Read Online The No. 2 Global Detective by Toby Clements - Free Book Online

stop an elephant in its tracks.’
    â€˜It sounds very dangerous, Mma.’
    â€˜It is. And yesterday my friend asked me if I could give it back to her.’
    Mma Ontoaste sat back on her chair and looked at her client. She was trying to stifle a yawn.
    â€˜Mma,’ she said. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
    â€˜Because I have a problem, Mma, which I need to sort out. I am a virtuous woman, as you know, and in ordinary circumstances I should hand the gun straight back to my friend, shouldn’t I?’
    â€˜Of course,’ agreed Mma Ontoaste.
    â€˜But,’ the lady went on. ‘My friend is very unhappy about having lost her job, Mma.’
    â€˜Oh, Mma, that is very bad,’ said Mma Ontoaste.
    â€˜Yes. In fact, she has gone quite crazy. You see, she feels that she was unjustly treated.’
    â€˜Injustice is a bad thing, a bad thing indeed. Your friend is right to be upset Mma.’
    â€˜Yes. I feel I should give her the gun back, Mma, but I am worried she will do something dangerous with it. She might even go after her ex-employer and shoot her in her big fat head with the gun. Twice or even three times until her ex-employer is quite dead, Mma.’
    Mma Ontoaste thought for a second. After a second she knew the answer.
    â€˜You must give her the gun back, Mma. That is your duty as a virtuous woman. What your friend then does with the gun is up to her.’
    The woman in the chair was silent for a minute. Then she slapped her hands on the arms of the chair and hauled herself to her feet. It was as if something had just been decided, but Mma Ontoaste could not say for sure what it was.
    â€˜Very well,’ the lady said. ‘I shall give her the gun tonight.’
    â€˜Good,’ said Mma Ontoaste. ‘And now I have to go and have some lunch. I am starving.’
    Mma Ontoaste relieved the woman of 5000 Pula and then, since Mma Murakami was still hard at work and not in a position to join her for lunch, Mma Ontoaste went to find her husband, that good man, Mr JPS Spagatoni, in his chip supper shop out by the old Ulster Defence headquarters, on Murieston Road.
    It was here at the Salt-’n’-Sauce Scotch Chip Supper Shop that Mr JPS Spagatoni served up the finest example of Scotch cuisine that sub-Saharan Africa had to offer. He battered everything from Mars bars to fillets of impala before dipping them into seething brown fat and, once they were cooked through, keeping them under heat lamps for as long as a week at a time and then selling them to passing drunks. He was especially proud of his deep-fried battered Pizza Calzone, which, when covered with special brown sauce and served with a solid fist of damp chips, made the perfect supper for any right-thinking person.
    Too many people these days were worried about the effect such suppers might have on a human’s digestion over a prolonged period of time, thought Mma Ontoaste, but her own beloved father, who had also fallen in love with the Scotch diet, had lived on such a diet until he had been taken happily, without a word of protest, at the age of 36, knowing his time was up.
    It was as she was walking through the yard, with her footsteps especially firm so as to alert any snakes who were apt at this time of day to be at their most somnolent and therefore at their most dangerous, that Mma Ontoaste remembered of course that her former assistant, Mma Pollosopresso, had, in an act of vengeance that had taken Mma Ontoaste’s breath away, both literally and figuratively, detonated a sizeable bomb under the tiny white van that she had driven about the streets of Gaborone ever since receiving it as a graduation present from her dear (albeit dead) daddy.
    This was a pity because Mma Ontoaste had given a lot of thought to which vehicle would be suitable for a lady detective of her standing, and the tiny white van, she had decided, had been perfect. Replacing it with anything else now would be difficult.