“I pretended to be surprised, although what I saw was exactly what I had expected to see. So I greeted him and said that I was sorry to have disturbed his lunch. He smiled and said that it did not matter, and that I should look for whatever it was that I was searching for. Then he went back to eating his steak, which smelled very good in the small space of that room.”
As the story progressed, Mma Ramotswe’s mouth opened wider and wider with astonishment. Mma Makutsi also seemed transfixed by the tale which their client was telling, and was sitting quite still at her desk, hanging on every word.
Poppy now paused. “I hope that you do not think that I was being too nosy,” she said. “I know that you should not look into things that are not your business.”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “But itwas your business, Mma,” she said. “It was surely your business. It is always the business of people who work in a place that somebody else in that place is stealing. That is everybody’s business.”
Poppy looked relieved. “I am glad you said that, Mma. I would not like you to think that I was one of those nosy people. I was worried …”
“So,” interrupted Mma Ramotswe. “You have to decide what to do. Is that why you have come to see me today?”
This conclusion seemed reasonable to Mma Ramotswe, but Poppy held up her hands in denial. “No, Mma,” she said. “I decided what to do straightaway. I went to Mma Tsau the next day and asked her about her husband. I said, ‘Why is your husband eating all this college food? Do you not have enough food of your own?’
“She was inspecting a pot at the time, and when I asked her this question she dropped it, she was so surprised. Then she looked closely at me and told me that she did not know what I was talking about and that I should not make up wild stories like that in case anybody believed that what I said was true.
“‘But I saw him myself,’ I told her. ‘I saw him in the storeroom over there eating steaks from the college kitchen. I saw him, Mma.’”
Mma Makutsi, who had been silent, could no longer contain herself. “Surely she did not try to deny that, Mma,” she said. “That wicked woman! Taking the meat from the students and giving it to that fat husband of hers! And our taxes paying for that meat too!”
Poppy and Mma Ramotswe both looked at Mma Makutsi. Her outrage was palpable.
“Well, she didn’t,” Poppy continued. “Once I had told her that I had seen what was going on, she just became silent for a while. But she was watching me with her eyes narrowed—like this. Then she said that if I told anybody about it, she would make sure that I lost my job. She explained to me that this would be easy for her to do. She said that she would simply tell the college managers that I was not up to the job and that they would have to get somebody else. She said that they would believe her and that there would be nothing I could do.”
“I hope that you went straight to the police,” said Mma Makutsi indignantly.
Poppy snorted. “How could I do that? I had no proof to give the police, and they would believe her rather than me. She is the senior cook, remember. I am just a junior person.”
Mma Ramotswe looked up at the ceiling. She had recently read an article about this sort of problem and she was trying to remember the word which was used to describe it. Whistle-blowing! Yes, that was it. The article had described how difficult it was for whistle-blowers when they saw something illegal being done at work. In some countries, it had said, there were laws to protect the whistle-blower—in some countries, but she was not sure whether this was true of Botswana. There was very little corruption in Botswana, but she was still not sure whether life was made any easier for whistle-blowers.
“Whistle-blowing,” she said aloud. “That’s what it is—whistle-blowing.”
Poppy looked at her blankly. “Who is blowing a whistle?” she asked.
“You are,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Or you could blow a whistle.”
“I do not see what whistles have to do with it,” said Poppy.
“If you went to the police you would be a whistle-blower,” explained Mma Ramotswe. “It’s a way of describing a person who lets others know about what is going on behind the scenes.”
“Behind what scenes?” asked Poppy.
Mma Ramotswe decided to change tack. There were some people who were rather literal in their understanding of things, and Poppy, it seemed, was one of these.
“Well, let us not think too much about whistles and such things,” she said. “The important thing is this: you want us to do something about this woman and her stealing. Is that right?”
The suggestion seemed to alarm Poppy. “No,” she said. “I do not want that, Mma. You must wait until I finish telling you my story.”
Mma Ramotswe made an apologetic gesture, and Poppy began to speak again.
“I was frightened, Mma. I could not face losing my job and so I did nothing. I did not like the thought of that man eating all that government food, but then I thought of what it would be like not to have a house, and so I just bit my tongue. But then, three days ago, Mma Tsau came to me just as I was about to leave work to go home. My husband has a car and was waiting for me at the end of the road. I could see him sitting in the car, looking up at the sky, as he likes to do. When you are a chef all you see is the kitchen ceiling and clouds of steam. When you are outside, you like to look at the sky.
“Mma Tsau drew me aside. She was shaking with anger and I thought that I had made some very bad mistake in my work. But it was not that. She gripped me by the arm and leaned forward to speak to me. ‘You think you’re clever,’ she said. ‘You think that you can get me to give you money not to say anything about my husband. You think that, don’t you?’
“I had no idea what she was talking about. I told her that, but she just laughed at me. She said that she had torn up the letter I had written. Then she said that on the very first opportunity that she could find, she would get rid of me. She said that it might take a few months, but she would make very sure that I would lose my job.”
Poppy stopped. Towards the end of her tale, her voice had risen, and by the time that she finished, the words were coming in gasps. Mma Ramotswe leaned forward and took her hand. “Do not be upset, Mma,” she said gently. “She is just making threats. Often these people don’t do what they threaten to do, isn’t that right, Mma Makutsi?”
Mma Makutsi glanced at Mma Ramotswe before she answered. She thought that people like that often did exactly what they threatened to do—and worse—but now was not the time to express such doubts. “Hot air,” she said. “You would think that in Botswana we had enough hot air, with the Kalahari just over there, but there are still people like this Mma Tsau who add to the hot air. And you do not need to worry about hot air, Mma.”
Poppy looked over towards Mma Makutsi and smiled weakly. “I hope that you’re right, Mma,” she said. “But I am not sure. And anyway, what was this letter? I did not write to her about it.”
Mma Ramotswe rose from her seat and walked to the window. Poppy had spoken about how chefs liked to look at the sky when they had the chance; well, so did private detectives, she thought; ladies and private detectives. Indeed, everybody should look at the sky when they could, because the sky had many answers, provided one knew how to see them. And now, as she looked at the sky, over the tops of the acacia trees and up into that echoing emptiness, it seemed to her so very obvious that Poppy was not the only person who knew about the food and that the other person who knew—who, again so obviously, must have been the cleaning woman—was taking the opportunity to blackmail Mma Tsau. Unfortunately for Poppy, she was getting the blame, but that was quite typical of life, was it not? The wrong people often got the blame, the wrong people suffered for what the right people did. And the sky in all this, the sky which had seen so much of it, was neutral, absolutely neutral.