her that, of course. But what if the man who wanted to marry her was a bully, or a drunkard, or a womaniser? All of this was possible; there was any number of men like that, waiting for an attractive girl that they could latch on to and whose life they could slowly destroy. These men were like leeches; they sucked away at the goodness of a woman's heart until it was dry and all her love had been used up. That took a long time, he knew, because women seemed to have vast reservoirs of goodness in them.
If one of these men claimed Precious, then what could he, a father, do? He could warn her of the risk, but whoever listened to warnings about somebody they loved? He had seen it so often before; love was a form of blindness that closed the eyes to the most glaring faults. You could love a murderer, and simply not believe that your lover would do so much as crush a tick, let alone kill somebody. There would be no point trying to dissuade her.
The cousin's house would be as safe as anywhere, even if it could not protect her from men. At least the cousin could keep an eye on her niece, and her husband might be able to chase the most unsuitable men away. He was a rich man now, with more than five buses, and he would have that authority that rich men had. He might be able to send some of the young men packing.

THE COUSIN was pleased to have Precious in the house. She decorated a room for her, hanging new curtains of a thick yellow material which she had bought from the OK Bazaars on a shopping trip to Johannesburg. Then she filled a chest of drawers with clothes and put on top of it a framed picture of the Pope. The floor was covered with a simply patterned reed mat. It was a bright, comfortable room.
Precious settled quickly into a new routine. She was given a job in the office of the bus company, where she added invoices and checked the figures in the drivers' records. She was quick at this, and the cousin's husband noticed that she was doing as much work as the two older clerks put together. They sat at their tables and gossiped away the day, occasionally moving invoices about the desk, occasionally getting up to put on the kettle.
It was easy for Precious, with her memory, to remember how to do new things and to apply the knowledge faultlessly. She was also willing to make suggestions, and scarcely a week went past in which she failed to make some suggestion as to how the office could be more efficient.
"You're working too hard," one of the clerks said to her. "You're trying to take our jobs."
Precious looked at them blankly. She had always worked as hard as she could, at everything she did, and she simply did not understand how anybody could do otherwise. How could they sit there, as they did, and stare into the space in front of their desks when they could be adding up figures or checking the drivers' returns?
She did her own checking, often unasked, and although everything usually added up, now and then she found a small discrepancy. These came from the giving of incorrect change, the cousin explained. It was easy enough to do on a crowded bus, and as long as it was not too significant, they just ignored it. But Precious found more than this. She found a discrepancy of slightly over two thousand pula in the fuel bills invoices and she drew this to the attention of her cousin's husband.
"Are you sure?" he asked. "How could two thousand pula go missing?"
"Stolen?" said Precious.
The cousin's husband shook his head. He regarded himself as a model employer—a paternalist, yes, but that is what the men wanted, was it not? He could not believe that any of his employees would cheat him. How could they, when he was so good to them and did so much for them?
Precious showed him how the money had been taken, and they jointly pieced together how it had been moved out of the right account into another one, and had then eventually vanished altogether. Only one of the clerks had access to these funds, so it must have been him; there could be no other explanation. She did not see the confrontation, but heard it from the other room. The clerk was indignant, shouting his denial at the top of his voice. Then there was silence for a moment, and the slamming of a door.
This was her first case. This was the beginning of the career of Mma Ramotswe.

The Arrival of Note Mokoti
There were four years of working in the bus office. The cousin and her husband became accustomed to her presence and began to call her their daughter. She did not mind this; they were her people, and she loved them. She loved the cousin, even if she still treated her as a child and scolded her publicly. She loved the cousin's husband, with his sad, scarred face and his large, mechanic's hands. She loved the house, and her room with its yellow curtains. It was a good life that she had made for herself.
Every weekend she travelled up to Mochudi on one of the cousin's husband's buses and visited her father. He would be waiting outside the house, sitting on his stool, and she would curtsey before him, in the old way, and clap her hands.
Then they would eat together, sitting in the shade of the lean-to verandah which he had erected to the side of the house. She would tell him about the week's activity in the bus office and he would take in every detail, asking for names, which he would link into elaborate genealogies. Everybody was related in some way; there was nobody who could not be fitted into the far-flung corners of family.
It was the same with cattle. Cattle had their families, and after she had finished speaking, he would tell her the cattle news. Although he rarely went out to the cattle post, he had reports every week and he could run the lives of the cattle through the herd-boys. He had an eye for cattle, an uncanny ability to detect traits in calves that would blossom in maturity. He could tell, at a glance, whether a calf which seemed puny, and which was therefore cheap, could be brought on and fattened. And he backed this judgement, and bought such animals, and made them into fine, butterfat cattle (if the rains were good).
He said that people were like their cattle. Thin, wretched cattle had thin, wretched owners. Listless cattle—cattle which wandered aimlessly—had owners whose lives lacked focus. And dishonest people, he maintained, had dishonest cattle—cattle which would cheat other cattle of food or which would try to insinuate themselves into the herds of others.
Obed Ramotswe was a severe judge—of men and cattle— and she found herself thinking: what will he say when he finds out about Note Mokoti?

SHE HAD met Note Mokoti on a bus on the way back from Mochudi. He was travelling down from Francistown and was sitting in the front, his trumpet case on the seat beside him. She could not help but notice him in his red shirt and seersucker trousers; nor fail to see the high cheekbones and the arched eyebrows. It was a proud face, the face of a man used to being looked at and appreciated, and she dropped her eyes immediately. She would not want him to think she was looking at him, even if she continued to glance at him from her seat. Who was this man? A musician, with that case beside him; a clever person from the University perhaps?
The bus stopped in Gaborone before going south on the road to Lobatse. She stayed in her seat, and saw him get up. He stood up, straightened the crease of his trousers, and then turned and looked down the bus. She felt her heart jump; he had looked at her; no, he had not, he was looking out of the window.
Suddenly, without thinking, she got to her feet and took her bag down from the rack. She would get off, not because she had anything to do in Gaborone, but because she wanted to see what he did. He had left the bus now and she hurried, muttering a quick explanation to the driver, one of her cousin's husband's men. Out in the crowd, out in the late afternoon sunlight, redolent of dust and hot travellers, she looked about her and saw him, standing not far away. He had bought a roast mealie from a hawker, and was eating it now, making lines down the cob. She felt that unsettling sensation again and she stopped where she stood, as if she were a stranger who was uncertain where to go.
He was looking at her, and she turned away flustered. Had he seen her watching him? Perhaps. She looked up again, quickly glancing in his direction, and he smiled at her this time and raised his eyebrows. Then, tossing the mealie cob away, he picked up the trumpet case and walked over towards her. She was frozen, unable to walk away, mesmerised like prey before a snake.
"I saw you on that bus," he said. "I thought I had seen you before. But I haven't."
She looked down at the ground.
"I have never seen you," she said. "Ever."
He smiled. He was not frightening, she thought, and some of her awkwardness left her.
"You see most people in this country once or twice," he said. "There are no strangers."
She nodded. "That is true."
There was a silence. Then he pointed to the case at his feet.
"This is a trumpet, you know. I am a musician."
She looked at the case. It had a sticker on it; a picture of a man playing a guitar.
"Do you like music?" he asked. "Jazz? Quella?"
She looked up, and saw that he was still smiling at her.
"Yes. I like music."
"I play in a band," he said. "We play in the bar at the President Hotel. You could come and listen. I am going there now."
They walked to the bar, which was only ten minutes or so from the bus stop. He bought her a drink and sat her at a table at the back, a table with one seat at it to discourage others.
Then he played, and she listened, overcome by the sliding, slippery music, and proud that she knew this man, that she was his guest. The drink was strange and bitter; she did not like the taste of alcohol, but drinking was what you did in bars and she was concerned that she would seem out of place or too young and people would notice her.
Afterwards, when the band had its break, he came to join her, and she saw that his brow was glistening with the effort of playing.
"I'm not playing well today," he said. "There are some days when you can and some days when you can't." "I thought you were very good. You played well." "I don't think so. I can play better. There are days when the trumpet just talks to me. I don't have to do anything then."
She saw that people were looking at them, and that one or two women were staring at her critically. They wanted to be where she was, she could tell. They wanted to be with Note.
He put her on the late bus after they had left the bar, and stood and waved to her as the bus drew away. She waved back and closed her eyes. She had a boyfriend now, a jazz musician, and she would be seeing him again, at his request, the following Friday night, when they were playing at a braaivleis at the Gaborone Club. Members of the band, he said, always took their girlfriends, and she would meet some interesting people there, good-quality people, people she would not normally meet. And that is where  Note  Mokoti proposed to Precious Ramotswe and where she accepted him, in a curious sort of way, without saying anything. It was after the band had finished and they were sitting in the darkness, away from the noise of the drinkers in the bar. He said: "I want to get married soon and I want to get married to you. You are a nice girl who will do very well for a wife."
Precious said nothing, because she was uncertain, and her silence was taken as assent.
"I will speak to your father about this," said Note. "I hope that he is not an old-fashioned man who will want a lot of cattle for you."
He was, but she did not say so. She had not agreed yet, she thought, but perhaps it was now too late.
Then Note said: "Now that you are going to be my wife, I must teach you what wives are for."
She said nothing. This is what happened, she supposed. This is how men were, just as her friends at school had told her, those who were easy, of course.
He put his arm around her and moved her back against the soft grass. They were in the shadows, and there was nobody nearby, just the noise of the drinkers shouting and laughing. He took her hand and placed it upon his stomach, where he left it, not knowing what to do. Then he started to kiss her, on her neck, her cheek, her lips, and all she heard was the thudding of her heart and her shortened breath.
He said: "Girls must learn this thing. Has anybody taught you?"
She shook her head. She had not learned and now, she felt, it was too late. She would not know what to do.
"I am glad," he said. "I knew straightaway that you were a virgin, which is a very good thing for a man. But now things will change. Right now. Tonight."
He hurt her. She asked him to stop, but he put her head back and hit her once across the cheek. But he immediately kissed her where the blow had struck, and said that he had not meant to do it. All the time he was pushing against her, and scratching at her, sometimes across her back, with his fingernails. Then he moved her over, and he hurt her again, and struck her across her back with his belt.
She sat up, and gathered her crumpled clothes together. She was concerned, even if he was not, that somebody might come out into the night and see them.
She dressed, and as she put on her blouse, she started to weep, quietly, because she was thinking of her father, whom she would see tomorrow on his verandah, who would tell her the cattle news, and who would never imagine what had happened to her that night.
Note Mokoti visited her father three weeks later, by himself, and asked him for Precious. Obed said he would speak to his daughter, which he did when she came to see him next. He sat on his stool and looked up at her and said to her that she would never have to marry anybody she did not want to marry. Those days were over, long ago. Nor should she feel that she had to marry at all; a woman could be by herself these days—there were more and more women like that.
She could have said no at this point, which is what her father wanted her to say. But she did not want to say that. She lived for her meetings with Note Mokoti. She wanted to marry him. He was not a good man, she could tell that, but she might change him. And, when all was said and done, there remained those dark moments of contact, those pleasures he snatched from her, which were addictive. She liked that. She felt ashamed even to think of it, but she liked what he did to her, the humiliation, the urgency. She wanted to be with him, wanted him to possess her. It was like a bitter drink which bids you back. And of course she sensed that she was pregnant. It was too early to tell, but she felt that Note Mokoti's child was within her, a tiny, fluttering bird, deep within her.

THEY MARRIED on a Saturday afternoon, at three o'clock, in the church at Mochudi, with the cattle outside under the trees, for it was late October and the heat was at its worst. The countryside was dry that year, as the previous season's rains had not been good. Everything was parched and wilting; there was little grass left, and the cattle were skin and bones. It was a listless time.
The Reformed Church Minister married them, gasping in his clerical black, mopping at his brow with a large red handkerchief.
He said: "You are being married here in God's sight. God places upon you certain duties. God looks after us and keeps us in this cruel world. God loves His children, but we must remember those duties He asks of us. Do you young people understand what I am saying?"
Note smiled. "I understand."
And, turning to Precious: "And do you understand?"
She looked up into the Minister's face—the face of her father's friend. She knew that her father had spoken to him about this marriage and about how unhappy he was about it, but the Minister had said that he was unable to intervene. Now his tone was gentle, and he pressed her hand lightly as he took it to place in Note's. As he did so, the child moved within her, and she winced because the movement was so sudden and so firm.

AFTER TWO days in Mochudi, where they stayed in the house of a cousin of Note's, they packed their possessions into the back of a truck and went down to Gaborone. Note had found somewhere to stay—two rooms and a kitchen in somebody's house near Tlokweng. It was a luxury to have two rooms; one was their bedroom, furnished with a double mattress and an old wardrobe; the other was a living room and dining room, with a table, two chairs, and a sideboard. The yellow curtains from her room at the cousin's house were hung up in this room, and they made it bright and cheerful.
Note kept his trumpet there and his collection of tapes. He would practise for twenty minutes at a time, and then, while his lip was resting, he would listen to a tape and pick out the rhythms on a guitar. He knew everything about township music—where it came from, who sang what, who played which part with whom. He had heard the greats, too; Hugh Masekela on the trumpet, Dollar Brand on the piano, Spokes Machobane singing; he had heard them in person in Johannesburg, and knew every recording they had ever made.
She watched him take the trumpet from its case and fit the mouthpiece. She watched as he raised it to his lips and then, so suddenly, from that tiny cup of metal against his flesh, the sound would burst out like a glorious, brilliant knife dividing the air. And the little room would reverberate and the flies, jolted out of their torpor, would buzz round and round as if riding the swirling notes.
She went with him to the bars, and he was kind to her there, but he seemed to get caught up in his own circle and she felt that he did not really want her there. There were people there who thought of nothing but music; they talked endlessly about music, music, music; how much could one say about music?
They didn't want her there either, she thought, and so she stopped going to the bars and stayed at home.
He came home late and he smelled of beer when he returned. It was a sour smell, like rancid milk, and she turned her head away as he pushed her down on the bed and pulled at her clothing.
"You have had a lot of beer. You have had a good evening."
He looked at her, his eyes slightly out of focus.
"I can drink if I want to. You're one of these women who stays at home and complains? Is that what you are?"
"I am not. I only meant to say that you had a good evening."
But his indignation would not be assuaged, and he said: "You are making me punish you, woman. You are making me do this thing to you."
She cried out, and tried to struggle, to push him away, but he was too strong for her.
"Don't hurt the baby."
"Baby! Why do you talk about this baby? It is not mine. I am not the father of any baby."

MALE HANDS again, but this time in thin rubber gloves, which made the hands pale and unfinished, like a white man's hands.
"Do you feel any pain here? No? And here?"
She shook her head.
"I think that the baby is all right. And up here, where these marks are. Is there pain just on the outside, or is it deeper in?"
"It is just the outside."
"I see. I am going to have to put in stitches here. All the way across here, because the skin has parted so badly. I'll spray something on to take the pain away but maybe it's better for you not to watch me while I'm sewing! Some people say men can't sew, but we doctors aren't too bad at it!"
She closed her eyes and heard a hissing sound. There was cold spray against her skin and then a numbness as the doctor worked on the wound.
"This was your husband's doing? Am I right?"
She opened her eyes. The doctor had finished the suture and had handed something to the nurse. He was looking at her now as he peeled off the gloves.
"How many times has this happened before? Is there anybody to look after you?"
"I don't know. I don't know."
"I suppose you're going to go back to him?"
She opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her.
"Of course you are. It's always the same. The woman goes back for more."
He sighed. "I'll probably see you again, you know. But I hope I don't. Just be careful."

SHE WENT back the next day, a scarf tied around her face to hide the bruises and the cuts. She ached in her arms and in her stomach, and the sutured wound stung sharply. They had given her pills at the hospital, and she had taken one just before she left on the bus. This seemed to help the pain, and she took another on the journey.
The door was open. She went in, her heart thumping within her chest, and saw what had happened. The room was empty, apart from the furniture. He had taken his tapes, and their new metal trunk, and the yellow curtains too. And in the bedroom, he had slashed the mattress with a knife, and there was kapok lying about, making it look like a shearing room.
She sat down on the bed and was still sitting there, staring at the floor, when the neighbour came in and said that she would get somebody to take her in a truck back to Mochudi, to Obed, to her father.
There she stayed, looking after her father, for the next fourteen years. He died shortly after her thirty-fourth birthday, and that was the point at which Precious Ramotswe, now parent-less, veteran of a nightmare marriage, and mother, for a brief and lovely five days, became the first lady private detective in Botswana.

Chapter Five

What you need to open a detective agency

Mma Ramotswe had thought that it would not be easy to open a detective agency. People always made the mistake of thinking that starting a business was simple and then found that there were all sorts of hidden problems and unforeseen demands. She had heard of people opening businesses that lasted four or five weeks before they ran out of money or stock, or both. It was always more difficult than you thought it would be.
She went to the lawyer at Pilane, who had arranged for her to get her father's money. He had organised the sale of the cattle, and had got a good price for them.
"I have got a lot of money for you," he said. "Your father's herd had grown and grown."
She took the cheque and the sheet of paper that he handed her. It was more than she had imagined possible. But there it was—all that money, made payable to Precious Ramotswe, on presentation to Barclays Bank of Botswana.
"You can buy a house with that," said the lawyer. "And a business."
"I am going to buy both of those."
The lawyer looked interested. "What sort of business? A store? I can give you advice, you know."
"A detective agency."
The lawyer looked blank.
"There are none for sale. There are none of those."
Mma Ramotswe nodded. "I know that. I am going to have to start from scratch."
The lawyer winced as she spoke. "It's easy to lose money in business," he said. "Especially when you don't know anything about what you're doing." He stared at her hard. "Especially then. And anyway, can women be detectives? Do you think they can?"
"Why not?" said Mma Ramotswe. She had heard that people did not like lawyers, and now she thought she could see why. This man was so certain of himself, so utterly convinced. What had it to do with him what she did? It was her money, her future. And how dare he say that about women, when he didn't even know that his zip was half undone! Should she tell him?
"Women are the ones who know what's going on," she said quietly. "They are the ones with eyes. Have you not heard of Agatha Christie?"
The lawyer looked taken aback. "Agatha Christie? Of course I know her. Yes, that is true. A woman sees more than a man sees. That is well-known."
"So," said Mma Ramotswe, "when people see a sign saying
No. 1 ladies' detective agency, what will they think? They'll think those ladies will know what's going on. They're the ones."
The lawyer stroked his chin. "Maybe."
"Yes," said Mma Ramotswe. "Maybe." Adding, "Your zip, Rra. I think you may not have noticed ..."

SHE FOUND the house first, on a corner plot in Zebra Drive. It was expensive, and she decided to take out a bond on part of it, so that she could afford to buy somewhere for the business too. That was more difficult, but at last she found a small place near Kgale Hill, on the edge of town, where she could set up. It was a good place, because a lot of people walked down that road every day and would see the sign. It would be almost as effective as having an advertisement in the Daily News or the Botswana Guardian. Everybody would soon know about her.
The building she bought had originally been a general dealer's shop, but had been converted into a dry cleaners and finally a bottle store. For a year or so it had lain empty, and had been lived in by squatters. They had made fires inside, and in each of the rooms there was a part of the wall where the plaster had been charred and burned. The owner had eventually returned from Francistown and had driven out the squatters and placed the dejected-looking building on the market. There had been one or two prospective purchasers, but they had been repelled by its condition and the price had dropped. When Mma Ramotswe had offered cash, the seller had leapt at her offer and she received the deeds within days.
There was a lot to do. A builder was called in to replace the damaged plaster and to repair the tin roof and, again with the offer of cash, this was accomplished within a week. Then Mma Ramotswe set to the task of painting, and she had soon completed the outside in ochre and the inside in white. She bought fresh yellow curtains for the windows and, in an unusual moment of extravagance, splashed out on a brand new office set of two desks and two chairs. Her friend, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, brought her an old typewriter which was surplus to his own requirements and which worked quite well, and with that the office was ready to open—once she had a secretary.
This was the easiest part of all. A telephone call to the Botswana College of Secretarial and Office Skills brought an immediate response. They had just the woman, they said. Mma Makutsi was the widow of a teacher and had just passed their general typing and secretarial examinations with an average grade of 97 percent; she would be ideal—they were certain of it.
Mma Ramotswe liked her immediately. She was a thin woman with a rather long face and braided hair in which she had rubbed copious quantities of henna. She wore oval glasses with wide plastic frames, and she had a fixed, but apparently quite sincere smile.
They opened the office on a Monday. Mma Ramotswe sat at her desk and Mma Makutsi sat at hers, behind the typewriter. She looked at Mma Ramotswe and smiled even more broadly.
"I am ready for work," she said. "I am ready to start."
"Mmm," said Mma Ramotswe. "It's early days yet. We've only just opened. We will have to wait for a client to come."
In her heart of hearts, she knew there would be no clients. The whole idea was a ghastly mistake. Nobody wanted a private detective, and certainly nobody would want her. Who was she, after all? She was just Precious Ramotswe from Mochudi.
She had never been to London or wherever detectives went to find out how to be private detectives. She had never even been to Johannesburg. What if somebody came in and said "You know Johannesburg of course," she would have to lie, or just say nothing.
Mma Makutsi looked at her, and then looked down at the typewriter keyboard. She opened a drawer, peered inside, and then closed it. At that moment a hen came into the room from the yard outside and pecked at something on the floor. "Get out," shouted Mma Makutsi. "No chickens in here!" At ten o'clock Mma Makutsi got up from her desk and went into the back room to make the tea. She had been asked to make bush tea, which was Mma Ramotswe's favourite, and she soon brought two cups back. She had a tin of condensed milk in her handbag, and she took this out and poured a small amount into each cup. Then they drank their tea, watching a small boy at the edge of the road throwing stones at a skeletal dog.
At eleven o'clock they had another cup of tea, and at twelve Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and announced that she was going to walk down the road to the shops to buy herself some perfume. Mma Makutsi was to stay behind and answer the telephone and welcome any clients who might come. Mma Ramotswe smiled as she said this. There would be no clients, of course, and she would be closed at the end of the month. Did Mma Makutsi understand what a parlous job she had obtained for herself? A woman with an average of 97 percent deserved better than this.
Mma Ramotswe was standing at the counter of the shop looking at a bottle of perfume when Mma Makutsi hurtled through the door.
"Mma Ramotswe," she panted. "A client. There is a client in the office. It is a big case. A missing man. Come quickly. There is no time to lose."

THE WIVES of missing men are all the same, thought Mma Ramotswe. At first they feel anxiety, and are convinced that something dreadful has happened. Then doubt begins to creep in, and they wonder whether he's gone off with another woman (which he usually has), and then finally they become angry. At the anger stage, most of them don't want him back anymore, even if he's found. They just want to have a good chance to shout at him.
Mma Malatsi was in the second stage, she thought. She has begun to suspect that he is off somewhere having a good time, while she's left at home, and of course it's beginning to rankle. Perhaps there are debts to be paid, even if she looks as if she's got a fair bit of money.
"Maybe you should tell me a little bit more about your husband," she said, as Mma Malatsi began to drink the cup of strong bush tea which Mma Makutsi had brewed for her.
"His name is Peter Malatsi," Mma Malatsi said. "He's forty and he has—had—has a business selling furniture. It's a good business and he did well. So he hasn't run away from any creditors."
Mma Ramotswe nodded. "There must be another reason," she began, and then, cautiously. "You know what men are like, Mma. What about another woman? Do you think . . ."
Mma Malatsi shook her head vigorously.
"I don't think so," she said. "Maybe a year ago that would have been possible, but then he became a Christian and took up with some Church that was always singing and marching around the place in white uniforms."
Mma Ramotswe noted this down. Church. Singing. Got religion badly? Lady preacher lured him away?
"Who were these people?" she said. "Maybe they know something about him?"
Mma Malatsi shrugged. "I'm not sure," she said, slightly irritably. "In fact, I don't know. He asked me to come with him once or twice, but I refused. So he just used to go off by himself on Sundays. In fact, he disappeared on a Sunday. I thought he'd gone off to his Church."
Mma Ramotswe looked at the ceiling. This was not going to be as hard as some of these cases. Peter Malatsi had gone off with one of the Christians; that was pretty clear. All she had to do now was find which group it was and she would be on his trail. It was the old predictable story; it would be a younger Christian, she was sure of that.

BY THE end of the following day, Mma Ramotswe had compiled a list of five Christian groups which could fit the description. Over the next two days she tracked down the leaders of three of them, and was satisfied that nothing was known of Peter Malatsi. Two of the three tried to convert her; the third merely asked her for money and received a five-pula note.
When she located the leader of the fourth group, the Reverend Shadreck Mapeli, she knew that the search was over. When she mentioned the Malatsi name, the Reverend gave a shudder and glanced over his shoulder surreptitiously.
"Are you from the police?" he asked. "Are you a policeman?"
"Policewoman," she said.
"Ah!" he said mournfully. "Aee!"
"I mean, I'm not a policewoman," she said quickly. "I'm a private detective."
The Reverend appeared to calm down slightly.
"Who sent you?"
"Mma Malatsi."
"Ooh," said the Reverend. "He told us that he had no wife."
"Well, he did," said Mma Ramotswe. "And she's been wondering where he is."
"He's dead," said the Reverend. "He's gone to the Lord."
Mma Ramotswe sensed that he was telling the truth, and that the enquiry was effectively at an end. Now all that remained to be done was to find out how he had died.
"You must tell me," she said. "I won't reveal your name to anybody if you don't want me to. Just tell me how it happened."
They drove to the river in Mma Ramotswe's small white van. It was the rainy season, and there had been several storms, which made the track almost impassable. But at last they reached the river's edge and parked the van under a tree.
"This is where we have our baptisms," said the Reverend, pointing to a pool in the swollen waters of the river. "This is where I stood, here, and this is where the sinners entered the water."
"How many sinners did you have?" asked Mma Ramotswe.
"Six sinners altogether, including Peter. They all went in together, while I prepared to follow them with my staff."
"Yes?" said Mma Ramotswe. "Then what happened?"
"The sinners were standing in the water up to about here." The Reverend indicated his upper chest. "I turned round to tell the flock to start singing, and then when I turned back I
noticed that there was something wrong. There were only five sinners in the water." "One had disappeared?"
"Yes," said the Reverend, shaking slightly as he spoke. "God had taken one of them to His bosom."
Mma Ramotswe looked at the water. It was not a big river, and for much of the year it was reduced to a few stagnant pools. But in a good rainy season, such as that year's, it could be quite a torrent. A nonswimmer could easily be swept away, she reflected, and yet, if somebody were to be swept away the body would surely be found downstream. There were plenty of people who went down to the river for one purpose or another and who would be bound to notice a body. The police would have been called. There would have been something in the newspaper about an unidentified body being found in the Not-wane River; the paper was always looking for stories like that. They wouldn't have let the opportunity go by.
She thought for a moment. There was another explanation, and it made her shiver. But before she went into that, she had to find out why the Reverend had kept so quiet about it all.
"You didn't tell the police," she said, trying not to sound too accusing. "Why not?"
The Reverend looked down at the ground, which, in her experience, was where people usually looked if they felt truly sorry. The shamelessly unrepentant, she found, always looked up at the sky.
"I know I should have told them. God will punish me for it. But I was worried that I would be blamed for poor Peter's accident and I thought they would take me to court. They might make me pay damages for it, and that would drive the Church into bankruptcy and put a stop to God's work." He paused. "Do you understand why I kept quiet, and told all the flock not to say anything?"
Mma Ramotswe nodded, and reached out to touch the Reverend gently on the arm.
"I do not think that what you did was bad," she said. "I'm sure that God wanted you to continue and He will not be angry. It was not your fault."
The Reverend raised his eyes and smiled.
"Those are kind words, my sister. Thank you."

THAT AFTERNOON, Mma Ramotswe asked her neighbour if she could borrow one of his dogs. He had a pack of five, and she hated every one of them for their incessant barking. These dogs barked in the morning, as if they were roosters, and at night, when the moon rose in the sky. They barked at crows, and at hammerkops; they barked at passersby; and they sometimes barked just because they had got too hot.
"I need a dog to help me on one of my cases," she explained. "I'll bring him back safe and sound."
The neighbour was flattered to have been asked.
"I'll give you this dog here," he said. "It's the senior dog, and he has a very good nose. He will make a good detective dog."
Mma Ramotswe took the dog warily. It was a large yellow creature, with a curious, offensive smell. That night, just after sunset, she put it in the back of her van, tying its neck to a handle with a piece of string. Then she set off down the track that led to the river, her headlights picking out the shapes of the thorn trees and the anthills in the darkness. In a strange way, she felt glad of the company of the dog, unpleasant though it was.
Now, beside the pool in the river, she took a thick stake from the van and drove it into the soft ground near the water's edge. Then she fetched the dog, led it down to the pool, and tied its string firmly to the stake. From a bag she had with her, she took out a large bone and put it in front of the yellow dog's nose. The animal gave a grunt of pleasure and immediately settled down to gnaw the bone.
Mma Ramotswe waited just a few yards away, a blanket tucked round her legs to keep off the mosquitoes and her old rifle over her knees. She knew it could be a long wait, and she hoped that she would not go to sleep. If she did, though, she was sure that the dog would wake her up when the time came. Two hours passed. The mosquitoes were bad, and her skin itched, but this was work, and she never complained when she was working. Then, suddenly, there came a growling noise from the dog. Mma Ramotswe strained her eyes in the darkness. She could just make out the shape of the dog, and she could see that it was standing now, looking towards the water. The dog growled again, and gave a bark; then it was silent once more. Mma Ramotswe tossed the blanket off her knees and picked up the powerful torch at her side. Just a little bit longer, she thought.
There was a noise from the water's edge, and Mma Ramotswe knew now that it was time to switch on her torch. As the beam came on, she saw, just at the edge of the water, its head turned towards the cowering dog, a large crocodile.
The crocodile was totally unconcerned by the light, which it probably took for the moon. Its eyes were fixed on the dog, and it was edging slowly towards its quarry. Mma Ramotswe raised the rifle to her shoulder and saw the side of the crocodile's head framed perfectly in her sights. She pulled the trigger.
When the bullet struck the crocodile, it gave a great leap, a somersault in fact, and landed on its back, half in the water, half out. For a moment or two it twitched and then was still. It had been a perfectly placed shot.
Mma Ramotswe noticed that she was trembling as she put the rifle down. Her Daddy had taught her to shoot, and he had done it well, but she did not like to shoot animals, especially crocodiles. They were bad luck, these creatures, but duty had to be done. And what was it doing there anyway? These creatures were not meant to be in the Notwane River; it must have wandered for miles overland, or swum up in the flood waters from the Limpopo itself. Poor crocodile—this was the end of its adventure.
She took a knife and slit through the creature's belly. The leather was soft, and the stomach was soon exposed and its contents revealed. Inside there were pebbles, which the crocodile used for digesting its food, and several pieces of foul-smelling fish. But it was not this that interested her; she was more interested in the undigested bangles and rings and wrist-watch she found. These were corroded, and one or two of them were encrusted, but they stood out amongst the stomach contents, each of them the evidence of the crocodile's sinister appetites.

"IS THIS your husband's property?" she asked Mma Malatsi, handing her the wristwatch she had claimed from the crocodile's stomach.
Mma Malatsi took the watch and looked at it. Mma Ramotswe grimaced; she hated moments like this, when she had no choice but to be the bearer of bad news.
But Mma Malatsi was extraordinarily calm. "Well at least I know that he's with the Lord," she said. "And that's much better than knowing that he's in the arms of some other woman, isn't it?"
Mma Ramotswe nodded. "I think it is," she said.
"Were you married, Mma?" asked Mma Malatsi. "Do you know what it is like to be married to a man?"
Mma Ramotswe looked out of the window. There was a thorn tree outside her window, but beyond that she could see the boulder-strewn hill.
"I had a husband," she said. "Once I had a husband. He played the trumpet. He made me unhappy and now I am glad that I no longer have a husband." She paused. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to be rude. You've lost your husband and you must be very sorry."
"A bit," said Mma Malatsi. "But I have lots to do."

Chapter Six

Boy

The boy was eleven, and was small for his age. They had tried everything to get him to grow, but he was taking his time, and now, when you saw him, you would say that he was only eight or nine, rather than eleven. Not that it bothered him in the slightest; his father had said to him: I was a short boy too. Now I am a tall man. Look at me. That will happen to you. You just wait.
But secretly the parents feared that there was something wrong; that his spine was twisted, perhaps, and that this was preventing him from growing. When he was barely four, he had fallen out of a tree—he had been after birds' eggs—and had lain still for several minutes, the breath knocked out of him; until his grandmother had run wailing across the melon field and had lifted him up and carried him home, a shattered egg still clasped in his hand. He had recovered—or so they thought at the time—but his walk was different, they thought.
They had taken him to the clinic, where a nurse had looked at his eyes and into his mouth and had pronounced him healthy.
"Boys fall all the time. They hardly ever break anything."
The nurse placed her hands on the child's shoulders and twisted his torso.
"See. There is nothing wrong with him. Nothing. If he had broken anything, he would have cried out."
But years later, when he remained small, the mother thought of the fall and blamed herself for believing that nurse who was only good for doing bilharzia tests and checking for worms.

THE BOY was more curious than other children. He loved to look for stones in the red earth and polish them with his spittle. He found some beautiful ones too—deep-blue ones and ones which had a copper-red hue, like the sky at dusk. He kept his stones at the foot of his sleeping mat in his hut and learned to count with them. The other boys learned to count by counting cattle, but this boy did not seem to like cattle—which was another thing that made him odd.
Because of his curiosity, which sent him scuttling about the bush on mysterious errands of his own, his parents were used to his being out of their sight for hours on end. No harm could come to him, unless he was unlucky enough to step on a puff adder or a cobra. But this never happened, and suddenly he would turn up again at the cattle enclosure, or behind the goats, clutching some strange thing he had found—a vulture's feather, a dried tshongololo millipede, the bleached skull of a snake.
Now the boy was out again, walking along one of the paths that led this way and that through the dusty bush. He had found something which interested him very much—the fresh dung of a snake—and he followed the path so he might see the creature itself. He knew what it was because it had balls of fur in it, and that would only come from a snake. It was rock rabbit fur, he was sure, because of its colour and because he knew that rock rabbits were a delicacy to a big snake. If he found the snake, he might kill it with a rock, and skin it, and that would make a handsome skin for a belt for him and his father.
But it was getting dark, and he would have to give up. He would never see the snake on a night with no moon; he would leave the path and cut back across the bush towards the dirt road that wound its way back, over the dry riverbed, to the village.
He found the road easily and sat for a moment on the verge, digging his toes into soft white sand. He was hungry, and he knew that there would be some meat with their porridge that night because he had seen his grandmother preparing the stew. She always gave him more than his fair share—almost more than his father—and that angered his two sisters.
"We like meat too. We girls like meat."
But that did not persuade the grandmother.
He stood up and began to walk along the road. It was quite dark now, and the trees and bushes were black, formless shapes, merging into one another. A bird was calling somewhere—a night-hunting bird—and there were night insects screeching. He felt a small stinging pain on his right arm, and slapped at it. A mosquito.
Suddenly, on the foliage of a tree ahead, there was a band of yellow light. The light shone and dipped, and the boy turned round. There was a truck on the road behind him. It could not be a car, because the sand was far too deep and soft for a car.
He stood on the side of the road and waited. The lights were almost upon him now; a small truck, a pickup, with two bounding headlights going up and down with the bumps in the road. Now it was upon him, and he held up his hand to shade his eyes.
"Good evening, young one." The traditional greeting, called out from within the cab of the truck.
He smiled and returned the greeting. He could make out two men in the cab—a young man at the wheel and an older man next to him. He knew they were strangers, although he could not see their faces. There was something odd about the way the man spoke Setswana. It was not the way a local would speak it. An odd voice that became higher at the end of a word. "Are you hunting for wild animals? You want to catch a leopard in this darkness?"
He shook his head. "No. I am just walking home." "Because a leopard could catch you before you caught it!" He laughed. "You are right, Rra! I would not like to see a leopard tonight."
"Then we will take you to your place. Is it far?" "No. It is not far. It is just over there. That way."

THE DRIVER opened the door and got out, leaving the engine running, to allow the boy to slide in over the bench seat. Then he got back in, closed the door and engaged the gears. The boy drew his feet up—there was some animal on the floor and he had touched a soft wet nose—a dog perhaps, or a goat.
He glanced at the man to his left, the older man. It would be rude to stare and it was difficult to see much in the darkness. But he did notice the thing that was wrong with the man's lip and he saw his eyes too. He turned away. A boy should never stare at an old man like this. But why were these people here? What were they doing?
"There it is. There is my father's place. You see—over there. Those lights."
"We can see it."
"I can walk from here if you like. If you stop, I can walk. There is a path."
"We are not stopping. You have something to do for us. You can help us with something."
"They are expecting me back. They will be waiting."
"There is always somebody waiting for somebody. Always."
He suddenly felt frightened, and he turned to look at the driver. The younger man smiled at him.
"Don't worry. Just sit still. You are going somewhere else tonight."
"Where are you taking me, Rra? Why are you taking me away?"
The older man reached out and touched the boy on the shoulder.
"You will not be harmed. You can go home some other time. They will know that you are not being harmed. We are kind men, you see. We are kind men. Listen, I'm going to tell you a little story while we travel. That will make you happy and keep you quiet.
"There were some herd boys who looked after the cattle of their rich uncle. He was a rich man that one! He had more cattle than anybody else in that part of Botswana and his cattle were big, big, like this, only bigger.
"Now these boys found that one day a calf had appeared on
the edge of the herd. It was a strange calf, with many colours on it, unlike any other calf they had ever seen. And, ow! they were pleased that this calf had come.
"This calf was very unusual in another way. This calf could sing a cattle song that the boys heard whenever they went near it. They could not hear the words which this calf was using, but they were something about cattle matters.
"The boys loved this calf, and because they loved it so much they did not notice that some of the other cattle were straying away. By the time that they did notice, it was only after two of the cattle had gone for good that they saw what had happened. "Their uncle came out. Here he comes, a tall, tall man with a stick. He shouts at the boys and he hits their calf with his stick, saying that strange calves never brought any luck.
"So the calf died, but before it died it whispered something to the boys and they were able to hear it this time. It was very special, and when the boys told their uncle what the calf had said he fell to his knees and wailed.
"The calf was his brother, you see, who had been eaten by a lion a long time before and had come back. Now this man had killed his brother and he was never happy again. He was sad. Very sad."
The boy watched the man's face as he told the story. If he had been unaware of what was happening until that moment, now he knew. He knew what was going to happen.
"Hold that boy! Take his arms! He's going to make me go off the road if you don't hold him."
"I'm trying. He is struggling like a devil."
"Just hold him. I'll stop the truck."

Chapter seven

Mma Makutsi Deals With The Mail

THE SUCCESS of the first case heartened Mma Ramotswe. She had now sent off for, and received, a manual on private detection and was going through it chapter by chapter, taking copious notes. She had made no mistakes in that first case, she thought. She had found out what information there was to be had by a simple process of listing the likely sources and seeking them out. That did not take a great deal of doing. Provided that one was methodical, there was hardly any way in which one could go wrong.
Then she had had a hunch about the crocodile and had followed it up. Again, the manual endorsed this as perfectly acceptable practice. "Don't disregard a hunch," it advised. "Hunches are another form of knowledge." Mma Ramotswe had liked that phrase and had mentioned it to Mma Makutsi. Her secretary had listened carefully, and then typed the sentence out on her typewriter and handed it to Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Makutsi was pleasant company and could type quite well. She had typed out a report which Mma Ramotswe had dictated on the Malatsi case and had typed out the bill for sending to Mma Malatsi. But apart from that she had not really been called on to do anything else and Mma Ramotswe wondered whether the business could really justify employing a secretary.
And yet one had to. What sort of private detective agency had no secretary? She would be a laughingstock without one, and clients—if there were really going to be any more, which was doubtful—could well be frightened away.
Mma Makutsi had the mail to open, of course. There was no mail for the first three days. On the fourth day, a catalogue was received, and a property tax demand, and on the fifth day a letter which was intended for the previous owner.
Then, at the beginning of the second week, she opened a white envelope dirty with finger marks and read the letter out to Mma Ramotswe.

Dear Mma Ramotswe,
I read about you in the newspaper and about how you have opened this big new agency down there in town. I am very proud for Botswana that we now have a person like you in this country.
I am the teacher at the small school at Katsana Village, thirty miles from Gaborone, which is near the place where I was born. I went to Teachers' College many years ago and I passed with a double distinction. My wife and I have two daughters and we have a son of eleven. This boy to which I am referring has recently vanished and has not been seen for two months.
We went to the police. They made a big search and asked questions everywhere. Nobody knew anything about our son. I took time off from the school and searched the land around our village. We have some kopjes not too far away and there are boulders and caves over there. I went into each one of those caves and looked into every crevice. But there was no sign of my son.
He was a boy who liked to wander, because he had a strong interest in nature. He was always collecting rocks and things like that. He knew a lot about the bush and he would never get into danger from stupidity. There are no leopards in these parts anymore and we are too far away from the Kalahari for lions to come.
I went everywhere, calling, calling, but my son never answered me. I looked in every well of every farmer and village nearby and asked them to check the water. But there was no sign of him.
How can a boy vanish off the face of the Earth like this? If I were not a Christian, I would say that some evil spirit had lifted him up and carried him off. But I know that things like that do not really happen.
I am not a wealthy man. I cannot afford the services of a private detective, but I ask you, Mma, in the name of Jesus Christ, to help me in one small way. Please, when you are making your enquiries about other things, and talking to people who might know what goes on, please ask them if they have heard anything about a boy called Thobiso, aged eleven years and four months, who is the son of the teacher at Katsana Village. Please just ask them, and if you hear anything at all, please address a note to the undersigned, myself, the teacher.
   In God's name,
   Ernest Molai Pakotati, Dip.Ed.


Mma Makutsi stopped reading and looked across the room at Mma Ramotswe. For a moment, neither spoke. Then Mma Ramotswe broke the silence.
"Do you know anything about this?" she asked. "Have you heard anything about a boy going missing?"
Mma Makutsi frowned. "I think so. I think there was something in the newspaper about a search for a boy. I think they thought he might have run away from home for some reason." Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and took the letter from her secretary. She held it as one might hold an exhibit in court— gingerly, so as not to disturb the evidence. It felt to her as if the letter—a mere scrap of paper, so light in itself—was weighted with pain.
"I don't suppose there's much I can do," she said quietly. "Of course I can keep my ears open. I can tell the poor daddy that, but what else can I do? He will know the bush around Katsana. He will know the people. I can't really do very much for him."
Mma Makutsi seemed relieved. "No," she said. "We can't help that poor man."
A letter was dictated by Mma Ramotswe, and Mma Makutsi typed it carefully into the typewriter. Then it was sealed in an envelope, a stamp stuck on the outside, and it was placed in the new red out-tray Mma Ramotswe had bought from the Botswana Book Centre. It was the second letter to leave the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, the first being Mma Malatsi's bill for two hundred and fifty pula—the bill on the top of which Mma Makutsi had typed: "Your late husband— the solving of the mystery of his death."

THAT EVENING, in the house in Zebra Drive, Mma Ramotswe prepared herself a meal of stew and pumpkin. She loved standing in the kitchen, stirring the pot, thinking over the events of the day, sipping at a large mug of bush tea which she balanced on the edge of the stove. Several things had happened that day, apart from the arrival of the letter. A man had come in with a query about a bad debt and she had reluctantly agreed to help him recover it. She was not sure whether this was the sort of thing which a private detective should do—there was nothing in the manual about it—but he was persistent and she found it difficult to refuse. Then there had been a visit from a woman who was concerned about her husband.
"He comes home smelling of perfume," she said, "And smiling too. Why would a man come home smelling of perfume and smiling?"
"Perhaps he is seeing another woman," ventured Mma Ramotswe.
The woman had looked at her aghast.
"Do you think he would do that? My husband?"
They had discussed the situation and it was agreed that the woman would tackle her husband on the subject.
"It's possible that there is another explanation," said Mma Ramotswe reassuringly.
"Such as?"
"Well . . ."
"Many men wear perfume these days," offered Mma Makutsi. "They think it makes them smell good. You know how men smell."
The client had turned in her chair and stared at Mma Makutsi.
"My husband does not smell," she said. "He is a very clean man."
Mma Ramotswe had thrown Mma Makutsi a warning look. She would have to have a word with her about keeping out of the way when clients were there.
But whatever else had happened that day, her thoughts kept returning to the teacher's letter and the story of the missing boy. How the poor man must have fretted—and the mother, too. He did not say anything about a mother, but there must have been one, or a grandmother of course. What thoughts would have been in their minds as each hour went past with no sign of the boy, and all the time he could be in danger, stuck in an old mine shaft, perhaps, too hoarse to cry out anymore while rescuers beat about above him. Or stolen perhaps—whisked away by somebody in the night. What cruel heart could do such a thing to an innocent child? How could anybody resist the boy's cries as he begged to be taken home? That such things could happen right there, in Botswana of all places, made her shiver with dread.
She began to wonder whether this was the right job for her after all. It was all very well thinking that one might help people to sort out their difficulties, but then these difficulties could be heartrending. The Malatsi case had been an odd one. She had expected Mma Malatsi to be distraught when she showed her the evidence that her husband had been eaten by a crocodile, but she had not seemed at all put out. What had she said? But then I have lots to do. What an extraordinary, unfeeling thing for somebody to say when she had just lost her husband. Did she not value him more than that?
Mma Ramotswe paused, her spoon dipped half below the surface of the simmering stew. When people were unmoved in that way, Mma Christie expected the reader to be suspicious. What would Mma Christie have thought if she had seen Mma Malatsi's cool reaction, her virtual indifference? She would have thought: This woman killed her husband! That's why she's unmoved by the news of his death. She knew all along that he was dead!
But what about the crocodile and the baptism, and the other sinners? No, she must be innocent. Perhaps she wanted him dead, and then her prayer was answered by the crocodile. Would that make you a murderer in God's eyes if something then happened? God would know, you see, that you had wanted somebody dead because there are no secrets that you can keep from God. Everybody knew that.
She stopped. It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.

Chapter eight

A Converstion With Mr J.L.B. Matekoni

The Books did not look good. At the end of the first month of its existence, the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was making a convincing loss. There had been three paying clients, and two who came for advice, received it, and declined to pay. Mma Malatsi had paid her bill for two hundred and fifty pula; Happy Bapetsi had paid two hundred pula for the exposure of her false father; and a local trader had paid one hundred pula to find out who was using his telephone to make unauthorised longdistance calls to Francistown. If one added this up it came to five hundred and fifty pula; but then Mma Makutsi's wages were five hundred and eighty pula a month. This meant that there was a loss of thirty pula, without even taking into account other overheads, such as the cost of petrol for the tiny white van and the cost of electricity for the office.
Of course, businesses took some time to get established— Mma Ramotswe understood this—but how long could one go on at a loss? She had a certain amount of money left over from her father's estate, but she could not live on that forever. She should have listened to her father; he had wanted her to buy a butchery, and that would have been so much safer. What was the expression they used? A blue-chip investment, that was it. But where was the excitement in that?
She thought of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Now that was a business which would be making a profit. There was no shortage of customers, as everybody knew what a fine mechanic he was. That was the difference between them, she thought; he knew what he was doing, whereas she did not.
Mma Ramotswe had known Mr J.L.B. Matekoni for years. He came from Mochudi, and his uncle had been a close friend of her father. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was forty-five—ten years older than Mma Ramotswe, but he regarded himself as being a contemporary and often said, when making an observation about the world: "For people of our age . . ."
He was a comfortable man, and she wondered why he had never married. He was not handsome, but he had an easy, reassuring face. He would have been the sort of husband that any woman would have liked to have about the house. He would fix things and stay in at night and perhaps even help with some of the domestic chores—something that so few men would ever dream of doing.
But he had remained single, and lived alone in a large house near the old airfield. She sometimes saw him sitting on his verandah when she drove past—Mr J.L.B. Matekoni by himself, sitting on a chair, staring out at the trees that grew in his garden. What did a man like that think about? Did he sit there and reflect on how nice it would be to have a wife, with children running around the garden, or did he sit there and think about the garage and the cars he had fixed? It was impossible to tell.
She liked to call on him at the garage and talk to him in his greasy office with its piles of receipts and orders for spare parts. She liked to look at the calendars on the wall, with their simple pictures of the sort that men liked. She liked to drink tea from one of his mugs with the greasy fingerprints on the outside while his two assistants raised cars on jacks and cluttered and banged about underneath.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni enjoyed these sessions. They would talk about Mochudi, or politics, or just exchange the news of the day. He would tell her who was having trouble with his car, and what was wrong with it, and who had bought petrol that day, and where they said they were going.
But that day they talked about finances, and about the problems of running a paying business.
"Staff costs are the biggest item," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "You see those two young boys out there under that car? You've no idea what they cost me. Their wages, their taxes, the insurance to cover them if that car were to fall on their heads. It all adds up. And at the end of the day there are just one or two pula left for me. Never much more."
"But at least you aren't making a loss," said Mma Ramotswe. "I'm thirty pula down on my first month's trading. And I'm sure it'll get worse."
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. "Staff costs," he said. "That secretary of yours—the one with those big glasses. That's where the money will be going."
Mma Ramotswe nodded. "I know," she said. "But you need a secretary if you have an office. If I didn't have a secretary, then I'd be stuck there all day. I couldn't come over here and talk to you. I couldn't go shopping."
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni reached for his mug. "Then you need to get better clients," he said. "You need a couple of big cases. You need somebody rich to give you a case."
"Somebody rich?"
"Yes. Somebody like . . . like Mr Patel, for example."
"Why would he need a private detective?"
"Rich men have their problems," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "You never know."
They lapsed into silence, watching the two young mechanics remove a wheel from the car on which they were working.
"Stupid boys," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "They don't need to do that."
"I've been thinking," said Mma Ramotswe. "I had a letter the other day. It made me very sad, and I wondered whether I should be a detective after all."
She told him of the letter about the missing boy, and she explained how she had felt unable to help the father.
"I couldn't do anything for him," she said. "I'm not a miracle worker. But I felt so sorry for him. He thought that his son had fallen in the bush or been taken by some animal. How could a father bear that?"
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni snorted. "I saw that in the paper," he said. "I read about that search. And I knew it was hopeless from the beginning."
"Why?" asked Mma Ramotswe.
For a moment, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was silent. Mma Ramotswe looked at him, and past him, through the window to the thorn tree outside. The tiny grey-green leaves, like blades of grass, were folded in upon themselves, against the heat; and beyond them the empty sky, so pale as to be white; and the smell of dust.
"Because that boy's dead," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, tracing an imaginary pattern in the air with his finger. "No animal took him, or at least no ordinary animal. A santawana maybe, a thokolosi. Oh yes."
Mma Ramotswe was silent. She imagined the father—the father of the dead boy, and for a brief moment she remembered that awful afternoon in Mochudi, at the hospital, when the nurse had come up to her, straightening her uniform, and she saw that the nurse was crying. To lose a child, like that, was something that could end one's world. One could never get back to how it was before. The stars went out. The moon disappeared. The birds became silent.
"Why do you say he's dead?" she asked. "He could have got lost and then . . ."
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head. "No," he said. "That boy would have been taken for witchcraft. He's dead now."
She put her empty mug down on the table. Outside, in the workshop, a wheel brace was dropped with a loud, clanging sound.
She glanced at her friend. This was a subject that one did not talk about. This was the one subject which would bring fear to the most resolute heart. This was the great taboo.
"How can you be sure?"
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. "Come on, now, Mma Ramotswe. You know as well as I do what goes on. We don't like to talk about it do we? It's the thing we Africans are most ashamed of. We know it happens but we pretend it doesn't. We know all right what happens to children who go missing. We know."
She looked up at him. Of course he was telling the truth, because he was a truthful, good man. And he was probably right—no matter how much everybody would like to think of other, innocent explanations as to what had happened to a missing boy, the most likely thing was exactly what Mr J.L.B. Matekoni said. The boy had been taken by a witch doctor and killed for medicine. Right there, in Botswana, in the late twentieth century, under that proud flag, in the midst of all that made Botswana a modern country, this thing had happened, this heart of darkness had thumped out like a drum. The little boy had been killed because some powerful person somewhere had commissioned the witch doctor to make strengthening medicine for him. She cast her eyes down.
"You may be right," she said. "That poor boy . . ." "Of course I'm right," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "And why do you think that poor man had to write that letter to you? It's because the police will be doing nothing to find out how and where it happened. Because they're scared. Every one of them. They're just as scared as I am and those two boys out there under that car are. Scared, Mma Ramotswe. Frightened for our lives. Every one of us—maybe even you."

MMA RAMOTSWE went to bed at ten that night, half an hour later than usual. She liked to lie in bed sometimes, with her reading lamp on, and read a magazine. Now she was tired, and the magazine kept slipping from her hands, defeating her struggles to keep awake.
She turned out the light and said her prayers, whispering the words although there was nobody in the house to hear her. It was always the same prayer, for the soul of her father, Obed, for Botswana and for rain that would make the crops grow and the cattle fat, and for her little baby, now safe in the arms of Jesus.
In the early hours of the morning she awoke in terror, her heartbeat irregular, her mouth dry. She sat up and reached for the light switch, but when she turned it on nothing happened. She pushed her sheet aside—there was no need for a blanket in the hot weather—and slipped off the bed.
The light in the corridor did not work either, nor that in the kitchen, where the moon made shadows and shapes on the floor. She looked out of the window, into the night. There were no lights anywhere; a power cut.
She opened the back door and stepped out into the yard in her bare feet. The town was in darkness, the trees obscure, indeterminate shapes, clumps of black.
"Mma Ramotswe!"
She stood where she was, frozen in terror. There was somebody in the yard, watching her. Somebody had whispered her name.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came. And it would be dangerous to speak, anyway. So she backed away, slowly, inch by inch, towards the kitchen door. Once inside, she slammed the door shut behind her and reached for the lock. As she turned the key the electricity came on and the kitchen was flooded with light. The fridge started to purr; a light from the cooker winked on and off at her: 3:04; 3:04

Chapter nine
The Boyfriend

There were three quite exceptional houses in the country, and Mma Ramotswe felt some satisfaction that she had been invited to two of them. The best-known of these was Mokolodi, a rambling chateau-like building placed in the middle of the bush to the south of Gaborone. This house, which had a gatehouse with gates on which hornbills had been worked in iron, was probably the grandest establishment in the country, and was certainly rather more impressive than Phakadi House, to the north, which was rather too close to the sewage ponds for Mma Ramotswe's taste. This had its compensations, though, as the sewage ponds attracted a great variety of bird life, and from the verandah of Phakadi one could watch flights of flamingos landing on the murky green water. But you could not do this if the wind was in the wrong direction, which it often was.
The third house could only be suspected of being a house of distinction, as very few people were invited to enter it, and Gaborone as a whole had to rely on what could be seen of the house from the outside—which was not much, as it was surrounded by a high white wall—or on reports from those who were summoned into the house for some special purpose. These reports were unanimous in their praise for the sheer opulence of the interior.
"Like Buckingham Palace," said one woman who had been called to arrange flowers for some family occasion. "Only rather better. I think that the Queen lives a bit more simply than those people in there."
The people in question were the family of Mr Paliwalar Sundigar Patel, the owner of eight stores—five in Gaborone and three in Francistown—a hotel in Orapa, and a large outfitters in Lobatse. He was undoubtedly one of the wealthiest men in the country, if not the wealthiest, but amongst the Batswana this counted for little, as none of the money had gone into cattle, and money which was not invested in cattle, as everybody knew, was but dust in the mouth.
Mr Paliwalar Patel had come to Botswana in 1967, at the age of twenty-five. He had not had a great deal in his pocket then, but his father, a trader in a remote part of Zululand, had advanced him the money to buy his first shop in the African Mall. This had been a great success; Mr Patel bought goods for virtually nothing from traders in distress and then sold them on at minimal profit. Trade blossomed and shop was added to shop, all of them run on the same commercial philosophy. By his fiftieth birthday, he stopped expanding his empire, and concentrated on the improvement and education of his family. There were four children—a son, Wallace, twin daughters, Sandri and Pali, and the youngest, a daughter called Nandira. Wallace had been sent to an expensive boarding school in Zimbabwe, in order to satisfy Mr Patel's ambition that he become a gentleman. There he had learned to play cricket, and to be cruel. He had been admitted to dental school, after a large donation by Mr Patel, and had then returned to Durban, where he set up a practice in cosmetic dentistry. At some point he had shortened his name—"for convenience's sake"—and had become Mr Wallace Pate BDS (Natal).
Mr Patel had protested at the change. "Why are you now this Mr Wallace Pate BDS (Natal) may I ask? Why? You ashamed, or something? You think I'm just a Mr Paliwalar Patel BA (Failed) or something?"
The son had tried to placate his father.
"Short names are easier, father. Pate, Patel—it's the same thing. So why have an extra letter at the end? The modern idea is to be brief. We must be modern these days. Everything is modern, even names."
There had been no such pretensions from the twins. They had both been sent back to the Natal to meet husbands, which they had done in the manner expected by their father. Both sons-in-law had now been taken into the business and were proving to have good heads for figures and a sound understanding of the importance of tight profit margins.
Then there was Nandira, who was sixteen at the time and a pupil at Maru-a-Pula School in Gaborone, the best and most expensive school in the country. She was bright academically, was consistently given glowing reports from the school, and was expected to make a good marriage in the fullness of time—probably on her twentieth birthday, which Mr Patel had felt was precisely the right time for a girl to marry.
The entire family, including the sons-in-law, the grandparents, and several distant cousins, lived in the Patel mansion near the old Botswana Defence Force Club. There had been several houses on the plot, old colonial-style houses with wide verandahs and fly screens, but Mr Patel had knocked them down and built his new house from scratch. In fact, it was several houses linked together, all forming the family compound. "We Indians like to live in a compound," Mr Patel had explained to the architect. "We like to be able to see what's going on in the family, you know."
The architect, who was given a free rein, designed a house in which he indulged every architectural whimsy which more demanding and less well-funded clients had suppressed over the years. To his astonishment, Mr Patel accepted everything, and the resulting building proved to be much to his taste. It was furnished in what could only be called Delhi Rococo, with a great deal of gilt in furniture and curtains, and on the walls expensive pictures of Hindu saints and mountain deer with eyes that followed one about the room.
When the twins married, at an expensive ceremony in Durban to which over fifteen hundred guests were invited, they were each given their own quarters, the house having been considerably expanded for the purpose. The sons-in-law were also each given a red Mercedes-Benz, with their initials on the driver's door. This required the Patel garage to be expanded as well, as there were now four Mercedes-Benz cars to be housed there; Mr Patel's, Mrs Patel's car (driven by a driver), and the two belonging to the sons-in law.
An elderly cousin had said to him at the wedding in Durban: "Look, man, we Indians have got to be careful. You shouldn't go flashing your money around the place. The Africans don't like that, you know, and when they get the chance they'll take it all away from us. Look at what happened in Uganda. Listen to what some of the hotheads are saying in Zimbabwe. Imagine what the Zulus would do to us if they had half a chance. We've got to be discreet."
Mr Patel had shaken his head. "None of that applies in Botswana. There's no danger there, I'm telling you. They're stable people. You should see them; with all their diamonds. Diamonds bring stability to a place, believe me."
The cousin appeared to ignore him. "Africa's like that, you see," he continued. "Everything's going fine one day, just fine, and then the next morning you wake up and discover your throat's been cut. Just watch out."
Mr Patel had taken the warning to heart, to an extent, and had added to the height of the wall surrounding his house so that people could not look in the windows and see the luxury. And if they continued to drive around in their big cars, well, there were plenty of those in town and there was no reason why they should be singled out for special attention.

MMA RAMOTSWE was delighted when she received the telephone call from Mr Patel asking her whether she could possibly call on him, in his house, some evening in the near future. They agreed upon that very evening, and she went home to change into a more formal dress before presenting herself at the gates of the Patel mansion. Before she went out, she telephoned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
"You said I should get a rich client," she said. "And now I have. Mr Patel."
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni drew in his breath. "He is a very rich man," he said. "He has four Mercedes-Benzes. Four. Three of them are all right, but one has had bad problems with its transmission. There was a coupling problem, one of the worst I've seen, and I had to spend days trying to get a new casing . . ."

YOU COULD not just push open the gate at the Patel house; nor could you park outside and hoot your horn, as everybody did with other houses. At the Patel house you pressed a bell in the wall, and a high-pitched voice issued from a small speaker above your head.
"Yes. Patel place here. What do you want?" "Mma Ramotswe," she said. "Private . . ." A crackling noise came from the speaker. "Private? Private what?"
She was about to answer, when there was another crackling sound and the gate began to swing open. Mma Ramotswe had left her tiny white van round the corner, to keep up appearances, and so she entered the compound by foot. Inside, she found herself in a courtyard which had been transformed by shade netting into a grove of lush vegetation. At the far end of the courtyard was the entrance to the house itself, a large doorway flanked by tall white pillars and tubs of plants. Mr Patel appeared before the open door and waved to her with his walking stick.
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-PuIa. 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 overconfident 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.
Suddenly a blue car drew up opposite the two girls. Mma Ramotswe stiffened and watched as the driver leant over the passenger seat and opened the front door. Nandira got in, and her friend got into the back. Mma Ramotswe started the engine of the little white van and pulled out of the school car park, just as the blue car drew away from the school. She followed at a safe distance, but ready to close the gap between them if there was any chance of losing them. She would not repeat yesterday's mistake and see Nandira vanish into thin air.
The blue car was taking its time, and Mma Ramotswe did not have to strain to keep up. They drove past the Sun Hotel and made their way towards the Stadium roundabout. There they turned in towards town and drove past the hospital and the Anglican Cathedral towards the Mall. Shops, thought Mma Ramotswe. They're just going shopping; or are they? She had seen teenagers meeting one another after school in places like the Botswana Book Centre. They called it "hanging around," she believed. They stood about and chatted and cracked jokes and did everything except buy something. Perhaps Nandira was going off to hang around with this Jack.
The blue car nosed into a parking place near the President Hotel. Mma Ramotswe parked several cars away and watched as the two girls got out of the car, accompanied by an older woman, presumably the mother of the other girl. She said something to her daughter, who nodded, and then detached herself from the girls and walked off in the direction of the hardware stores.
Nandira and her friend walked past the steps of the President Hotel and then slowly made their way up to the Post Office. Mma Ramotswe followed them casually, stopping to look at a rack of African print blouses which a woman was displaying in the square.
"Buy one of these Mma," said the woman. "Very good blouses. They never run. Look, this one I'm wearing has been washed ten, twenty times, and hasn't run. Look."
Mma Ramotswe looked at the woman's blouse—the colours had certainly not run. She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the two girls. They were looking in the shoe shop window, taking their time about wherever they were going.
"You wouldn't have my size," said Mma Ramotswe. "I need a very big blouse."
The trader checked her rack and then looked at Mma Ramotswe again.
"You're right," she said. "You are too big for these blouses. Far too big."
Mma Ramotswe smiled. "But they are nice blouses, Mma, and I hope you sell them to some nice small person."
She moved on. The girls had finished with the shoe shop and were strolling up towards the Book Centre. Mma Ramotswe had been right; they were planning to hang about.

THERE WERE very few people in the Botswana Book Centre. Three or four men were paging through magazines in the periodical section, and one or two people were looking at books. The assistants were leaning over the counters, gossiping idly, and even the flies seemed lethargic.
Mma Ramotswe noticed that the two girls were at the far end of the shop, looking at a shelf of books in the Setswana section. What were they doing there? Nandira could be learning Setswana at school, but she would hardly be likely to be buying any of the schoolbooks or biblical commentaries that dominated that section. No, they must be waiting for somebody.
Mma Ramotswe walked purposefully to the African section and reached for a book. It was The Snakes of Southern Africa, and it was well illustrated. She gazed at a picture of a short brown snake and asked herself whether she had seen one of these. Her cousin had been bitten by a snake like that years ago, when they were children, and had come to no harm. Was that the snake? She looked at the text below the picture and read. It could well have been the same snake, because it was described as nonvenomous and not at all aggressive. But it had attacked her cousin; or had her cousin attacked it? Boys attacked snakes. They threw stones at them and seemed unable to leave them alone. But she was not sure whether Putoke had done that; it was so long ago, and she could not really remember.
She looked over at the girls. They were standing there, talking to one another again, and one of them was laughing. Some story about boys, thought Mma Ramotswe. Well, let them laugh; they'll realise soon enough that the whole subject of men was not very funny. In a few years' time it would be tears, not laughter, thought Mma Ramotswe grimly.
She returned to her perusal of The Snakes of Southern Africa. Now this was a bad snake, this one. There it was. Look at the head! Ow! And those evil eyes! Mma Ramotswe shuddered, and read: "The above picture is of an adult male black mamba, measuring 1.87 metres. As is shown in the distribution map, this snake is to be found throughout the region, although it has a certain preference for open veld. It differs from the green mamba, both in distribution, habitat, and toxi-city of venom. The snake is one of the most dangerous snakes to be found in Africa, being outranked in this respect only by the Gaboon Viper, a rare, forest-dwelling snake found in certain parts of the eastern districts of Zimbabwe.
"Accounts of attacks by black mambas are often exaggerated, and stories of the snake's attacking men on galloping horses, and overtaking them, are almost certainly apocryphal. The mamba can manage a considerable speed over a very short distance, but could not compete with a horse. Nor are the stories of virtually instantaneous death necessarily true, although the action of the venom can be speeded if the victim of the bite should panic, which of course he often does on realising that he has been bitten by a mamba.
"In one reliably recorded case, a twenty-six-year-old man in good physical condition sustained a mamba bite on his right ankle after he had inadvertently stepped on the snake in the bush. There was no serum immediately available, but the victim possibly succeeded in draining off some of the venom when he inflicted deep cuts on the site of the bite (not a course of action which is today regarded as helpful). He then walked some four miles through the bush to seek help and was admitted to hospital within two hours. Antivenom was administered and the victim survived unscathed; had it been a puff-adder bite, of course, there would have been considerable necrotic damage within that time and he may even have lost the leg ..."
Mma Ramotswe paused. One leg. He would need to have an artificial leg. Mr Patel. Nandira. She looked up sharply. The snake book had so absorbed her that she had not been paying attention to the girls and now—where were they?—gone. They were gone.
She pushed The Snakes of Southern Africa back onto the shelf and rushed out into the square. There were more people about now, as many people did their shopping in the latter part of the afternoon, to escape the heat. She looked about her. There were some teenagers a little way away, but they were boys. No, there was a girl. But was it Nandira? No. She looked in the other direction. There was a man parking his bicycle under a tree and she noticed that the bicycle had a car aerial on it. Why?
She set off in the direction of the President Hotel. Perhaps the girls had merely gone back to the car to rejoin the mother, in which case, everything would be all right. But when she got to the car park, she saw the blue car going out at the other end, with just the mother in it. So the girls were still around, somewhere in the square.
Mma Ramotswe went back to the steps of the President Hotel and looked out over the square. She moved her gaze systematically—as Clovis Andersen recommended—looking at each group of people, scrutinising each knot of shoppers outside each shop window. There was no sign of the girls. She noticed the woman with the rack of blouses. She had a packet of some sort in her hand and was extracting what looked like a Mopani worm from within it.
"Mopani worms?" asked Mma Ramotswe. The woman turned round and looked at her. "Yes." She offered the bag to Mma Ramotswe, who helped herself to one of the dried tree worms and popped it into her mouth. It was a delicacy she simply could not resist.
"You must see everything that goes on, Mma," she said, as she swallowed the worm. "Standing here like this."
The woman laughed. "I see everybody. Everybody."
"Did you see two girls come out of the Book Centre?" asked Mma Ramotswe. "One Indian girl and one African girl. The Indian one about so high?"
The trader picked out another worm from her bag and popped it into her mouth.
"I saw them," she said. "They went over to the cinema. Then they went off somewhere else. I didn't notice where they were going."
Mma Ramotswe smiled. "You should be a detective," she said.
"Like you," said the woman simply.
This surprised Mma Ramotswe. She was quite well-known, but she had not necessarily expected a street trader to know who she was. She reached into her handbag and extracted a ten-pula note, which she pressed into the woman's hand.
"Thank you," she said. "That's a fee from me. And I hope you will be able to help me again some time."
The woman seemed delighted.
"I can tell you everything," she said. "I am the eyes of this place. This morning, for example, do you want to know who was talking to whom just over there? Do you know? You'd be surprised if I told you."
"Some other time," said Mma Ramotswe. "I'll be in touch."
There was no point in trying to find where Nandira had got to now, but there was every point in following up the information that she already had. So Mma Ramotswe went to the cinema and enquired as to the time of that evening's performance, which is what she concluded the two girls had been doing. Then she returned to the little white van and drove home, to prepare herself for an early supper and an outing to the cinema. She had seen the name of the film; it was not something that she wanted to sit through, but it had been at least a year since she had been to the cinema and she found that she was looking forward to the prospect.
Mr Patel telephoned before she left.
"My daughter has said that she is going out to see a friend about some homework," he said peevishly. "She is lying to me again."
'Yes," said Mma Ramotswe. "I'm afraid that she is. But I know where she's going and I shall be there, don't you worry."
"She is going to see this Jack?" shouted Mr Patel. "She is meeting this boy?"
"Probably," said Mma Ramotswe. "But there is no point in your upsetting yourself. I will give you a report tomorrow."
"Early-early, please," said Mr Patel. "I am always up at six, sharp-sharp-"

THERE WERE very few people in the cinema when Mma Ramotswe arrived. She chose a seat in the penultimate row, at the back. This gave her a good view of the door through which anybody entering the auditorium would have to pass, and even if Nandira and Jack came in after the lights had gone down, it would still be possible for Mma Ramotswe to pick them out.
Mma Ramotswe recognised several of the customers. Her butcher arrived shortly after she did, and he and his wife gave her a friendly wave. Then there was one of the teachers from the school and the woman who ran the aerobics class at the President Hotel. Finally there was the Catholic bishop, who arrived by himself and ate popcorn loudly in the front row.
Nandira arrived five minutes before the first part of the programme was about to start. She was by herself, and she stood for a moment in the door, looking around her. Mma Ramotswe felt her eyes rest on her, and she looked down quickly, as if inspecting the floor for something. After a moment or two she looked up again, and saw that the girl was still looking at her.
Mma Ramotswe looked down at the floor again, and saw a discarded ticket, which she reached down to pick up.
Nandira walked purposefully across the auditorium to Mma Ramotswe's row and sat down in the seat next to her.
"Evening, Mma," she said politely. "Is this seat taken?"
Mma Ramotswe looked up, as if surprised.
"There is nobody there," she said. "It is quite free."
Nandira sat down.
"I am looking forward to this film," she said pleasantly. "I have wanted to see it for a long time."
"Good," said Mma Ramotswe. "It is nice to see a film that you've always wanted to see."
There was a silence. The girl was looking at her, and Mma Ramotswe felt quite uncomfortable. What would Clovis Andersen have done in such circumstances? She was sure that he said something about this sort of thing, but she could not quite remember what it was. This was where the subject crowded you, rather than the other way round.
"I saw you this afternoon," said Nandira. "I saw you at Maru-a-Pula."
"Ah, yes," said Mma Ramotswe. "I was waiting for somebody."
"Then I saw you in the Book Centre," Nandira continued. "You were looking at a book."
"That's right," said Mma Ramotswe. "I was thinking of buying a book."
"Then you asked Mma Bapitse about me," Nandira said quietly. "She's that trader. She told me that you were asking about me."
Mma Ramotswe made a mental note to be careful of Mma Bapitse in the future.
"So, why are you following me?" asked Nandira, turning in her seat to stare at Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Ramotswe thought quickly. There was no point in denying it, and she may as well try to make the most of a difficult situation. So she told Nandira about her father's anxieties and how he had approached her.
"He wants to find out whether you're seeing boys," she said. "He's worried about it."
Nandira looked pleased.
"Well, if he's worried, he's only got himself to blame if I keep going out with boys."
"And are you?" asked Mma Ramotswe. "Are you going out with lots of boys?"
Nandira hesitated. Then, quietly: "No. Not really."
"But   what   about   this   Jack?"   asked   Mma   Ramotswe.
"Who's he?"
For a moment it seemed as if Nandira was not going to reply. Here was another adult trying to pry into her private life, and yet there was something about Mma Ramotswe that she trusted. Perhaps she could be useful; perhaps . . .
"Jack doesn't exist," she said quietly. "I made him up."
"Why?"
Nandira shrugged. "I want them—my family—to think I've got a boyfriend," she said. "I want them to think there's somebody I chose, not somebody they thought right for me." She paused. "Do you understand that?"
Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. She felt sorry for this poor, overprotected girl, and imagined just how in such circumstances one might want to pretend to have a boyfriend.
"Yes," she said, laying a hand on Nandira's arm. "I understand."
Nandira fidgeted with her watchstrap.
"Are you going to tell him?" she asked.
"Well, do I have much choice?" asked Mma Ramotswe. "I can hardly say that I've seen you with a boy called Jack when he doesn't really exist."
Nandira sighed. "Well, I suppose I've asked for it. It's been a silly game." She paused. "But once he realises that there's nothing in it, do you think that he might let me have a bit more freedom? Do you think that he might let me live my life for a little without having to tell him how I spend every single minute?"
"I could try to persuade him," said Mma Ramotswe. "I don't know whether he'll listen to me. But I could try."
"Please do," said Nandira. "Please try."
They watched the film together, and both enjoyed it. Then Mma Ramotswe drove Nandira back in her tiny white van, in a companionable silence, and dropped her at the gate in the high white wall. The girl stood and watched as the van drove off, and then she turned and pressed the bell.
"Patel place here. What do you want?"
"Freedom," she muttered under her breath, and then, more loudly: "It's me, Papa. I'm home now."

MMA RAMOTSWE telephoned Mr Patel early the next morning, as she had promised to do. She explained to him that it would be better for her to speak to him at home, rather than to explain matters over the telephone.
"You've got bad news for me," he said, his voice rising. "You are going to be telling me something bad-bad. Oh my God! What is it?"
Mma Ramotswe reassured him that the news was not bad, but she still found him looking anxious when she was shown into his study half an hour later.
"I am very worried," he said. "You will not understand a father's worries. It is different for a mother. A father feels a special sort of worry."
Mma Ramotswe smiled reassuringly. "The news is good," she said. "There is no boyfriend." "And what about this note?" he said. "What about this Jack person? Is that all imagination?"
"Yes," said Mma Ramotswe simply. "Yes, it is." Mr Patel looked puzzled. He lifted his walking stick and tapped his artificial leg several times. Then he opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing.
'You see," said Mma Ramotswe, "Nandira has been inventing a social life for herself. She made up a boyfriend for herself just to bring a bit of ... of freedom into her life. The best thing you can do is just to ignore it. Give her a bit more time to lead her own life. Don't keep asking her to account for her time. There's no boyfriend and there may not even be one for some time."
Mr Patel put his walking stick down on the floor. Then he closed his eyes and appeared deep in thought.
"Why should I do this?" he said after a while. "Why should I give in to these modern ideas?"
Mma Ramotswe was ready with her answer. "Recause if you don't, then the imaginary boyfriend may turn into a real one. That's why."
Mma Ramotswe watched him as he wrestled with her advice. Then, without warning he stood up, tottered for a while before he got his balance, and then turned to face her.
"You are a very clever woman," he said. "And I'm going to take your advice. I will leave her to get on with her life, and then I am sure that in two or three years she will agree with us and allow me to arra ... to help her to find a suitable man to marry."
"That could easily happen," said Mma Ramotswe, breathing a sigh of relief.
"Yes," said Mr Patel warmly. "And I shall have you to thank for it all!"

MMA RAMOTSWE often thought about Nandira when she drove past the Patel compound, with its high white wall. She expected to see her from time to time, now that she knew what she looked like, but she never did, at least not until a year later, when, while taking her Saturday morning coffee on the verandah of the President Hotel, she felt somebody tap her shoulder. She turned round in her seat, and there was Nandira, with a young man. The young man was about eighteen, she thought, and he had a pleasant, open expression.
"Mma Ramotswe," said Nandira in a friendly way. "I thought it was you."
Mma Ramotswe shook Nandira's hand. The young man smiled at her.
"This is my friend," said Nandira. "I don't think you've met him."
The young man stepped forward and held out his hand.
"Jack," he said.

Chapter ten

Mma Ramotswe thinks about the land while driving her tiny white Van to Francistown

Mma Ramotswe drove her tiny white van before dawn along the sleeping roads of Gaborone, past the Kalahari Breweries, past the Dry Lands Research Station, and out onto the road that led north. A man leaped out from bushes at the side of the road and tried to flag her down; but she was unwilling to stop in the dark, for you never knew who might be wanting a lift at such an hour. He disappeared into the shadows again, and in her mirror she saw him deflate with disappointment. Then, just past the Mochudi turnoff, the sun came up, rising over the wide plains that stretched away towards the course of the Limpopo. Suddenly it was there, smiling on Africa, a slither of golden red ball, inching up, floating effortlessly free of the horizon to dispel the last wisps of morning mist.
The thorn trees stood clear in the sharp light of morning, and there were birds upon them, and in flight—hoopoes, louries, and tiny birds which she could not name. Here and there cattle stood at the fence which followed the road for mile upon mile. They raised their heads and stared, or ambled slowly on, tugging at the tufts of dry grass that clung tenaciously to the hardened earth.
This was a dry land. Just a short distance to the west lay the Kalahari, a hinterland of ochre that stretched off, for unimaginable miles, to the singing emptinesses of the Namib. If she turned her tiny white van off on one of the tracks that struck off from the main road, she could drive for perhaps thirty or forty miles before her wheels would begin to sink into the sand and spin hopelessly. The vegetation would slowly become sparser, more desert-like. The thorn trees would thin out and there would be ridges of thin earth, through which the omnipresent sand would surface and crenellate. There would be patches of bareness, and scattered grey rocks, and there would be no sign of human activity. To live with this great dry interior, brown and hard, was the lot of the Batswana, and it was this that made them cautious, and careful in their husbandry.
If you went there, out into the Kalahari, you might hear lions by night. For the lions were there still, on these wide landscapes, and they made their presence known in the darkness, in coughing grunts and growls. She had been there once as a young woman, when she had gone with her friend to visit a remote cattle post. It was as far into the Kalahari as cattle could go, and she had felt the utter loneliness of a place without people. This was Botswana distilled; the essence of her country.
It was the rainy season, and the land was covered with green. Rain could transform it so quickly, and had done so; now the ground was covered with shoots of sweet new grass, Namaqualand daisies, the vines of Tsama melons, and aloes with stalk flowers of red and yellow.
They had made a fire at night, just outside the crude huts which served as shelter at the cattle post, but the light from the fire seemed so tiny under the great empty night sky with its dipping constellations. She had huddled close to her friend, who had told her that she should not be frightened, because lions would keep away from fires, as would supernatural beings, tokoloshes and the like.
She awoke in the small hours of the morning, and the fire was low. She could make out its embers through the spaces between the branches that made up the wall of the hut. Somewhere, far away, there was a grunting sound, but she was not afraid, and she walked out of the hut to stand underneath the sky and draw the dry, clear air into her lungs. And she thought: I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own. She waited for another thought to come, but none did, and so she crept back into the hut and the warmth of the blankets on her sleeping mat.
Now, driving the tiny white van along those rolling miles, she thought that one day she might go back into the Kalahari, into those empty spaces, those wide grasslands that broke and broke the heart.