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

gone on listing the countries where people were also lazy and stupid, and full of malevolence, but Mma Ontoaste was one of those people who preferred to emphasise the positive.
    â€˜Oh Rra!’ she exclaimed. ‘I must show this to Mma Murakami. She will be so excited. She is my new assistant. She passed her exams at the Napier Secretarial College with 98 per cent.’
    â€˜Oh, that is good, Mma. Napier Secretarial College is a very fine college. Your new assistant must be very clever. Ninety-eight per cent is better than 97 per cent.’
    â€˜Exactly, Rra. I am glad to hear you say that. I had to ask my last assistant to leave because she only got 97 per cent in her final exams. And then she blew up my tiny white van. Can you imagine that?’
    â€˜Oh, Mma. Are you sure it was her?’
    With that the man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service wiped the cake crumbs from his lips with the back of his hand. Mma Ontoaste was taken aback. This was not the old Botswana way. Wiping one’s mouth with the back of one’s hand was the rudest thing a man could do and it occurred to Mma Ontoaste that the man who was dressed in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service was not perhaps from Botswana, but rather Nigeria, where they were known to be very rude and selfish and constantly wiping crumbs from their mouths with the backs of their hands. Yes. The more she thought of it, the more certain Mma Ontoaste became that this man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service was not from Botswana but from some other country, somewhere else. The question then was why had he got a job in the Botswana Postal Service in the first place?
    â€˜Rra?’ Mma Ontoaste started. ‘May I ask you a question?’
    For a second the man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service stared at her but then, before Mma Ontoaste could ask her question, he snatched up the remaining slice of cake and jammed it in his mouth before bolting across the yard and out through the gate in the stock fence, his postal bag swinging wildly behind him.
    Well, thought Mma Ontoaste, still sitting in her chair, does that not take the biscuit!
    Mma Delicious Ontoaste took the envelope that the man in the uniform of the Botswana Postal Service had left on the table and she opened it with a letter knife that her father – that dear good man – had left her, commemorating his visit to Las Vegas. She was surprised by the contents. A single sheet of thin paper stamped in a long line of capital letters. Mma Ontoaste read the letters that together made up a series of words:
    TO MMA ONTOASTE STOP OWNER OF THE BEST DETECTIVE AGENCY IN THE WORLD EVER EXCLAMATION MARK NO. 2 STOP TOM HURST LECTURER IN TRAN AND PATH ON WAY TO BOTSWANA STOP URGENT HELP NEEDED STOP SENSITIVE MATTER STOP MURDER MOST FOUL STOP MALICE AFORETHOUGHT STOP ARRIVES GABORONE FLIGHT SA 235/1763 06/01 STOP. DEAN CUFF COLLEGE
    â€˜Well,’ exclaimed Mma Ontoaste. ‘What can that be about, I wonder?’

CHAPTER TWO
    Mma Murakami does not answer the door when Mma Ontoaste knocks on it and Mma Ontoaste thinks this is very rude. Then, a bit later, she has a disagreeable surprise as a new bride loses and then, to be fair, finds, her new husband but not without having had a fright on the way.
    Mma Ontoaste sat for a second on the veranda and she thought that this would be the perfect thing to talk to Mma Murakami about over a cup of bush tea. It would be their first case together and it promised to be an especially interesting case too, and so Mma Ontoaste knocked on the door of Mma Murakami’s office, the implication of this being that she wanted to come in. But Mma Murakami was typing loudly and still listening to jazz music on her new transistor radio and so she did not hear the owner of The Best Detective Agency in the World Ever! No. 2 knocking on the door and, after a minute, Mma Ontoaste returned to her own desk, a frown on her face.
    Mma Ontoaste would