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

fan and the low murmur of the seething oil. Where was the radio?
    â€˜Dennis?’ he asked the trainee. ‘Have you seen the radio? It was up there on that shelf and now it has gone.’
    â€˜No, Rra,’ said Dennis. ‘I have not seen the radio.’
    This seemed straightforward enough. So the radio had been stolen. Thank God I am just a humble fryer of fish, thought Mr JPS Spagatoni, and not a great detective like Mma Ontoaste. She will know what to do in a case like this. Mma Ontoaste would be able to come up with a plan.
    And at that moment, through the door of his chip shop Mr JPS Spagatoni, that good man, saw Mma Ontoaste arriving outside, struggling to parallel park her cow on Murieston Road.
    Mr JPS Spagatoni and Mma Ontoaste had been married for three years now and in all that time, so busy had they been with foaming bush tea, errant vans, frying potato suppers and staring at the scenery that they had spent not one minute alone together, and so no one in Botswana, that good country, could say for certain what they did when they were alone, or comment on the state of their relationship, and this, perhaps, was a good thing. There was too much of that sort of thing in the world. After all, whose business was it what they did when they were alone? Mma Ontoaste and Mr JPS Spagatoni had shown that it was possible to glean an idea of someone’s character without intruding on their most private or intimate moments. But no one who knew them even in passing could resist speculating on what really lay between them and, in the vacuum, the theories were legion.
    While Mma Ontoaste ate a pizza Calzone supper with extra salt and sauce, Mr JPS Spagatoni told her about the missing radio. Mma Ontoaste listened in silence, her eye drifting over the entertainment section of the newspaper, and when Mr JPS Spagatoni had finished he stepped back and waited to hear what her plan would be.
    â€˜There is a circus in town, you know, Rra? It has come all the way from the North Pole!’
    â€˜Oh the North Pole is a long way away, Mma,’ said Dennis. ‘I hope the polar bears are not suffering too much in our climate. All that fur is not good.’
    â€˜But what about the radio, Mma?’ asked Mr JPS Spagatoni.
    There was a silence for a few seconds. Mma Ontoaste seemed to have returned to the paper, where she was reading a story about a break-in at the Botswana National Museum that had occurred some weeks before. After a second she looked up. She had not been listening to Mr JPS Spagatoni or Dennis at all.
    â€˜Rra,’ she said. ‘Can I have a bottle of Irn-Bru?’
    â€˜A bottle of Irn-Bru?’ asked Mr JPS Spagatoni, stunned for a moment. Mma Ontoaste did not drink Irn-Bru. She drank bush tea.
    â€˜Is there something wrong, Mma?’ he asked.
    â€˜No, Rra. I just fancied a change.’
    A change? First there was the way in which Mma Ontoaste had asked Mma Pollosopresso to leave. Then there was the cow inconsiderately parked in the sun outside (and getting a ticket, Mr JPS Spagatoni could see, through the door of his grass-hutted chip shop) and now Irn-Bru instead of bush tea. No one doubted Irn-Bru’s revitalising qualities, of course, but still: this was not the Mma Ontoaste whom Mr JPS Spagatoni knew and loved. He blamed this new assistant.
    â€˜Well Mma, what about my radio?’ he asked. ‘Have you had any further thoughts on that?’
    â€˜Rra,’ she said, tipping her head back and draining the bottle of orange liquid in three large gulps, so that when she finished she looked at him with watery eyes. ‘I have to tell you I am completely bloody mystified by the puzzle of your absent radio.’
    Mr JPS Spagatoni leapt back. Had he heard her right? It was not her pessimism in the face of this difficult case that horrified him, although that did as well; it was her use of the B word.
    â€˜Mma!’ he cried. ‘What is wrong with you?’

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