Gold of Our Fathers

by Kwei Quartey

  Also by the Author

  The Inspector Darko Dawson Mysteries

  Wife of the Gods

  Children of the Street

  Murder at Cape Three Points

  Death At The Voyager Hotel

  Kamila

  Copyright © 2016 by Kwei Quartey

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue, and incidents depicted are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Quartey, Kwei.

  Gold of our fathers / Kwei Quartey.

  ISBN 978-1-61695-630-1

  eISBN 978-1-61695-631-8

  I. Title.

  PS3617.U37G65 2016

  813’.6—dc23 2015028758

  Map of Ghana: © Rainer Lesniewski/Shutterstock

  Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Adwoa: female resident of Dunkwa.

  Armah, Daniel: retired policeman, Darko Dawson’s mentor.

  Asase: officer assisting Darko Dawson.

  Bediako, Frank: commander, Ghana Armed Forces Northern Command, Kumasi.

  Brave: one of the workers at the Aniamoa dredging site.

  Chikata, Philip: inspector, Darko Dawson’s junior partner at CID Accra Central Headquarters.

  Dawson, Christine: Darko Dawson’s wife.

  Dawson, Darko: detective chief inspector, Criminal Investigations Department in Accra, Ghana.

  Dzamesi, Prosper: director-general, Criminal Investigations Department.

  Dzigbodi, Gbedema, Kwame, and Kweku: Kudzo Gablah’s fellow mine workers.

  Ekaw: Kudzo Gablah’s friend.

  Gablah, Kudzo: alluvial mine worker who discovered the

  dead body.

  Gifty: Christine Dawson’s mother; Darko Dawson’s mother-in-law.

  Granger, Chuck: American owner of gold mines next to the Lieu site.

  Helmsley, Akua: environmental reporter for The Guardian (UK).

  Huang, Leonard: Chinese miner/merchant frequently acting as interpreter for Darko Dawson.

  Kobby: a constable in Dunkwa.

  Kwapong, Phyllis, MD: forensic pathologist.

  Lartey, Theophilus: assistant commissioner of police (ACP); Inspector Chikata’s uncle.

  Liu, Bao: Chinese illegal alluvial miner and murder victim.

  Liu, Lian: Bao’s wife.

  Liu, Wei: Bao’s younger brother.

  Manu, Deborah: deputy commissioner of police, regional

  commander, Ghana Police Service, Ashanti Region.

  Nkrumah: pathology technician.

  Obeng, Augustus: detective sergeant; Darko Dawson’s junior partner at Obuasi Divisional Headquarters.

  Okoh, Amos: brother of Yaw Okoh.

  Okoh, Yaw: worker in a local mine, murder suspect.

  Longdon, Ata: assistant commissioner of police, commander, Obuasi Divisional Headquarters.

  Queenie: flirtatious Dunkwa resident, a.k.a. Smoothie.

  Sackie: inspector, Dunkwa Police Station supervisor.

  Samuels, Joshua: freelance photographer for Akua Helmsley.

  Tanbry, Beko: American gold investor.

  Thompson, Tommy: director of Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC).

  Author notes

  • Police jurisdictions: For purposes of the story, the police station at Dunkwa is depicted as being under Kumasi Regional Headquarters in the Ashanti Region. In fact, Dunkwa is in the Central Region on its border with the Ashanti Region. Therefore, its head office is actually at Cape Coast Regional Headquarters.

  • Opposite to Europe and the USA, June to August is the coolest season in Ghana due to rainfall during those months.

  • Ghanaian languages such as Ga, Twi, Ewe, and Fante are distinct, not “dialects” of each other.

  PROLOGUE

  Dark gravel, the gray-and-black color of an aging man’s beard, renders the most gold. One has to dig beyond the water table to reach the coveted ore. As far as Kudzo Gablah’s eye could see, machine-excavated pits and craters disfigured the once lush landscape. Mounds of tawny soil surrounded each scooped-out depression, as if a giant hand had reached inside the earth and turned it inside out.

  Short-handled shovel in hand, Kudzo stood in the middle of one of the craters, his old ill-fitting Wellington boots sinking into the soft earth. At the top of the pit, which was more than twice Kudzo’s height of five-eleven, his four fellow galamsey workers joked and jostled with each other, and even though he had yelled at them that they might as well begin work while waiting for the boss to arrive, they were slow to start. At only twenty-four years old, Kudzo was the most experienced and the most senior mine worker, the others barely out of their teens.

  He planted his first stab deep into the gravel, enjoying the crisp sound of earth giving way to the sharp blade. He and the other guys would be digging all day. It would be especially grueling without the aid of the hydraulic excavator, which had broken down two days ago. Their Chinese boss, Bao Liu, had said he would come in early this morning to attempt a repair of the vehicle, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was almost 6:30 now, and that was odd because when Mr. Liu said he was going to arrive early, he meant early. Perhaps he or his wife had fallen ill.

  Kudzo looked up to see Wei Liu carefully making his way toward them over a narrow muddy crest at the top of one of the pits. About thirty-five, he was Bao’s younger brother, but the two were as unlike as a yam tuber and a thin stalk of sugar cane. Wei was stout, while his older brother was hard and wiry. Bao yelled a lot and insulted people, whereas Wei was quiet and sullen. They knew some English and a little bit of Twi. Between those two languages, they managed to communicate with the Ghanaian workers. Sometimes Kudzo and his friends made fun of the Chinese brothers’ accents and mimicked the sound of Chinese as they perceived it. Kudzo didn’t like Wei, much less his older brother.

  “Where Bao?” Wei asked Kudzo abruptly, without even a “good morning.”

  “Please, I don’t know,” Kudzo said, thinking, Shouldn’t you know better than me where your brother is? “Maybe he went somewhere.” More specifically, Kudzo was thinking Bao might have gone into the bush to relieve himself, the way everyone did around the mines. “Didn’t he call you?”

  “Yeah,” Wei said. “Four twenty this morning.”

  Looking worried, Wei left to examine the excavator. Something was jammed in the hydraulic arm attached to the bucket—the huge, clawed scooper shaped like a cupped hand. As far as Kudzo knew, Bao and Wei were supposed to have tried to repair it early this morning, and Bao’s truck was parked in the usual spot.

  Kudzo’s companions picked up their shovels and slid down into the pit beside him. Before long, they would be smeared with mud as they worked. The warmth of the morning hinted at the heat that would begin to peak before noon. As fit as the young workers were, they still found the ten working hours physically and mentally punishing. Not everyone could do it. Dropping out after a few weeks was common, especially for city boys. Unable to handle the pace and intensity, they often packed up and left. Sprains and injuries happened all the time, and two drowning incidents had occurred during the last rainy season. All this pain and exertion for what? Sometimes only a few specks of gold after all the
ore had been washed at the end of the day. But every once in a while, a dazzling amount of the glittering yellow metal was found, and then it all seemed worth it again.

  The boys coordinated smoothly with each other. Kudzo shoveled soft, clayey gravel rapidly into a wide shallow pan, which Gbedema snatched from between his feet and lifted onto Dzigbodi’s head. On his way to the sluice box where Kweku washed the gravel, Dzigbodi would pass Kwame going in the opposite direction to pick up his new load from Kudzo. Throughout the day, they would rotate positions. It was like a dance.

  At intervals, they chattered noisily with one another to break the grinding monotony, sometimes making crude jokes at each other’s expense, and at other times shouting encouragement when one of them flagged. They depended on each other to keep going. Occasionally an argument might break out, but it was seldom more than fleeting.

  Kudzo glanced up to see Wei on his phone again—not talking, just calling, but then he put it away when apparently no one answered. He was probably trying to get hold of his brother again. Where was Bao?

  At the top of the pit on the side where they were working, the earth was a light brown with an orange tinge, in contrast to the gray-and-black beneath it—as if someone had recently dumped soil taken from a different area. Kudzo was sure it had not been that way the day before, and he remarked on it to his friends. They concurred with him but there was no time to give it that much thought, and they soon forgot about Kudzo’s observation.

  He might have put the light-colored soil out of his mind had some of it not caved in as the darker gravel was dug away from underneath. Kudzo didn’t want this kind of earth because it was usually poor in gold, so he began pushing it aside with his shovel. The blade struck something dull, relatively soft and immovable. He hit it a couple more times to dislodge it, but it didn’t budge. Now Kudzo saw a dark spot in the light soil. Frowning, he cleared some of the earth away.

  “What are you doing?” Kwame shouted in Twi, annoyed at Kudzo’s break in the rhythm.

  “Something is here,” Kudzo returned. “I don’t know what it is.”

  Kwame joined his partner to help clear away the soil from around the object. The other two boys, curious, came over to watch. Kudzo felt a shiver travel down his back. Something about the object made him uneasy.

  Wei, who was on his phone again and had seen them cease work, walked quickly in their direction. “Hey!” he yelled. “What you doing?”

  Dzigbodi pointed at what Kudzo and Kwame were unearthing. Wei jumped down into the pit to get a closer look. “Dig more,” he instructed them, as if he were contributing anything new to what they were already doing.

  As they saw what it was, Kudzo gave an exclamation of shock. Kwame tried to stand up, but slipped in the mud instead. It was clear now. The object was a human head. Wei grabbed a shovel and began to help scoop the soil away. As the eyes and nose came into view, he let out a cry. Kwame scrabbled out of the pit in fear, but Kudzo wrenched himself out of his paralysis and used his shovel to help Wei pull earth away from the head. Now one shoulder was visible. Wei was weeping and babbling hysterically in Chinese. Kudzo already knew the truth, but it had a dreamlike quality. The dead man buried deep in gold ore was Bao Liu, Wei’s brother.

  ACCRA

  JULY

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Now that you’re chief inspector,” Christine said to Dawson, “does that mean they won’t send you to different parts of the country as often as they used to?”

  On a late Saturday afternoon at the Mmofra Park, Darko Dawson and his wife, Christine, were sitting in the shade of a neem tree watching their sons, Sly and Hosiah, playing with a group of kids.

  Dawson grunted. “Not necessarily. One of our deputy commissioners, which is a very high rank, got moved up all the way up to Bolgatanga.”

  Bolgatanga was a town in the very north of Ghana, some 460 miles away from Accra.

  “I hope that happens to Theophilus Lartey,” Christine commented dryly.

  Dawson laughed at her entrenched dislike of the man who had been Dawson’s boss for several years. She considered Lartey a domineering bully, particularly when it came to sending Dawson off to other parts of the country far from Accra, which was home to the family. For his part, Dawson had always resisted leaving his wife and sons behind for extended periods, only to go down in defeat after a stern warning from Lartey about insubordination and a threat of being fired.

  During the last round of promotions two months ago, Lartey had been elevated from chief superintendent to assistant commissioner of police. Dawson had been promoted from detective inspector to chief inspector at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) in Accra, Ghana. Dawson had mixed feelings about his imminent separation from Lartey. In the first place, although the man could be cantankerous, Dawson was accustomed to him, and he could always depend on Lartey to stand behind his junior officers—barring any malfeasance, of course. As grumpy as he could be, he was scrupulously honest. Dawson’s assistant on all his criminal cases, Detective Sergeant—now Inspector—Philip Chikata, also happened to be Lartey’s adored nephew. In the early days, that had worked against Dawson, but he had now mastered how to get what he wanted from Lartey through Chikata, and it had proved to be a powerful tool.

  Dawson stole a glance at his wife, pretty in form-fitting jeans and a sleeveless Ghanaian print top. Her hair, cinnamon-colored and elaborately braided in the latest style, was gathered behind her neck in a loose bundle. She was never poorly turned out, and Dawson took a secret delight in showing her off.

  He felt relaxed with her in this park, Mmofra, meaning “children” in Fante, which provided a safe space for children’s play and out-of-classroom learning with exposure to Ghanaian culture in a natural setting. A portion of the grounds was dotted with drought-resistant shrubs and cassava plants, but the rest was uncultivated and waiting for landscaping when funds came in.

  Hosiah and Sly were engaged in a game of treasure hunt. The two competing teams, with the help of an adult chaperone, had to consult their table of Adinkra symbols to figure out each clue and how to proceed to the next station. Dawson, no stranger to clues himself, liked the idea of that game with its Ghanaian twist.

  Not all the kids were participating in the game. Sitting in chairs carved from tree trunks, one group was poring over children’s books, and yet another was on the swings, watched over by a volunteer. A boy and a girl of about seven were playing the traditional board game of oware carved into a recycled log and mounted on a wooden pedestal.

  Christine had volunteered herself a few times here after she had discovered the place. Before she’d known about it, she had lamented the lack of a functional playground in Accra. This was one of them, along with the new eco-park at the edge of the city.

  Hosiah and Sly came running up, treasure hunt over and the team of the older brother, ten-year-old Sly, triumphant. Hosiah was slightly crestfallen.

  “It’s okay,” Dawson said, pulling him close and hugging him. “Next time you’ll beat them.”

  Hosiah was sweating and Dawson wiped his forehead with a washcloth he had handy. At age eight, Hosiah looked just like his father, with a large contribution from Christine to his deep, expressive eyes. But the incandescent smile that could light up a room and melt even a murderer’s heart was all Hosiah’s own. Skinny and loose-limbed, Hosiah had had a growth spurt over the last twelve months after cardiac surgery to correct a congenital defect. Sly’s physique contrasted with that of his younger brother’s. He was already showing the beginnings of teenage muscularity, as is common in boys who have lived on the streets, as Sly had done. Adopted at age eight by Dawson and Christine, it was clear he was not related by birth. Hailing from Northern Ghana, his face was more angular than anyone’s in Dawson’s family, wide cheekbones tapering sharply to his chin, and his lips were thinner.

  He affectionately put his arm around his younger brother’s shoulders. “Co
me on, let’s go to the swings. I’ll push you.”

  They ran off together as their parents looked on fondly. Dawson loved to see them together, and he was happy with the way things were going, especially for Hosiah. Because he could now fully participate in sports, he had a lot more friends both in school and out, and he was more outgoing than before. A year ago, before the cardiac surgery that saved him, his condition had worsened, and he had become short of breath with even the slightest exertion. Thank God for the surgeons at Korle Bu, the largest tertiary hospital in the country, who performed Hosiah’s expensive surgery on a largely charitable basis.

  Sly too was doing well. Many of his rough edges had smoothed out. Fights at school were a problem in the beginning, but his adoptive parents had worked patiently with him to curb his feral instincts. But Sly’s fierce protection of his younger brother had been unwavering: anyone attempting to bully Hosiah paid dearly.

  So, much contributed to Dawson’s feeling of contentment: the lifting of the worries over his beloved boy, his promotion and subsequent uptick—very slight, but better than nothing—in his salary, and Christine’s recent promotion to an assistant headmistress at her school.

  He glanced at his phone. “Shall we go?” he asked Christine.

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  Dawson walked over to the swings and joined Sly and Hosiah for a few minutes before calling time. Then it was back to the car with Hosiah riding atop his dad’s shoulders. Dawson felt remarkably happy, but he should have known that nothing good lasts long. Or more accurately, he did know. He had simply forgotten.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Monday morning Dawson made his way to work on his Honda motorcycle. It was the fastest way to deal with Accra’s choked traffic. It was also dangerous. Survival on a motorcycle required a certain level of aggression and without question, catlike reflexes. At Kwame Nkrumah Circle, the new overpass was open, but for all its complexity, Dawson wasn’t sure whether it helped or worsened the chaos.