“Murder,” he whispered. “There have been murders?”
Mma Ramotswe was about to laugh at the suggestion. “Oh no,” she began. But then she stopped herself, and the thought occurred to her that perhaps this was exactly what they were letting themselves in for. Tati Monyena had described the deaths as mishaps and had hinted, at the most, that there was some form of unexplained negligence behind them; he had said nothing about deliberate killing. And yet it was possible, was it not? She remembered reading somewhere about cases where hospital patients had been deliberately killed by doctors or nurses. She thought hard, probing the recesses of her memory, and it came to her. Yes, there had been such a doctor in Zimbabwe, in Bulawayo, and she had read about him. He had started to poison people while he was still at medical school in America and had continued to do so for years. These people existed. Was it possible that a person like that could have slipped into Botswana? Or could it be a nurse? They did it too sometimes, she believed. It gave them power, somebody had said. They felt powerful.
She half-turned to Mr Polopetsi. “I hope not,” she said. “But we must keep an open mind, Rra. It is possible, I suppose.”
They were ten miles from Mochudi now, and Mma Ramotswe spent the rest of the journey describing to Mr Polopetsi what Tati Monyena had told her: three Fridays, three unexplained deaths, and all in the same bed.
“That cannot be a coincidence,” he said, shaking his head. “That sort of thing just does not happen.” He paused. “You know that I worked in this hospital once, Mma Ramotswe? Did I tell you that?”
Mma Ramotswe knew that Mr Polopetsi had worked as an assistant in the pharmacy at the Princess Marina Hospital in Gaborone, and she knew of the injustice that occurred there which led to his spell in prison. But she did not know that he had been at Mochudi.
“Yes,” Mr Polopetsi explained. “I was there for eight months, while they were short-staffed. That was about four years ago. I was in the pharmacy.” He lowered his voice as he mentioned the pharmacy, in shame, she thought. All that had turned sour for him, and all because of a lying witness and the transfer of blame. It was so unfair, but she had gone over all that with him before, several times, and she knew—they both knew—that they could do nothing to remedy it. “You are innocent in your heart,” she had said to him. “That is the most important thing.” And he had thought about that for a few moments before shaking his head and saying, “I would like that to be true, Mma, but it is not. It is what other people think. That is the most important thing.”
Now, as they made their way through the outskirts of Mochudi, past the rash of small hairdressing establishments with their hand-painted grandiose signs, past the turn-offs that led to the larger houses of those who had made good in Gaborone and returned to the village, past the tax office and the general dealers, he said to her casually, almost as if he were thinking aloud, “I wouldn’t like to be one of his patients.”
“Of whose patients?”
“There was a doctor who worked at the hospital when I was there,” he said. “I didn’t like him. Nobody did. And I remember thinking: I would be frightened to be in that doctor’s care. I really would.”
She changed gear. A donkey had wandered onto the road and was standing directly in the path of the tiny white van. It was a defeated, cowed creature, and seemed to be looking directly up at the sun.
“That donkey is blind,” said Mr Polopetsi. “Look at him.”
She guided the van round the static animal. “Why?” she said.
“Why does he stand there? That is what they do. That is just the way they are.”
“No,” she said. “That is not what I meant. I wondered what frightened you about him.”
He thought for a few moments before answering. “You get a feeling sometimes. You just do.” He paused. “Maybe we’ll see him.”
“Is he still there, Rra?”
Mr Polopetsi shrugged. “He was last year. I heard from a friend. I don’t know if he has moved since then. Maybe not. He was married to a woman from Mochudi, so maybe he will still be there. He is a South African himself. Xhosa mother, Boer father.”
Mma Ramotswe was thoughtful. “Do you know many others from the hospital staff? From that time?”
“Many,” said Mr Polopetsi.
Mma Ramotswe nodded. It had been a good idea, she decided, to bring Mr Polopetsi with her. Clovis Andersen, author of The Principles of Private Detection, said in one of his chapters that there was no substitute for local knowledge. It cuts hours and days off an investigation, he wrote. Local knowledge is like gold.
Mma Ramotswe glanced at her modest assistant. It was difficult to think of Mr Polopetsi in these golden terms; he was so mild and diffident. But Clovis Andersen was usually right about these things, and she muttered gold under her breath.
“What?” asked Mr Polopetsi.
“We have arrived,” said Mma Ramotswe.
TATI MONYENA was clearly proud of his office, which was scrupulously clean and which exuded the smell of polish. In the centre of the room stood a large desk on which rested a telephone, three stacked letter trays, and a small wooden sign, facing out, on which was inscribed Mr T. Monyena. Against one wall stood two grey metal filing cabinets, considerably more modern than those in Mma Ramotswe’s office, and on another wall, directly behind Tati Monyena’s chair, was a large framed picture of His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Botswana.
Mma Ramotswe and Mr Polopetsi sat in the straight-backed chairs in front of the desk. It was a tight fit for Mma Ramotswe, and the chair-arm on each side pushed uncomfortably into her traditional waistline. Mr Polopetsi, though, barely filled his seat, and perched nervously on the edge of it, his hands clasped together on his lap.
“It is very good of you to come so quickly,” said Tati Monyena. “We are at your disposal.” He paused. He had made a magnanimous beginning, but he was not at all sure what he could do to help Mma Ramotswe. She would want to speak to people, he imagined, even though he had spoken to the ward nurses again and again, and had had several conversations with the doctors in question, in this very office; conversations in which the doctors sat where Mma Ramotswe was sitting and defensively insisted that they had no idea how these patients had died.
“I should like to speak to the nurses,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And I should like to see the ward too, if possible.”
Tati Monyena’s hand reached for the telephone. “I can arrange for both of those things, Mma. I shall show you the ward, and then we will bring the nurses back here so you can talk to them in this office. There are three of them who were there at the time.”
Mma Ramotswe frowned. She did not wish to be rude, but it would not be a good idea to interview the nurses in front of Tati Monyena. “It might be better for me to see them by themselves,” she said. “Just Mr Polopetsi here and myself. That’s not to suggest…”
Tati Monyena raised a hand to stop her. “Of course, Mma! Of course. How tactless of me! You can speak to them in private. But I don’t think they will say anything. When things go wrong, people become very careful. They forget what they have seen. They saw nothing. Nothing happened. It is always the same thing.”
“That is human nature,” interjected Mr Polopetsi. He had been silent until then, and they both looked at him intently.
“Of course it is,” said Tati Monyena. “It is human nature to protect ourselves. We are no different from animals in that respect.”
“Except that they can’t tell lies,” said Mr Polopetsi.
Tati Monyena laughed. “Of course. But that’s only because they cannot speak. I think that if they could, then they would probably lie too. Would a dog own up if some meat had been stolen? Would it say, I am the one who has eaten the meat? I do not think so.”