by Leye Adenle
The meeting was at the home of a retired Supreme Court judge. He made his driver use the siren, so that they would arrive early and find a place to park in the vast compound.
Chauffeured bulletproof cars brought the other attendees. He didn’t have a bulletproof car and here they were, arriving in theirs to ask him why the police were not chasing down more armed robbery gangs.
A servant showed him to his place: a dining table chair at the end of a large parlour where sofas and armchairs had been arranged in rows all facing the same direction. He sat quietly adjusting his uniform while waiting to be summoned.
The meeting started with prayers, then they worried over a new nightclub that had opened on one of the quieter streets of the island. A man with a grey Afro, dressed like he was on his way to play golf, said he would look into it. Ibrahim recognised him. He was the State’s Commissioner for Works and Housing. Next, they were concerned with a proposal by a son of a wealthy northern industrialist to build a commercial helipad on the island. The boy’s family did not live there. The Commissioner for Works and Housing told the meeting he would see what he could do.
Waiters in white uniforms rolled in platters of hors d’oeuvres on silver trolleys. It would be unprofessional to eat, so in agonising silence he suffered the smell of food while others snacked. The meeting continued with talk of funerals and parties and he began to hope they might have forgotten about him. His mind wandered to Amaka and the minister. What was she doing with him so late, and at his hotel? Surely she was sleeping with the man. He got out his pen and rolled it in his palm.
‘Where is the policeman?’
The host was standing in front of his guests, his weight supported on a walking stick.
Ibrahim felt them watching him as he walked to the front. Hardly had he composed himself when the salvo of questions began to fly.
‘Who is the girl?’
‘Have you caught the people who did it?’
‘How did CNN hear about it?’
‘Is it really a ritual killing?’
He answered their questions, making sure to include at every opportunity the actions he had taken to keep the island and its inhabitants safe. He was mostly making it up as he went along.
‘What exactly are we going to do about this?’ an old, Greek lady said. She was the matriarch of a successful shipping family.
‘We have doubled patrols around the Island, ma. From tonight, checkpoints will be deployed at every route into V.I. We are working on a lead that should help us recover the vehicle used in the crime. I assure you that I am dedicating all my resources to getting to the bottom of this. We will solve this crime. In the meantime, increased visibility of officers will make sure that this does not happen again.’
He considered it, but decided not to tell them about the operation planned for later that night when his men would lay siege on Matori and hopefully capture Chucks and the dregs of the Iron Benders gang.
A young man who had been listening with the intense look of someone really paying attention raised his hand. He was MD of a new bank that was doing very well on the stock exchange.
‘How many ritual murders have the police solved in the past?’ the MD said.
‘To my knowledge, not many, sir.’
‘Give me an estimate. Would you say, fifty, forty per cent?’
‘I do not have the statistics to answer that question, sir.’
‘Give me a ballpark.’
‘Sir?’
‘Hazard a guess.’
‘Maybe 10 per cent, sir.’
‘Or five, or one?’
‘Maybe.’
‘It seems to me that if the police are so inept at solving such crimes, it would be a criminal waste of your resources to try to solve this one. It seems to me that concentrating your resources on policing Victoria Island would be more efficient.’
Ibrahim understood what he was saying. He had spoken the minds of the rest of his neighbours. They didn’t care what had happened to the girl – she wasn’t one of them. They only cared that it had happened on their island. They would rather have him keep the island safe than solve this crime and get justice for the girl. He avoided looking straight at the MD. Who was this small boy telling a police inspector how to do his job?
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and hoped that was the end of that.
Saying sir to someone younger than him never made him happy.
The son of a former governor spoke next.
‘What is this thing in the papers about a BBC reporter who was arrested at the scene?’
‘We arrested no such person.’
‘Good. We don’t need that kind of exposure here. I’m sure you understand?’
The boy co-owned a wine bar on the island. His customers were mostly expats. The others agreed by exchanging murmurs with each other.
‘But if you didn’t arrest any Briton, why are the papers reporting that you did?’ said an elderly lady whose family owned one of the biggest five-star hotels. Like the young man and the rest of them, she didn’t want to lose her foreign clients. She had a hotel while others had luxury flats that they rented out to expats for yearly sums that could buy whole buildings in other parts of the state. VI attracted foreigners and their deep pockets because it was a relatively safe place to live; a place where crime was low and the police did not disturb them.
‘I don’t know where they got the story from,’ Ibrahim said.
‘But they cannot just make up something like that. Did you arrest someone then later release him or what? Were there foreigners at the club when the thing happened?’
‘Yes, ma.’
The governor’s son wanted clarification. ‘Yes, there were foreigners at the scene, or yes, you arrested someone and later released them?’
‘There were foreigners at the scene and we took their statements.’
‘But you arrested suspects at the scene?’
‘Yes.’
‘Real suspects or just people you found there?’
‘We took some people back to the station for questioning. Naturally, by the time we got there the perpetrators had fled, so there was no one to arrest. We took some statements at the scene and we took some people back to the station for proper interrogation. There were no suspects, just people who may have seen something. We needed to get as much information out of them as possible. That is the only reason we took some of them back to the station. We didn’t arrest anybody.’
Ibrahim didn’t like where the questions were leading. The people arrested at the crime scene were not criminals and everyone knew it. But it would have looked bad in his report if he didn’t make any arrests, even if he later released all the ‘suspects’ on the same day. It would also not have gone down well with his boys if they had not ‘arrested’ some suspects who would later pay ‘bail’ to regain their freedom.
‘I’m just wondering where they got the story from,’ the lady said, turning expectantly to the woman seated next to her and resting back into her chair.
From the back of the room someone else spoke.
‘I think we need to increase the monthly allowance to the police. We need to pay for extra officers on patrol and get more patrol cars. I move that we increase the allowance to ten million.’
A soft murmur travelled round the room. They all agreed and Ibrahim had to bite his lip to hide a smile.
It was not an official obligation to honour their invitations but these were the people who subsidised the paltry budget the Federal Government provided. Their generosity propped up his officers’ meagre salaries and at least kept some of them from temptation. Being posted to the station at Bar Beach was the miracle his pastor had seen in a vision. His children were in good schools, his wife was back in school to finish her master’s, and he now drove a reliable second-hand Honda Accord with air-conditioning and an automatic gearbox. The monthly allowance they gave him paid for it all. The poor girl’s murder had just doubled that allowance. He had no doubts he could keep their island safe,
or at least appear to. The only thing that threatened it all was the situation with the British journalist. And Amaka. He had to find her and find Mr Guy Collins of the BBC.
The meeting ended and the rich folk gathered into groups. The man who had suggested increasing the monthly allowance caught up with Ibrahim.
‘Good afternoon, sir,’ Ibrahim said and bowed slightly as he greeted Chief Ebenezer Amadi. Amadi asked after each of his five children by name.
‘They were a bit tough on you in there, Ibrahim,’ Amadi said.
‘Sir, it’s not easy.’
‘Don’t mind them. Here, use this for the weekend.’
Ibrahim slipped the brown envelope into his pocket and they bade each other farewell. He got into the back seat of his car and looked inside the envelope. It contained fifty-dollar bills, one inch thick. He looked at the rear-view mirror, at the driver and the officer in front. He put the envelope back into his pocket and smiled as he left the mansion.
28
The two officers sent to spy on the minister were waiting on a bench outside the station when Ibrahim returned. They marched to his car.
‘Sir, we have double-checked at the Sheraton and they are 100 per cent sure that the minster did not lodge there last night,’ said the officer who had the initiative to return to the hotel to check again. ‘We also enquired with the ministry. They said that for the past week the minister has been on official duty in Norway. He isn’t due back for another week.’
‘You called the ministry?’ Ibrahim said, eyeing him suspiciously.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘I asked for his aide-de-camp. They told me he was with the minister and I asked where I could reach him. That’s when they told me they are in Norway, sir.’
‘They didn’t ask why you were looking for the ADC?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good. And you’re sure they are in Norway?’
The two answered as one: ‘Yes, sir.’
Ibrahim went to his office and shut the door. He searched his desk for the card Amaka had given him and found it under a file. He sat down and held it up, scrutinising it as if somewhere on the printed ink and the scribbled note he would find the answer to this new puzzle.
On the one hand, she wasn’t sleeping with the minister or at least she hadn’t done so last night. On the other, she had tricked him into releasing the British journalist. That was a serious crime. But why had she done it? She didn’t know the man: she had said that, and the man didn’t seem to recognise her. So why did she come looking for him?
Ibrahim had been warned to be careful when dealing with her, but now Amaka had committed an offence and it was she who now had to be careful with him. She had hindered an investigation, aided a suspect in absconding – he was sure he could think of many more laws she had broken. All he had to do was find her, and find the man she took from him, particularly now she didn’t have any Minister of Information to protect her.
He stood up from his desk, pulled out his pen and began to pace his office. He had her. He didn’t know where to find her but he had more than enough resources at his disposal. Before any of that, he had a press briefing to attend to. In a few hours he would parade the captured members of the Iron Benders gang to the media. An opportunity like that, to show the nation that the police were doing their job, was too juicy to miss. He also had to set things in motion to deliver all he had promised to do, or lied that he had done, at the Victoria Island Neighbourhood Association meeting. Then had to revise the plan for Operation Bulldog: the siege on Matori. After that he would hunt Amaka down.
Guy’s phone was still in his pocket. He switched it on and found the address book. There was only one number stored on it. He copied it down onto a notepad. Next he checked the media folder but there were no pictures. There was, however, a voice recording.
As he listened, he realised it was from the night before, outside Ronnie’s bar. The sound was not perfect but he could make out clear voices mixed in with the noise of cars passing or starting, then he recognised his own voice talking to the British journalist. He listened to the entire recording – it was long. He played it again then he sent an officer to find a charger.
He set the phone down on his desk, leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers behind his head. So, the man had planned to do some reporting, after all.
Ibrahim’s phone rang. It was the police commissioner again. He knew he was also under a lot of pressure. Once news about the body got out, he’d have received a lot of phone calls from residents of Victoria Island, some of them able to terminate his appointment at the slightest irritation. He would have been dealing with their panic and subtle threats. He answered the phone, sitting to attention in his chair.
‘Ibrahim, I just received a call from the British High Commission. Do you have a British citizen in detention?’
Ibrahim bit his lips. ‘No, sir.’
‘Did you have any British citizen in detention?’
‘No, sir.’
‘So, where did they hear that?’
Ibrahim shut his eyes as he prepared to lie to his boss.
‘There were many white men at the scene of the incident last night, sir. We questioned some of them. Someone must have seen us talking to them and assumed we were making arrests.’
‘So, I can tell the High Commissioner that there is no British citizen in detention at your police station?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘OK. Make sure your story doesn’t change. Do you understand?’
He kept the phone to his ear long after the call had ended. Finding Amaka and the Briton had just moved to the top of his priority list.
And then Guy’s phone rang.
‘Can you hear me? It’s Ade. I’m back from Abuja. I am at the hotel. They said you have checked out. Guy? Are you there?’
He pressed the end button, paused to think, then composed a text message. ‘Can’t hear you. Wait for me in the lobby.’
29
Bent over, dripping with sweat, holding his stomach in both hands, Catch-Fire left the toilet and closed the door. His bowels made a sound like water rushing through a pipe. Pain radiated up to his throat as he reached for the handle. He grabbed his belly and leaned forward. Alcohol, mashed-up food and blood gushed out of his mouth with the force of a firefighter’s hose.
The girls in the corridor backed away as vomit ricocheted off linoleum. Another wave passed through him, forcing tears from his eyes as he threw up again. He placed his hands on the wall.
‘It is Chief Amadi. He has poisoned me,’ he said, his head down, debris and saliva dangling from his chin. ‘He wants to kill me.’
The worst of the spasms shot through his body and forced him onto his hands and knees in his own vomit. He threw up blood.
‘My phone,’ he said.
Chief Amadi was eating lunch at the twenty-two chair dining table he had shipped from France. He checked to see who was calling, then he checked the time.
Catch-Fire looked up at the girls.
‘Chief has killed me,’ he said. ‘He has poisoned me. Catch-Fire must not die. Go and call Doctor. Catch-Fire must not die.’
Doctor raced ahead of the girls who had come to fetch him from his one-bedroom home and clinic where he diagnosed his neighbours with unpronounceable ailments and charged them whatever they could afford for his treatments.
He arrived in the corridor to find Catch-Fire, surrounded by worried onlookers, in a foetal position. He recognised the smell that greeted him.
‘Doctor, help me.’
Doctor bent close to the ground and sniffed to be sure, then turned and sprinted out the way he had come.
‘Ah, even Doctor has run away,’ one of the girls said.
Catch-Fire watched the man leave and he began to cry.
‘I am dead. Catch-Fire don die. Chief Amadi has killed me.’
Outside, Doctor searched for two weeds that grow side by side wherever there is veg
etation. He found them and plucked a handful of each. He ran back to Catch-Fire’s side and began to rub the plants together in his palms, chanting incantations as he did, and spitting into the paste after each dose of spells.
Catch-Fire clenched his teeth as the paste was brought to his face. The girls and the men gripped him and forced his mouth open and Doctor put the medicine in his mouth.
‘Bring me water,’ Doctor said.
Catch-Fire struggled with the hands holding him down. The doctor pinched his nostrils closed and poured water down his mouth and Catch-Fire gagged.
‘Leave him.’
Catch-Fire, regaining his freedom, spat and spat again.
‘Don’t vomit it,’ Doctor said.
Catch-Fire looked at him and spat again.
Chief Amadi finished his meal. The last call from Catch-Fire had been over an hour ago. Maybe it was all over by now. Then the phone rang again. The caller withheld their number. He decided to answer it. If it was Catch-Fire, still alive, he would tell him he had been in the bathroom and he would invite him to a drink at his house.
‘Chief Amadi? Is this Chief Amadi?’
Amadi did not recognise the voice.
‘How may I help you?’
‘Chief, you do not know me but I know you.’
Strange introduction, he thought. It was likely someone about to beg for a loan that wouldn’t be repaid.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Kanayo, they call me Knockout. I am the gentleman that your boy, Catch-Fire, used guns to chase out of his house yesterday.’
Amadi shifted the phone to his better ear.
‘Yes?’
‘I brought business for the boy, but because his girls are making his head swell he chased me out like that.’
‘Yes? So, what can I do for you?’
‘Sir, I want to do business with you.’
