“No,” said Mma Makutsi.
Mma Ramotswe tried again. “You see, that person may not have finished cooking… She may have to look for a saucepan, or something like that. She may have to get things out of the fridge…” She made her way towards the fridge and took out the pieces of chicken she had set aside for their dinner.
Mma Makutsi looked unconvinced. “I still think that it is better to be early, Mma. And that is why the rule is: always arrive ten minutes early.”
Mma Ramotswe decided that this was not an argument she could win. She would have to wait until the matter came up again in print-only then would it be possible to present Mma Makutsi with evidence capable of persuading her that she was wrong.
“Well, maybe there are two views on this,” Mma Ramotswe suggested mildly.
Mma Makutsi nodded vigorously. “Yes. A right one and a wrong one, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe turned away to hide a smile. She had to admire Mma Makutsi; so many people these days had no idea of what they believed and were quite happy to bend with whatever wind was blowing. Mma Makutsi was not like that.
She changed the subject. “We need to talk about the Molofololo case,” she said. “I have to get this chicken on the stove, but we can talk while I am cooking.”
“And I can help you,” offered Mma Makutsi.
Mma Ramotswe gave her assistant the task of peeling the potatoes while she relayed to her what she had learned at Big Man Tafa's house.
“So far,” she began, “we know this: Big Man Tafa, the goalkeeper, wants to be captain. He thinks that Rops is past his best and should retire…”
“To the cattle post,” interjected Mma Makutsi.
“Yes, that is what his wife said. But there is more.”
Mma Makutsi, having peeled the first potato, held it up against the light. “They must have talked a lot, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe explained that she had also talked to an informant on the street. “I learned that Big Man Tafa does not like Mr. Molofololo. He said that he is always interfering. And then I learned that Big Man owes money. At least ten thousand pula.”
Mma Makutsi made her disapproval clear. “Ten thousand pula! That is a lot, Mma. That gives him a very powerful motive, don't you think?”
Mma Ramotswe agreed, but pointed out that the person with the most obvious motive by no means always acts upon it. Motives, she reminded Mma Makutsi, could be what Clovis Andersen described as red herrings. She remembered the very passage, which she quoted to Mma Makutsi. Always remember that life is never what we think it will be. There are always red herrings and their job is to mislead you. Never forget that!
“So you don't think that it's Big Man Tafa?” asked Mma Makutsi.
Mma Ramotswe looked thoughtful. “No, I do not think it's him, Mma. There are many reasons for it to be him, but I do not think it is.”
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn't smell guilty,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You know how it is, Mma? Your nose tells you a lot of things. We must listen to our noses.” She was silent for a moment, again weighing Big Man in the balance. No, it was not him. “No, Mma, Big Man is full of ambition, and he does not like Rops very much. But when I suggested to him that somebody was throwing matches away, I could tell that he was genuinely shocked. The nose, you see.”
Mma Makutsi found her eyes drawn inexorably to her employer's nose. It was not an exceptional nose in any way, and she wondered why it should have a greater ability than any other nose in this respect. But she thought that Mma Ramotswe was right; noses were useful and they did tell us a lot.
“And the teacher?” she asked. “What did your nose say about him?”
Mma Ramotswe tapped the side of her nose. “My nose was very clear on that one. The teacher is a very honest man.”
Mma Makutsi approved of this. “Teachers should be honest. It is a great pity, Mma, that these days teachers are just like everybody else. I do not think that is right.”
Mma Ramotswe had views on that-she had great respect for teachers-but she did not want to get into a discussion of that just now. “Not only was he honest,” said Mma Ramotswe, “he was very fit. He took me to show me the new school gymnasium-a very fine room, Mma, with some ropes for children to swing on and a trampoline, Mma. He invited me to step onto the trampoline while we talked.”
Mma Makutsi shrieked. “You didn't agree, did you, Mma?”
“I'm afraid that I did,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I got onto it with him, and he started to bounce. That made me start to bounce up and down too. We talked that way.”
Mma Makutsi said that she would have liked to have seen that. “I would not have laughed at you, Mma Ramotswe,” she said. “But I would still have liked very much to see that. Did you find anything out about him?”
“Only that he is very keen,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He likes everybody on the team-he had no bad words for anybody, and he even praised Mr. Molofololo. He said that he was very grateful to him for having given him a place on the team. And then he said that he was sure that the team would start to win again soon, especially since he was now on it. He said that he would make it his business to see that they won in future.”
“He's the one,” said Mma Makutsi. “All the others have motives. He has none. He must be the one.”
“I wish it were that simple,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And no, Mma, he is definitely not the one. My nose told me that. Again it was my nose.”
Mma Makutsi wondered what her own nose had told her about Oteng Bolelang. Her meeting with him had been a very unsatisfactory one, she told Mma Ramotswe, although she had learned that he suspected that Big Man Tafa could not see very well.
“What a strange thing,” Mma Ramotswe exclaimed. “Did he actually say that, Mma?”
“Yes. He said that he had tested Big Man's sight by throwing him a pencil and Big Man had not caught it because he could not see well enough.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Or because he wasn't ready for it, don't you think, Mma? If I suddenly threw you something, would you be able to catch it?”
Mma Makutsi pondered this. Mma Ramotswe was probably right. We did not expect people to throw things at us and therefore were not prepared. It was not surprising, then, if we failed to catch them.
“And there's another thing,” said Mma Ramotswe. “People are always accusing players-and referees-of not being able to see. When I was at the Stadium, I heard people shouting out, Where are your glasses, Ref? I thought it very rude.”
“It is a very rude game altogether,” said Mma Makutsi.
“And did you learn anything else, Mma?”
Mma Makutsi told her about Oteng Bolelang's comments on Mr. Molofololo. “Apparently he is always changing everything. Outfits. Colours. Tactics. Even telephone numbers.”
Mma Ramotswe made a clucking sound. “He is not popular with his players, you know, Mma. And you know what that means?”
Mma Makutsi peeled the last of the potatoes and dropped it into the saucepan of water that Mma Ramotswe had placed in the sink. “What does it mean, Mma?”
“It means that all of them probably have a motive,” said Mma Ramotswe. She sounded discouraged. If every player had a motive, then how could they possibly single out the player who was responsible for the team's bad performance? And there was another possibility to consider: What if none of the players was responsible, and the reason for the decline of the team lay elsewhere? No, this was not going to be an easy case, and as she turned the chicken pieces in their oil, she wondered again whether this was not one of those cases that they would have been far wiser to have refused. Having a high success rate depends on the ability to say no to hopeless cases, wrote Clovis Andersen. Once again, Clovis Andersen was right. He always was. Always.