Alexander McCall Smith - Tears of the Giraffe

As he spoke, Mma Ramotswe made her decision. He was lying. Had he been telling the truth, she would have brought the encounter to an end, but she knew now that her initial intuition had been right. He was lying as he spoke. It was easy to tell; indeed, Mma Ramotswe could not understand why everybody could not tell when another person was lying. In her eyes, it was so obvious, and Dr Ranta might as well have had an illuminated liar sign about his neck.

"I do not believe you, Rra," she said simply. "You are lying to me."

He opened his mouth slightly, and then closed it. Then, folding his hands over his stomach again, he leant back in his chair.

"Our talk has come to an end, Mma," he announced. "I am sorry that I cannot help you. Perhaps you can go home and study some more logic. Logic will tell you that when a person says he cannot help you, you will get no help. That, after all, is logical."

He spoke with a sneer, pleased with his elegant turn of phrase.

"Very well, Rra," said Mma Ramotswe. 'You could help me, or rather you could help that poor American woman. She is a mother. You had a mother. I could say to you, Think about that mother's feelings, but I know that with a person like you that makes no difference. You do not care about that woman. Not just because she is a white woman, from far away; you wouldn't care if she was a woman from your own village, would you?"

He grinned at her. "I told you. We have finished our talk."

"But people who don't care about others can sometimes be made to care," she said.

He snorted. "In a minute I am going to telephone the Administration and tell them that there is a trespasser in my room. I could say that I found you trying to steal something. I could do that, you know. In fact, I think that is just what I might do. We have had trouble with casual thieves recently and they would send the security people pretty quickly. You might have difficulty explaining it all, Mrs Logician."

"I wouldn't do that, Rra," she said. "You see, I know all about Angel."

The effect was immediate. His body stiffened and again she smelled the acrid odour, stronger now.

"Yes," she said. "I know about Angel and the examination paper. I have a statement back in my office. I can pull the chair from under you now, right now. What would you do in Gaborone as an unemployed university lecturer, Rra? Go back to your village? Help with the cattle again?"

Her words, she noted, were like axe blows. Extortion, she thought. Blackmail. This is how the blackmailer feels when he has his victim at his feet. Complete power.

"You cannot do that... I will deny ,.. There is nothing to show..."

"I have all the proof they will need," she said. "Angel, and another girl who is prepared to lie and say that you gave her exam questions. She is cross with you and she will lie. What she says is not true, but there will be two girls with the same story. We detectives call that corroboration, Rra. Courts like corroboration. They call it similar fact evidence. Your colleagues in the Law Department will tell you all about such evidence. Go and speak to them. They will explain the law to you."

He moved his tongue between his teeth, as if to moisten his lips. She saw that, and she saw the damp patch of sweat under his armpits; one of his laces was undone, she noted, and the tie had a stain, coffee or tea.

"I do not like doing this, Rra," she said. "But this is my job. Sometimes I have to be tough and do things that I do not like doing. But what I am doing now has to be done because there is a very sad American woman who only wants to say goodbye to her son. I know you don't care about her, but I do, and I think that her feelings are more important than yours. So I am going to offer you a bargain. You tell me what happened and I shall promise you-and my word means what it says, Rra-I shall promise you that we hear nothing more about Angel and her friend."

His breathing was irregular; short gasps, like that of a person with obstructive airways disease-a struggling for breath.

"I did not kill him," he said. "I did not kill him."

"Now you are telling the truth," said Mma Ramotswe. "I can tell that. But you must tell me what happened and where his body is. That is what I want to know."

"Are you going to go to the police and tell them that I withheld information? If you will, then I will just face whatever happens about that girl."

"No, I am not going to go to the police. This story is just for his mother. That is all."

He closed his eyes. "I cannot talk here. You can come to my house."

"I will come this evening."

"No," he said. "Tomorrow."

"I shall come this evening," she said. "That woman has waited ten years. She must not wait any longer."

"All right. I shall write down the address. You can come tonight at nine o'clock."

"I shall come at eight," said Mma Ramotswe. "Not every woman will do what you tell her to do, you know."

She left him, and as she made her way back to the tiny white van she listened to her own breathing and felt her own heart thumping wildly. She had no idea where she had found the courage, but it had been there, like the water at the bottom of a disused quarry-unfathomably deep.

WHILE MMA Ramotswe indulged in the pleasures of blackmail-for that is what it was, even if in a good cause, and therein lay another moral problem which she and Mma Makutsi might chew over in due course-Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, garagiste to His Excellency, the British High Commissioner to Botswana, took his two foster children to the garage for the afternoon. The girl, Motholeli, had begged him to take them so that she could watch him work, and he, bemused, had agreed. A garage workshop was no place for children, with all those heavy tools and pneumatic hoses, but he could detail one of the apprentices to watch over them while he worked. Besides, it might be an idea to expose the boy to the garage at this stage so that he could get a taste for mechanics at an early age. An understanding of cars and engines had to be instilled early; it was not something that could be picked up later. One might become a mechanic at any age, of course, but not everybody could have a feeling for engines. That was something that had to be acquired by osmosis, slowly, over the years.

He parked in front of his office door so that Motholeli could get into the wheelchair in the shade. The boy dashed off immediately to investigate a tap at the side of the building and had to be called back.

"This place is dangerous," cautioned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "You must stay with one of these boys over there."

He called over the younger apprentice, the one who constantly tapped him on the shoulder with his greasy finger and ruined his clean overalls.

"You must stop what you are doing," he said. "You watch over these two while I am working. Make sure that they don't get hurt."

The apprentice seemed to be relieved by his new duties and beamed broadly at the children. He's the lazy one, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He would make a better nanny than a mechanic.

The garage was busy. There was a football team's minibus in for an overhaul and the work was challenging. The engine had been strained from constant overloading, but that was the case with every minibus in the country. They were always overloaded as the proprietors attempted to cram in every possible fare. This one, which needed new rings, had been belching acrid black smoke to the extent that the players were complaining about shortness of breath.

The engine was exposed and the transmission had been detached. With the help of the other apprentice, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni attached lifting tackle to the engine block and began to winch it out of the vehicle. Motholeli, watching intently from her wheelchair, pointed something out to her brother. He glanced briefly in the direction of the engine, but then looked away again. He was tracing a pattern in a patch of oil at his feet.