The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (10 page)

Mma Ramotswe turned to look at him in astonishment. This, she decided, was a man who could well have more enemies than she had imagined.

THEY WALKED FROM THE HOUSE,
following a path that took them past the servants’ quarters and a shed housing a tractor side by side with an ancient donkey-cart. Mr. Moeti pointed to the cart and told Mma Ramotswe how he believed that the old ways of doing things still had their place. “Donkeys don’t go wrong,” he said. “Tractors do. And the same goes for everything else. An old radio, for example, has very few buttons. A new one? There are so
many buttons that you don’t know what to do, even if you’re an engineer.”

“My husband would agree with you,” said Mma Ramotswe. “When people bring in their cars these days, he needs a computer to do everything. He says you even need a computer to work out if you’ve run out of petrol.”

In a small paddock not far from the barn, they saw the donkeys in question, three dispirited creatures standing under the shade of a tree, their heads lowered in that air of utter defeat, of dejection, that marks out their species. A young herd boy, aged no more than seven or eight, was standing beside the donkeys, staring at his employer and Mma Ramotswe as they walked past.

“That child?”

Mr. Moeti glanced in the boy’s direction. “Just a herd boy. That was his mother back there in the house.”

“Does he know anything?”

Mr. Moeti looked at her in surprise. “No. He’s just a boy.”

“They have eyes,” said Mma Ramotswe quietly—so quietly that he did not hear her and had to ask her to repeat what she had said.

“And?” he asked.

“I have found that children—especially boys—see things and can give you very important information. They notice.”

Mr. Moeti shrugged. “You can ask him if you like.”

Without waiting, he whistled and gestured for the boy to come over. The child hesitated, and then approached them. He brought flies with him, Mma Ramotswe noticed.

“This lady wants to ask you something,” Mr. Moeti said. His tone was gruff, and he stared at the boy as he spoke.

Mma Ramotswe bent down to speak to the boy, reaching for his hand as she addressed him. She asked him his name, and he gave it. He was Mpho.

“So, Mpho, you know about this bad thing with the cattle?”

He moved his head slightly—a nod, but a reluctant one. His eyes, she saw, were fixed on Mr. Moeti.

“Did you see anything?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

He was still watching Mr. Moeti, and Mma Ramotswe glanced up discouragingly at the farmer. “Maybe I should speak to him by himself,” she said. “It is sometimes better to speak to children on their own.”

“No need,” snapped Mr. Moeti. “Mpho, you answer the auntie: You saw nothing, right?”

Mpho shook his head. “I have seen nothing, Mma. I know nothing.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

The boy shivered. He looked up at Mr. Moeti again and then lowered his gaze to the ground. “I am sure, Mma. Can I go now?”

She squeezed his hand. “Of course you can. Goodbye, Mpho,
go siame.
” They continued on their way.

“That’s an odd little boy,” Mr. Moeti remarked, smiling. “He stands there by the donkeys half the time, doing nothing, or just playing with stones he picks up.”

“He’s a child,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Children should be allowed to spend their time doing things like that.”

“He has cattle to watch. That’s what he’s paid to do.”

She did not reply. The child’s fear had been so obvious, and she was surprised that Mr. Moeti had not felt obliged to explain it away. Did he imagine she had not noticed it? And the cause of the child’s fear was equally apparent: the herd boy was frightened of Mr. Moeti. He had seen something—of course he had—but he knew that he was not supposed to talk about it. She could find out what the child knew, if she really wanted to; if she had the chance to speak to the child by himself, then it would not be difficult to encourage him to speak. All you had to say to a child was that you knew what the secret was, and it would all come tumbling out. No
child could keep a secret for long; they claimed to, but it was usually beyond them.

But of course it was not that simple. If she managed to persuade the child to speak, then he would be even more terrified, knowing that Mr. Moeti might find out. And yet, if the boy had witnessed the incident, he would be able to identify the perpetrator. And if he could do that, then why would Mr. Moeti have an interest in concealing the fact? It did not make sense at all, unless, of course, the child had seen something else altogether—some incident that explained the attack. Perhaps Mr. Moeti had done something to somebody else that had then resulted in the attack on his cattle, and perhaps the child had seen whatever it was that the farmer had done. Or—and this was also a possibility, she had to admit—perhaps the herd boy was simply frightened of Mr. Moeti in general and really had seen nothing. What was it that Clovis Andersen said in
The Principles of Private Detection
? It was in the chapter on establishing facts—a very important section in the scheme of the Andersen opus.
Do not forget,
wrote the distinguished authority,
that although a possible explanation may seem likely, there may be an entirely different cause operating in the background. If Mr. Green votes for Mr. Brown, you may think that is because Mr. Green approves of Mr. Brown’s politics, but the real reason may be because Mr. Brown is Mr. Green’s brother-in-law!

Mma Ramotswe had been intrigued by this passage, and had read it out loud to Mma Makutsi one morning when business had been slack. Mma Makutsi had listened intently before asking Mma Ramotswe to repeat it. Then she had asked, “Who is this Mr. Green?”

“He is Mr. Brown’s brother-in-law,” replied Mma Ramotswe. “I do not think they really exist.”

“Oh, I know that,” said Mma Makutsi. “But I am asking because there may be another reason altogether. What if Mr.
Brown has told Mr. Green that unless he votes for him he will cut off his nose? What then? That is a possible explanation too.”

Mma Ramotswe gave this some thought before replying. “A good point, Mma Makutsi. And it shows that Mr. Andersen is correct. There may be even more explanations than those you think you have. That is very true.”

It had been a slightly odd conversation—many conversations with Mma Makutsi could take a surprising turn—but it seemed helpful to remember it now. There could be any number of reasons for the boy’s fear of Mr. Moeti and none of them might have anything to do with the cattle incident.

Mr. Moeti now stopped and pointed to a patch of grass at the side of the path. “This is where the last bullock was found,” he said. “He was a very fine beast. Strong. White patches on his head.”

Mma Ramotswe looked about her. They were, she thought, in a place best described as nowhere, surrounded by thin acacia scrub that stretched out to a small outcrop of hills to the south. Through the trees, though, she could just make out a fence that ran die-straight through the bush. She pointed at this.

“The border of my farm,” said Mr. Moeti. “My neighbour is on that side—I am on this.”

“And who is he?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

Mr. Moeti did not appear to be particularly interested. “He is just a man,” he said. “He has a business down in Lobatse. He comes here at weekends.”

She nodded. This was not at all unusual. The ambition of any successful businessman in Botswana was to own land, and cattle, of course. Wealth in the bank was one thing; wealth in the shape of cattle was quite another, and for many, much more desirable.

She sighed. “It is very sad, what happened to your cattle. Very sad. People can be so cruel to animals. They do not think of their
suffering, do they? Imagine how painful it must be to have your tendons cut and you just lie there and …”

She looked at him as she spoke, and saw that his expression remained impassive. That was interesting, she noted. Most people, when reminded of pain, reacted in some way. They winced or gritted their teeth, or simply looked distressed. But Mr. Moeti did none of these.

“Not good,” he said.

“No. Not good, Rra.”

He gestured to the patch of grass. “Should we look around?”

She saw no point to doing this, but having gone out there she thought that she should at least look; not that there was anything to see, really, other than a small patch of ground on which something cruel had been done. There were numerous such small patches of ground throughout the world, she thought, and Africa, her beloved Africa, had many of them.

She looked up at the sky. That was the real witness to human cruelty, to all our manifold sorrows—the sky.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a grunt from Mr. Moeti. It was a rather odd sound, and she wondered for a moment whether he was in pain; it was that sort of sound, the
oh
that escapes our lips when a sudden awkward movement sends an electric shock of pain from the back. What if Mr. Moeti were to have a heart attack out here? Would she have to leave him lying on the ground—on the very grass on which the bullock had lain in the embrace of its own pain—and run back along the path to the house? And what would happen then? How long would it be before a doctor could be summoned or an ambulance brought out from Gaborone?

“Are you all right, Rra?”

He muttered something inaudible.

“Rra?”

“Come over here, Mma Ramotswe. Come over here.”

He was bending over, looking at something on the ground. As she approached, he pointed, the gold band of his wristwatch glinting in the sun as he did so.

“You see that?” he said. “I don’t want to touch it before you see it. Look.”

She peered down at the ground. There was a small, silver-coloured object, half covered by a dried leaf that had blown across it. She went down on her knees; the ground beneath the meagre covering of vegetation was hard and stony. She reached out and picked up the object. A real detective, she thought, would have used tweezers and immediately dropped the evidence into a convenient plastic bag. But where were the tweezers and plastic bags out here? Or even in the office? She would hardly find tweezers among the rough spanners and wrenches of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

She looked at Mr. Moeti. “A key ring.”

He held out his hand. “Let me see it, Mma.”

She watched him. “Is it yours, Mr. Moeti?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never seen this before.”

“It is a little thing,” she said. “It must be easy to drop something like that.”

“Yes,” he said. He was staring at her intently. “Mma Ramotswe?”

She took the key ring back from him. “Yes, Rra.”

“Was this dropped by the person who did this thing?”

She gestured to the wide expanse of surrounding bush. “This is not a very busy place, Rra.”

He looked embarrassed. “Of course. I am not a detective—I am a farmer.”

“How did you take the bullock away?”

He pointed towards the farm. “I brought my tractor. I came with my stockman.”

“Just the two of you?”

“Yes.”

She felt the key ring between her fingers. There was a rough edge to it; it was almost sharp; a small, metal map of Botswana.

“And could this be his?”

He answered quickly: “He has never seen it either.”

“Oh? How do you know that?”

He looked away. “I mean that I do not think he has ever seen it. That is what I mean.”

 
CHAPTER SEVEN
 
 A TRUTH ABOUT LIES

M
MA RAMOTSWE
had told Mma Makutsi that they should close the office while they were out, but had said nothing about coming back. Mma Makutsi was conscientious—one did not achieve ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College without demonstrating responsibility and the capacity for hard work—but she felt, nonetheless, that Mma Ramotswe could hardly have meant for her to go back to the office after her shopping trip. Buying shoes was not a simple transaction; one had to take one’s time about it, and it was already noon. If the choosing of the shoes took two hours—perhaps three, with time for contemplation—then there would surely be no point in walking back to the office (another half an hour) only to have to close up for the day an hour or two later. No time and motion expert would think that a good idea; such a person, she felt, would be more likely to suggest going home after the purchase of the shoes in order to be fresher and more energetic for work the next day.

Mma Makutsi had attended a lecture by a time and motion expert in her final month at the Botswana Secretarial College. It
had been a riveting talk, perhaps the most entertaining of all the lectures they had received at the college, and she remembered almost every detail of what was said. The expert was a rotund man who had immediately engaged the attention of the students—or almost all of them—by telling them how he performed the task of getting dressed each morning. “I am very efficient,” he said, smiling as he spoke. “When I get undressed, I hang my shirt on a hanger straightaway. Then, in the morning, if I am wearing the same shirt—and it is not efficient, I believe, to change your shirt every day, unless it is very hot—then in the morning I back up into the shirt like this, while at the same time picking up my trousers with my free hand, like this, and putting first one leg in and then the other. As I put in the first leg I make sure that a shoe is lined up to receive it when it comes out the bottom of the trousers. In this way, I put all my clothes on at the same time. It is a big saving of time. Three minutes and twenty seconds, to be precise. I have plotted it on a graph and taken the average.”