CHAPTER SIX

Mma Pollosopresso saves the day but Mr JPS Spagatoni is carted off to hospital where he may or may not die.

Mma Pollosopresso had always been frightened of snakes and she guessed immediately what had happened to her ex-employer. But as she stood there, pointing the huge gun at Mma Ontoaste’s temple, it occurred to her that this might have made a very fine 11 o’clock Moral Dilemma. If Mma Pollosopresso did not shoot her, then Mma Ontoaste would certainly die from the snakebite, wouldn’t she? So she was, in effect, already dead, which meant that if Mma Pollosopresso shot her now, would she really be killing her? Would she not just be shooting a dead body? Even the law might be vague on that one. Mma Pollosopresso realised with a slight chuckle that the only person who might be able to hand down some sort of opinion on this matter might be the very person who was about to die: Mma Ontoaste.

It would be interesting to hear her opinion. And now that she, Mma Pollosopresso, had set up her own Detective Agency, The Only Detective Agency You Will Ever Need Ever! No. 4, they could debate the matter as equals, detective to detective. Oh that would be fun.

Mma Pollosopresso took her finger off the trigger and put the gun aside. She bent down and placed a careful hand on the detective’s neck. A ragged pulse was still beating. Mma Pollosopresso knew that she had to act fast: water and antivenom were vital, as well as some kind of pressure immobilisation that would prevent the venom leaking into Mma Ontoaste’s lymphatic system. But first Mma Pollosopresso would have to find the bite to know where she could apply her tourniquet.

It was as Mma Pollosopresso was searching the body of the redoubtable founder of The Best Detective Agency in the World Ever! No. 2 for snakebites that Mr JPS Spagatoni, that good man, returned from his day at the Salt-’n’-Sauce Scotch Chip Supper Shop on Murieston Road, out by the old UDF headquarters. As usual, it had been a long day for Mr JPS Spagatoni. He had started drinking his first 80/- beer of the day at about four that afternoon, a little while after Mma Ontoaste’s disastrous visit, and so he was now quite tanked. He was being half supported, half carried by one of the trainees, Dennis, and Mr JPS Spagatoni’s accent, always stronger when he had been drinking, made the song he was singing as they weaved their way up the road under the sodium glare of the street lights difficult to understand. Under one arm he was carrying four tins of 80/- beer and a half bottle of blended malt whisky and so it did not look as if he planned to end the day with an early night.

When they reached the yard, Dennis led his boss across to the toilet, an outside hut the practicalities of which no one ever really went into. While Mr JPS Spagatoni was micturating noisily into the bucket, Dennis noticed Mma Pollosopresso and Mma Ontoaste in the pumpkin patch.

‘Mma, what are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Oh Dennis,’ replied Mma Pollosopresso. ‘Mma Ontoaste has been bitten by a snake. Will you run to the hospital in Bobonong to get some antivenom and to ask them to send a bus to collect her and take her there?’

Dennis understood the urgency and, once he had put Mr JPS Spagatoni in that good man’s favourite chair on the veranda, he set off for the hospital almost at once. It was only when Mr JPS Spagatoni was on the other side of two of the cans of 80/- and half of the whisky that he looked up and noticed Mma Pollosopresso in the garden. He had been keeping up a steady soliloquy on the evils of people from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Malawi and, of course, the Democratic Republic of Congo all the while, and as she searched Mma Ontoaste’s body, Mma Pollosopresso knew that it was only a short matter of time before Mr JPS Spagatoni would begin to mourn the death of Bonnie Prince Charlie with tears coursing down his stubbly cheeks. After that he would ordinarily start throwing bottles and cursing the English before collapsing in a puddle of his own making.

But now he frowned into the darkness of the Botswana night and tried to work out what was going on. At first he thought it was an optical illusion. Then he thought his wife was being robbed. This stirred him to action. He staggered to his feet and made to rush at Mma Pollosopresso, waving his bottle of whisky like a knobkerrie.

‘Ah’ll ’ave ya! Ah’ll … Aaaah!’

Mr JPS Spagatoni, that drunk man, tripped on the stoop and fell heavily, the bottle of whisky spinning out of his hand and rattling across the setts to vanish under some unnamed bush. Mma Pollosopresso stood for a moment and watched nervously as he tried to right himself. He burped deeply and then vomited a chunky concoction of fish and chips and whisky and beer before finally giving up the ghost and subsiding with a muttered curse and a vague threat.

By now Mma Pollosopresso had found the bites: two tiny punctures on Mma Ontoaste’s meaty calf, and then the snake itself, crushed beneath her ex-employer. Mma Pollosopresso recognised the baby lebolobolo for what it was, and compared the bulk of Mma Ontoaste with that of the snake.

The lebolobolo was not a very poisonous snake, was it? And a stay in the hospital in Gaborone, for all of Botswana’s undoubted beauty, was not something everybody would enjoy equally. People had been known to die in the hospital, had they not? And she did not want this to happen to Mma Ontoaste. It occurred to her that, once the antivenom was administered, then perhaps it would be better if Mma Ontoaste stayed in her own bed and fought the poison where she was most comfortable.

When Dennis arrived with the minibus half an hour later, and once the antivenom was administered, Mma Pollosopresso asked the medic and the driver to help her move the redoubtable founder of The Best Detective Agency in the World Ever! No. 2 across the yard into the grass hut.

‘But Mma,’ began the driver. ‘I have to bring a body back to the hospital. It is the rules.’

No one asked why this particular rule might be in force. It was not the time or the place. Instead the story carried on and each pair of eyes drifted down to where Mr JPS Spagatoni was lying in his pool of sick. He was much lighter than Mma Ontoaste anyway, and he looked as if he would be easier to get into the back of the minibus, and so it was decided. Once they had got him in, bumping his head on the door as they went, they moved Mma Ontoaste. It was a struggle but after half an hour they managed to drag her into her hut and onto the bed, where she lay breathing heavily but regularly.

And all that Mma Pollosopresso and Dennis needed to do was sit there and watch, occasionally pouring sips of water into her mouth and now and then mopping her brow with one of the countless pieces of lint that that not-so-good man Mr JPS Spagatoni kept lying about the place. All through the night, as the antivenom took hold, Mma Pollosopresso kept up her bedside vigil as her ex-employer hovered between life and death. It was an uncomfortable night for all concerned, but by dawn (‘sudden’ and ‘tropical’) it began to look as if the redoubtable founder of The Best Detective Agency in the World Ever! No. 2 would live, which was just as well because later that morning she was due to meet Tom Hurst, but it was more than could be said with any great certainty about Mr JPS Spagatoni, who, during the night, had received an unnecessary blood transfusion from an unqualified medic and was now lying sweating on a trolley in a corridor waiting for the attentions of a doctor who had long since gone to work in England, where the wages, if not the weather or the people, were better.