“I think this is one of Sam’s cases. I know there must be hundreds like it, but she had one exactly the same as this.” She took her mobile phone out of her pocket and dialled Sam’s number.
Jonathon prowled along the shuttered kiosks looking for anyone who could help. Suddenly, he stopped. “I can hear voices,” he called over to Amie. “Someone is here.”
Amie frowned while she listened to the continual ringing tone on Sam’s number. She hurried over to Jonathon. “I’m beginning to feel very uneasy about this,” she said. “Something’s not right.”
“Why?” Jonathon didn’t seem all that worried, only slightly annoyed at having to turn out at this time of night.
“Well, how do we know that Sam is even coming here? How do we know those emails even came from her?”
“You’re imagining things again,” Jonathon sounded very matter of fact. “Don’t go seeing things that aren’t there and blowing things out of all proportion.”
Amie ground her teeth and said nothing. Why did Jonathon make her feel like an idiot? Yes, he’d suggested they get a guard when she was ‘seeing’ things in the garden, but she’d been right, hadn’t she? She’d seen Lulu’s customers or clients or whatever you call the people that prostitutes service. She wasn’t stupid, and now he was coming over all macho on her. She shrugged her shoulders as she followed Jonathon up the concourse and punched in Sam’s number again. Still there was no answer and it dropped into voice mail telling her Sam wasn’t available to take her call right now.
Jonathon backtracked to where he’d heard the voices and rapped loudly on the closed shutter. After a few moments it was raised slightly and a stern black face appeared in the opening.
“Good evening,” Jonathon began. “We are looking for a passenger, a Samantha Reynolds ...”
“Marlow, Gerry’s name is Marlow,” Amie hissed in his ear.
“Samantha Marlow,” Jonathon repeated.
“Who you want? Two people?”
“No, only one, a lady who came in on the flight from London, a white lady. It’s the same lady,” he added.
“Wait!” the head disappeared and the shutter was slammed back down.
“What’s going on?” Amie was fretting. “What are we supposed to wait for?”
“You’ve been in Africa long enough to know how it all works,” Jonathon replied.
“In that case perhaps you should have shown him the crinkly handshake.” Amie did know how it worked.
“I don’t have a cent on me. We were in such a rush I left my wallet in the bedroom.”
“Well, I have a few Togodian dollars, but not much. I had to pay Lulu.” Amie indicated her handbag.
“Too late now, he’s gone. We’ll just have to be patient.”
The minutes dragged on. Amie walked up and down the concourse, glancing every now and then at the little shuttered window. Jonathon leaned against the counter, propped his head in his hand and closed his eyes.
Eventually the shutter was raised again and the same head appeared.
“She not here,” he announced with apparent satisfaction. “She gone.”
“Gone where?” even Jonathon looked a little alarmed.
“Gone with police.”
“Where did the police take her?” cried Amie rushing over. “We came to collect her, to take her home. I’m her sister!”
The head simply shrugged and banged the shutter down, the noise echoing across the empty concourse.
“What the hell do we do now?” grumbled Amie.
Jonathon took her arm and pushed her towards the exit door.
“We go to the main police station in town and see if she’s there. I’m sure there’s been some kind of mistake.”
“Should we take her suitcase?” Amie glanced back at the lone piece of luggage still resting drunkenly on the silent carousel.
“No, better not. If it’s not hers we could be had up for theft and then we’d be in big trouble as well. Though I’m surprised no one’s removed it already.”
“Stolen it you mean,” Amie murmured under her breath.
While they hurtled along the empty roads back towards town, Amie’s mind was imagining all kinds of things. Samantha had been abducted, they were going to ask a ransom for her. Samantha was fast asleep at home in her bed outside London and blissfully unaware that her sister and brother-in-law were searching for her thousands of miles away, and this was a trap to kidnap Amie and Jonathon, out here in the dark, with no other traffic in sight.
No, she told herself, calm down, you’re letting your mind run away with you. There’ll be a perfectly simple explanation.
Jonathon screeched to a halt and left the car in an official parking bay outside the main police station, and together they rushed up the steps and into the outer office. There was one policeman on duty. He was slumped over a desk on the other side of the counter and was fast asleep.
Amie checked to see if there was a bell they could ring, but the high counter separating them was bare.
“Excuse me,” she called out.
The loud snoring didn’t miss a beat.
“Can you help us?” she tried again, a little louder this time. The guardian of the law slept on.
“Oi,” screamed Jonathon at the top of his lungs and this had the desired effect. The policeman leapt to his feet, dazed. He noticed the pair of them waiting for attention.
He sauntered towards them pulling his uniform jacket straight, and leaned his elbows on the counter staring at them.
“Yes?” he enquired after giving them both a good look. Amie was aware she must look a mess in her scruffy track suit, and Jonathon didn’t look much better either in a crumpled t-shirt and the light jacket he wore when he was on site.
“Good evening, sir, can you help us, please?” Jonathon switched on the charm. “We are looking for a young, white woman who flew in this evening on the flight from London. Do you know where she is?”
The policeman looked at them for several seconds before saying “You have been to airport?”
“Yes, we’ve just come from there, they told us she was here,” Jonathon’s voice was quiet and calm.
“You have a picture of her, of this woman?”
“Well, no,” Amie was thrown for a moment it had never entered her head to take a photograph of Sam to the airport.
“You need a picture for the posters,” the policeman was quite sure about that.
“No. Look we don’t want to put up posters or anything like that. We were told at the airport that she’d been taken by the police. Now we’ve come to find her,” Jonathon explained.
“Ah! She has been arrested?” This seemed to please the government official no end.
“No. Yes. No. We don’t know! But please can you tell us if she has been brought here.” By now Amie’s patience was wearing thin.
The policeman sighed and moving in slow motion picked up a large ledger from the back desk. He placed it on the counter before dropping out of sight then reappearing with a pencil in his hand. Licking the end, he proceeded to carefully write the date at the top of a new page and then wrote Missing Person underneath.
“Name?” he sounded very bored.
“Samantha Marlow, though she could also be travelling under the name of Samantha Reynolds.” Amie spoke slowly.
“But I thought you said ...” Jonathon interrupted.
“Yes, I know, but I’m not sure if she got a new passport when she got married. That was only seven years ago and it might still be in her maiden name, so ...” Amie was distracted by the policemen noisily clearing his throat. He looked back over to his abandoned chair and the couple got the message.
“Samantha Reynolds or Marlow,” repeated Amie.
“How you spell that?” Was the policeman being deliberately obtuse, enjoying his power play or was he genuinely trying to help?
“S-a-m-a-n ...” began Jonathon as the officer laboriously wrote each letter in turn.
“No, n, not m,” Jonathon corrected h
im.
The head disappeared again below the counter and reappeared with an eraser. Slowly he rubbed out the m and carefully replaced it with the letter n.
Amie wanted to scream, she paced up and down, causing the officer to glare at her. She returned to the counter fidgeting, she couldn’t keep still. Her sister was missing, maybe even in danger and this idiot was just wasting time. She glanced over to the phone on the desk behind the counter and then at the flap guarding access to the back of the room.
Sensing what she was about to do, Jonathon grabbed her arm and hauled her back.
“Calm down,” he hissed. “You’ll only make things worse and then I’ll have to bail two of you out.”
“So, you think she’s here?” Amie whispered back.
“No idea, but for once – have some patience.”
Two hours later they staggered down the front steps of the station, no nearer to finding Samantha. By now Amie was furious. She wanted to drive round the streets, find another police station, go to the British Embassy, do something, but Jonathon was not being cooperative.
“There is nothing more we can do tonight, Amie,” he said glancing at his watch. “It’s already 4 am. The embassy is closed, she’s hardly likely to be wandering around town lost and there are at least three more police stations around the city. Do you want to go through all that again?”
“No, but we could at least try!”
“Give it another couple of hours and I’ll go into the office early and start pulling some strings from there. You have to play the game. It’s highly improbable she’s come to any harm, if she ever arrived at all.”
“Phone the folks, yes, that’s something I can do.” Amie began searching through her contacts list. Since her parents had moved house and she’d always Skyped or emailed them, their phone number wasn’t one she had in her head.
“Whoa there,” Jonathon put out his hand to stop her. “It’s the middle of the night, what’s the point of worrying them? You know your father had that mini stroke recently. It would be unkind to wake them up and send them into a flat spin. I’m sure we can sort all this out in a couple of hours – just be patient.”
Amie thought that Jonathon was being totally unreasonable. She was sure there was something they could do. Maybe phone London and ask if Sam had been on a flight? But then she had no idea which of the airlines had flown in that day, and weren’t airports closed at night? Airline offices were too. She sighed and leaned back in her seat while Jonathon drove them home.
“I might manage a couple of hours,” he announced making for the bedroom. “Are you coming?”
“Are you mad? I couldn’t sleep if I tried.” By now Amie was feeling disorientated and woozy. She’d not rested all night, yet the adrenalin was still racing through her body. She shuffled into the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. Settling into an arm chair in the lounge her mind was full of questions and imagined scenarios. By the time she had Samantha tied to a chair being tortured in some deserted warehouse, her mind closed down and she fell into a fitful sleep.
This might be the perfect time to strike? He dialled the number again. “They’re there, in the house, no maid and the night watchman is asleep. Do you want us to go?”
“Do you have the material with you?”
“No, but ...”
“I told you before. We need to make a statement, one that will scare the world. Patience is a virtue my brother. Pray for patience.”
The man was furious with himself, feeling foolish. It wasn’t safe to drive around with all the equipment they would need, surely those in charge realised that, but although he could still make a plan, he didn’t dare move without their consent.
5 OUMA ADEDE TO THE RESCUE
Jonathon woke her as he was about to leave the house. She leaped to her feet, feeling guilty.
“Where are you going?”
“To the office to start making enquiries. You stay here in case the police rock up. I’ll be in touch. Did you charge your phone last night?”
“Oh, no! I forgot,” Amie peered at the screen – the battery was down to 3%. How stupid of her. She’d cuddled it on her lap all night ready to answer it the moment it rang. She got up to plug it in as Jonathon gave her a quick peck on the cheek, telling her he’d left some cash by her bag. Then he was gone.
I’m damned if I’m going to sit here waiting, Amie thought angrily. No way! She would take a shower, dress, have one more coffee, and then she would be out searching. Sam was her sister – she couldn’t just sit patiently waiting for her.
Just as she was ready to leave there was a loud banging on the gate, and she flew down the front path and flung it wide open, but it was only Teabag reporting for work. He looked puzzled when he saw Amie’s crestfallen face.
“I sorry Madam is something wrong? You angry with me? I not late? So sorry Madam, so sorry.”
“No, Teabag, it’s just I am worried and ... oh never mind. Come on in, I’m just going out.”
Teabag opened the other gate as Amie reversed her car onto the road and raced up the street. He shook his head at the way Madam was driving. “She have bad accident,” he muttered to himself.
An accident was the last thing on Amie’s mind so she didn’t notice Teabag slipping back out of the gate and taking off down the road in the opposite direction.
Now, where to first? Thought Amie. The embassy didn’t open until nine, but maybe the police station first?
The moment she walked into the outer office her heart dropped when she saw the same policeman on duty. He glared at her.
“Any news?” She tried to sound bright and cheerful.
He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
Amie approached the counter. “You do understand that I’m very worried about her. She’s my sister and she’s lost and she knows no one here. She’ll be alone and frightened. Please, is there anything you can do to help?”
His features softened a little and he shook his head. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Soon they come in to work, then we can ask.” He sat back down at his desk and poured himself a mug of tea before adding copious amounts of sugar.
Amie couldn’t bear to stand still. She rushed back outside and jumped into the car to visit the other three police stations she’d spotted at odd times while driving around the city. At each one she drew a blank. No one had brought a white girl in. They didn’t know where she was, and no accidents had been reported.
Defeated, Amie headed for the airport. Maybe Samantha was still there, locked away somewhere. Surely, they’d started work by now, weren’t there local flights due in? Maybe the man last night had been wrong and the police hadn’t taken Sam anywhere. He could have said that just to get rid of them.
By chance she glanced down at the petrol gauge and saw she didn’t have enough fuel to get her to and from the airport; she needed a garage. Then, she realised that she’d come out without her bag, the money Jonathon had left for her and her phone, which was still on the coffee table charging. “What an idiot,” she screamed out loud to herself racing back towards the house, scattering chickens pecking in the grass by the side of the road. One woman raised her fist and shouted at her as she cut a corner and flew down the back street, but Amie was past caring. Everything, everything was going wrong, just as she’d begun to settle down again and get her life in order.
She kept her finger on the horn as she approached the house but there was no Teabag there to open the gates. Leaping out of the car she unlocked the gate and rushed up the path – she was in a full-scale panic – then she stopped dead in her tracks. There, sitting calmly on her front porch was Ouma Adede.
The witchdoctor’s long black skirts flowed around her, and she wore the same off-white t-shirt advertising a local beer Amie had seen before. The beads and Coca Cola bottle tops around her wrists and ankles tinkled as she moved and the bones, chicken bladders and beads that adorned her dreadlocks proclaimed to the world who and what she was.
Amie was los
t for words, what was she doing here? She didn’t have time for this right now.
“Come child,” Ouma Adede beckoned her. “Come and sit and calm.”
Amie took a few steps forward. “But, I can’t, I can’t. Look Ouma Adede, I’m sorry, but right now I have to look for my sister. I don’t have time I ...”
“I know. I feel your pain,” the old lady replied.
“Pain! Oh my god, you mean something has happened to her. Is she dead? Is she in pain? Do you know where she is?” The words spilled from Amie like a river in full flood.
“Calm, peace, everything will be good. I feel here.” Ouma Adede put her hand on her heart. “She is safe, do not be distressed. I come because you need me.”
Aware of the power emanating from the old lady sitting peacefully on her front step, Amie felt a sense of calm wash over her. This was ridiculous. Did she really believe in the power of witchdoctors? She’d been impressed the last time they’d met, but time had dimmed the memory and later it had seemed like a dream. But here she was again, large as life and she still had that presence.
“Where is she? Is she safe?” Amie asked holding her breath as she waited for a reply.
“Come, sit, relax and then I take you to her.” Ouma Adede grasped Amie firmly by the arm and forced her to sit down. “And you must take some of this, only one small sip,” she held out a small plastic soda bottle half full of what looked to Amie, like dirty washing up water.
“Er, no, no thank you.” Amie leaned away from it.
“But you must, you must. Here, take.”
Amie felt she was not in a position to refuse, if the old lady knew where Samantha was it was better to humour her. Gingerly, she took the bottle and reluctantly took the top off and raised it to her lips. She would pretend to take a sip, but the witchdoctor was too quick for her and at the precise moment she nudged Amie’s arm and she swallowed at least a teaspoon of the revolting mixture. Amie grimaced as she handed the bottle back.
“Can we go now?” she said attempting to stand up, but Ouma Adede put a hand out to stop her.
Amie in Africa Box Set 1 Page 70
