MMA RAMOTSWE HAD TOLD Mr Polopetsi that there was something brewing at Mokolodi. She could not be more specific than that, as that was all she knew, and she wondered whether, as a man, he would understand. It seemed to her that men were often unaware of an atmosphere and could assume that all was well when it very clearly was not. This was not the case with all men; there were some who were extremely intuitive in their approach, but many men, alas, were not. Men were interested in hard facts, and sometimes hard facts were simply not available and one had to make do with feelings.
Mr Polopetsi looked puzzled. “So what do you want me to do?” he asked. “Why are we here?”
Mma Ramotswe was patient. “Private detection is all about soaking things up,” she said. “You speak to people. You walk around with your eyes wide open. You get a feel for what’s happening. And then you draw your conclusions.”
“But I don’t know what I’m meant to be reaching conclusions about,” protested Mr Polopetsi.
“Just see what you feel,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I’m going to talk to a relative of mine. You just … just walk about the place as if you’re a visitor. Have a cup of tea. Look at the animals. See if you feel anything.”
Mr Polopetsi still looked doubtful, but he was beginning to be intrigued by the assignment. It was rather like being a spy, he thought, and that was something of a challenge. When he was a boy he had played at being a spy and had positioned himself beneath a neighbour’s window and listened to the conversation within. He had noted down what was said (the conversation had mostly been about a wedding which was going to take place the following week), and he was in the middle of writing when a woman came out of the house and shouted at him. Then she had hit him with a broom, and he had run away and hidden in a small cluster of paw-paw trees. How strange it was, he thought, that here he was now doing what he had done as a boy, although he could not see himself crouching beneath a window. If Mma Ramotswe expected him to do that, then she would have to think again; she could crouch under windows herself, but he would certainly not do that, even for her.
MMA RAMOTSWE’S RELATIVE, the nephew (by a second marriage) of her senior uncle, was the supervisor of the workshop. Leaving Mr Polopetsi in the parking place, where he stood, rather awkwardly, wondering what to do, she made her way down the track that led to the workshops. This track took her past a small number of staff houses, shady buildings finished in warm earth, with comfortable windows of the traditional type—eyes for the building, thought Mma Ramotswe; eyes that made the buildings look human, which is how buildings should look. And then, at the bottom of the track, close to the stables, was the workshop, a rambling set of buildings around a courtyard. With its grease and its working litter—an old tractor, engine parts, the metal bars of an animal cage awaiting welding—it had some of the feel of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, the sort of place in which one might expect the wife of a mechanic to feel at home. And Mma Ramotswe did. Had Mr J.L.B. Matekoni himself strolled out of a doorway, wiping his hands on a piece of lint, she would not have been surprised; instead of him, though, it was her relative, looking at her in surprise, and breaking into a broad grin.
They exchanged family news, standing there in the courtyard. Was his father well? No, but he was still cheerful, and spent a lot of his time talking about the old days. He had talked about Obed Ramotswe recently, and still missed his advice on cattle. Mma Ramotswe lowered her eyes; there was nobody who knew more about cattle than her late father, and it touched her that this knowledge should still be talked about; wise men are remembered, they always are.
And what was she doing? Was it true that she had a detective agency, of all things? And that husband of hers? He was a good man, as everybody knew. There was a local man whose car had broken down in Gaborone and who had been helped by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who had seen this man standing in despair beside that car and who had stopped and towed him back to the garage, where he had fixed the car—for nothing. That had been talked about.
So the conversation continued, until Mma Ramotswe, hot under the slanting afternoon sun, had mopped her brow and had been invited inside for a mug of tea. It was the wrong sort of tea, of course, but it was still welcome, even if it did cause a slight fluttering of the heart, which ordinary tea or coffee always did to her.
“Why have you come out here?” the relative asked. “I heard that you were here the other day. I was in town. I did not see you.”
“I was collecting a part for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” she explained. “Neil had found it for him. But I didn’t manage to speak to anybody. So I thought I would come back and say hallo.”
The relative nodded. “You are always welcome,” he said. “We like to see people out here.”
There was a silence. Mma Ramotswe picked up the mug of tea he had prepared and took a sip. “Is everything going well here?” she asked. It was an innocent-seeming question, but one which was asked with an ulterior motive, and it did not sound innocent to her.
The relative looked at her. “Going well? I suppose so.”
Mma Ramotswe waited for him to say something else, but he did not. She saw, though, that he was frowning. People did not normally frown when they said that something was going well.
“You look unhappy,” she said.
This remark seemed to take the relative by surprise. “You noticed?” he said.
Mma Ramotswe tapped the table with a finger. “That is what I am paid to do,” she said. “I am paid to notice things. Even when I am off duty, I notice things. And I can tell that there’s something uncomfortable going on here. I can tell.”
“What can you tell, Mma Ramotswe?” said the relative.
Mma Ramotswe patiently explained to him about atmospheres, and about how one could always tell when people were frightened. It showed in their eyes, she said. Fear always showed in the eyes.
The relative listened. He looked away as she spoke, as people will do when they did not wish their eyes to be seen. This confirmed her impression.
“You yourself are frightened of something,” she coaxed, her voice low. “I can tell.”
The relative glanced back at her. His look was a pleading one. He rose to his feet and closed the door. There was only one small window in the room, a small rectangle of sky, and they were immediately enveloped in gloom. It was slightly cold too, as the floor of the room was of uncovered concrete and the warming sunlight which had slanted in through the door was now excluded. In the background, against one of the walls, a tap that ran into a dirty basin dripped water.
Mma Ramotswe had suspected it, but had put the thought to the back of her mind. Now, to her dismay, the possibility returned, and it chilled her. She could cope with anything. She understood very well what people were capable of, how cruel they could be, how perverse in their selfishness, how ruthless; she could cope with all that, and with all the general misfortunes of life. She was not afraid of human wickedness, which was usually tawdry and banal, something to be pitied, but there was one thing, one dark thing, which frightened her no matter how much she saw it for what it was. That thing, she now felt, might be present here, and it might explain why people were frightened.
She reached out and took her relative’s hand. And at that moment she knew that she had been right. His hand was shaking.
“You must tell me, Rra,” she whispered. “You must tell me what it is that is frightening you. Who has done it? Who has put a curse on this place?”
His eyes were wide. “There is no curse,” he said, his voice low. “There is no curse … yet.”
“Yet?”
“No. Not yet.”
Mma Ramotswe digested this information in silence. She was convinced that behind this there would be some scruffy witch doctor somewhere, a traditional healer, perhaps, who had found the profits of healing too small and had taken to the selling of charms and potions. It was a bit like a lion turning man-eater: an old lion, or an injured one, would discover that he could no longer run down his usual prey and turned to those slower two-legged creatures for easier pickings. It was easy for a healer to be tempted.Here’s something to make you strong; here’s something to deal with your enemies.