Sleep Well, My Lady

by Kwei Quartey

  Peter shook his head in disgust. “There it goes again. This time, I think it’s the chain.” He leaned over to the rear side of the box and fiddled with the chain to no avail. “I’ll disconnect the box and we can manually push the gate shut.”

  Jojo and Ismael helped him. Without the mechanical advantage of the motor, the gate was quite heavy.

  When they were done, Peter said, “I will put an out-of-order sign here.”

  Ismael nodded. “Yes.”

  “And then the residents will come complain to me that they don’t like the gate to be locked,” Peter said ruefully.

  “Is that so?” Jojo said.

  “Oh, yes,” Peter said, using his hand to flick off sweat from his forehead. “They don’t think about their safety, just their convenience. But when someone gets into the compound and commits a crime, they come to complain again. We never win. They treat us like shit.”

  Jojo was surprised by this flash of anger from Peter, who otherwise had seemed laid-back and not easily flustered. This aspect of his work, his treatment by the Trasacco residents, was obviously a sore spot. Had Lady Araba treated him that way?

  “Like when Lady Araba was murdered,” Ismael said, almost under his breath.

  Jojo looked at him. “Come again?”

  “The residents here—and Lady Araba’s family too, by the way—say it’s security’s fault that someone was able to kill her,” Ismael explained, “because the murderer must have entered the complex through this back gate.”

  “Was it giving trouble at that time too?” Jojo asked.

  “No,” Peter said, “it was fine. But still, people tried to blame us by saying, even if the gate was closed, we should have been doing a better job of patrolling the place.”

  “And what about the front entrance?” Jojo asked. “Did anyone come through that evening who might have killed Lady Araba?”

  “A little before nine that night, Kweku brought her home in the SUV,” Peter said, “and by nine-twenty he was leaving on foot. After that, we had a few residents returning home up to about midnight, and after that it was quiet.”

  Jojo gestured to the CCTV on a mast about a hundred meters away. “Did the CCTV cameras pick up anything?”

  “The cameras were working, but the DVR wasn’t recording,” Peter said. “It’s an old machine that was here already when I started to work for Trasacco. It’s still there in the security room, but we have a new one now.”

  “How was she like?” Jojo said conversationally. “I mean Lady Araba.”

  Ismael glanced at Peter, who spoke first. “She was a good woman. Better than all the other people here put together. Not so, Ismael?”

  He nodded. “Yes, it’s true. Very nice woman.”

  “And beautiful?” Jojo said coyly.

  “Wow, I tell you, brother!” Peter said. “When you see her in real life, eh? You will be amazed! The skin, the hair, the shape of the body. She was truly blessed.”

  “And she loved plants and flowers too,” Ismael said. “That’s one thing I liked about her.”

  Peter shot him a sly glance and winked at Jojo. “This guy loved her.”

  “Me?” Ismael said in exaggerated consternation. “Not me, oo! You, rather!”

  The two men went through a cycle of mock accusations and denials. It was a good question though, Jojo thought to himself. Had either of them had a fatal attraction to Araba?

  Peter’s phone rang and he walked off to take the call. “Chaley, I’m going back to the front, okay?” he told the other two.

  “Okay, boss,” Jojo said, smiling brightly. “Thank you, eh? Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “The whole thing pains him,” Ismael said, watching Peter walk away. “I think he still kind of blames himself for Lady Araba’s death. He feels that, somehow, he could have prevented it. For me, the issue is this stupid automatic gate. I like Peter, but, come on, you just have to be tough and go to the Trasacco people and tell them, no, we should lock the gate permanently, and then we won’t have any issue of people sneaking in.”

  “I see what you’re saying,” Jojo said. “You’re right.”

  “Yes, of course I’m right,” Ismael said fiercely, but a slight smile crept to his lips.

  “So, it was you and Peter who discovered the body?” Jojo asked, sensing an opening now that they had exhausted the subject of the gate.

  “Yeah,” Ismael said, taking a seat on the grass along the curb. “This is how it happened. I will tell you.”

  Jojo sat next to him.

  “Like I said,” Ismael began, “Lady Araba liked plants and flowers. She knew I worked at a garden shop, and so she asked me to bring two flowerpots to put on the terrace outside her bedroom, and then after that I was going to plant something nice for her. Monday morning by seven o’clock, I took a ladder and climbed it to her terrace. It was when I was arranging the flowerpots that I saw through the window she was there on the bed.” Ismael shook his head. “It was a terrible sight. She was lying on her back across the bed with plenty of blood around her head. Her face was like . . . it was swollen.” Ismael formed the shape of a ball with his hands.

  “So, I ran back down to the front, where her driver, Kweku-Sam, was waiting for her to come down, and I told him to go and fetch Peter quick. When Peter arrived, I asked him if he had a key to the house and he said no, so I broke the glass door to get inside.”

  “When you got inside the room, were you afraid?” Jojo asked.

  Ismael shook his head. “Naw, but seeing her like that shocked me.”

  “Did you touch her?”

  “Yeah.” Ismael held Jojo’s gaze. “She was cold—not like ice, but you get me.”

  “Yes.” Jojo looked around. “Is Lady Araba’s house like any of these ones?”

  Ismael shook his head. “No. Come, I’ll show you the place.”

  The two men walked side by side in relative silence. Jojo was aware of birds twittering, a sound often missed in Accra. He felt as if the air here was as clean and clear as Wli Falls. Did rich people breathe separate oxygen from everyone else?

  “Here is her place,” Ismael said, pointing.

  From the rear, Lady Araba’s house was the fourth on their left. It was pale orange with a red tile roof. White columns framed the front entrance portico from the ground to the second floor. The two-car garage was on the far right. Projecting outward was a large bay window divided in three.

  Two cars sat in the tiled driveway—a Hyundai SUV and a glistening emerald-green sports car of a type Jojo had never seen before. Two people were emerging from the front door—a young Ghanaian woman and a forty-five-ish-year-old balding white man with a carelessly trimmed graying beard.

  “I think someone is trying to buy the house,” Ismael said. “I know the woman. Her name is Rita—she’s a realtor with Trasacco who brings people around to see the place. Lady Araba’s family has been trying hard to sell it.”

  As the woman talked with the man, she caught sight of Ismael and beckoned to him. Jojo followed him as he went up to them. Indeed, the white man was interested in making a purchase, but he had a question for the groundskeeper: Would Ismael be able to replace the grassy lawn with succulent plants? Ismael said, yes, of course—no problem.

  “Good,” the man said.

  “Anything you want to change,” Ismael said, “just let me know.”

  The man smiled at him for the first time. “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome, sir.”

  Rita thanked Ismael as well, and then began showing the man the garage after remotely opening the door.

  Jojo lowered his voice to ask Ismael, “Where is the room where the woman was killed?”

  “It’s upstairs at the back. You can’t see it from here.”

  “Can we go there?”

  “By all means.”

  The
y changed direction, passing the big bay window, through which Jojo could see expensive and luxurious furniture.

  “That’s the living room,” Ismael said.

  “Wow,” Jojo said. “Where I live with my family can fit inside there five times.”

  Ismael made a face. “You see, oo,” he said, expressing the cruel irony.

  The kitchen, which they passed next, seemed unnecessarily large in Jojo’s humble opinion, but then, if you could afford to buy all that space, why not?

  They turned the corner.

  “The storeroom is there,” Ismael said, pointing, “and these are the staff quarters.”

  On their left, a flank of fully grown trees and a tall hedge would prevent an intruder from being spotted.

  “Did the lady have a houseboy?” Jojo asked.

  “House girl,” Ismael corrected him. “Amanua.”

  “And she didn’t hear anything?”

  “She wasn’t here. She was back in her hometown for a funeral at that time.”

  “The killers must have known their way around the place,” Jojo said.

  “Yes,” Ismael said soberly.

  Jojo noticed he didn’t comment on the reference to more than one killer. “So, what do you think really happened to Lady Araba?”

  “Chaley,” Ismael said, dropping his voice as if other people were around, “her life was a disaster—I mean, the people around her. That man, Augustus Seeza, her so-called boyfriend—drunk all the time. And they used to fight sometimes too.”

  “Did you ever see or hear them fighting?” Jojo asked.

  “One time,” Ismael said. “When I was taking Lady Araba some flowers, they were near the garage shouting at each other.”

  “You said you were taking her some flowers?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, she liked them, so I used to bring her some from my shop.”

  “Ah, okay. That was nice of you.”

  Ismael smiled, but said nothing. That moment felt odd to Jojo.

  “People say Augustus Seeza killed Lady Araba,” Jojo said. “What do you think?”

  “It’s him,” Ismael said. “The man was jealous because people said the lady had more than one lover.”

  They paused as they reached the kitchen terrace at the rear side of the house.

  “More than one lover?” Jojo asked. “Like who?”

  “Peter says Araba’s assistant was fucking her too. He used to come here at night sometimes.”

  “But then maybe the assistant might have killed her,” Jojo pointed out.

  “Anyway, that’s true,” Ismael conceded. “But I still think it’s Augustus, and they will never get him or send him to prison because he’s an important guy and his family has money. I’m sure they paid the police to arrest Kweku-Sam.”

  “You don’t think Kweku killed her?”

  Ismael made a disdainful sound with his lips. “Not at all. To me, he was the most loyal person in her life. But you know, this is how the Ghana police do. They find some guy who can never pay for a good lawyer and then tell the public he is the guilty one. Then they send him to prison and that’s the end of it.” Ismael dusted his hands symbolically. “Let’s go.”

  The backyard wasn’t as spacious as the front, but it was just as pleasant, with shrubs and bushes Ismael had kept pruned and shaped. At the garden terrace, Jojo recognized that the living room at the front of the house wasn’t visible from where they stood. Instead, Ismael explained, they were looking at the dining room and “family” room. A few meters on, he pointed upward. “You see? I carried the flowerpots up the ladder to the terrace. That’s when I saw her.”

  Wondering what emotions were going through Ismael’s mind, Jojo contemplated him for a moment, then returned his attention to the terrace. Even ten months after the crime with the house now empty, he wanted to get inside for a feel of the place, but he felt it would be too much at this point to ask Ismael or Peter. Later, perhaps.

  And then Jojo had an idea.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Ten months after

  Friday just before 6 p.m., Emma got her cleaning supplies ready to work on the first-floor lab. She filled her mobile bucket with water, added some bleach, and picked up the mop. She was about to pass Thomas’s office but paused when she noticed he hadn’t left for home yet. His door was about one-quarter open and Emma saw him standing by a small desktop refrigerator reading a document. Emma wondered what Thomas kept in the refrigerator.

  At that moment, he turned and almost caught Emma staring before she looked quickly away and bent over to appear busy with the mop.

  “Emma?”

  She straightened up. “Yes, sir?”

  “Anything wrong?”

  “No please. I’m going to clean the lab now.”

  “No, wait—clean my office first.”

  “Yes please.”

  Emma dipped the mop, wrung it out, and entered the room with the bucket. Thomas sat askew on one corner of his desk, and as she passed, he grasped Emma’s waist and pulled her to him.

  “I saw you looking at me,” he said softly. “You like me?”

  The bucket was just behind Emma’s right foot. She moved her heel back and up, tipping the bucket over. Water gushed onto the floor.

  Thomas jumped away. “Shit.”

  “Oh!” Emma cried. “Sorry, my boss! Let me clean it.”

  He looked annoyed as she feverishly got to work mopping up the mini-flood. “Hurry up and finish,” he said crossly, leaving the room to stand in the hallway.

  “Yes please.”

  She mopped as quickly as she could, left the office with another apology to Thomas, hurried to the nearest washroom, and locked it behind her. She shuddered as a wave of revulsion washed over her. Although Thomas’s unwanted advance didn’t come close to the attempted rape she had experienced a year ago, it was enough to bring the traumatic memory flooding back.

  What should she do? Realistically, she should relay this episode to Sowah, but because he eschewed putting his investigators in danger, she knew he would pull her off the case. And then what? He would give it to one of the guys. Oh, no. This was her assignment. She would handle this and see it through.

  Emma splashed her face with cold water, patted dry, squared her shoulders, exited the bathroom, and went to the lab to begin her cleaning.

  Emma finished up, left the lab, and prepared to go upstairs to the second floor. As she did so, Thomas stepped out of his office ahead of her, turned right down the hall away from Emma, and went to the washroom—the same one Emma had just been in. Thomas had left his door open—or halfway, at least. Emma glanced in and saw several items out on the counter beside the mini-refrigerator and wondered if that was where they’d come from.

  What were they?

  Emma’s elementary school teacher used to say, She who hesitates is lost.

  With a glance down the hall, Emma quickly entered the office and went straight to the counter where the objects lay: four small paper envelopes and a medium-sized paper bag. Still cold from the refrigerator, they were evidence bags containing various items. Each had a label filled out with handwritten information: case number, investigating officer, victim, date and time of recovery, and who had released the evidence to whom and when. The investigating officer was DS Isaac N. Boateng, and the victim was Araba Tagoe.

  Emma heard the washroom door open again, and Thomas’s footsteps as he returned. Heart racing, Emma pulled her phone out and snapped a picture of each of the evidence containers, replacing them more or less the way she had found them, then turned and ran for the door. Thomas couldn’t be more than a few steps away—she wouldn’t make it.

  They almost collided in the doorway. Both stopped, their gazes locked. Emma’s stomach dropped. Thomas’s chin lifted and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

  Emma
still had a dust rag in her hand. She waved it at him. “Please, I forgot this in your office.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve done that.” He looked her up and down. “What is that in your hand?”

  “My phone, please.”

  “Why? For what?”

  “Oh—just my friend texted me,” she said, her face hot.

  “So, you’re texting while working.” Thomas looked at her with scorching disapproval. “I don’t like your behavior, you hear me? You are not performing well at all. Have you completed your work for today?”

  “Yes please.”

  “Then put all the supplies away and leave. Don’t come back.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Forty-eight hours after

  After two days of explosive media coverage of Lady Araba’s death, Dr. Caroline Seeza was distressed by the vitriol heaped on her son. On GhanaWeb.com, a news outlet and troll factory, she saw some of the foulest language and most outrageous accusations she had ever seen directed toward Augustus.

  A scenario popular with the website’s readers was that Augustus was a philanderer, and when Araba confronted him, he flew into a rage and murdered her. They called Augustus a drunkard, murderer, piece of shit, wife abuser, ignorant broadcaster, liar, AIDS spreader, and an adulterer. On the opposing side were some who were certain that Araba had been seeing one or more men besides Augustus, and so he killed her out of jealousy. They sided with Augustus, going as far as calling Araba an ashawo—prostitute—who had gotten what she deserved.

  But there was other nonsense as well—claims, for example, that since Augustus had grilled so many government officials from both parties on his show, the murder must have been politically motivated. GhanaWeb wasn’t a bastion of advanced thinking.

  Caroline, obsessing over this on her laptop in the bedroom, started when Julius came up behind her.

  “What are you reading?” he asked.