“I’m sorry about that dog,” said Dr Moffat. “He is not a very friendly dog. I don’t know where we went wrong.”
“Some dogs are just bad,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is not the fault of the owners. Just like some children are bad when it is not the fault of the parents.”
“Well, maybe my dog will change,” said Dr Moffat. “Maybe he will become kinder as he grows older.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “I hope so, Doctor,” she said. “But I have not come here to be unkind about that dog of yours. I have come to ask you a quick favour.”
“I am always happy to do anything for you, Mma Ramotswe,” said Dr Moffat. “You know that.”
“Will you take my blood pressure, then?”
If Dr Moffat was surprised by the request, he did not show it. Ushering Mma Ramotswe into his study at the back of the house, he took a sphygmomanometer out of his desk drawer and began to wrap the cuff round Mma Ramotswe’s proffered arm.
“Have you been feeling unwell?” he asked quietly as he inflated the instrument.
“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It’s just that I needed to know.”
Dr Moffat looked at the mercury. “It’s a tiny bit higher than would be wise,” he said. “It’s one hundred and sixty over ninety. In a case like that we should probably do some other tests.”
Mma Ramotswe stared at him. “Are you sure about that reading?” she asked.
Dr Moffat told her that he was. “It’s not too bad,” he said.
“It’s exactly what I thought it would be.”
He gave her a curious look. “Oh? Why would you think that?”
She did not answer the question, but reached into her pocket and took out the bottle of pills which Dr Lubega had sold her. “Do you know these pills?” she asked.
Dr Moffat looked at the label. “That is a well-known pill for high blood pressure,” he said. “It’s very good. Rather costly. But very good. It’s a beta-blocker combined with a diuretic.”
He opened the bottle and spilled a couple of pills out onto his hand. He seemed interested in them, and he held one up closer to examine it.
“That’s a bit odd,” he said, after a moment. “I don’t remember this drug looking like that. I seem to recall it was white. I could be wrong, of course. These are … blue, aren’t they? Yes, definitely blue.”
He replaced the pills in the bottle and crossed the floor of his study to reach for a volume from the bookshelf. “This is a copy of the British National Formulary ,” he said. “It lists all the proprietary drugs and describes their appearance. Let me take a look.”
It took him a few minutes to find the drug, but when he did he nodded his agreement with what he read. “There it is,” he said, reading from the formulary. “White tablets. Each tablet contains fifty milligrams of beta-blocker and twelve point five milligrams of diuretic.” He closed the book and looked at Mma Ramotswe over the top of his spectacles.
“I think you’re going to have to tell me where these came from, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “But would it be easier to do so over a cup of tea? I’m sure that Fiona would be happy to make us all a cup of tea while you tell me all about it.”
“Tea would be very good,” said Mma Ramotswe.
At the end of the story, Dr Moffat shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid that the only conclusion we can reach is that this Dr Lubega is substituting a cheap generic for a costly drug but charging his patients the full cost.”
“And that would harm them?” she asked.
“It could,” said Dr Moffat. “Some of the generics are all right, but others do not necessarily do what they’re meant to. There’s an issue of purity, you see. Of course, this doctor may have thought that everything would be all right and that no harm would come to anybody, but that’s not good enough. You don’t take that sort of risk. And you definitely don’t commit fraud on your patients.” He shook his head. “We’ll have to report this, of course. You know that?”
Mma Ramotswe sighed. That was the trouble with getting involved in these things; one got drawn in. There were reports. Dr Moffat sensed her weariness. “I’ll have a word with the ministry,” he said. “It’s easier that way.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled her appreciation and took a sip of her tea. She wondered why a doctor would need to defraud his patients when he could already make a perfectly comfortable living in legitimate practice. Of course, he could have hire-purchase payments or school fees or debts to pay off; one never knew. Or he could need the money because somebody was extorting money out of him. Blackmail drove people to extremes of desperation. And a doctor would be a tempting target for blackmail if he had a dark secret to conceal … But it seemed a little bit unlikely to her. It was probably just greed, simple greed. The desire to own a Mercedes-Benz, for example. That could drive people to all sorts of mischief.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WAITING FOR A VISIT
THE NEXT MORNING when Mma Ramotswe arrived at the shared premises of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, she found Mr Polopetsi with his head under a car. She was always wary of calling out to a mechanic when he was under a car, as they inevitably bumped their heads in surprise. And so she bent down and whispered to him, “Dumela, Rra. Have you anything to tell me?”
Mr Polopetsi heaved himself out from under the car and wiped his hands on a piece of cloth. “Yes, I do,” he said keenly. “I have some very interesting news for you.”
“You found Poppy?”
“Yes, I found her.”
“And you had a word with her?”
“Yes, I did.”
Mma Ramotswe looked at him expectantly. “Well?”
“I asked her whether she had written a letter to anybody about what had happened. That is exactly what I asked her.”
Mma Ramotswe felt herself becoming impatient. “Come on, Mr Polopetsi. Tell me what she said.”
Mr Polopetsi raised a finger in one of his characteristic gestures of emphasis. “You’ll never believe who she wrote to, Mma Ramotswe. You’ll never guess.”
Mma Ramotswe savoured her moment. “Aunty Emang?” she said quietly.
Mr Polopetsi looked deflated. “Yes. How did you know that?”
“I had a hunch, Mr Polopetsi. I had a hunch.” She affected a careless tone. “I find that sometimes I have a hunch, and sometimes they are correct. Anyway, that’s very useful information you came up with there. It confirms my view of what is happening.”
“I do not know what is happening,” said Mr Polopetsi.
“Then I will tell you, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe, pointing to her office. “Come inside and sit down, and I will tell you exactly what is going on and what we need to do.”
BOTH MMA MAKUTSI and Mr Polopetsi listened attentively as Mma Ramotswe gave an account of where she had got to in the blackmail investigation.
“Now what do we do?” asked Mma Makutsi. “We know who it is. Do we go to the police?”
“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “At least, not yet.”
“Well?” pressed Mr Polopetsi. “Do we go and talk to Aunty Emang, whoever she is?”
“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have a better idea than that. We get Aunty Emang to come and talk to us. Here in our office. We get her to sit in that chair and tell us all about her nasty ways.”
Mr Polopetsi laughed. “She will never come, Mma! Why should she come?”
“Oh, she will come all right,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Mma Makutsi, I should like to dictate a letter. Mr Polopetsi, you stay and listen to what I have to say.”
Mma Makutsi liked to use her shorthand, which had been described by the examiners at the Botswana Secretarial College as “quite the best shorthand we have ever seen, in the whole history of the college.”
“Are you ready, Mma?” asked Mma Ramotswe, composing herself at her desk. She was aware of being watched closely by Mr Polopetsi, who appeared to be hanging on her every word. This was a very important moment.
“The letter goes to,” she said, “… to Aunty Emang, at the newspaper. Begin. Dear Aunty Emang, I am a lady who needs your help and I am writing to you because I know that you give very good advice. I am a private detective, and my name is Mma Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (but please do not print that bit in the paper, dear Aunty, as I would not like people to know that I am the person who has written this letter)”