by Kwei Quartey
“No need to rent,” Joe said. “I have an old Toyota Corolla you can use. It’s ten years old but still going strong.”
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate it very much.”
“No problem at all. I will have one of my drivers drop off the car at the guesthouse.”
After tortuous directions that Uncle Joe modified several times during multiple back-and-forth phone calls, the taxi arrived at Gifty’s guesthouse in the quiet, up-and-coming neighborhood of Patase, where new houses surrounded by high walls and electrified fences appeared to be sprouting about as fast as they were in Accra. Dawson paid the fare and rang the bell at the side of a black gate. A tubby man in his thirties opened up. He turned out to be the watchman. His name was Haruna, a Muslim—so no church for him.
“Good morning, sir,” he said, after Dawson had introduced himself. “You are welcome. We are expecting you.”
Dawson came in and gaped at the size of the residence. It was two stories and it must have had four bedrooms at least.
“This is where we’re going to stay?” he asked Haruna, barely able to believe it.
“Oh, no,” the watchman said apologetically. “Some tenants are already occupying it.”
Dawson felt like a fool as he saw the small house they were approaching behind the mansion. He should have known it. Of course Gifty wasn’t giving them a mansion.
“Is the foreman here?” he asked Haruna.
“Please, he have gone to church, and he say if you can wait for him small.”
“Small” could mean anything. An hour, a day. It depended just where the man fell on the religious spectrum from casual churchgoer to obsessive worshipper.
The guesthouse was tiny—smaller than Dawson’s house in Accra. The stack of tiles in front of the guesthouse was both good news and bad: materials had arrived, but the work hadn’t started.
The watchman unlocked the front door. The first room was the sitting room, with two battered, dusty chairs, a sinking sofa, some side tables, and an old-style, cathode-ray television. The air conditioner high up on the wall had wires poking ominously out of it. Dawson stepped—not that many steps—to the kitchen on the left. The space where the stove was meant to be was empty. The sink was caked with grime, and when Dawson tried the tap, he got nothing but a blast of air.
“Ewurade,” he muttered.
The watchman politely waited for Dawson as he continued his inspection of the house with growing dismay. In the bathroom, the mildewed shower stall was waiting for tiling—hence the stack outside—the new toilet wasn’t installed, and the washbasin was cracked straight through the middle.
The smaller of the two bedrooms—and both were small—had a lopsided bed supported on one side by a couple of cement blocks. When Dawson put his hand in the middle of the mattress it sagged and released a puff of dust. He sneezed twice as he opened the louvers of the windows. As he had predicted, the mosquito netting was clogged with dirt.
Feeling angrier by the minute with the previous renters, the foreman, Gifty, and everyone in general, Darko stood helplessly in the middle of the floor and looked around. It was a spectacular disaster.
His jaw tense, he speed dialed Christine, and she answered on the second ring. “Hi, sweetie.”
“This house is a mess, Christine,” Dawson said hotly. “I mean, this is not fit for human habitation.”
“Oh, dear. Is it that bad?”
“No, it’s worse.”
“Hold on. Mama is right here. Let me ask her about it.”
Dawson groaned inwardly. Just his luck. He heard the back-and-forth exchange between the two women and then his wife came back on the line.
“Mama is going to call Mr. Nyarko. That’s the name of the foreman. Are you there right now?”
“Yes. This Nyarko is supposed to be back soon, but I can’t afford to stand around waiting for people, Christine. I’m working on the case and I don’t have time for all this nonsense.”
“I know, I know—”
“I mean, has your mother been monitoring the progress in the house or not?”
“She has,” Christine said, her tone beginning to mirror his frustration. “She’s been calling him all along, and he’s been telling her things were progressing.”
“Well, he’s a liar,” Dawson said sullenly. “No wonder he disappeared. He doesn’t want to see me. He’s probably run away with your mother’s money.”
“She hasn’t paid him yet.”
“How can she not have paid him yet?” Dawson said incredulously. “No wonder he hasn’t finished the work! You know how it is with these guys: they do the jobs that pay the money up front.”
“Dark,” Christine said, sounding exasperated, “just . . . just go and solve your cases and let us take care of it, okay? Relax. We’ll get it sorted out.”
“We can’t have the boys come to this mess,” he went on, as if she hadn’t just tried to reassure him. “It’s bad enough we’re moving them out of their school and their neighborhood—”
“Dark, I get it, I get it. Go about your business. I’ll call you this evening.”
Dawson ended the call in a high state of annoyance. Why, why was it always the case that whenever and wherever his mother-in-law was involved, things were guaranteed to go badly?
The watchman had tactfully gone outside, no doubt uncomfortable with Dawson’s spirited exchange on the phone.
“This is my number,” Dawson said to him, writing it down on a sheet of paper in his pocket notebook and ripping it out. “Please tell Mr. Nyarko to call me as soon as possible.”
“Yes, please.”
One of Uncle Joe’s drivers came round with a dark blue Toyota Corolla. Dawson thanked him and got in, adjusting the seat to accommodate his long legs. The odometer read 130,000 miles, but except for a few rattles emanating from the rear somewhere, the little car felt quite solid. It was going on eleven now. Dawson wanted to get as much out of this Kumasi trip as possible, and he thought of a way he could do it. He scrolled to Akua Helmsley’s name on his phone and called.
“Good morning, Chief Inspector Dawson,” she answered cheerfully.
“Good morning, Miss Helmsley. I’m in Kumasi at the moment.”
“Oh,” she said with interest. “Anything I can help you with?”
“Do you know of an American man called Mr. Chuck?” he asked. “I was told that he has a mining site adjacent to Bao Liu’s.”
“You mean Chuck Granger, from the beautiful state of Utah. He was on this reality show last year called Tropical Gold on the Explorer Channel, which is out of the UK—all about his adventures in gold mining in Ghana.”
Dawson frowned. “Really?” He’d never heard of this.
“Yes. After we—The Guardian, that is—ran a story on it, the Ghana government got embarrassed because it gave the appearance of sanctioning illegal mining right under their noses—not exactly the sort of thing that would look good on the Mines and Natural Resources Minister’s CV.”
“It isn’t,” Dawson agreed. “What happened next?”
“Well, the ministry made a big show of hunting the crew down, as they put it—which is a joke since it was common knowledge the crew were being put up by the Explorer Channel on the top floor of the Golden Tulip Hotel, where I’m staying myself. Then they made a big fuss of kicking them out of the country—Granger included—‘in order to safeguard the interests of our dear motherland,’ or some such nonsense. And guess what? A few months later Granger comes right back and continues his mining minus the cameras.”
“Only in Ghana,” Dawson said bitterly. He wanted to be more furious, but sometimes, righteous anger could be exhausting. “I suppose from the minister’s point of view it was, ‘How much is it worth to you to return, Mr. Granger?’”
“Exactly. Listen, Chief Inspector, since you’re in Kumasi, why not swing by my hotel and I�
��ll show you the Tropical Gold website plus all the information I’ve gathered on Granger. I’m down at the tennis courts. You can meet me there. Do you play, by any chance?”
“Tennis?”
She laughed. “Yes, Chief Inspector. Tennis.”
“No. I don’t go around in tennis circles.”
“Nor do I, actually.” She laughed again. “And I can’t play either.”
“I will see you as soon as possible, given traffic.”
“I’ll be waiting, Chief Inspector.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The tennis courts were shaded and cool. Akua Helmsley was relaxing on the patio to one side in a reclining chair, wearing shorts that showed off her dangerously slim, smooth legs. Dawson firmly avoided looking, or even stealing a glance. She moved from the recliner to a table so that she could sit beside him with her iPad.
“All right,” she said, waking it from sleep. “Let’s look at Chuck Granger. Here’s the official Tropical Gold page.”
The page showed a bulky, redheaded American man in his early thirties with a five o’clock shadow and a fierce frown.
“‘Property mogul Chuck Granger had it all,’” Akua read. “‘At a mere twenty-eight years old, Granger was worth two million dollars. But so tied up in making the deal, so determined to make more and more money, he ignored the warning signs heralding the US housing crash that triggered the worldwide recession. Granger lost everything.’”
Dawson was following her reading, slightly distracted by the faint scent of her fragrance. “So he lost everything in the real estate crash,” he said, “and decided the solution was to come to Ghana and mine for gold?”
“That’s the premise of the program, yes.”
Dawson sat back and laughed. “That’s just foolishness.”
“Not when it’s watched by millions of viewers in the United Kingdom and the United States,” she pointed out, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs at the ankles.
Dawson’s eyes very nearly strayed, but he remained resolute and held his gaze firmly on her face. “Only Ghanaians can lawfully engage in small-scale mining,” he said, “but an American lands at Kotoka Airport with a film crew and proceeds to mine illegally under the full glare of cameras, and no one asks any questions.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“But that attitude doesn’t go far enough,” she said, looking at him fully in the eyes. “I intend to find out exactly how and why that happened. Who gave these guys the green light, and who pocketed a tidy packet of dollars for it?”
Dawson felt moderate alarm stir within him. “Be careful how deep you dig, Miss Helmsley. Dangerous people high up want to keep things undercover.”
“But I would never say that to you,” she said. “I’m an investigator too—like you. Not a cop, but I have similar motivations. I have to go after these things and find out the truth. It’s in my blood.”
He felt he had expressed his sentiment poorly. “I just mean . . . well, pick your battles carefully. Even I drop police cases that aren’t worth the trouble.”
“Thank you for your concern, Chief Inspector.” She turned back to her iPad. “Take a look at one of the Tropical Gold episodes—just to give you an idea of what they’re like.”
The scene showed Granger, a group of galamsey boys, and an engineer caught in a drenching downpour at a mining site. An excavator was perched at the edge of a pit, and the operator was attempting to move earth in the midst of rain and a burgeoning flood, which seemed unwise to Dawson. Gradually, as the camera pulled away, the sodden ground at the edge of the pit began to sink, and then collapse. A lot of yelling and running around followed, with the operator leaping from the excavator before it slid forward in the mud and ended up in the pit on its side.
Dawson was incredulous. “Is it real?” he asked, eyes glued to the screen.
“An equal number of people say it’s fake as say it’s real. Now, watch this.”
She fast forwarded to the end of the episode and allowed the credits to roll up to a certain point, at which she froze the screen.
“Read what’s at the very bottom, Chief Inspector, if you would.”
“It says, ‘Explorer Channel wishes to thank . . .’” Dawson blinked. “‘. . . wishes to thank the Ministry of Tourism, Ghana.’” He exchanged an astonished glance with Helmsley.
“Exactly,” she said, nodding. “They somehow got sanction and approval from the tourism minister to come to Ghana and tramp up and down digging up the landscape.”
“Could be that Explorer lied about the true purpose of the visit?” Dawson suggested. “Maybe they told the ministry a half truth like, ‘We’d like to film the beautiful forests of Ghana while highlighting the tragedy of environmental destruction at the hands of illegal gold miners.’”
“Wow,” she said, looking at him with new admiration. “Beautifully put, Chief Inspector. You might have a career in journalism.”
He grinned. “Thanks, but I’ll stick to the police stuff.”
“At any rate,” Helmsley said, “you can see how addicting it could be to follow the weekly exploits of this, sorry to say, not very intelligent Chuck Granger.”
“You’ve met him?”
“Oh, yes. Well, in a way. I went to interview him at his site and he yelled me off the property. Big, fat, ugly American.”
Dawson almost laughed at the gusto with which she said it. “How well is he doing with the mining?”
“I don’t have numbers, but I think he’s making a killing. Sorry, bad choice of words.”
Dawson smiled. “Maybe not. Do you think he would have a motive to kill Mr. Liu?”
“Oh, good gracious, no,” she said with a flick of her head. “I don’t think he gives a flying fig about the Lius. They could be dead or alive, so far as he’s concerned.”
Dawson didn’t mention Kudzo’s story of Granger calling Bao names and threatening his life.
A female waiter appeared and interrupted them to ask if they’d like anything to drink.
“I’ll take a strawberry daiquiri,” Akua said. “And Chief Inspector Dawson will take?”
“Just some bottled water, thank you.”
“Still or carbonated?”
“Still, please.”
The waiter left and Dawson turned back to Akua.
“Now, Chief Inspector,” she said coyly, “let’s do a fair trade, shall we?”
“Meaning?”
“I gave you some dirt on Chuck Granger. In return, talk to me a little about Mr. Bao Liu, as well as the young Ghanaian guy you arrested.”
Dawson smiled ironically. “Seems like you know quite a bit already.”
“But not enough. I need to do a little fact-checking. Can you oblige me?”
“I’ll do what I can, but some things might have to be off the record.”
“Understood. So, when we saw each other last outside the police station in Obuasi, you had Bao Liu’s brother, Wei, in custody. You said it was not for suspicion of murder, but ‘a different offense.’ That different offense was?”
“We would have had him down at the station for questioning only, minus handcuffs, had he not taken a swing at one of my officers.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Bad move. Which officer was that? Can you name him?”
Dawson shook his head. “Leave him out of it, please.”
“Very well. And when I saw Wei with you and the other officers, you were on your way where?”
“To confirm his alibi with a friend of his.”
“And it checked out?”
“Yes. I can’t give you the details, but they freed Wei from suspicion, and as for the officer assault, we dropped the charge with a written warning that trying to hit a police officer can have severe consequences.”
“I’ll say,” Helmsley said dryly. “Lucky you were there at the time, be
cause otherwise Wei might have gotten his arse well and truly kicked.”
“Maybe so. I don’t know.”
“Okay. And the Ghanaian gentleman?”
“Kudzo Gablah. He was one of the Lius’ galamsey workers. Not a strong suspect, and the ventured motive that he killed Bao because the guy was often late paying the workers never struck me as being anything else but weak. And his alibi was solid as well.”
“Who else do you have then, Chief Inspector?”
“No one.”
“Oh.”
She made a face of exaggerated disappointment, and he laughed. “Sorry.”
The daiquiri and still water arrived. Helmsley took a sip of hers and murmured her approval. “Any idea when the autopsy on Bao will be done?” she asked.
Dawson shook his head.
“I would like to attend the autopsy with you,” she said. “Is that possible?”
“You’re asking the wrong person, I’m afraid. You’ll have to consult the mortuary officials.”
“I’ll do that. How tough are the autopsies for you to watch?”
“It depends on the case,” Dawson said. “The worst are those with advanced putrefaction, and floaters—dead bodies that have been in water for some time.”
“I suppose you’re used to them?”
“Never really get used to them—just my reaction to them.”
“Yes, I see. Very insightful, Chief Inspector.”
“Back to Chuck Granger. Do you know where he lives?”
“I know where he used to live, at least. Not sure if he’s still there, but there’s a bed-and-breakfast place in the Ahodwo area of Kumasi called Four Villages Inn. It’s internationally famous.”
“Oh, yes,” Dawson said as he remembered passing it on the way to Lian’s house.
“A Canadian man, Christopher Scott, and his Ghanaian wife own it. She’s absolutely adorable, but he’s something of a nutcase. Obsessed with short-term tourist visas.”
Dawson shrugged. “I don’t even know what those are.”
“Nor do you need to,” she said. “It affects him because he’s in the hospitality industry. His hotel is quite unusual.”
