The red car ahead of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni went up Kudumatse Drive and continued on the road that led out to Kanye. The buildings became smaller—offices and small warehouses became houses; dirt roads went off on both sides to newly built dwellings, two-bedroomed embodiments of somebody’s ambitions, dreams, hard work, carved out of what had not all that long ago been thorn bush, grazing for cattle. He saw a car he thought he recognised, parked outside one of these; a car that he had worked on only a few weeks ago. It belonged to a teacher at Gaborone Secondary School, a man who everybody said would one day be a headmaster. His wife went to the Anglican Cathedral on Sunday mornings, Mma Ramotswe reported, and sang all the hymns lustily, although quite out of tune. “But she is doing her best,” added Mma Ramotswe.
Suddenly the red car slowed down. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been keeping his truck three vehicles behind it, as he did not want to be spotted by Mr Botumile, and now he was faced with a decision as to whether he should pull in—which surely would look suspicious—or overtake. Two cars ahead of him started to overtake, but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni did not follow them. Steering over to the side of the road, he watched what was happening ahead. The red car started to move more quickly, and then, with very little warning, swung round onto the other side of the road and headed back in the direction from which it had come. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni continued on his course. He had a glimpse of the driver of the red car—just a face, staring fixedly ahead, not enough to remember, or to judge—and then all he saw was the rear of the car heading back towards town. He looked in his driving mirror—the road was clear, and he turned, going some way off the edge of the tar, as his truck had a wide turning circle.
Fortunately the traffic returning to town was lighter, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni soon found himself closing on Mr Botumile’s car. He slowed down, but not too much, as this was an unpredictable quarry, like a wild animal in the bush that will suddenly turn and dart off in an unexpected direction to elude capture. Ahead of him the rays of the sinking sun had caught the windows of the Government buildings off Khama Crescent and were flashing signals. Red. Stop, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Stop. Go back to what you understand.
Mr Botumile drove through the centre of town, past the Princess Marina Hospital, and on towards the Gaborone Sun Hotel. Then he stopped, parking in front of the hotel just as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni turned his truck into a different section of the hotel parking lot and turned off the engine. Then both men left their vehicles and entered the hotel, Mr Botumile going first, alone—he thought—and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni following him a discreet distance behind, his heart beating hard within him at the sheer excitement of what he was doing. This is better, he thought, infinitely better than adjusting brake pads and replacing oil filters.
“MR GOTSO?” exclaimed Mma Ramotswe. “Mr Charlie Gotso? Him?”
“Yes,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I recognised him immediately—who wouldn’t? Charlie Gotso was sitting there, and when I saw him I had to look away quickly. Not that he would know who I am. He’d know who you are, Mma Ramotswe. You’ve spoken to him, haven’t you? All those years ago when…”
“That was a long time ago,” Mma Ramotswe said. “And I was just a small person to him. Men like that don’t remember small people.”
“You are not small, Mma,” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni found himself protesting, but stopped. Mma Ramotswe was not small.
She looked at him with amusement. “No, I am not small, Rra. You are right. But I was thinking of how I would mean nothing to a man like that.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was quick to assent. “Of course that’s what you meant. I know men like that. They are very arrogant.”
“He is a rich man,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Rich men sometimes forget that they are people, just like the rest of us.” She paused. “So there was Charlie Gotso, no less! And Mr Botumile went straight up to him and sat down?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. He and Mma Ramotswe were sitting at the kitchen table in their house on Zebra Drive. Behind them, on the stove, a pan of chopped pumpkin was on the boil, filling the air with that familiar chalky smell of the yellow pumpkin flesh. Inside the oven, a small leg of lamb was slowly roasting; it would be a good meal, when it was eventually served in half an hour or so. There was time enough, then, to talk, and for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to give Mma Ramotswe an account of the enquiry from which he had just returned.
“This was outside,” he said. “You know that bar at the back? That place. And since there were quite a few people there, and most of the tables were occupied, I was able to sit down at the table next to theirs without it appearing odd.”
“You did the right thing,” said Mma Ramotswe. Clovis Andersen, in The Principles of Private Detection, advised that it could look just as odd to distance oneself unnaturally from the object of one’s attention as to come too close. Neither too near nor too far, he wrote. That’s what the Ancients called the golden mean, and they were right—as always! She had wondered who these ancients were; whether they were the same people whom one called the elders in Botswana, or whether they were somebody else altogether. But the important thing was that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who had never read The Principles of Private Detection, should have done just the right thing without any specialist knowledge. This only went to show, she decided, that much of what was written in The Principles of Private Detection was simply common sense, leading to decisions at which one could have anyway arrived unaided.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni accepted the compliment graciously. “Thank you, Mma. Well, there I was sitting at the table, so close to Charlie Gotso that I could see the place on his neck where he has a barber’s rash—rough skin, Mma, like a little ploughed field. And there were flecks on his collar from the blood.”
Mma Ramotswe made a face. “Poor man.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at her in surprise. “He is no good, that man.”