The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

a workshop that repaired electric fans. He parked his truck on the opposite side of the road, in a position where he could see the front entrance to the offices, but sufficiently far away so as not to look suspicious to anybody who should emerge from the building. He was just a man in a truck; the sort of man, and the sort of truck, one saw all the time on the roads of Gaborone; quite unexceptional. Most of those men, and trucks, were busy going somewhere, but occasionally they stopped, as this man had done, and waited for something or other to happen. It was not an unusual sight.
    Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked at his watch. It was now almost five o’clock, the time when, according to Mma Botumile, her husband invariably left the office. He was a creature of habit, she said, even if some of these habits had become bad ones. If Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni were to wait outside the office, he would see him coming out and getting into his large red car, which would be parked by the side of the building. There was no need to give a detailed description of him, she said, as he could be identified by his car.
    â€œWhat make of car is it?” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had asked politely. He would never describe a car simply by its colour, and it astonished him that people did this. He had noticed Mma Makutsi doing it, and even Mma Ramotswe, who should have known better, described cars in terms of their colour, without making any reference to make or engine capacity.
    Mma Botumile had looked at him almost with pity. “How do you expect me to know that?” she said. “You’re the mechanic.”
    He had bitten his lip at the rudeness of the response. It was unusual in Botswana, a polite country, to come across such behaviour, and when one did encounter it, it appeared all the more surprising, and unpleasant. He was at a loss as to why she should be so curt in her manner. In his experience bad behaviour came from those who were unsure of themselves, those who had some obscure point to make. Mma Botumile was a woman of position, a successful woman who had nothing to prove to anybody; certainly she had no reason to belittle Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who could hardly have been any threat to her. So why should she be so rude? Did she dislike all men, or just him; and if it was just him, then what was there about him that so offended her?
    Now, sitting in the cab of his truck, he looked over the road towards the side of the building where, he suddenly noticed, two large red cars were parked. For a moment he felt despair—this whole thing had been a mistake from the very outset—but then he thought: the odds were surely against there being two drivers of red cars who would leave the building at exactly five o’clock. Of course not: the first man to come out after five o’clock would be Mma Botumile’s husband.
    He consulted his watch again. It was one minute to five now, and at any moment Rra Botumile might walk out of the front door. He looked up from his watch, and at that moment two men emerged from the office building, deep in conversation with one another; two men in white shirtsleeves and ties, jackets slung over their shoulders, the very picture of the office-worker at the end of the day. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni watched them as they turned the corner of the building and approached the cars, lingered for a moment to conclude their conversation, and then each got into a red car.
    For a few moments, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sat quite still. He had no way of telling which of the two men was Mma Botumile’s husband, which meant that either he would have to give up and go home, or he would have to make a very quick decision and follow one of them. It would be easy enough to drive off and abandon the enquiry, but that would involve going back to Mma Ramotswe and telling her that he had failed at his attempt at doing what he understood to be the simplest and most basic of the procedures of her profession. He had not read Clovis