“Just settle,” said Mma Ramotswe quietly. “Do what the insurance people tell you to do. Otherwise you’ll end up with a bill for far more than four thousand pula.”
Hector shook his head. “I won’t pay for something I didn’t do,” he said through clenched teeth. “I want you to find out what this man is up to. But if you come back to me in a week’s time and say that I am wrong, then I will pay without a murmur. Will that do?”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. She could understand his reluctance to pay damages he thought he didn’t owe, and her fee for a week’s work would not be high. He was a wealthy man, and he was entitled to spend his own money in pursuit of a principle; and, if Moretsi was lying, then a fraudster would have been confounded in the process. So she agreed to act, and she drove away in her little white van wondering how she could prove that the missing finger had nothing to do with Hector’s factory. As she parked the van outside her office and walked into the cool of her waiting room, she realised that she had absolutely no idea how to proceed. It had all the appearances of a hopeless case.
THAT NIGHT, as she lay in the bedroom of her house in Zebra Drive, Mma Ramotswe found that sleep eluded her. She got up, put on the pink slippers which she always wore since she had been stung by a scorpion while walking through the house at night, and went through to the kitchen to make a pot of bush tea.
The house seemed so different at night. Everything was in its correct place, of course, but somehow the furniture seemed more angular and the pictures on the wall more one-dimensional. She remembered somebody saying that at night we are all strangers, even to ourselves, and this struck her as being true. All the familiar objects of her daily life looked as if they belonged to somebody else, somebody called Mma Ramotswe, who was not quite the person walking about in pink slippers. Even the photograph of her Daddy in his shiny blue suit seemed different. This was a person called Daddy Ramotswe, of course, but not the Daddy she had known, the Daddy who had sacrificed everything for her, and whose last wish had been to see her happily settled in a business. How proud he would have been to have seen her now, the owner of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, known to everybody of note in town, even to permanent secretaries and Government ministers. And how important he would have felt had he seen her that very morning almost bumping into the Malawian High Commissioner as she left the President Hotel and the High Commissioner saying: “Good morning, Mma Ramotswe, you almost knocked me down there, but there’s nobody I would rather be knocked down by than you, my goodness!” To be known to a High Commissioner! To be greeted by name by people like that! Not that she was impressed by them, of course, even high commissioners; but her Daddy would have been, and she regretted that he had not lived to see his plans for her come to fruition.
She made her tea and settled down to drink it on her most comfortable chair. It was a hot night and the dogs were howling throughout the town, egging one another on in the darkness. It was not a sound you really noticed anymore, she thought. They were always there, these howling dogs, defending their yards against all sorts of shadows and winds. Stupid creatures!
She thought of Hector. He was a stubborn man—famously so—but she rather respected him for it. Why should he pay? What was it he had said: If I pay him this time then he’ll go on to somebody else. She thought for a moment, and then put the mug of bush tea down on the table. The idea had come to her suddenly, as all her good ideas seemed to come. Perhaps Hector was the somebody else. Perhaps he had already made claims elsewhere. Perhaps Hector was not the first!
Sleep proved easier after that, and she awoke the next morning confident that a few enquiries, and perhaps a trip up to Mahalapye, would be all that was required to dispose of Moretsi’s spurious claim. She breakfasted quickly and then drove directly to the office. It was getting towards the end of winter, which meant that the temperature of the air was just right, and the sky was bright, pale blue, and cloudless. There was a slight smell of wood-smoke in the air, a smell that tugged at her heart because it reminded her of mornings around the fire in Mochudi. She would go back there, she thought, when she had worked long enough to retire. She would buy a house, or build one perhaps, and ask some of her cousins to live with her. They would grow melons on the lands and might even buy a small shop in the village; and every morning she could sit in front of her house and sniff at the wood-smoke and look forward to spending the day talking with her friends. How sorry she felt for white people, who couldn’t do any of this, and who were always dashing around and worrying themselves over things that were going to happen anyway. What use was it having all that money if you could never sit still or just watch your cattle eating grass? None, in her view; none at all, and yet they did not know it. Every so often you met a white person who understood, who realised how things really were; but these people were few and far between and the other white people often treated them with suspicion.
The woman who swept her office was already there when she arrived. She asked after her family, and the woman told her of their latest doings. She had one son who was a warder at the prison and another who was a trainee chef at the Sun Hotel. They were both doing well, in their ways, and Mma Ramotswe was always interested to hear of their achievements. But that morning she cut the cleaner short—as politely as she could—and got down to work.
The trade directory gave her the information she needed. There were ten insurance companies doing business in Gaborone; four of these were small, and probably rather specialised; the other six she had heard of and had done work for four of them. She listed them, noted down their telephone numbers, and made a start.
The Botswana Eagle Company was the first she telephoned. They were willing to help, but could not come up with any information. Nor could the Mutual Life Company of Southern Africa, or the Southern Star Insurance Company. But at the fourth, Kalahari Accident and Indemnity, which asked for an hour or so to search the records, she found out what she needed to know.
“We’ve found one claim under that name,” said the woman on the other end of the line. “Two years ago we had a claim from a garage in town. One of their petrol attendants claimed to have injured his finger while replacing the petrol pump dispenser in its holder. He lost a finger and they claimed under their employer’s policy.”
Mma Ramotswe’s heart gave a leap. “Four thousand pula?” she asked.
“Close enough,” said the clerk. “We settled for three thousand eight hundred.”
“Right hand?” pressed Mma Ramotswe. “Second finger counting from the thumb?”
The clerk shuffled through some papers.
“Yes,” she said. “There’s a medical report. It says something about … I’m not sure how to pronounce it … osteomy …”
“Elitis,” prompted Mma Ramotswe. “Requiring amputation of the finger at the proximal phalangeal joint?”
“Yes,” said the clerk. “Exactly.”
There were one or two details to be obtained, and Mma Ramotswe did that before thanking the clerk and ringing off. For a few moments she sat quite still, savouring the satisfaction of having revealed the fraud so quickly. But there were still several loose ends to be sorted out, and for these she would have to go up to Mahalapye. She would like to meet Moretsi, if she could, and she was also looking forward to an interview with his attorney. That, she thought, would be a pleasure that would more or less justify the two-hour drive up that awful Francistown Road.
The attorney proved to be quite willing to see her that afternoon. He assumed that she had been engaged by Hector to settle, and he imagined that it would be quite easy to browbeat her into settling on his terms. They might try for a little bit more than four thousand, in fact; he could say that there were new factors in the assessment of damages which made it necessary to ask for more. He would use the word quantum, which was Latin, he believed, and he might even refer to a recent decision of the Court of Appeal or even the Appellate Division in Bloemfontein. That would intimidate anyone, particularly a woman! And yes, he was sure that Mr Moretsi would be able to be there. He was a busy man, of course; no, he wasn’t in fact, he couldn’t work, poor man, as a result of his injury, but he would make sure that he was there.
Mma Ramotswe chuckled as she put down the telephone. The attorney would be going to fetch his client out of some bar, she imagined, where he was probably already celebrating prematurely the award of four thousand pula. Well, he was due for an unpleasant surprise, and she, Mma Ramotswe, would be the agent of Nemesis.
She left her office in the charge of her secretary and set off to Mahalapye in the tiny white van. The day had heated up, and now, at noon, it was really quite hot. In a few months’ time it would be impossible at midday and she would hate to have to drive any distance through the heat. She travelled with her window open and the rushing air cooled the van. She drove past the Dry Lands Research Station and the road that led off to Mochudi. She drove past the hills to the east of Mochudi and down into the broad valley that lay beyond. All around her there was nothing—just endless bush that stretched away to the bounds of the Kalahari on the one side and the plains of the Limpopo on the other. Empty bush, with nothing in it, but some cattle here and there and the occasional creaking windmill bringing up a tiny trickle of water for the thirsty beasts; nothing, nothing, that was what her country was so rich in—emptiness.
She was half an hour from Mahalapye when the snake shot across the road. The first she saw of it was when its body was about halfway out onto the road—a dart of green against the black tar; and then she was upon it, and the snake was beneath the van. She drew in her breath and slowed the car, looking behind her in the mirror as she did so. Where was the snake? Had it succeeded in crossing the road in time? No, it had not; she had seen it go under the van and she was sure that she had heard something, a dull thump.
She drew to a halt at the edge of the road, and looked in the mirror again. There was no sign of the snake. She looked at the steering wheel and drummed her fingers lightly against it. Perhaps it had been too quick to be seen; these snakes could move with astonishing speed. But she had looked almost immediately, and it was far too big a snake to disappear just like that. No, the snake was in the van somewhere, in the works or under her seat perhaps. She had heard of this happening time and time again. People picked up snakes as passengers and the first thing they knew about it was when the snake bit them. She had heard of people dying at the wheel, as they drove, bitten by snakes that had been caught up in the pipes and rods that ran this way and that under a car.
Mma Ramotswe felt a sudden urge to leave the van. She opened her door, hesitantly at first, but then threw it back and leaped out, to stand, panting, beside the vehicle. There was a snake under the tiny white van, she was now sure of that; but how could she possibly get it out? And what sort of snake was it? It had been green, as far as she remembered, which meant at least it wasn’t a mamba. It was all very well people talking about green mambas, which certainly existed, but Mma Ramotswe knew that they were very restricted in their distribution and they were certainly not to be found in any part of Botswana. They were tree-dwelling snakes, for the most part, and they did not like sparse thorn bush. It was more likely to be a cobra, she thought, because it was large enough and she could think of no other green snake that long.
Mma Ramotswe stood quite still. The snake could have been watching her at that very moment, ready to strike if she approached any closer; or it could have insinuated itself into the cab of the van and was even now settling in under her seat. She bent forward and tried to look under the van, but she could not get low enough without going onto her hands and knees. If she did that, and if the snake should choose to move, she was worried that she would be unable to get away quickly enough. She stood up again and thought of Hector. This was what husbands were for. If she had accepted him long ago, then she would not be driving alone up to Mahalapye. She would have a man with her, and he would be getting under the van to poke the snake out of its place.
The road was very quiet, but there was a car or a truck every so often, and now she was aware of a car coming from the Mahalapye direction. The car slowed down as it approached her and then stopped. There was a man in the driver’s seat and a young boy beside him.
“Are you in trouble, Mma?” he called out politely. “Have you broken down?”
Mma Ramotswe crossed the road and spoke to him through his open window. She explained about the snake, and he turned off his engine and got out, instructing the boy to stay where he was.
“They get underneath,” he said. “It can be dangerous. You were right to stop.”
The man approached the van gingerly. Then, leaning through the open door of the cab, he reached for the lever which released the bonnet and he gave it a sharp tug. Satisfied that it had worked, he walked slowly round to the front of the van and very carefully began to open the bonnet. Mma Ramotswe joined him, peering over his shoulder, ready to flee at the first sight of the snake.
The man suddenly froze.
“Don’t make any sudden movement,” he said very softly. “There it is. Look.”
Mma Ramotswe peered into the engine space. For a few moments she could make out nothing unusual, but then the snake moved slightly and she saw it. She was right; it was a cobra, twined about the engine, its head moving slowly to right and left, as if seeking out something.
The man was quite still. Then he touched Mma Ramotswe on the forearm.
“Walk very carefully back to the door,” he said. “Get into the cab, and start the engine. Understand?”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. Then, moving as slowly as she could, she eased herself into the driving seat and reached forward to turn the key.
The engine came into life immediately, as it always did. The tiny white van had never failed to start first time.
