“One of them is qualified,” said Mma Ramotswe.
Dr Maketsi looked blank. “One of them?”
Mma Ramotswe settled back in her chair with the air of one about to reveal a mystery.
“There were once two twins,” she began. “One went to medical school and became a doctor. The other did not. The one with the qualification got a job as a doctor, but was greedy and thought that two jobs as a doctor would pay better than one. So he took two jobs, and did both of them part-time. When he wasn’t there, his brother, who was his identical twin, you’ll recall, did the job for him. He used such medical knowledge as he had picked up from his qualified brother and no doubt also got advice from the brother as to what to do. And that’s it. That’s the story of Dr Komoti, and his twin brother in Mafikeng.”
Dr Maketsi sat absolutely silent. As Mma Ramotswe spoke he had sunk his head in his hands and for a moment she thought that he was going to cry.
“So we’ve had both of them in the hospital,” he said at last. “Sometimes we’ve had the qualified one, and sometimes we’ve had the twin brother.”
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe simply. “For three days a week, say, you’ve had the qualified twin while the unqualified twin practised as a general practitioner in a surgery near Mafikeng Railway Station. Then they’d change about, and I assume that the qualified one would pick up any pieces which the unqualified one had left lying around, so to speak.”
“Two jobs for the price of one medical degree,” mused Dr Maketsi. “It’s the most cunning scheme I’ve come across for a long, long time.”
“I have to admit I was amazed by it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I thought that I’d seen all the varieties of human dishonesty, but obviously one can still be surprised from time to time.”
Dr Maketsi rubbed his chin.
“I’ll have to go to the police about this,” he said. “There’s going to have to be a prosecution. We have to protect the public from people like this.”
“Unless …” started Mma Ramotswe.
Dr Maketsi grabbed at the straw he suspected she might be offering him.
“Can you think of an alternative?” he asked. “Once this gets out, people will take fright. We’ll have people encouraging others not to go to hospital. Our public health programmes rely on trust—you know how it is.”
“Precisely,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I suggest that we transfer the heat elsewhere. I agree with you: the public has to be protected and Dr Komoti is going to have to be struck off, or whatever you people do. But why not get this done in somebody else’s patch?”
“Do you mean in Mafikeng?”
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “After all, an offence is being committed down there and we can let the South Africans deal with it. The papers up here in Gaborone probably won’t even pick up on it. All that people here will know is that Dr Komoti resigned suddenly, which people often do—for all sorts of reasons.”
“Well,” said Dr Maketsi. “I would rather like to keep the Minister’s nose out of all this. I don’t think it would help if he became … how shall we put it, upset?”
“Of course it wouldn’t help,” said Mma Ramotswe. “With your permission I shall telephone my friend Billy Pilani, who’s a police captain down there. He’d love to be seen to expose a bogus doctor. Billy likes a good, sensational arrest.”
“You do that,” said Dr Maketsi, smiling. This was a tidy solution to a most extraordinary matter, and he was most impressed with the way in which Mma Ramotswe had handled it.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t think that even my aunt in Mochudi could have dealt with this any better than you have.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled at her old friend. You can go through life and make new friends every year—every month practically—but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.
She reached out and touched
Dr Maketsi on the arm, gently, as old friends will sometimes do when they have
nothing more to say.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
THE WITCH DOCTOR’S WIFE
A DUSTY track, hardly in use, enough to break the springs; a hill, a tumble of boulders, just as the sketch map drawn by Mr Charlie Gotso had predicted; and above, stretching from horizon to horizon, the empty sky, singing in the heat of noon.
Mma Ramotswe steered the tiny white van cautiously, avoiding the rocks that could tear the sump from the car, wondering why nobody came this way. This was dead country; no cattle, no goats; only the bush and the stunted thorn trees. That anybody should want to live here, away from a village, away from human contact, seemed inexplicable. Dead country.
Suddenly she saw the house, tucked away behind the trees, almost in the shadow of the hill. It was a bare earth house in the traditional style; brown mud walls, a few glassless windows, with a knee-height wall around the yard. A previous owner, a long time ago, had painted designs on the wall, but neglect and the years had scaled them off and only their ghosts remained.
She parked the van and drew in her breath. She had faced down fraudsters; she had coped with jealous wives; she had even stood up to Mr Gotso; but this meeting would be different. This was evil incarnate, the heart of darkness, the root of shame. This man, for all his mumbo-jumbo and his spells, was a murderer.
She opened the door and eased herself out of the van. The sun was riding high and its light prickled at her skin. They were too far west here, too close to the Kalahari, and her unease increased. This was not the comforting land she had grown up with; this was the merciless Africa, the waterless land.
She made her way towards the house, and as she did so she felt that she was being watched. There was no movement, but eyes were upon her, eyes from within the house. At the wall, in accordance with custom, she stopped and called out, announcing herself.
“I am very hot,” she said. “I need water.”
There was no reply from within the house, but a rustle to her left, amongst the bushes. She turned round, almost guiltily, and stared. It was a large black beetle, a setotojane, with its horny neck, pushing at a minute trophy, some insect that had died of thirst perhaps. Little disasters, little victories; like ours, she thought; when viewed from above we are no more than setotojane.
“Mma?”
She turned round sharply. A woman was standing in the doorway, wiping her hands on a cloth.
Mma Ramotswe stepped through the gateless break in the wall.
“Dumela Mma,” she said. “I am Mma Ramotswe.”
The woman nodded. “Eee. I am Mma Notshi.”
Mma Ramotswe studied her. She was a woman in her late fifties, or thereabouts, wearing a long skirt of the sort which the Herero women wore; but she was not Herero—she could tell.
