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Authors: Toby Clements
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There were no detectives she could think of who rented their cars, or who just drove blue cars, say, or red cars, or yellow cars, or who changed their car with each book. Of course it was a bit of a cheap trick to give a detective the characteristic of driving a particular car, as if the choice of car might say anything more about them than their choice of shoes, but it was memorable, and that Mma Ontoaste had to admit. Mma Ontoaste tried to think of any other type of character so easily identified by their car as, for example, Inspector Morse was by his old Jaguar, or even, Heaven help us, âJimâ Bergerac was by his Triumph.
Could she not come up with anything better than that? Mma Ontoaste wondered. She recalled her Supervisor at Cuff College advising them that their choice of vehicle was just as important as their choice of companion. And yet had Mma Ontoaste not just replaced her companion? Perhaps this could be her trick? Could she not just go down to a garage in Gaborone and buy a hybrid car?
In the meantime she would have to get a bus. But after the affair of the missing government office worker Machende Arimuhapwa, the bus company (whose motto was âWe Guarantee to Get You There Alive if at all Possibleâ) did not instil confidence. It was as she was thinking this that her eye fell upon the small herd of cattle that her dear daddy had left her in that never-to-be-forgotten will. Would a cow do? she wondered. Could Mma Ontoaste ride a cow on her investigations? Whyever not? she thought. In many ways a cow would make an ideal mount. They were solid and dependable, much like her beloved Botswana, and one could hang things from their horns such as bags of produce one had bought from the market in Castle Terrace.
The only problem with the new plan was that Mma Ontoaste was a large woman who might very easily crush the cow to death. This was a serious problem. Mma Ontoaste could have lost some weight, of course, and there was some medical evidence to suggest that it was not healthy to be so heavily âbuiltâ, but it was good to be fat and that, as her husband Mr JPS Spagatoni, that good man, that good man who fried chips for a living, might say, was that. Some people liked modern-shaped ladies, of course, of the sort who could resist the temptation of an extra slice of cake with their bush tea in the afternoons while they were sitting and talking to old friends, but Mma Delicious Ontoaste was not one of these ladies. She was the sort of lady who knew the importance of sitting and eating and so, when she approached the herd of cows, sheltering in the shade of a
mopane
tree, she did so with consideration for the pain that she might be about to inflict upon one of their number.
CHAPTER FOUR
In which a bottle of Irn-Bru comes between a man and his wife with some quite bad consequences.
It was just as Mr JPS Spagatoni of the Salt-ânâ-Sauce Scotch Chip Supper Shop on Murieston Road, Botswanaâs leading Scotch chip shop, was drying his hands on another piece of clean lint and watching one of the trainee fryers cut a cauliflower into individual florets for dipping in batter, that he realised that something was wrong. Mr JPS Spagatoni was a good man, but that is not to say he was a clever man, and so, although he was the best fryer of pizza Calzone suppers in the land â a fact of which he was enormously proud â it took him some moments to realise what it was that had been bothering him for the past few days. There was, he finally realised, no music.
The radio, which he had kept on the top shelf on the wall behind the counter, along with catering-sized jars of pickled eggs and boxes of spare plastic chip forks, was missing. It had been an old leather-bound Roberts transistor radio with a coat-hanger in place of an aerial, and Forth Radio had been playing in the shop for as long as Mr JPS Spagatoni could remember. Now though all he could hear was the steady buzz of the extractor
Could she not come up with anything better than that? Mma Ontoaste wondered. She recalled her Supervisor at Cuff College advising them that their choice of vehicle was just as important as their choice of companion. And yet had Mma Ontoaste not just replaced her companion? Perhaps this could be her trick? Could she not just go down to a garage in Gaborone and buy a hybrid car?
In the meantime she would have to get a bus. But after the affair of the missing government office worker Machende Arimuhapwa, the bus company (whose motto was âWe Guarantee to Get You There Alive if at all Possibleâ) did not instil confidence. It was as she was thinking this that her eye fell upon the small herd of cattle that her dear daddy had left her in that never-to-be-forgotten will. Would a cow do? she wondered. Could Mma Ontoaste ride a cow on her investigations? Whyever not? she thought. In many ways a cow would make an ideal mount. They were solid and dependable, much like her beloved Botswana, and one could hang things from their horns such as bags of produce one had bought from the market in Castle Terrace.
The only problem with the new plan was that Mma Ontoaste was a large woman who might very easily crush the cow to death. This was a serious problem. Mma Ontoaste could have lost some weight, of course, and there was some medical evidence to suggest that it was not healthy to be so heavily âbuiltâ, but it was good to be fat and that, as her husband Mr JPS Spagatoni, that good man, that good man who fried chips for a living, might say, was that. Some people liked modern-shaped ladies, of course, of the sort who could resist the temptation of an extra slice of cake with their bush tea in the afternoons while they were sitting and talking to old friends, but Mma Delicious Ontoaste was not one of these ladies. She was the sort of lady who knew the importance of sitting and eating and so, when she approached the herd of cows, sheltering in the shade of a
mopane
tree, she did so with consideration for the pain that she might be about to inflict upon one of their number.
CHAPTER FOUR
In which a bottle of Irn-Bru comes between a man and his wife with some quite bad consequences.
It was just as Mr JPS Spagatoni of the Salt-ânâ-Sauce Scotch Chip Supper Shop on Murieston Road, Botswanaâs leading Scotch chip shop, was drying his hands on another piece of clean lint and watching one of the trainee fryers cut a cauliflower into individual florets for dipping in batter, that he realised that something was wrong. Mr JPS Spagatoni was a good man, but that is not to say he was a clever man, and so, although he was the best fryer of pizza Calzone suppers in the land â a fact of which he was enormously proud â it took him some moments to realise what it was that had been bothering him for the past few days. There was, he finally realised, no music.
The radio, which he had kept on the top shelf on the wall behind the counter, along with catering-sized jars of pickled eggs and boxes of spare plastic chip forks, was missing. It had been an old leather-bound Roberts transistor radio with a coat-hanger in place of an aerial, and Forth Radio had been playing in the shop for as long as Mr JPS Spagatoni could remember. Now though all he could hear was the steady buzz of the extractor
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