She looked at Neil across the rim of her cup. He was a very straightforward man, and although he was not a Motswana he was a man who had been born in Africa and lived all his life there. Such people may be white people, but they knew, they understood as well as anybody else. If he was worried about something, then there would be reason to worry.
“I felt that there was something wrong, Rra,” she said quietly. “I could tell—I could just tell that there was something wrong.” As she spoke, she felt it again—that feeling of dread. She half-turned in her seat and looked behind her, back into the darkened interior of the building behind them, where the kitchen was. A woman was standing in the doorway, just standing, doing nothing. Mma Ramotswe could not quite make out her face, and the woman withdrew, back into the shadows.
Neil had replaced his cup on the table and was rubbing the rim of it gently, as if to coax out a sound. Mma Ramotswe noticed that one of his fingers had been scratched: a small line of dried blood ran across the skin, which was weathered, cracked, the skin of a man who worked with stone and machinery and the branches of thorn trees. She waited for him to speak.
“This is generally a pretty happy place,” he began. “You know what it’s like, don’t you?”
Mma Ramotswe did. She remembered when Mokolodi had first been set up, the dream of Ian Kirby, who had been a friend of Seretse Khama and his family. He had created the game park and had given it over to a trust for the nation so that people could come out from Gaborone, which was so close, and see animals in the wild. It was an idealistic place, and it attracted people who loved the bush and wanted to preserve it. These were not people to argue or fight with one another. Nor was it the sort of place where a dishonest or difficult person would wish to work. And yet there was something wrong. What was it? What was it? She closed her eyes, but opened them again quickly. It was fear; it was unmistakable.
“I know what this place is like normally,” she said. “It is happy. I have a cousin here, you know. She has always liked working here.”
“Well, it’s not like that now,” said Neil. “There’s something very odd going on, and I don’t seem able to find out what the trouble is. I’ve asked people and they just clam up. They look away. You know how people do that when they don’t want to talk. They look away.”
Mma Ramotswe understood that. People did not always talk about the things that were worrying them. Sometimes this was because they thought it rude to burden others with their troubles; sometimes it was because they did not know how to say what had to be said; there were many reasons. But fear was always a possible explanation: you did not talk about things that you were worried might happen. If you did, then the very things you worried about could come to pass.
“Tell me, Rra,” she asked, “how do you know that there is something? How can you tell?”
Neil picked up a dried leaf which had blown onto the table and crushed it slowly between his fingers. “How do I know? Well, I’ll give you an example. Last Saturday I wanted to drive round the reserve at night. I do that from time to time—we’ve had a bit of trouble with poachers, and I like to go out at odd times, without lights, so that if there’s anybody thinking of getting up to anything they will know that we’re in the habit of coming round the corner at any time, night or day. I usually take two or three of the men when I do this.
“Normally there’s no difficulty in getting some men to come with me. They take it in turns, and pitch up of their own accord. Well, last Saturday it seemed to be a very different situation. Nobody was willing to volunteer, and when I went down to the houses to see what was going on, everybody’s door was firmly shut.”
Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. “They were scared?”
“That’s the only explanation,” said Neil.
“Scared of poachers?”
Neil shrugged his shoulders. “It’s difficult to say. I would have thought that was unlikely. The sort of poachers we get round here will usually run a mile rather than come up against any of us. They’re not a very impressive breed of poacher, I’m afraid.”
“So?” pressed Mma Ramotswe. “Was there anything else?”
Neil thought for a moment. “There have been other odd things. One of the women who works in the kitchen ran out screaming her head off the other day. She was hysterical. She said that she had seen something in the storeroom.”
“And?” encouraged Mma Ramotswe.
“I called one of the other women to calm her down,” said Neil. “Then I went and had a look in the storeroom. Of course, there was nothing. But when I tried to get the women to come in with me so that I could show them that there was nothing there, they both refused. Both of them. The woman who was trying to calm her friend down was just as bad.”
Mma Ramotswe listened carefully. This was beginning to sound familiar to her. Although it happened relatively infrequently, it still happened. Witchcraft. Somebody was practising witchcraft, and the moment that happened, then all reason, all sound ideas and rationality, could be abandoned. Just below the surface, there were deep wells of fear and superstition that could suddenly be revealed by something like this. It was less common than it used to be, but it was there.
She looked at her watch. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni needed that axle, and she and Mma Makutsi did not have the time to sit and talk much longer, pleasant though it was to sit under that tree.
“I will come back sometime soon,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And when I come back, I shall look into these things for you. In the meantime, we must get that axle for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. That is what we need to do first. The other thing can wait.”
Mma Ramotswe went back to her van and drove it down to the workshop area, while Neil and Mma Makutsi walked together down the track to meet her there. It took no more than a few minutes for the half-axle to be found among a pile of greasy spare parts. Then it was loaded into the back of the tiny white van, where it rested on some spread-out newspapers. Mma Ramotswe noticed that the two men who picked up the axle and manoeuvred it into the van said nothing beyond a mumbled greeting, completing their task in silence and then turning away, melting back into the workshop.
“You won’t forget to come out soon?” Neil said as Mma Ramotswe prepared to leave.
“I won’t,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Don’t worry. I’ll come out and have a word with a few people.”
“If they’ll talk,” said Neil gloomily. “It’s as if somebody has stuck their lips together with tape.”
“Somebody probably has,” said Mma Ramotswe quietly. “It’s just that we can’t see the tape.”
She drove back up the Mokolodi road to join the main road back to Gaborone. Mma Makutsi was still silent, sitting next to her, morosely looking out of her window. Mma Ramotswe glanced at her companion and was on the point of saying something, but did not. It seemed to her as if she was surrounded by silence—those silent men at the workshop, the silent woman beside her, the silent sky.
She looked again at Mma Makutsi. She had been about to say: “You know, Mma, I might just as well have come out here by myself, for all the fun you’re being.” But she did not. If I said anything like that, she told herself, I rather think Mma Makutsi would burst into tears. She wanted to reach across and lay a hand on Mma Makutsi’s arm, to comfort her, but could not. They were coming to a bend in the road, and they would end up in a ditch if she took her hands off the wheel. That would not help, thought Mma Ramotswe.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MR POLOPETSI, AND THE COMPLICATIONS IN HIS LIFE
MR J.L.B. MATEKONI was very pleased with the half-axle that he had obtained from Mokolodi. Fitting it, though, was a major job, requiring the assistance of the two apprentices—who needed to be instructed on this matter anyway. So the next morning, while the three of them conferred under the raised vehicle, Mr Polopetsi, who was the most recent addition to the staff of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, was left in charge of the routine work of the garage. He had been recruited after Mma Ramotswe’s van had knocked him off his bicycle and she had arranged for it to be fixed by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. It was after this that he had revealed what had happened to him, how he had been sent to prison for negligence after the wrong drug had been dispensed from the hospital pharmacy in which he worked. It had not been his fault, but lies had been told by another, and the magistrate had felt that a conviction and prison sentence were necessary to satisfy the outrage of the patient’s family. Mma Ramotswe had been moved by the story and by his plight, and had arranged work for him in the garage. It had been a good choice: Mr Polopetsi was a methodical worker who had rapidly learned how to service a car and carry out the more mundane repairs. He was an intelligent man, and discreet too, and Mma Ramotswe foresaw the day when he would be useful in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. He could never be a partner in the agency, as a ladies’ detective agency could not allow that, but he could certainly perform some of the tasks for which a man would be useful. It would be handy, for instance, to have a man who could go and observe what was going on in a particular bar, if that should be necessary in a case. A lady detective could not very well do that, as she would spend half her time fending off the men who pestered ladies in bars.