Gold of Our Fathers

by Kwei Quartey

  He shrugged. “Something like . . . not believe it. How Bao dead?”

  Dawson nodded. He’d seen the broadest range of emotions in his time. This was only one of the many.

  Lian sent Huang and Dawson a querying look. Wei said something to her, obviously in explanation.

  “Tell her I’m very sorry for the death of her husband,” Dawson told Huang after he had explained to her.

  Huang did that, and then she asked Wei a question. He sat in the sofa closest to her chair and began what Dawson assumed was an account of everything that had happened that morning.

  “She want know why take so long you inform her,” Huang said.

  “Tell her I’m sorry for that,” Dawson said. “It was because we had to see to some police business first.”

  She nodded in acceptance and asked something else.

  “She want know if anyone caught,” Huang said, “and I told her no.”

  “Thank you,” Dawson said. “Please ask her if she feels well enough for me to ask her some questions, or does she need some more time?”

  Huang posed the question to her. “No, she okay, Mr. Dawson. You can go ’head.”

  “Did Bao sleep here last night?”

  “She says yes.”

  “Excuse me for asking, but did she sleep in the same bed with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time did he leave to go to work this morning?”

  After a short discussion, Huang came back to Dawson. “He told her last night that he go to help Wei fix excavator four o’clock in the morning, and so he have to wake up two thirty. She set her alarm clock and wake him up, and he leave about ten minutes.”

  Kumasi to Dunkwa in under two hours, Dawson thought. Probably quite feasible that early, especially if Bao drove anything like his younger brother. “After she saw him for the last time,” Dawson asked quietly, aware that this might trigger tears again, “did she speak to him again?”

  He was right. When Huang asked Lian, her chin began to quiver and her face cracked, shredded again by grief. She shook her head.

  “No,” Huang said sadly. “She never speak to him again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dawson said. “I need to ask her something. Does she know of anyone who would want to kill Bao?”

  A long discussion followed between the Lian and the Chinese males.

  “She says she think Ghanaian galamsey men hate Bao, so maybe one of them do it.”

  “Anyone in particular?” Dawson thought he had discerned a name in Lian’s long response. “She thinks Kudzo did it?”

  Huang was astonished. “How you understand what she say?”

  “I didn’t,” Dawson said. “I just heard the name Kudzo. Why does she think Kudzo did it?”

  She shrugged in answer when Huang posed the question, and gave a sharp, short answer.

  “She never trust them,” Huang explained, avoiding Dawson’s eye for some reason. “Always gave Bao trouble.”

  “That isn’t all she said. Tell me all of it, Mr. Huang.”

  He was squirming. “She say she hate this country,” he confessed. “She wish she never come here. She hate the black people, they lazy, all they want is money for no work. Thieves, make trouble all the time.”

  “Ah, I see,” Dawson said.

  “Sorry, sir,” Huang said.

  Dawson shrugged. “At least she’s honest.”

  “Lian wanna know where Bao body,” Huang said. “She want see him.”

  “By now it should be at the mortuary at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital,” Dawson said. “If she feels prepared to go today, we can go there now.”

  “She says she wants to.”

  “Then let’s go,” Dawson said, “because today is Friday and there will only be a skeleton crew over the weekend.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mr. Huang’s SUV was much roomier than Wei’s pickup, so with Dawson in the front passenger seat and Huang and Lian in the back, Wei drove ten kilometers north to KATH. On the way there, the weekend spectacle for which the Ashanti Region, Kumasi especially, was infamous was on full display. Starting every Thursday—sometimes earlier—Kumasi was thronged with funerals and their preparation. A sea of people filled the streets wearing traditional funeral outfits of the deepest blacks and brilliant reds from scarlet to maroon.

  The deceased might have been nobody while he was alive, but now that he was dead, he’d be famous. The shack he lived in that none of his children offered to fix up despite his pleas for assistance would now become a palace for the funeral. Rich or poor, the family would try to put on a show to wow the “mourners,” who might choose to attend based on how good the food promised to be, how expensive the alcoholic drinks would be, how many dance and drumming troupes would perform, and how fancy the coffin was. And the so-called mourners? How many yards of silky wax print fabric could you display, and what was the latest and most expensive in funeral fashion? How many gold bracelets could you fit on your wrists, how many rings on your fingers, and how much money could you contribute to the family bereavement fund for all to see?

  Dawson turned away in some disgust, busying himself with his phone by texting Christine to ask how she was doing.

  At the entrance, the KATH hospital sign, with the H in red, was perched on top of a kiosk of three ATMs, in case one forgot that cash would be needed for any kind of medical treatment. Cash is still king. The National Health Insurance Scheme was poorly funded, and services were not even close to free.

  Mr. Huang found a parking spot and they walked the palm tree–lined path that skirted the parking lot and approached the newly painted white-and-bronze building. KATH had been around for a while and still had some of the old style louver windows. None of them knew where the mortuary was, but in Dawson’s experience, a morgue was always to the rear of the main hospital building. Having it in front wasn’t a particularly good omen.

  Dawson asked directions from a passing nurse.

  “That way,” she said, pointing.

  They crossed through a large waiting area and down a steep incline. Dawson stole a glance at Lian to see how she was holding up. Her jaw was rigid.

  Lining each side of the walkway were clusters of men and women—mostly women—in black and red. Most of these people were waiting for the release of a relative’s body. The buildings around which they loitered were old and worn, but at the bottom of the hill came something modern and spacious. Dawson opened the door for the other three and then followed them into a bright spotless lobby cooled to blissful temperatures. Offices lined the hallway in one direction, and down the other were an auditorium and a large comfortable waiting room. The mortuary was here? It seemed almost too beautiful.

  “May I help you?” a woman asked from behind a half window in the reception office to the left.

  “Good afternoon,” Dawson said, moving closer. “Is the mortuary in this building?”

  “No,” she replied. “This is administration. The morgue is around the corner to the left.”

  Following her directions, Dawson and the others found the right place, and it conformed more to his general image of a mortuary. The inauspicious and unmarked entrance took them into a gloomy narrow hallway. A technician in khaki medical garb was walking down the corridor toward them. He knocked on a door and Dawson caught him just before he went in. The name on his breast pocket said nkrumah.

  Dawson showed his ID.

  Nkrumah, lanky with a bony face and shaved head, glanced at it. “Yes, please. How can I help you?”

  “I’m working on the case of Bao Liu. Is the body here?”

  Nkrumah sent a knowing glance at Dawson’s companions. “The Chinese man. Yes, he’s here. He just came. Please, one moment.”

  He turned and went back down the corridor the way he had come, disappearing through swinging double doors on the far left. Dawson ca
ught the first whiff of formaldehyde and corpses emanating from there. “Mr. Huang,” he said, turning to him. “You must warn Lian that Bao’s body will not be nice to look at. He will seem very different from when he was alive.”

  Huang nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

  He spoke quietly to her, and she nodded.

  “Is she okay?” Dawson asked.

  “She’s fine,” Huang confirmed.

  Minutes later, Nkrumah emerged and beckoned to them. Dawson and the Chinese trio walked down to join him, and the sickly, fetid smell of the mortuary room grew stronger. A large space with only three tables, the autopsy room had an open door on the far end to facilitate ventilation.

  Lian drew in her breath sharply, pressing a kerchief to her nose. Wei tucked her arm into his to steady her. What she had seen was shocking: a corpse occupied each one of the tables, but six or seven of them were on the floor. No one should see that, Dawson thought. But the reality of most hospital mortuaries around the country was that capacity was inadequate. The bodies on the floor were up next for autopsies—or maybe they weren’t—and there was nowhere to put them.

  Bao Liu was not one of those corpses on the floor, and thank God, Dawson thought. Nkrumah took them into a smaller room where Bao’s body lay on a table more modestly with a sheet covering him from the chest down. He had turned a mottled gray, an awful hue under the fluorescent lighting.

  Dawson moved around to Lian’s unsupported side just in time for what he had anticipated. After she had looked at Bao’s face for a few moments, Lian collapsed like a sack of cocoyams. Dawson grabbed her on his side, as did Wei on his. Huang hurried to help.

  “Let her rest her head on your lap,” Dawson instructed him, as he and Wei let her down slowly to the floor.

  Nkrumah, who had evidently seen this before, lifted Lian’s feet up and seconds later she opened her eyes, looked up with a bewildered expression, and murmured something.

  “What did she say?” Dawson asked Huang.

  “She ask if it all a dream.”

  “Okay, let her rest there.” He looked at Nkrumah. “Let’s talk for a moment.”

  The two men stepped outside.

  “When do you think the postmortem might be done?” Dawson asked.

  Nkrumah angled his head, considering. “Please, maybe in about . . . three weeks?”

  Dawson had feared as much. “Can we do better than that?”

  “If only you want to talk to our physician on duty, Dr. Prempeh.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He is in. I can take you to his office.”

  “Okay—after we check how the lady is doing.”

  They returned to the room to find Lian at least partially recovered. She was standing, leaning against Wei, and slowly he walked with her out of the room and the morgue, settling them on the two chairs in the hallway.

  “I’ll be back,” Dawson told Huang. Nkrumah led him up the hall, knocked on a door marked dr. prempeh, and opened it. The room was full—Prempeh was at his desk addressing five other people, three standing, two sitting. He was in his early thirties with trendy glasses, a white shirt and checkered tie, and black slacks. He looked up at Nkrumah. “Yes?”

  “Please, I have Detective Darko Dawson here regarding the Liu case.”

  “Oh, yeah, come in.”

  “It’s okay,” Dawson said hurriedly. The room was too crowded for comfort. “I’ll wait outside.”

  Dawson thanked Mr. Nkrumah, and the tech went off about his duties. Dawson checked his phone messages to while away the minutes. Not too long after, the five people filed out. Two of them were women, one much older than the other, dressed in black; the men were in normal, rather tattered attire, and they appeared crestfallen. Dawson’s guess was they were having a difficult time getting their relative’s body released for funeral rites.

  Prempeh’s head popped around the door. “Still there? Oh, good. Come in. Sorry about that.”

  He and Dawson shook hands. “Please,” Prempeh said, “do have a seat.” He went back to his own and leaned back. “You said you’re Inspector who?”

  “Dawson. Darko Dawson.”

  “Okay, cool. How can I help?”

  Dawson gave him a quick rundown of the case so far. “The problem is,” he said, to the doctor, “Mr. Nkrumah is saying it will be about three weeks before we can get an autopsy on Bao Liu.”

  “Is that what he said?” Prempeh asked. “Ridiculous.” He sprang up, jumped to the door, and yanked it open, poking his head around the frame and bellowing, “Nkrumah!”

  “Sir!” a voice answered from the distance, and Dawson heard footsteps running down the corridor. “Yes, sir?”

  “Why is it going to take three weeks to do the post on the Chinese man?”

  “Please, we are very backlogged.”

  “We’re always backlogged, so what’s the difference? When is this alleged forensic expert coming from Accra to help us?”

  “Please, I don’t know. The director says he’s working on it, please.”

  “Okay, okay. Go back to work.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Prempeh, looking annoyed, pushed the door closed and flopped down in his chair again. “Do you know why it is going to take three weeks?” he asked Dawson fiercely. “Disorganization, that’s all. Disorganization and inefficiency. All morning long I’ve been waiting for my cases to come up and they’re not ready.”

  He looked up at a knock on the door, which opened to a woman and two men who slowly filed in and stood against the wall with hands crossed in front of them.

  “Excuse me one moment, Mr. Dawson,” Dr. Prempeh said. “Yes, how can I help you?”

  The woman was dressed in deep red. The older man, about sixty, was in traditional swaddling black cloth that covered the left chest and shoulder with the right exposed. Dawson guessed the younger man was a son or nephew. He was about twenty-six in calf-length cargo shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt that looked like it hadn’t been washed in several days.

  Beginning with a salute of deference to the doctor and an imploring “mepa wo kyew,” the older man launched into a complicated explanation in Twi as to why they had come. It appeared to Dawson that they had been given the incorrect information that their relative, who had suffered a premature and unsuspected death, would not need an autopsy. The man was appealing for the release of the body, repeating his plea multiple times.

  The woman added to this by curtseying several times to the doctor while elaborately performing the traditional supplicant gesture of gently patting the palm of the left hand with the back of the right.

  “What you have to do,” Dr. Prempeh said with patience that surprised Dawson, “is go back to the one who told you no autopsy is needed, and tell him to write a letter to the mortuary director explaining why. Then the director will make the final decision.”

  They thanked him profusely and left. Prempeh looked at Dawson. “If I had said no, I won’t release the body, they would blame me. Now I’ve tossed the ball back in the other guy’s court. But honestly, they are never going to get the body released without the postmortem, and the trouble is they have no money to pay for it. It’s sad, but there it is.”

  Dawson agreed—the sad, battered life of the poor and powerless in Ghana: wasting time and money traveling back and forth to no avail.

  “On the other hand,” Prempeh continued, “there should be no problem with this Chinese guy going to the top of the line. I’m assuming his folks have money.” Prempeh leaned back. “Well, let me ask you this, Inspector. How important is this case to you?”

  “How do you mean, Doctor?”

  “I mean, realistically, this is not really a high-profile case to you, is it? Some illegal Chinese guy murdered? These galamsey people are murdering each other every week for some stupid reason—both the Ghanaians and the Chinese. You want to move fa
st on the case, or would you rather put this on low priority and get to something else?”

  Dawson felt his blood chill a little. “Prostitute, bank executive, illegal gold miner—it’s all the same to me. Murder is murder.”

  “Got it,” Prempeh said, smiling. He leaned forward and unconsciously spun his pen in circles on the desk. “Here is what I will do for you. I could perform the post on this man, but you know, I’m not really a forensic pathologist, which is what you need here. There’s a woman in Accra at Korle Bu—brand new Edinburgh graduate and first Ghanaian female forensic pathologist in the country—they say she’s sharp as a tack. She was supposed to come up here and teach us some new stuff, but all the stupid bureaucracy has got in the way. Let me try and expedite it, and maybe we can get her up here to do the Chinese man as her first demonstration case in the posh facility in the new building—not here in this dump.”

  “I appreciate that very much,” Dawson said, standing up. “I think you need to talk to the Chinese man’s family to explain the situation.”

  “I will do that,” Prempeh said. “Please show them in.”

  Dawson called the Chinese trio in but stayed out himself. Prempeh could handle it through Mr. Huang, and besides, Dawson did not want to be there if and when money changed hands. See nothing, hear nothing, say nothing.

  Lian wanted to return home, but did not want to be alone, so Wei offered to stay with her a while. But first he had to pick up his laptop. Mr. Huang said it was no problem to swing around to Wei’s house. Perfect, Dawson thought. Wei directed Huang to take a right at Pine Avenue off Bantama Road, and then a left on West End Hospital Bypass. The streets of Kwadaso were somewhat serpentine with neat houses quite close together on either side. At length, Wei pointed out his house and told Huang to blow the horn at the gate. A few seconds later, a watchman pulled it open so that Huang could drive through.

  Wei alighted and the other three waited for him. The house, a pinkish color, and the unpaved yard were clearly smaller than Lian’s, but just like hers, the property was protected by an electric fence running along the top of the wall, which encircled the house and space around it.