She had a report to write, and she busied herself with this. It was not an easy one, as she had to detail the weaknesses she had found in the hiring department of a company which provided security guards.
They imagined that they screened out applicants with a criminal record when they sought jobs with the company; Mma Ramotswe had discovered that it was simplicity itself to lie about one’s past on the application form and that the forms were usually not even scrutinised by the official in charge of the personnel department. This man, who had got the job through lying about his qualifications and experience, rubber-stamped the applications of virtually anybody, but particularly of applications submitted by any of his relatives. Mma Ramotswe’s report would not make comfortable reading for the company, and she knew to expect some anger over the results. This was inevitable—people did not like to be told uncomfortable truths, even if they had asked for them. Uncomfortable truths meant that one had to go back and invent a whole new set of procedures, and that was not always welcome when there were so many other things to do.
As she listed the defects in the firm’s arrangements, Mma Ramotswe thought of how difficult it was to have a completely secure system for anything. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was a case in point. They kept all their records in two old filing cabinets, and neither of these, she realised, had a lock, or at least a lock that worked. There was a lock on the office door, naturally enough, but during the day they rarely bothered to use that if both of them went out on some errand. There were always people around the garage, of course—either Mr J.L.B. Matekoni or the apprentices, and surely intruders would be deterred by their presence … No, she thought, perhaps not. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was often so absorbed in tinkering with an engine that he would not notice it if the President himself drew up in his large official car. And as for the apprentices, they were completely unobservant and missed the most glaring features of what went on round about them. Indeed, she had given up on asking them for descriptions of clients who might have called while she was out and spoken to one of them. “There was a man,” they would say. “He came to see you. Now he is gone.” And in response to questioning for some clue as to the caller’s identity, they would say, “He was not a very tall man, I think. Or maybe he was a bit tall. I could not tell.”
Her pen stopped in mid-sentence. Who was she to criticise when it would be possible for virtually anybody to walk into the office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency at an unguarded moment and rifle through the secrets of their clients? Are you interested in who is suspected by his wife of adultery? Please, help yourself: there are plenty of reports about that in an old filing cabinet on the Tlokweng Road—just help yourself! And why was that man dismissed from that hotel last month, with no reason given? Well, the report on that—freely available from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and signed by Mma Grace Makutsi, Dip. Sec. (Botswana Secretarial College) (97%)—may be obtained by the simple expedient of looking in the top drawer of the second desk of an unlocked office beside Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.
Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and made her way over to the filing cabinet nearest her. Bending forward, she peered at the lock which was built into the top of the cabinet. It was a small, oval silver-coloured plate with an incised key-hole. At the top of the plate the maker’s sign, a small rampant lion, was stamped into the metal. The lion looked back at Mma Ramotswe, and she shook her head. There was rust in the key-hole, and the edges of the hole were dented. Even if they could locate the key, it would be impossible to insert it. She looked at the lion, a symbol of the pride which somebody must once have felt, somewhere, in the construction of the cabinet. And perhaps this pride was not entirely misplaced—the cabinet must have been made decades ago, perhaps even forty or fifty years previously, and it still worked. How many modern cabinets, with their plastic trimmings and their bright colours, would still be holding files in fifty years’ time? And it was the same with people, she thought. Bright, modern people were all very well, but did they last the course? Traditionally minded (and traditionally built) people might not seem so fashionable, but they would always be there, doing what they always did. A traditional mechanic, for example—somebody like Mr J.L.B. Matekoni—would be able to keep your car going when a modern mechanic—somebody like Charlie—would shrug his shoulders and say that everything needed to be renewed.
She reached out and gave the filing cabinet an affectionate pat. Then, on impulse, she bent down and kissed its scratched and dented metal surface. The metal felt cool to her lips and smelled acrid, as metal can—a smell of rust and sharpness.
“Dumela, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi from the doorway.
Mma Ramotswe straightened up.
“Don’t worry about me,” said Mma Makutsi. “Just carry on doing whatever it was that you were doing …” She glanced at the filing cabinet and then at her employer.
Mma Ramotswe returned to her desk. “I was thinking about that filing cabinet,” she said. “And suddenly I felt very grateful to it. I know that it must have looked very strange to you, Mma.”
“Not at all,” said Mma Makutsi. “I am grateful to it too. It keeps all our records safe.”
Mma Ramotswe frowned. “Well, I’m not sure if they’re completely safe,” she said. “In fact, I was just wondering whether we should do something about locking them. Confidentiality is very important. You know that, Mma.”
Mma Makutsi looked thoughtfully at the filing cabinets. “That is true,” she said. “But I do not think we would ever find a key for those old locks.” She paused. “Maybe we could put a chain around them, with a padlock?”
Mma Ramotswe did not think that this would be a good idea. It would look absurd to have chained filing cabinets, and would give quite the wrong impression to clients. It was bad enough having an office inside a garage, but it would be worse to have something quite so odd-looking as a chain around a cabinet. It would be better to buy a couple of new filing cabinets, even if they would not be as sturdy and substantial as these old ones. There was probably enough money in the office account to do this, and they had not spent very much on equipment recently. In fact, they had spent nothing, apart from three pula for a new teaspoon, which had been required after one of the apprentices had used their existing teaspoon to fix a gearbox and had broken it. The thought of furniture reminded her. Mma Makutsi was about to marry, was she not? And was she not about to marry into the furniture trade?
“Phuti Radiphuti!” Mma Ramotswe exclaimed.
Mma Makutsi looked up sharply. “Phuti?”
“Your fiancé, Mma,” went on Mma Ramotswe. “Does he do office furniture as well as house furniture?”
Mma Makutsi looked down at her shoes.Fiancé? she imagined hearing the shoes say.We used to be engaged to a pair of men’s shoes but we haven’t seen them for some time! Is it still on, Boss?
Mma Ramotswe smiled across her desk. “I wouldn’t expect a new filing cabinet for nothing,” she said. “But he could give us a trade price, could he not? Or he would know where we could get it cheaply.” She noticed Mma Makutsi’s expression, and tailed off. “If he could …”
Mma Makutsi seemed reluctant to speak. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and then out of the door. “He did not come to my place last night,” she said. “I had cooked for him. But he did not come.”
Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. She had feared that something like this would happen. Ever since Mma Makutsi had become engaged, she had been concerned that something would go wrong. That had nothing to do with Phuti Radiphuti himself, who seemed a good candidate for marriage, but it had everything to do with the bad luck that seemed to dog Mma Makutsi. There were some people who were badly treated by life, no matter how hard they worked and no matter what efforts they made to better their circumstances. Mma Makutsi had done her very best, but perhaps she would never get any further than she had already got, and would remain an assistant detective, a woman from Bobonong, with large round glasses, and a house that, although comfortable, had no hot water supply. Phuti Radiphuti could have changed everything, but now would not. He would be just another missed opportunity, another reminder of what might have been had everything been different.