by Kwei Quartey
Copyright©2013 by Kwei Quartey
eBook cover and book interior designed by Ellie Searl, Publishista®
www.publishista.com
All rights reserved
No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Kwei Quartey.
K.A.B. Publishers
Pasadena, CA
In memory of Phylicia Moore
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Note to Readers
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
About the Author
Acknowledgments
A million thanks as always to my editor Judy Sternlight for her clarity of vision, and to Ellie Searl for the cover design and technical expertise in the e-publishing of this novella.
Note to Readers
The text of the novella contains PLs, Personalized [hyper]Links, which take you to a brief annotation with photographs I’ve personally taken of the places or things mentioned in the story.
Prologue
In equatorial Africa, day breaks around 5:30 a.m. no matter the time of year. Morning preparations at the Voyager Hotel in Accra, Ghana, follow a similar timetable. The breakfast buffet is laid out, the day staff arrives to take over from the graveyard shift, the janitor sweeps the lobby, and tour buses and hired cars park in readiness at the front of the hotel.
Jost Miedema also has a set routine each morning. His alarm goes off at 5:40, and he rises and changes out of his pajamas. His busy schedule begins with a one-hour swim. Leaving his hotel chalet, he walks across the lawn to the pool, enjoying the feeling of the springy grass underfoot. A former triathlete, he’s a healthy forty-five. To his left stands the main hotel, an oblong, two-story building painted a singular pink that glows in the dawn. Accommodations there are significantly cheaper than the chalet. Fortunately, his company pays for his luxury.
The solar lights around the pool deck are off, but there is already enough illumination from the sun’s nascent rays. He tosses his towel onto one of the umbrella tables, pulls his goggles over his head and presses them against his eyes to make a tight seal. As he walks to the edge of the pool, he sees a shadow at the bottom of the deep end.
Thomas, the gardener, is unfurling the hose to water the canna lilies in the hotel’s back garden. He is the first person to hear the cries for help. He drops everything and runs around the corner to the swimming pool, where he finds Mr. Miedema on the deck kneeling over a naked white woman and pumping her chest hard with both hands. She is ghostly pale except for her head and neck, which are purplish. Her arms and legs are flexed upward in the rigor of death.
“She’s drowned!” Mr. Miedema screams at him. “Go and get the doctor!”
Thomas turns around and begins to run as Amadu, the night security guard, comes rushing from the opposite direction.
“Call the doctor!” Thomas yells to him. “Somebody drown!”
Amadu rushes back to the hotel. As Mr. Miedema continues CPR, Thomas hovers, his hand over his open mouth as he exclaims in distress, “Ao! Ao!”
A spectator crowd, mostly hotel staff, is forming at one end of the pool. Thomas takes off his shirt and covers the woman’s private parts.
Amadu returns with Dr. Franklin, a squat balding man still in his pajamas.
“What happened?” he asks, crouching beside Mr. Miedema.
“Found her at the bottom of the pool when I came to swim,” he says, out of breath.
“Oh, my God,” Franklin mutters. “I think she’s long gone. Stop compressions a moment.”
He palpates her neck with his fingertips, feeling for the carotid pulse. There is none. Her opaque eyes stare up without seeing and her body is as cold and lifeless as a stone statue.
He shakes his head sadly. “I’m sorry. We’re too late.”
CHAPTER ONE
Paula Djan looked up at the light tap on her office door and saw Ajua standing there. The girl was fourteen years old, tall for her age and a tough kid. Her eyes were beautiful, although they could cut deep into you and flare dangerously when she was angry. Now they were soft and anxious.
She curtsied almost imperceptibly. “Good morning, Madam Djan.”
“Morning, Ajua. Come in. Something wrong?”
“Please,” she said softly as she came forward, “will Madam Heather come today?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Please, I always meet her outside the school at seven thirty, but up till now, she has not come.”
“But Ajua,” Paula said, smiling kindly, “it’s only five past eight. She might be caught in traffic or something like that. You know how congested Accra is on a Monday morning.”
“Please, she’s never late,” Ajua insisted.
“She’ll be here,” Paula said confidently. “Go and get ready for class.”
“Yes, Madam Djan.”
Paula chuckled under her breath as she fondly watched Ajua leave. She was one of the success stories at the High Street Academy in Accra. Until Heather’s arrival, no one had been able to put the brakes on Ajua’s truancy. She was sleeping in class, failing all her tests, and on the verge of expulsion when Heather took her under her wing. She must have perceived some hidden potential in the girl, and something about this new teacher’s aide from America had inspired Ajua. Heather had put in extra time to tutor her, and now Ajua was a consistent C-student, an amazing transformation.
Paula was the headmistress of the High Street Academy, an urban school that provided free education to eight- to fifteen-year-old needy children from nearby neighborhoods. The school building was surrounded by the ramshackle homes that had sprung up behind the Accra Arts Center, a tourist trap on High Street; but it was an exceedingly rare tourist who knew about this humble school where teachers strived to change the lives of their young students—if not now, then in the future.
Heather was exactly the kind of worker Paula needed right now, because the school’s performance during the last quarter had slipped. Only fifteen minutes ago, she had been on the phone with her boss, Kwame Coker, who had warned her that the school’s Danish sponsors might withdraw funding by the end of the year if standards did not pick up. That gave Paula nine months to turn things around.
“They want to see better results,” Coker had said emphatically. “Our target is one-third of the student body transferring to top junior high schools, particularly high-achieving girls. It’s very important that our girls succeed.”
“Yes, of course sir,” Paula had stammered, hearing the desperation in her own voice. “Believe me, no one wants them to succeed more than I do, but we’re wrestling with teen pregnancy, the number one reason for girls dropping out; it isn’t easy.”
“Then you need to try harder,” he said firmly. “Look, as director of the program, I must go to the Danes and say, ‘here are the achievements for the year.’ If I have nothing to show them, they’re going to ask me why they should continue to give us money. That means my job, your job, all of our jobs, are on the line.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So make this the first day of a new beginn
ing. Clear?”
It was indeed to be the first day of a new beginning, but not in the way Coker had meant nor in a manner Paula would have imagined. When Heather had not shown by 8:45, Ajua’s concerns no longer seemed unfounded. In a corner of the small room that doubled as administrative office and staffroom, Paula’s assistant Gale was talking to a desk clerk at the Voyager Hotel. “I’m only asking if you would please go to her room and find out if she is there and whether she is okay.”
Hotheaded Gale was petite and fair-colored, while her mostly unflappable boss was tall, dark, and well built. After listening to the clerk’s unhelpful reply, Gale hung up in annoyance. “Agh. He says he’s not allowed to provide that kind of private information over the phone. Aren’t you good friends with the manager over there?”
“Yes—Edward Laryea,” Paula said, scrolling through the contacts on her phone. “I’ll call him now.”
The number rang several times without a response, but there was still another option. “Take my car,” Paula said to Gale, digging into her purse for the keys. “Go to the Voyager yourself, check if Heather is there and if she’s all right. Who knows, she might be in bed with malaria or something.”
“Okay,” Gale said, grabbing the keys and disappearing through the door as swiftly as a sparrow.
During the years Paula had been at High Street Academy, she had been sending the foreign teachers’ aides to stay at the Voyager Hotel. The accommodations weren’t fancy, but the rates were good, and the place was scrupulously clean.
At nine fifteen, Paula was to meet with a journalist from the Ghana Herald, which was doing a series on the plight of Accra’s burgeoning population of homeless children. Because the paper could be sensational and controversial, Paula had hesitated to do the interview, but she had decided in the end that her refusal would have looked bad.
Diane Jones, a chubby, black Chicagoan popped her head into Paula’s office. Like Heather, she was a volunteer teacher’s assistant at High Street Academy. Her usual good cheer was missing today. “Any word?”
“No,” Paula replied. “But I’ve sent Gale to look for her.” She had a sudden sickening foreboding. “Heather didn’t mention anything to you about coming late today?”
“No,” Diane said. “Last night, I told her I was coming in early to get some paperwork done, and she said, ‘okay, see you at eight.’ I was up at five this morning and left the hotel around five thirty.”
“It’s not like her to disappear like this,” Paula frowned. She spied Oliver, one of the permanent staff teachers, heading toward his classroom. “Oliver!” she called out. “Have you heard from Heather this morning?”
“No.” He checked his phone screen and shook his head. “Nothing. I was just checking for her at the front but there’s no sign of her. If you’ll take my first class I can go look for her at the Voyager.”
“No need,” said Paula, forcing a smile. “Gale is already on her way there.”
She was making an effort to appear calm but she was now even more concerned. Of all people, Oliver should have heard from Heather because he was dating her. Paula would have preferred that romances in the workplace never happened at all, but they were inevitable and impossible to stop. The only action she had taken was to make sure Heather and Oliver never taught together in the same class. Sidelong, yearning glances between them was not what a bunch of already excitable students needed.
Heather and Oliver were a fine study in contrast—she slim and strawberry blond with a heart-shaped face and aqua eyes, he broad and deeply black with flared nostrils and cheekbones like mountain ridges.
“I’m sure she’ll be here,” Diane said tentatively, but the questioning tone of her voice betrayed her. “I’ll check back with you after this period.”
Oliver had a class to teach as well, and his students had begun straggling in. Space was in short supply, such that his classroom abutted Paula’s office. He left to begin the lesson, his brow still creased with worry.
“Take your seats,” she heard him instructing the kids through the half-open door. “Quietly!”
Worn, rickety wooden desks and chairs scraped and squeaked, papers rustled, and the giggles and boisterous jostling died down. Paula stood unobtrusively at the door and watched Oliver teach the English class. It was the most difficult subject for many of the students. Math was less of a problem.
“Take out your pencils and exercise books, please,” he said. “Let’s see how well you have learned your spelling.”
Two boys were clowning around in the back row.
“Come here,” Oliver said tersely to them. “Both of you.”
They came up meekly to the front of the class and he scolded them in English first, and then, for emphasis, in Ga. Addressing them in their mother tongue had more impact, and Ga, an innately sterner language than English, was well tailored for rebuke.
“You’re not here to play, eh?” Oliver said. “You’re here to learn so you can make something of yourselves. Do you understand?”
The boys bowed their shorn heads and made no eye contact with their teacher.
“Go and sit down,” he said. “No more playing the fool.”
Oliver gave them a shove, but as they returned to their seats, Paula could see the secret twinkle in his eye. He was very fond of the children, and concern for their wellbeing and ultimate success lay beneath even his strongest reprimands. That was why Paula had hired him. He was a good teacher, first, but just as important, he cared about these children.
A man Paula didn’t know was approaching the office from alongside the classroom. Guessing he was the journalist, she opened the door wide to welcome him.
“Mrs. Djan?” he asked as he reached her.
“Yes, good morning.”
“I’m John Prempeh with the Ghana Herald.” She invited him in. He was short and wide, with a round, boyish face and spectacles.
“I hope this is an okay time for you?” he asked deferentially.
“It’s fine,” she said, nodding, “although there might be one or two interruptions—either by the staff or the kids, or phone calls.”
“No problem.”
As they sat down, Prempeh took out a small recording device and put it on the desk between them. His newspaper had already published the first segment of his two-part series on the homeless, out-of-school children who roamed Accra’s streets selling small items, dismantling electronic waste, and doing odd jobs.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Djan,” he said. “The first question I have is about the composition of the High Street Academy students.”
“We have about one hundred and twenty children attending,” she said. “They come from poor Accra neighborhoods, particularly Jamestown. We admit students at Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced levels, depending on their prior level of schooling. Many have dropped out or missed school because of poverty or family strife.”
Prempeh made a note of that on his yellow legal pad. “Is the education completely free?”
“Books and supplies are one hundred percent financed by a Danish NGO,” she said, “and the students get lunch every day, Monday to Friday.”
“I see.” He looked up again. “How large is your staff?”
“We have four teachers, and two volunteer teacher assistants from the States, and then there’s my assistant and me. I can stand in for any of the teachers if need be.”
Prempeh repositioned his glasses, which had been steadily sliding down his oily nose.
“What are some of your greatest achievements?” he asked, flashing her an encouraging smile.
“We’ve transferred several of our brightest to the best middle and junior high schools in the country,” Paula said proudly.
“What proportion of the entire student body are these brightest children?”
This was the sensitive part, and Paula chose her words carefully. “It has varied. Last year, we sent twenty-five of our kids to the most excellent schools. We aim for a higher percentage of course, but we
’re faced with problems of spotty attendance, truancy and teenage pregnancy. These factors work against us.”
“So, about twenty percent, would you say?” Prempeh sounded neutral, but Paula sensed he was leading up to something.
“Yes, but I emphasize those were the children who went to the best schools with the most stringent requirements,” she said, somewhat defensively. “Other children were placed in second tier schools.”
“Is it easy to get support from western countries?” he asked, now looking at her from over the top of his spectacles.
“No,” she admitted. “All foreign donors have become stricter with their funds, and they now demand that certain criteria are fulfilled in order for the sponsorship to continue. We have to show results if we want to keep the money coming in.”
Abruptly, Prempeh’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you think that your relationship with these Danish donors fosters Ghana’s continuing dependency on foreigners’ handouts?”
She pulled back a little at the loaded question. “That’s a subject of debate, but while we’re wasting time arguing about it, Mr. Prempeh, I’m not going to sacrifice those kids outside in that classroom.”
Her phone rang, and she was thankful to get away from a potential argument with Prempeh. “Excuse me.” The screen showed Edward Laryea was calling. “I need to take this. Hello, Edward?”
“Hi, Paula,” he said. “I saw you called earlier, but I was tied up. It’s about Heather Peterson, isn’t it?”
Fleetingly, Paula thought Edward might have good news, but then she recognized the sober tone of his voice.
“Something terrible has happened,” he said.
Her stomach plunged.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Heather was found dead this morning in the hotel pool.”
CHAPTER TWO
Paula was still shaking from the shock.
“She was only twenty-four,” she told Detective Chief Inspector Agyekum, a fiftyish, bony man with spidery fingers. He wrote everything down in his notebook.
