Death at the Voyager Hotel

by Kwei Quartey

  “Got it,” Paula said. “Maybe I didn’t notice, but are there lights inside the pool itself?”

  Edward shook his head. “Not worth the trouble or expense. If the bulbs go out, we have to order them specially and pay a technician to install them. In any case, they attract insects toward the water. It’s better to have external lights that draw the insects away from the pool.”

  “Ah, I see,” Paula said. “Very interesting. Learn something every day.”

  “I’m trying to get Edward to go a hundred percent solar for the whole hotel,” Miedema said, grinning.

  Edward cleared his throat and feigned choking. “Em, that’s a little too hefty a bill for us right now.”

  Miedema laughed. “I’m going to keep sweetening the terms until you can’t refuse, my friend.”

  Paula watched the two men joking around and realized how much they liked each other.

  “Do you stay in Ghana for months at a time?” she asked Miedema.

  “Two or three weeks, normally. I’ll be back in Holland next week Wednesday to be with my kids for a month or so.”

  Paula noticed he hadn’t said wife and kids. “Are home solar systems available? I’m interested.”

  “Absolutely,” he said eagerly. “Just call me when you’re ready and we can set up an appointment at the office.”

  They exchanged phone numbers and she stood up. “Thank you very much for your help, Mr. Miedema.”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” he said, standing as well. “And please, do call me Jost.”

  “Okay—I will.”

  As Paula got to the door, she turned to him again. “I wonder—did you ever think Heather was depressed?”

  Jost thought for a moment, and shook his head slowly. “Quite the contrary, she seemed unfailingly upbeat. But as I told Chief Inspector Agyekum when he was here on Tuesday, I can’t pretend that Heather confided in me to the extent that she would have talked about anything troubling her deep down. We knew each other only in the context of our training, and for a number of good reasons, I liked to keep it that way and I believe she did too.”

  Probably wise, Paula thought, still wondering about Jost’s marital situation. Then an idea struck her. “You said you took snapshots of Heather’s swimming technique—might you have one or two photos you could share? One of my staff is putting together a slideshow to honor her memory, so if you have something that shows her swimming prowess, we’d love to have that.”

  “But of course! I’m happy to. Shall I send them to your phone?”

  “Please do. Thanks again.”

  Before Paula left, she asked Edward if he would allow her to see the room in which Heather had stayed. Not a problem, he said. The police had released it and it was vacant for the moment.

  “Jost seems like a very nice man,” she said, as they returned to the hotel.

  “He is.”

  Paula tried to think of a tactful way to put her next question. “You don’t think…I mean, there’s no reason to believe he was involved with Heather beyond the swimming training?”

  They had reached the rear entrance to his office and Edward swiped his card. “Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “You heard what he said about not getting unduly involved with her. He’s an honest guy.”

  “I notice he mentioned his children but not his wife.”

  “Yes, he’s been divorced for many years.”

  He picked up a key card from the front desk and they went upstairs to Room 216. A far cry from Jost’s chalet, this accommodation had only the basics—one room with a bed, a desk, and a chair. The adjoining bathroom was very small. Nevertheless, everything was clean and neat. Most of Paula’s volunteers came to Ghana with limited funds, and the Voyager, with its reputation for cleanliness and affordability, was the perfect hotel for their needs. Edward ran a tight ship.

  Paula went to the window where she had a full view of the three chalets. However she noticed that the trellis below obscured most of the swimming pool. It was possible, then, that a hotel guest could have looked out of the window in the middle of the night on Sunday and missed Heather’s body in the water.

  “Nice room” she said, turning back to smile at Edward as they came out. “I like it.”

  “Thank you.” He pulled the door shut. “Let’s go this way and I’ll show you something.”

  She followed him downstairs. At the bottom, two doors faced them at right angles to each other.

  “That one goes to the lobby,” Edward said, pointing to the right. He bypassed it. “But if you want to go for a swim, you go out this way.”

  He pushed open the second door and they exited onto a concrete walkway.

  “Oh,” Paula said, now comprehending. “It’s the same back area you have access to from your office, just from a different exit.”

  “Right, and this path leads to the chalets and the pool. So, as I told you, Heather could go directly from her room to the pool without being spotted, something I was proud of before, because of the privacy it offered the guests. Now that’s all changed, and we will have a CC camera that shows who goes in and out of this door.”

  Paula was staring thoughtfully at the exit door. Perhaps Heather came outside that night to meet someone at the pool without having any intention to swim, and then something went terribly wrong.

  “There’s absolutely no way to get from the lobby of the hotel to this rear exit without being seen?” she asked Edward.

  “I never say never, but it would be difficult. Either the front receptionist or the security guard would spot you.”

  Paula gazed at the pool in the distance. What happened that night? She was eager to talk to Amadu. She hoped the night guard might know more than he had revealed to his boss.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  That night, after the twins were in bed, Paula and Thelo relaxed in the sitting room and indulged in vanilla ice cream. She hesitated to tell him about her visit with Edward at the Voyager. Despite the rationalizations she had used to justify it to herself, there was no way around it: she had gone “snooping.” Thelo would not be happy about that.

  “I have some news for you,” he said at length, licking cream off his plump lips.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Do you remember the forensic pathologist I used to tell you about—Dr. Anum Biney?”

  “Mm. The one you said is so good that all the detectives want him to do the postmortems on their cases?”

  “Correct. I thought over what you said yesterday at the office and decided to call him this morning about the case.”

  “Oh, good!” she exclaimed. “What did he say?”

  “He couldn’t talk long because he was about to do an autopsy, but he promised to get back to me this evening or first thing tomorrow.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful! Thank you so much for doing that, my love.”

  She gave him an ice-creamy kiss on the cheek, and he laughed.

  “I thought he would be the best person to consult,” he continued, “because he has insights into both detective work and forensic laboratory studies. He’s smarter than all the rest of us put together.”

  “I can’t wait for him to call.”

  “I need to caution you though, Paula,” he said, leveling his spoon in her direction, “Dr. Biney may not tell us exactly what you want to hear. He may side with the conclusions of the pathologist who did Heather’s postmortem, and he might say that her blood alcohol level was completely valid. Are you prepared for that?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Are you going to accept what he says even if it’s not what you’d hoped for?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes were boring into her, and she had some difficulty meeting his glare.

  He grunted. “Okay. You’ve given me your word. I don’t want to hear you backtracking later on.”

  “You won’t,” she said, watching him as he got up. “Where are you going?”

  “I want more ice cream. Is it really made in Ghana?”

 
; “That’s what it says on the carton.”

  “It’s as good as Italian.”

  “No ice cream is good as Italian,” Paula said with conviction. Last year, Thelo had taken her to Italy for a memorable weeklong trip in celebration of her birthday. It helped to have contacts in the travel and tourist businesses. “That’s the last I’m buying for the rest of the year,” she called out. “You’re getting too fat.”

  “Yes, yes, you’ve made that plain. Want any more?”

  “No, thank you. This is enough.”

  He came back with another generous serving. “Since you’re so concerned about my, em, rotundity, why did you buy the ice cream in the first place?”

  “Because you asked me to.”

  “Doesn’t mean you had to agree,” he said, sitting down.

  They both began to giggle.

  Dr. Biney called as they were getting ready for bed.

  “Thank you very much for getting back to us, Dr. Biney,” Thelo said, and Paula detected a deferential tone that she was unaccustomed to hearing from her husband. “I’m well, and you? Paula is here with me. Will you mind if I switch to speaker mode so she can join the discussion? Great. Here we go. We’re all on now.”

  “Hello, Paula.” Even on the little speakerphone, Dr. Biney’s voice was a rich baritone. “How can I help?”

  She summarized the case and what concerned her so much about it. “The bottom line, Doctor,” she said in conclusion, “is that my colleagues and I knew Heather well, and we just cannot believe that she could have gone swimming naked. Secondly, she did not drink heavily, so it seems impossible that she would have a high blood alcohol concentration. Third, she was a very strong swimmer, and was the least likely person to have drowned.”

  “Your reasoning is sound,” Dr. Biney said with his clipped, precise diction. “First of all, let me express my condolences. I read about this in the papers and I find it very distressing indeed.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “But it’s fascinating as well,” he went on. “Two questions need answering. First is whether the high blood alcohol concentration measured in this unfortunate young woman’s bloodstream was representative of her true physiologic state before death, and the second is, did she die by accident or homicide? Do you agree?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” Paula said, feeling a slight thrill that the doctor’s line of thinking seemed, at least to start, in harmony with hers.

  “Postmortem measurement of blood alcohol levels is a tricky business,” he continued. “One reason is that microbes involved in decomposition of the body can themselves produce a mixture of alcohols, including ethanol.”

  “Wait,” Paula said incredulously. “Doctor, you’re saying that the microbes could actually create blood alcohol levels regardless of whether alcohol was in the person’s system before death?”

  “Correct.”

  Paula glanced at Thelo, who was mirroring her own look of surprise. “If she was in the water for say, six or seven hours,” she asked Biney, “could enough decomposition take place for that effect on blood alcohol to occur?”

  “It could, yes. Decomposition is slower in water than in air, of course, but this time of the year in Ghana, ambient temperatures even at night are high, and the water in the pool was probably warm as well from natural solar heating during the day. Both those factors would increase decomposition. Once she’s out of the water, putrefaction starts to accelerate, so one has to get the serology samples drawn as quickly as possible to avoid errors, even if the body is refrigerated. If it’s not done expeditiously, the alcohol levels will rise even more.”

  Paula’s heart was racing. Dr. Biney’s eye-opening information was bolstering her case. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Thelo sitting very still, and she knew that he had not been expecting this at all.

  “What about the autopsy itself?” she asked eagerly. “Shouldn’t the pathologist have been able to distinguish between homicidal and accidental drowning?”

  “That brings us to the second question,” Biney said. “A shortcoming of law enforcement all over the world is the tendency to assume that a drowning death is an accident, especially when it takes place in a swimming pool, which is particularly associated with recreation and fun. If Heather’s body had been discovered under a bush or even at the side of the pool, everyone from the first policeman on the scene to the pathologist would have a high level of suspicion regarding foul play.

  “Not so with drowning deaths. Signs of struggle may be absent, altered, or difficult to interpret because of the changes induced by hours of immersion in water. So while I don’t approve of a hasty rush to the conclusion that a drowning is accidental, the bottom line is that homicidal drowning is a more difficult case to prove, and it’s for that very reason that I personally believe that there are many, many more homicidal drowning deaths annually than we realize—not just here in Ghana, but internationally.”

  “That’s a lot of people getting away with murder,” Thelo said somberly.

  “Indeed,” Biney said. “There’s something else, too. If Heather was murdered by drowning, it means she would have struggled terribly for a minute or so. That tremendous exertion of the muscles would also accelerate decomposition and bring the alcohol levels up.”

  “Oh, my God,” Paula whispered in horror at the thought of Heather fighting for her life.

  “I apologize for being so graphic,” Dr. Biney said.

  “No, it’s all right.” She looked at Thelo before going on. “Doctor, is there a chance you could get the case reexamined, and that you could do the autopsy this time?”

  Biney hesitated. “Em…I don’t think it’s an unreasonable request, but in practice we may run up against a lot of opposition, from the pathologist who did the case right up to the Director-General of CID. It will take a lot of persuasion to reopen the investigation, and even then—well, you know how slowly things move over there.”

  “Yes, we know,” Paula and Thelo chorused.

  “I’m going to be out of town until next Wednesday,” Biney said, “but let me see what I can do when I return. I don’t want you to get your hopes up too high, though.”

  “We understand, Doctor Biney,” Thelo said. “Thank you for offering.”

  “Not at all. If there’s anything more I can help with, please feel free to call.”

  Thelo hung up and looked at Paula.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I’m flabbergasted,” he confessed. “I didn’t know all that stuff about the bacteria.”

  “It validates everything I’ve been saying,” she said quietly. “This was no drowning accident, Thelo. Heather was murdered. Someone has to reopen the case. Should we call Agyekum?”

  He frowned. “No, better let Dr. Biney take it up when he gets back—like he said he would.”

  She looked at Thelo for a long time, pondering.

  “What?” he asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I’m skeptical,” she said finally. “Skeptical that Dr. Biney is going to try that hard to reactivate the investigation.”

  Thelo looked insulted. “How can you mistrust one of the most principled men alive?”

  “I don’t mistrust him at all,” Paula denied. “I think he’ll make a bona fide argument that the case should be reopened, but if he runs up against opposition, which he said is likely, he’s not going to fight for it. And when you think about it, why should he? He’s busy, he travels all over the country, and his plate is more than full. He doesn’t have time to fight for it.”

  “But the bottom line,” Thelo said firmly, “is that he’s still our best chance. So, my advice is that we wait until he returns next week and see how he can help refocus attention on the case.”

  He got into bed, cast around for the TV remote and switched through the channels until he got Al Jazeera English. While he was watching the news, Paula fetched a blank sheet of paper and a pencil and sat up against her pillows next to him. She had learned a few thing
s about detective work from watching him in years past. He had always made lists and diagrams to help organize his thoughts. She wrote Heather Peterson Murder at the top of the page and underlined it. After a moment’s thought, she added,

  1. Heather: A little wine/beer(?) but not intoxicated when she drowned: falsely elevated BAC

  2. Found naked in public pool—out of character for her

  3. Murdered—who drowned her? Motive?

  Suspects

  1. A robber who tried to steal her clothes and swimsuit, she challenged him, resulting in a struggle?

  Her handwriting was small and most of the sheet was blank, as was her mind. She looked at Thelo, and he took his eyes off the TV screen to lean over and read what she’d written. After a moment, he shook his head.

  “A robber?” he asked in some amusement. “You learned about enough homicide cases from me to know that the first suspects in a murder are people the victim knows. The closer the relationship, the more suspect they become. The reason you can’t write anymore is that you’re close to the same people Heather was, and that means the suspects you name could be men and or women you care about.”

  She sighed. He was right.

  Thelo switched off the TV and sat up. “Heather was seeing Oliver, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you have to put his name there along with the motive. What would his motive be?”

  Paula wrote,

  1. Oliver – rejected lover?

  Thelo nodded. “Yes, correct. Who else?”

  “Diane,” Paula said uncomfortably. “She was smitten with Oliver for a while, and then Heather came along. Diane claims she was already done with him, but that might be sour grapes.”

  “Agreed,” Thelo said. “So, jealousy would be the motive there.”

  She wrote down,