It is stealing.”
“Not only that,” Mma Boko continued. “That was shocking enough, Mma, to see this mother telling her children to eat things while she kept a look-out for the supermarket staff. That’s a very bad example to a child. But there was something else. I had to go and inform the cashier, Mma. I went and told her that there were five children all eating things.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “That was the right thing to do, Mma.”
Mma Boko shook her head. “You would think they would be pleased. You would think that she would have said, ‘Thank you for this information—we shall attend to it immediately.’ You would think she would have said that, and instead, what did she say? She said, ‘Mind your own business.’ That is what she said—her exact words. Mind your own business.”
“But that is terrible, Mma. She should have done something.”
“Exactly,” said Mma Boko. “But that is what we are coming to these days, Mma. People don’t care.”
Mma Ramotswe allowed a few moments to pass, and then she said, “Next door, Mma. When I knocked on your door a little while ago and told you that I am a private detective wanting to find out about something, that was about next door actually.”
Mma Boko said that this did not surprise her. “When you said you were a private detective, I assumed that. I thought you would be acting for that man’s wife. And that is why I have been happy to speak to you.”
“What man, Mma?”
“That man next door. He has a wife, you see, and he also has that young woman—that shameless young woman.”
Mma Ramotswe coaxed out the facts slowly and skilfully. The flat was rented, Mma Boko told her, by a wealthy businessman—“He has many shops, Mma, and they say that he even owns a small mine somewhere up north.” The businessman was married, and had three children, she believed. “Three innocent children, Mma, and the wife is innocent too—all innocent. But this businessman—I have never actually seen him, Mma, but I have been told all these things about him—this businessman likes young women. Men, you know, Mma, they are all like that. He has set this young woman up in this flat, and he lets her use that silver car too. A young woman—driving around in a car like that, Mma. That is very bad.”
At the end, Mma Ramotswe thanked her for her frankness. Once again, her theory had been proved: if you wanted to get information about something, you had only to ask. Of course, you might get a lot of additional material, as she had just done: information about bad behaviour in supermarkets, for instance, and techniques for resisting temptation. She thought about that again. Something had been said about a reverend, she remembered, and that made her wonder.
* * *
—
BACK IN THE VAN, squashed up against one another once more, each revealed their results.
“Now, Charlie,” Mma Ramotswe began. “You go first. You tell us what you found out.”
“Nothing,” said Charlie. “There was just an old man in the flat. He said that he never saw what was going on outside, as he had lost his glasses six months ago and had not bought a new pair yet. He said that he probably wouldn’t bother, because there was nothing worth looking at any more.”
Mma Makutsi laughed. “Some people lack curiosity, don’t they?”
“He told me that he used to be a train driver,” Charlie went on.
“As long as he had his glasses then,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You wouldn’t want to lose your glasses when you were driving a train. And you, Mma Makutsi—did you find out anything?”
Mma Makutsi had the air of one who harboured private information that she was only too eager to impart. “I found out something very interesting,” she said.
“That’s good,” said Mma Ramotswe, with the air of one who already knew a secret about to be revealed.
“The flat I went to is occupied by a divorced woman,” she said. “She is very lonely, I think, because she was keen to speak to me. I told her I was a detective and she said that she had thought of being a detective herself, but had never done anything about it.”
“Ha!” Charlie interjected. “There are many people who think they can be detectives. I find that when I tell them what I do.”
“Apprentice detective,” Mma Makutsi said.
Charlie ignored this. “I tell them that I am a detective and they say, ‘I could be that too. I’m