by Kwei Quartey
EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, DAWSON got dressed, grabbed a quick breakfast of oatmeal at the corner kiosk, and then headed for the other side of town. After Mrs. Mensah’s stunning words last night, he was most certainly going to pay a visit to Isaac Kutu.
The Mensahs’ house was along the route, and as he approached he saw a crowd outside, along with three parked minivans. Dawson spotted Elizabeth and pulled over.
“Morning, Dawson,” she said as he came up.
“Morning, Elizabeth. What’s going on?”
“We’re getting a delegation together to pick up the body.”
It seemed to Dawson like a lot of people to carry out this one mission. There was much animated discussion until it was finally decided who would go to the VRA Hospital mortuary. They piled into the vehicles and sped off.
“Where are you going?” Elizabeth asked Dawson.
“To pay Isaac Kutu a visit.”
“I hope you’ll be able to attend the funeral?”
Dawson loathed funerals, but he said, “I will be sure to pay my respects.”
Dawson stopped at the police station on the way to Isaac’s compound. He intended to see Samuel and was mentally prepared for a confrontation with Inspector Fiti if he was there.
Fortunately, neither the inspector nor Constable Bubo was in the station, although Gyamfi was at work at his desk. It seemed sometimes that Gyamfi ran the place.
“Morning, Dawson.” He appeared subdued.
“How are you, Gyamfi?”
“Fine, sir.”
Dawson searched his face. “Everything all right?”
Gyamfi flashed one of his brilliant smiles. “Yes, everything is fine.”
“Can I see Samuel, please?”
Gyamfi hesitated. “Yes, all right. But you have to hurry before Inspector Fiti gets here. I don’t want trouble.”
“I’ll be quick. Thank you.”
Samuel was pacing in his cell, as if he had new energy.
“Are you okay, Samuel?” Dawson asked
He came to the bars. “I’m fine, sir.”
“Have they been treating you well since yesterday?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you have something to eat?”
“A little bit.”
“What about your family? Did they come to see you?”
Samuel shook his head. “They don’t want to talk to me anymore, sir. Well, my father doesn’t.”
Dawson said nothing to that, but he made a mental note to visit Mr. Boateng and persuade him that his son needed him.
“I want to ask you about that evening you talked to Gladys,” Dawson said. “Do you remember what she was wearing?”
“I remember it was a blue skirt and blouse. Very nice. With white.”
“Blue and white? That’s all?”
“And with Adinkra symbols on it too, sir.”
Samuel had just confirmed Auntie Osewa’s description of Gladys’s outfit. It was a strange conflict for Dawson. He didn’t want his aunt to turn out to be a liar, yet he wished it wasn’t true that Gladys had gone into the forest with Samuel and that it had been the last time she was ever seen.
Dawson tried another angle. “You know the place people like to get firewood?”
“Yes, I know it. Why?”
“Did you see anyone cutting firewood there that evening?”
“No. Not that there wasn’t someone there, just I didn’t notice anyone. Have you found something that will free me?”
“Not yet,” Dawson said, “but I want to move you to Ho Central Prison as soon as possible. At least I know one or two people there who will make sure you’re treated well.”
“Ho Central?” Samuel’s face fell. “I don’t want to go to another prison. I only want to be set free.”
“I know you do, Samuel. Believe me, I want that too, and as soon as I can make it happen, I will. In the meantime, I want you somewhere safe where neither Inspector Fiti nor Constable Bubo can lay a hand on you.”
“I see,” Samuel said dejectedly. “Okay. You know best, sir.”
“Just tell me something and I will never ask the question again,” Dawson said gently. “Look at me and tell me the truth. After Mr. Kutu had told you to leave Gladys alone, did you secretly come back and kill her?”
Samuel’s eyes locked on his. “I didn’t, Mr. Dawson. If only someone, just one person in the world, would believe that I didn’t kill her.”
“That one person is me.” Dawson put a curved finger through the bars. “Shake.”
The detective and the prisoner locked their fingers together.
“I’ll be back to see you,” Dawson said.
But just as he was about to leave, Gyamfi put his head around the corner.
“Wait there,” he said softly. “Inspector Fiti is coming.”
He hurried back to his post. Dawson heard Fiti barking an order.
“Yes, sir, Inspector,” Gyamfi said. “I’ll bring it to you in your office.”
He returned. “I’m going into his office,” he whispered. “Wait till you hear the door close.”
Dawson waited, listening to the conversation between the inspector and his constable. Thirty seconds later, the office door shut with a bang and Dawson got out fast.
He walked to Isaac’s compound. Tomefa was outside sorting firewood. “Isaac is out,” she told Dawson, “but he’ll be back soon.”
While waiting, Dawson went to take a look at the spot where Auntie Osewa said she had been gathering her firewood the evening she’d spied Samuel and Gladys together. It was a cluster of trees ravaged by overcutting. Dawson stood at the edge and confirmed that Auntie Osewa would have had a good vantage point to observe Samuel and Gladys entering the forest. From Isaac Kutu’s description of where he had seen them together that same evening, they would have been about three hundred meters away from where Dawson stood.
Dawson walked back to Isaac’s place wondering how to resolve the conflict between Samuel’s and Auntie Osewa’s stories.
Isaac Kutu was standing in the middle of his compound as Dawson walked in.
“Woizo, Darko.”
“How are you, Mr. Kutu?”
“I’m fine, sir.”
“I would like to look around your compound, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“What for?”
“I’ll know when I see it,” Dawson said. But he thought, A silver bracelet would be nice.
“What if I say you cannot search this place?”
“If you attempted to stop me, I would have to arrest you.”
Isaac laughed drily. “I don’t believe you would do that.”
Dawson took out his cuffs. “Try me.”
“You’ll have to catch me first.”
“You won’t run. You’re not the kind of man to run, so we will fight.” Isaac smiled tightly and his eyes darkened. “Where do you want to search?”
“Everywhere.”
The first room was small, dark, and close, and had one of the strangest smells Dawson had ever experienced. Hanging on the walls were many things he didn’t recognize. The ones he did included snakeskins, mummified lizards, roots, bark, and dried leaves of several kinds. On the floor were clumps of powder of different colors.
Dawson spotted a box full of small animal skulls that made his skin crawl.
“Would you empty that, please?” he asked.
Isaac turned the box over, and the skulls rattled out. They smelled ghastly.
“What are those for?”
“Snake skulls,” Isaac said. “You crush them into a powder and use it to cure snakebites.”
Dawson peered into the box. There was no silver bracelet.
They moved to the second room, and Dawson poked around where he could. He was becoming ill from the odors, and he realized that, if Isaac had Gladys’s bracelet, there was an infinite number of places he could have hidden it.
“What are all those things on the wall?” he asked Isaac in a third room.
“Different thi
ngs for different sicknesses. I can’t tell you all of them.”
“Give me one or two examples.”
“There is a root called asreetsopoku—that one over there. We use it to cure hernia. You cut it and wash it and drink it with gin. We have another one there, nereyu, that we use for heart trouble.”
“Are any of these the ones Gladys was interested in?”
“She was interested in all of them.”
“Did you try to hide anything from her?”
“I didn’t tell her everything.”
“Were you working on something secret she wanted to know about?”
“Secret, like what?”
“I don’t know. I’m asking you.”
“Yes, I was.”
“Can you tell me?”
“Then it won’t be a secret anymore.”
“I can’t steal it from you, so what do you care? A certain disease?”
“Of course.”
“One that has no cure.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve discovered something for AIDS?”
“I can tell you a little about it, but I need something in return.”
“I don’t pay people for information.”
“Not money, Darko. Just a promise that you won’t go and tell someone in Accra who will come to try to steal from me.”
“You have my word.”
“First, Gladys told me one of Togbe Adzima’s trokosi was suffering from AIDS.”
Dawson’s stomach plunged. That almost certainly meant Adzima had HIV. He thought of Efia and the other four wives. The new wife.
“Gladys wanted her to take a government-supplied medicine,” Isaac went on, “but the trokosi refused and Nunana brought her to me instead. I gave her some traditional medicines, and she got well for some time, but she died later.”
“What did Gladys do then?”
“First, she went to the wives to ask them to take a test for AIDS. Second, she asked me if I could go back to Accra with her to meet some scientists at her school about my medicine—maybe it could be made to work better.”
“What did you say to that?”
“I told her I would think about it. I wasn’t ready to give her an answer.”
“Did she try to get Togbe Adzima tested for AIDS too?”
“Why should she?”
Dawson frowned. “The trokosi come to him as virgins.”
“And so?”
“And so if one of them got AIDS, she can only have got it from Adzima.”
“No, AIDS can come from a curse, or witchcraft.”
Dawson shook his head. “You should stop believing that.”
He turned to leave, and Isaac was surprised. “Where are you going?”
“To see Togbe Adzima.”
BEFORE CONTINUING ON TO Bedome, Dawson took a slight diversion to talk to the handful of farmers toiling on their plots at the side of the forest.
He called out, “Good morning. Ayekoo!”
They responded appreciatively, and Dawson introduced himself and asked if any of them had witnessed the argument between Isaac and Samuel. Two of them said yes.
“Where were they when you saw them?” Dawson asked.
The farmers pointed, and as he turned to look, Dawson realized something that he hadn’t before. Although Isaac and Samuel would have been within view from this spot, the Bedome-Ketanu footpath was obscured by a clump of bushes. It meant that the farmers would not have been able to see whoever accosted Gladys on her way home.
“Did Samuel come back this way?” Dawson asked.
The older of the two farmers nodded. “He came and helped us for a little while.”
“Did he leave you before it got dark?”
The farmer shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Did he seem angry after the quarrel?”
“He was annoyed, yes, but I told him not to let it trouble him, and I think he was all right after that.”
Dawson thanked the two witnesses, and took down their names in case he needed to get back in touch with them.
As he walked on to Bedome, Dawson wondered, How could Samuel have been in two places at one time—working on the farm and talking to Gladys on the path? It wasn’t physically possible.
Togbe Adzima was sitting outside bouncing one of his children on his knee, but as soon as he saw Dawson approaching, he got up and retreated into his house.
“Don’t come in here,” he shouted from inside. “Get away from me!”
But there was no door to stop Dawson from entering.
“What do you want from me?” Adzima snapped.
“I need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“I’m not here to do anything bad to you, but Togbe Adzima, your life may be in danger.”
“What are you talking about?”
“One of your trokosi died.”
“Who told you that?”
“Mr. Kutu.”
“All right. And so what?”
“Have you had that blood test Gladys Mensah was giving?”
“I don’t need any kind of blood test.”
“Was the trokosi a virgin when she came to you?”
“Of course,” Adzima said contemptuously.
“Okay, listen to me. I have come to ask you to use condoms, especially with your new wife. I can get you some.”
Adzima threw his head back and roared with laugher. “For what? Mr. Detective Man, I’m not going to use any condom.”
“I’m begging you.”
“You are begging me?” Adzima spat. “You came here and did all kinds of bad things, and now you say you’re begging me. You are too funny, Mr. Inspector.”
After several more futile attempts to talk sense into Adzima, Dawson left abruptly, annoyed and despairing. Even if he did find a way to put the priest behind bars today and get him away from Efia and his other wives, it might already be too late. He may already have transmitted HIV to some or all of them.
Dawson walked quickly back toward Ketanu. He passed a mango tree laden with ripe, rosy fruit and badly wanted to climb up and pick a few. He used to love doing that as a boy. The only problem was that fire ants, just as fond of mango trees, made ingenious nests out of clusters of leaves. If they were disturbed, these vicious little creatures the color of fire launched an attack with bites that felt like a thousand red-hot needles.
As he passed by, Dawson heard a hiss from somewhere behind the mango tree. He stopped and turned.
“Mr. Dawson!” A loud whisper.
He moved back toward the tree. “Who’s there?”
“Can you come, please?”
He circled around to see who it was.
“Nunana? What are you doing?”
She was crouched behind the tree trunk.
“So sorry to disturb you, please, sir,” she said, still speaking in a whisper. “I saw you coming from Bedome. I have to tell you something, but I don’t want anyone to see me talking to you.”
He knelt down beside her and dropped his voice in the same way. “What is it you have to tell me?”
“You are looking for a silver bracelet belonging to Gladys Mensah.”
“Yes, I am! You know something about it?”
“Please, I have seen one, sir.”
“Where?”
“In Togbe Adzima’s room, sir. In a tin he keeps with his drink.” She swallowed hard and looked around nervously, as if convinced they were being watched. “I was cleaning his house, and I saw it.”
“When was that?”
“On Tuesday.”
Dawson’s heart surged. That was the day before he and Fiti had searched Adzima’s room. This could be the lead he had been praying for.
“Inspector Fiti and I didn’t find the bracelet,” he said. “Do you think he’s hidden it somewhere?”
Nunana shook her head. “I don’t think he has it anymore, sir. I think he has sold it.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
/> “How do you think he got Gladys’s bracelet?”
“I don’t know, but when Efia came to tell us Gladys was dead, Togbe went to see where the body was, and he went alone.” Nunana dropped her voice even further. “Maybe he stole it at that time.”
“Do you remember what the bracelet looked like?”
“Yes, sir.”
Dawson took his notebook and pen from his top pocket. “I want you to draw it, if you can. Just do your best.”
“All right, let me try.”
She rested the notebook on her knee, and with her tongue sticking out with the effort, she painstakingly drew the bracelet, laughing with both embarrassment and pride as she finished her rendition. It was rudimentary, but it showed clearly enough that the bracelet was a double strand of loops.
“Beautiful,” Dawson said.
She laughed again, pleased.
“Now, Nunana, tell me the truth,” Dawson said. “Think about this carefully and tell me the truth. That evening before Efia discovered Gladys’s body, did Togbe go anywhere? Did he disappear somewhere?”
She looked away for a second. “I … I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
Her voice was stretched tight like a rubber band at its limit. Lying. She knew, or had seen, something.
“You’re afraid,” Dawson said. “Afraid of Togbe, not so?”
Her eyes swung back and forth like a pendulum.
“If you’re so afraid,” Dawson pressed gently, “why come and tell me anything at all? Because, Nunana, you have honor. You can’t just let it be that a man takes a bracelet from the wrist of a dead woman. Is that right?”
Nunana nodded. Dawson waited as she gathered courage.
“After Togbe quarreled with Gladys that evening and she had left Bedome, he was angry and he started to hit all of us. Then one of his friends from Ketanu came and he went with him to have beer.”
“Do you know that friend?”
“No, I don’t know him.”
“Can you describe him?”
Her description was not the best in the world, but Nunana was certain that Togbe’s friend was fat, short, and had speckled, graying hair.
