by Kwei Quartey
“You’ve stayed there before?”
“Yes.”
Dawson imagined Four Villages would be expensive—for him, anyway, but he was certain Helmsley had money. She had an air about her. “Do you live in the UK?”
“About three-quarters of the year, and the rest in Accra, usually. You’ve heard of the Helmsley Company?”
“I can’t say I have.”
“Belongs to my father—men’s and women’s fashion clothing. You’ll see the line in any mall in Accra or Kumasi.”
Which is why I haven’t seen it. Dawson didn’t spend much time in malls. Christine and the boys, to some extent, but not him.
“Where did you go to school?” he asked.
“Primary school here in Ghana, secondary school and university in England.”
He had guessed it. She had hot Ghanaian blood chilled by the frigid UK. “Do you speak any Ghanaian language?”
“My Twi isn’t bad.”
He nodded, but his mind was already moving onto something else. “Did your cameraman take pictures of the areas adjacent to the crime scene?”
“Yes, why?”
“I’m looking for tracks—excavator tire tracks—particularly leading from the crime scene area to Chuck Granger’s site.”
“All right. Well, let’s check and see.”
She had arranged all her laptop photos in logical, alphabetical order. She was exceptionally organized.
“What about this one?” she asked, stopping at a panorama that included Granger’s excavators on the site. “I can crop out this area of the terrain between Granger’s and Liu’s site to make it larger.”
She did that, and they both stared at the soil pattern in the photograph.
“See anything?” she asked.
“Not a thing.”
“Are you thinking Granger was trespassing on Liu’s site?”
“Maybe,” he said, not mentioning Kudzo’s observation that an excavator could have buried Bao Liu very quickly. He stood up. “I must get going now. Thank you for your help.”
“Likewise, Chief Inspector Dawson. We have a video piece coming out on the Guardian website in the next few days. I’ll send you the link.”
“Thank you very much.” As he left, he wanted to tell her, “Please be careful,” but he thought he had expressed that enough. She had made her point: she was tough, and she didn’t need to be told her job just because she was a woman.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dawson got back to Obuasi by just before two in the afternoon. In transit, he had tried to call Sergeant Obeng and was annoyed that the man did not pick up or return the call. It was true that network problems plagued telephone calls, but people used that excuse all too often.
When Dawson arrived at district headquarters, six or so civilians were playing the waiting game around the entrance to the charge office. The constable at the front desk straightened up as Dawson entered.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Afternoon.”
Behind the desk, a corporal was sitting in a chair dozing off. Dawson ripped a page out of his notebook, balled it up and lobbed it accurately at his head. He jerked awake and jumped up, almost losing his balance.
“Morning, massa,” he stammered, mortified.
“It’s afternoon, corporal,” Dawson said. “Find something to do that doesn’t involve sleeping on the job.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who is in charge today?”
“Inspector Kwarteng, sir.”
“Where is he?”
“Please, he has gone out.”
Dawson frowned. “Gone out to where?”
The corporal was sheepish. “Please, I don’t know.”
“Have you noted his departure in the diary?”
“No, please.”
Dawson was getting irritated. Does anyone take any responsibility for anything around here? “What about Detective Sergeant Obeng? Is he here? Or am I asking too much?”
“Please, I think he is in the back.”
Dawson grunted, slipped to the rear of the charge office and turned right down the dim corridor toward the jail, but he stopped and reversed direction because he thought he heard someone crying out behind him. As he drew closer, he realized it was coming from inside the storeroom. He opened the door a crack, at first seeing only mops, brooms, and cleaning supplies.
“Why are you lying?” one voice said softly. It belonged to Sergeant Obeng. “Eh? You think I don’t know what is a liar? Take your hands away from your head. I say, put them down.”
Dawson heard the sharp slap that followed and the corresponding yelp from the second person—Kudzo. Dawson opened the door fully. Startled, Obeng jumped and swung around, breathing heavily. The weapon in his hand was a wooden ruler which, as Dawson remembered all too well from his schooldays, could deliver quite a sting. Kudzo was cowering on the floor, holding his hands in front of his head in the classic defensive posture.
“What’s going on?” Dawson said quietly.
“Please,” Obeng stammered. “Please . . . I . . .”
“Wait for me at the charge office.”
“Yes, sir.” He squeezed past Dawson like a guilty dog.
Kudzo sat up partially with an imploring look. “Please, I beg you. Massa, I beg you.”
“Stay right there,” Dawson said, getting out his phone. He snapped one photo of Kudzo sitting there in distress, and then moved forward. “Lift up your face and look at me.”
He was in tears, but his face appeared untouched.
“Don’t move,” Dawson said, and snapped another picture. “Now stand up and lift your shirt.”
Kudzo did so. Dawson could see the welts. “Just as I thought. Is this where he was hitting you?”
“Yes, please. This side of my body. And on my head.”
But deep black as Kudzo’s skin was from hours in the sun, Dawson had difficulty making out the bruises in the dim light of the storeroom.
“Come with me,” Dawson said.
He took Kudzo to the court office.
“Stand by the window,” Dawson said.
The bruises were more visible now, though barely. Dawson took several photos. The results could have been a little more obvious, but it was the best he could do.
He put his head around the door and called for the constable to escort the suspect back to his cell in exchange for Obeng’s return.
The sergeant came in with his head down, unable to meet Dawson’s eyes.
“Have a seat,” Dawson said.
“Yes, sir.”
Dawson perched on the side of the table. “What were you trying to do?”
“Please, I wanted him to confess.”
“That’s how you get a suspect to confess?”
“No, sir.”
“How long were you doing that this morning?”
Obeng cleared his throat. “When you came, it was just a few minutes, sir.”
“Didn’t anyone hear you and ask what you were doing?”
“Inspector Kwarteng has gone out, and only the corporal and constable are here.”
Even if they had heard the commotion, Dawson thought, they would not have challenged their superior, Sergeant Obeng.
“The worst thing about this,” Dawson said, “is that I promised the boy that no one was going to beat him, which is exactly what you have done. Why?”
Obeng was perspiring. Dawson caught an odor from him and moved his face closer to the sergeant, sniffing the air around him. Obeng tensed up and held his breath.
“You’ve been drinking,” Dawson said.
Obeng looked away without answering, rubbing the back of his head like an ashamed schoolboy in the headmaster’s office.
“Until what time were you drinking last night?” Dawson pressed. �
��Until one or two in the morning? And then you slept and woke up and drank some more because you knew I wouldn’t be in early.”
Obeng stared at the floor morosely.
“How many people like Kudzo have you been mistreating?” Dawson asked. He suspected the sergeant wouldn’t answer, and he was right. Nor did he need to. His silence alone was confirmation that this occasion had not been the first.
Dawson got up. “Okay. I will have to report this to Commander Longdon and you will probably come up before the disciplinary board in Kumasi in the very near future. For now you are dismissed for the weekend, pending Commander Longdon’s decision on the next step. Clear? You may go home now.”
Dawson called the constable and corporal into the office to ask them if they had heard any commotion from the storeroom. The constable looked mystified and denied any knowledge of what had happened. The corporal on the other hand looked too studiously innocent, convincing Dawson that he was really guilty.
“You didn’t hear any kind of noise or struggle?” he asked the corporal for the second time, phrased differently.
“Oh, no, not at all,” he said.
His tone changed, and there was a slight tremor to his voice, which activated Dawson’s synesthesia. He felt as if he had closed his left fist around a cactus stem. “I know you’re lying. You don’t want to get involved with any scandal.”
The lance corporal looked down at his feet. “No, sir. Yes, sir.”
“If you see something you know is wrong,” Dawson said, “you report it. Understood? Bring Mr. Gablah back here and then get back to work.”
Kudzo was subdued as he came in.
“Take a seat,” Dawson told him in Ewe. “Tell me what happened from the very beginning.”
“Please, he told the lance corporal to take me to him for questioning, then when I came to the room—”
“Which room? This one?”
“Yes, please.”
“Go on.”
“Then he asked me why I don’t just confess that I killed Mr. Bao, and I told him, please, I haven’t done anything. And he told me he will beat me if I don’t confess, and I said no. So, then he took me to the store place and started to hit me.”
“How long was he beating you?”
“Please, I don’t know. Maybe ten or twenty minutes.”
Dawson estimated that it was probably less.
“Did you Kill Mr. Bao?”
“Why should I?” Kudzo said more heatedly. “He was paying me, so why should I kill him? I never even had job before. Please, I came from Keta. When I was there, I couldn’t get any work, and my father too, he wasn’t working and my mother is sick and she needs an operation. A certain friend of mine was mining gold at Aniamoa and he asked me why I don’t come and work with him there and then I can make some money to send home.”
“Was that Brave?”
“Yes, please,” Kudzo said, startled. “Please, how do you know?”
“We met him at the mining site. So you left Keta, your hometown, and what happened when you went to Aniamoa?”
“I started to work there, but one man, the foreman, he didn’t like me, and he sacked me from there. That’s why I came to Dunkwa to work.”
“The foreman told me you have a hot temper. Is that true?”
“Me?” Kudzo said, pointing at himself incredulously. “No, please.”
Dawson smiled slightly. “How did you come to work for Mr. Bao in particular?”
“I went to watch how they are mining at his site, and when he saw me standing there, he told one of the guys to go and call me, and then he asked me if I can do the work. I told him yes, I can do it.”
“How is the mining job? Is it tough?”
“Wow!” Kudzo exclaimed, in an enthusiastic burst of limited English. “It is tough! When I started, I didn’t even know. I thought because I did work on the farm in Volta Region that it would be easy for me.” Kudzo shook his head slowly and ruefully. “When I was at Aniamoa with Brave, the first day, my hands started to bleed from using those poles to stir the riverbed. Some of the men started to laugh at me and told me, that’s how it is.”
“How did Mr. Bao treat you?”
“He liked to shout at people all the time. Sometimes he insulted us, saying we were lazy. But me, I didn’t fear him, and that way he somehow respected me. Sometimes he asked me if I can go and catch some bush meat for him, like grass cutter or something like that. You know, these Chinese people, they will eat any focking meat.”
“Any what?”
“Please, any focking meat, they like it.”
“Oh, I see.” Dawson let that odd observation go. “I want to ask you something.”
“Yes, please.”
“If you didn’t kill Mr. Bao, who do you think did it?”
Kudzo’s eyes darted away. “Please I don’t have any idea about that.”
His tone changed, and again triggered Dawson’s synesthesia: a light, quick shock, like hitting one’s funny bone. He leaned forward. “Kudzo, if you want to leave this place right now, you have to tell me the truth. If not, you will stay here another night.”
Kudzo sighed and looked desperate and torn.
“I’m not going to tell anyone what you tell me,” Dawson said, while thinking, Why should he trust me when I’ve already broken my promise that no one would beat him?
Kudzo was struggling, but the truth won. “Okay,” he said finally, “a certain man in Dunkwa, his name is Amos Okoh. He and his father have a small farm near Bao Liu’s galamsey site. Sometimes Amos’s girlfriend goes to the farm to help Amos and his father. Mr. Bao too, he used to like Amos’s girlfriend, so when she was passing to the farm, he used to try and talk to her, telling her he could give her plenty gold.”
This is the kind of information I’m looking for, Dawson thought. “Go on.”
“One day, Amos challenged Mr. Bao and warned him not to be looking at his girlfriend and talking to her. They had an argument. When Amos was leaving by the bridge, Mr. Bao started to shake the ropes and made the bridge swing so much that Amos fell inside the deep water.”
Dawson visualized the catastrophe. “What happened?”
“Amos started to shout that he couldn’t swim. Some workers tried to use a pole to pull him out, but they couldn’t find one long enough. So Amos drowned. He died inside the water.”
“Oh, my God,” Dawson said, shocked.
“Some days passed, and then the body floated to the surface, and someone brought a canoe to go and pick it out of the water.”
“Did the police arrest Mr. Bao?”
“No, please. They questioned him, and then they let him go. Somebody said he paid the police.”
Dawson stiffened. “Did the family try to bring charges against Bao?”
Kudzo flipped up his palms and shrugged. “Please, what can they do? They are poor people. They can’t do anything. But his younger brother—his name is Yaw—said something about it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he would kill Mr. Bao for what he did to Amos.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After he wrote his report about Obeng in painstaking longhand, Dawson called Commander Longdon to tell him about it. Although he didn’t answer, he called back about thirty minutes later. Dawson gave him a summary of events.
“You did the right thing, Dawson,” Longdon said after listening to the account. “This is very disturbing and I’ll get on it as soon as I get in on Monday.”
“I gather that Sergeant Obeng has assaulted prisoners before, sir,” Dawson said.
Slight pause. “Why do you say that?”
“The way he responded to my questions, I could tell.”
“I see.” Longdon heaved a heavy sigh. “Nothing like that has been reported to me.”
Of course not, Dawson thought in
annoyance. Because no one reports anything to anyone around here—or in the GPS in general, for that matter. It was a generalization, he realized, and not completely true. He had been in a state of irritation from the moment he had stepped foot in Gifty’s guesthouse this morning.
“What about his drinking, sir?” Dawson asked.
“I know nothing about it.”
It was possible, Dawson reasoned. Commanders had more interaction with chief inspector rank and above, and less with the very low ranks. It was up to the chief inspectors to report problems like alcoholism to the commander. And it could be, too, that Obeng had successfully hidden his addiction until now.
“I’ll attend to the matter on Monday,” Longdon stated. “Do you have your report ready?”
“If one of the secretaries is available, I can have it typed early in the morning, sir.”
“Yes. Please give it to my assistant, Lance Corporal Asante, and she’ll do it.”
“Thank you.” He added quickly, “I have a request, sir.”
“Yes, what is it?” he said, a slight edge of impatience creeping into his voice.
“I’m assuming that since Sergeant Obeng will be suspended, I won’t have a partner to work on the case, so I would like to request that my normal partner, Inspector Philip Chikata from Central Headquarters, join me from Accra.”
“What?” Longdon said, sounding incredulous. “Why from Accra? I have another sergeant in Obuasi we can replace Obeng with, and if that fails, we have officers at Kumasi Regional Headquarters, for example—which is much closer.”
Dawson wasn’t going to let it go quite that easily. “Working with someone I know and trust will expedite the case, sir.”
“I won’t agree to it, and Central won’t either, Dawson.”
“Please, sir, why won’t you agree to it, sir?” he said, aware that if he wasn’t challenging Longdon’s wisdom and authority, he was dangerously close.
“Because that’s the way it is,” the commander snapped, plainly cross now.
He ended the call abruptly, leaving Dawson in an exceedingly bad mood. His mother-in-law, Obeng, Longdon, Obuasi, Kumasi . . . you name it, he was annoyed with him, her, or it. And if the commander thought he was going to forget about getting Chikata up here to Obuasi, he was very much mistaken.
