The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe by Alexander McCall Smith

Author:Alexander McCall Smith [Smith, Alexander McCall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-80863-9
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2014-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHARLIE DROVE the tiny white van past the university, past the Sun Hotel, and then turned across the traffic into the street where Mr. Sengupta lived. It was a long street and almost all of the houses were surrounded by walls high enough to prevent anything but a glimpse of their roofs and, in the case of those houses with two storeys, a sight of the first-floor windows. The road itself was a bit broader than many around it, and vegetation had grown up along the edges: thorn bushes, high tufts of grass, acacia trees. Among this growth were the paths that were always there in Africa, following some inexpressible logic of their own, winding this way and that, sometimes seeming to go nowhere at all. You rarely saw people on these paths, yet they were always well trodden, flattened into hard earth and dust, small hand-made features that took no notice of the more formal constructions around them: the tarred roads, the bridges, the car parks.

Charlie slowed as he passed the large gates of the Sengupta house, and then continued to the end of the street: as this was a cul-de-sac there was a turning circle, and Charlie stopped there briefly before proceeding back down the road. He had seen his spot—a place at the side of the road, backed by a plot of land that had yet to be built upon. This plot was to all intents and purposes thick bush: acacias had seeded themselves in profusion and those vicious arresting thorns, the wag-’n-bietjie, the wait-a-bit thorn, the mokgalo, famous for its ability to latch onto the clothing—or flesh—of the incautious passer-by, had taken firm root. At the edge of this plot there was a place for the van to be parked, shaded by the canopy of a large jacaranda, concealed from most of the houses and from the road itself, and yet affording a view both of the Sengupta gate and, because of slightly increased elevation, of part of the garden beyond the gate.

It was the ideal spot to begin the task of surveillance and Charlie quickly settled down to it, lowering the rather shaky-looking sun visor in front of the driver’s seat. On the other side of the visor was a mirror, fixed there by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni after Mma Ramotswe had complained that the makers of vans seemed to forget that many drivers were ladies and might have need of such a mirror. Removing his sunglasses, he glanced at his reflection and said to himself: very smart, very smart. Then he straightened his jeans so that the fabric was pulled tight across his thigh muscles, and finally, replaced his sunglasses. I am on duty, watching, he thought. They may come out at any moment, and I will be ready to see where they go.

An hour went past, during which nothing happened. Charlie had begun his watch at nine, and now, at ten, the sun was climbing steadily in the sky. The screech of cicadas, the accompaniment to any stretch of Botswana bush no matter how small, intensified as the day heated up.

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