by Kwei Quartey
He held up his palm, and John executed a solid high five. “Thank you, sir,” he said, grinning broadly. “I’m a good striker too.”
“Wow,” Dawson said, impressed. “But you’ll have to go inside soon because of the rain.”
“Yes, please,” John agreed.
Dawson slipped an arm lightly around the boy’s shoulders. “You’re growing very strong. You must work very hard.”
“Yes, please.”
“Do you ever go to the farm with your uncle?”
“Yes, please. I wake up early with him sometimes, and I help him for two hours and come back to the house and bathe myself. Then I go to school.”
“Good boy,” Dawson said, looking down at him. “Stay in school, okay?”
“Yes, please.”
“John, do you know about that one Chinese man who was found dead a few days ago not far from your uncle’s farm?”
“Yes, I heard about it,” the boy said, nodding. “One of my friends was watching when they dug him out from the soil.”
“At that time, where were you?”
“Please, I wasn’t at the farm because I was having fever. I stayed in the house.”
Interesting. “But your uncle went to farm that day?”
“Yes, please.”
“Did you see or hear him leave the house?”
John wrinkled his nose. “I think so, but I don’t remember so well, because the fever was making my head confused. My auntie was with me, and she said I didn’t even know where I was until all the fever came out of my body. Anyway, I think he left the house the same time as usual.”
“Which is what time?”
“Maybe . . .” John inclined his head. “Five o’clock? When we get to the farm, by that time it’s starting to get light.”
“I see. Thank you, John. You can get back to your match now.”
“Thank you, sir. Bye.” He skipped away, happy to return to the soccer game.
Dawson smiled after him. He was as straightforward as a preteen could be. Had he provided Owura Okoh his alibi? Not exactly. It was a conditional alibi, if such a thing existed.
Returning to the Okohs’ house, Dawson walked slowly with his hands thrust in his pockets and his head down as he pondered. Okoh, as gentle a soul as he appeared to be, had a powerful motive to kill Bao Liu. If indeed the Chinese man had caused the death of Amos Okoh after having dishonored the family name with the most repugnant insult possible, what reason in the world was left not to kill the man?
But Dawson’s mind vacillated like a pendulum over Owura Okoh as a suspect. Dawson’s head said, Altogether possible. His heart said, I can’t see him committing the act of murder. For the moment, the heart was winning the debate.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dawson went briefly back to the Okohs’ to express his regrets that he had been unable to catch up with Yaw. He exchanged phone numbers with them and bade them goodbye for the time being. Never leave without a phone number if one is available. It was a fundamental rule.
Before he reached the Corolla, Dawson stopped in surprise. Fifty meters or so ahead of him, Akua Helmsley was interviewing a Dunkwa man while being filmed by Samuels. This woman is always one step behind me, he thought. Or ahead.
Dawson watched them as Helmsley finished up, thanked the man, and turned her attention to the video Samuels was playing back on what was obviously a very expensive camera. Dawson approached them.
“Chief Inspector,” she said with equal surprise as she saw him.
“Miss Helmsley.”
“Are you going to stop us from filming again?” she said with a teasing smile.
He smiled back. “This time I don’t believe I have any right to.”
“Then I’m very relieved. Come and have a look at this video I’m putting together for The Guardian to go out tonight.”
The interview was about two minutes long. Akua explained to Dawson that she would be trimming it down and doing a voice-over in English to summarize what the resident had said in Twi. The gist was he feared what was going to happen when the rain arrived late that night. With about two continuous days of downpour, flooding in Dunkwa was all but certain, and the last time that had happened it had been a disaster.
“I’ll be back here covering it in the midst of the storm tomorrow, but I want to give the prelude this evening.”
“Won’t that be dangerous, Miss Helmsley? Why not stay safely in Kumasi until the worst is over and then come back?”
“That’s for ordinary mortals and cowards.” She laughed. “Perhaps they’re one and the same. In any case, Dawson, I can assure you that Kumasi and Obuasi will have their share of the deluge, the only difference being that those towns don’t sit on a river the way Dunkwa sits on the Ofin.”
“It will break its banks, for sure,” Dawson said, thinking of people being swept away in the swirling current: a terrifying image for him.
“And I intend to be here to cover it. Care to join me?” She said it almost teasingly, as if daring him.
“Thank you, but no. I have a lot of work I need to get done at Obuasi. The office is a mess.” He realized too late that it sounded like a weak excuse.
“What brought you here today?” she asked.
“I came to talk to someone,” Dawson replied. “Do you know anything about the case of Amos Okoh—said to have drowned in one of the mining pits after falling off a bridge?”
“It was probably one of the handful of tragic cases I heard about, but I didn’t follow up on that one specifically. Why, does it have a bearing on the murder of Mr. Liu?”
“It might, yes.”
She looked at him contemplatively. “But I sense you’re not close to making an arrest.”
“That’s correct. I am not.”
“You’ll get it,” she said confidently. “I have faith in you.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Where do you go from here?” she asked him.
“I want to take a look at the scene of Amos’s drowning since I’m here.” He glanced up at the sky. “Hopefully I can beat the rain.”
“Is that your vehicle over there?” Akua said calculatingly.
She pointed at the Corolla and he said yes.
“Inspector,” she said in half amusement, “the terrain is going to slice that little thing in two. Why not let us take you there in the four-by-four? In any case, I would like to see the place myself.”
They circumnavigated the southernmost portion of Bao’s mining area and approached from the north instead. Between here and the shack stretched another moonscape expanse of yellow-gray soil churned up by excavators. Solitary shrubs poked out of the barrenness here and there, and Dawson wondered what determined their individual hardiness and ability to survive in the midst of devastation.
Ahead, a deep pond with craggy sides stretched longer than it was wide. It was across the shorter dimension that a simple rope suspension bridge was constructed. Its narrow deck, made of wooden planks lashed together, arced down toward the water’s surface and up again at the other side of the pond. At intervals, a vertical rope connected the planks with the upper rope that acted as a handrail.
“That must be the bridge the Okohs told me about,” Dawson said, pointing.
He, Akua, and Samuels alighted and walked toward the giant water-filled pit. As they drew closer, Dawson was struck that the water wasn’t the usual milky brown or yellow. Instead, it was blue.
“Why is it that color?” he asked Akua.
“Prussian blue,” she said without hesitation. “Some of the cyanide that AngloGold Ashanti uses to extract gold from the ore leaches into the soil and combines with iron oxide. That produces ferrocyanide, which is a blue color.”
“So that water contains cyanide?” Dawson asked, stunned.
“Yes.”
“So if I d
rink it, I’m a dead man?”
“Actually no. Because the cyanide is tightly bound to the iron, it’s no longer toxic.” She winked at him and smiled. “Still, I wouldn’t try it if I were you.”
“Don’t worry,” Dawson said dryly.
She gazed at the pond for a while, and then shook her head. “What a disaster.” She looked around. “The whole thing is a disaster.” Her voice shook a little, far different from the steady, professional tone she used in her video reports.
“How did you learn all this stuff?” Dawson asked with admiration.
She snorted. “The hard way. Sometimes people don’t want to tell you anything at all.”
Dawson approached the side of the pit where the rope bridge was lashed to two thick metal stakes implanted deeply into the soil two or three meters back from the edge. He had no interest in walking across the bridge, but he did want to see how it moved. He put one foot on the deck, depressed it a couple times, and generated a wave without too much effort. Then, standing to one side, Dawson pushed against the handrail until the bridge began to rock back and forth like a pendulum, the amplitude increasing with each shove.
Akua had been watching. “Looks quite precarious,” she commented.
“It is,” Dawson agreed. “I wouldn’t get on that thing if you paid me.”
But he could see how the bridge drastically cut down on the time it would take to walk around the pits to get from one side to the other. Time was money—or more precisely, gold.
He visualized what must have happened to Amos. His girlfriend, Comfort, came across the bridge from the other side of the pond. Bao was on this side and began to talk to her. Perhaps he was only being friendly, but that wasn’t the way Amos saw it as he appeared on the scene. Amos’s warnings to leave his girlfriend alone led to a shouting match, at the end of which Bao ordered Amos off “his” land. Were it not for Comfort pleading with Amos, he might have physically attacked Bao at that moment. Instead, he relented and went across the bridge to the other side with Comfort. But that wasn’t the end of the matter because Bao began to taunt Amos, capping it off with the insult that tops all. Furious, Amos turned back menacingly, machete in hand.
Panicking—or not—Bao began to rock the bridge even as Amos approached. Perhaps the young man stopped to catch his balance, or he might have tried to keep moving forward despite the violent swaying motion. At any rate, to the horror of Comfort and everyone else looking on, Amos tumbled in.
It seemed strange that nothing had been at hand—no pole, no rope—to use as a rescue device, but from Dawson’s years in the police force, he knew all about crowd paralysis—multiple onlookers apparently incapable of springing into action as a disaster unfolds before them, whether it is a drowning, beating, or a rape. So even if something had been available to pull Amos out of the water, precious and irretrievable seconds might have been lost. Now Amos was dead, and the murder of Bao that had followed was quite possibly in revenge for that death.
Akua joined Dawson as he walked around a portion of the pit’s perimeter. The environment seemed alien and hostile to him.
He looked up at the sky as the first flitter of lightning showed, followed by a deep rumble of thunder. “We’d best be going.”
By the time Dawson got back to his hotel, night had fallen and the rain had begun. He called Chikata.
“How far, boss?” the sergeant asked, slang for “How goes it?”
Dawson gave Chikata a brief rundown of the case and the grim discovery of an intoxicated Sergeant Obeng beating up a suspect.
“Ewurade. That’s a shame. So, what’s next?”
“I want you to come up from Accra and replace him, but Commander Longdon doesn’t agree. He says he can find someone from either Obuasi or Kumasi, which I’m sure he can, but I don’t care.”
“Ah, massa.” Chikata began to laugh. “You are really something. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m not asking you to do anything,” Dawson said lightly.
“I’ll work on it.”
“Thank you, Chikata.”
Dawson ended the call with the satisfaction that he had just launched a potent chain reaction. Chikata would be on the phone to his powerful Uncle Theo within minutes, and before long the heavy machinery would creak into action.
At five thirty on Monday morning, Dawson jerked awake to a fat plop of water in the middle of his forehead. He sat up quickly and looked at the ceiling. It was pouring outside and the roof was leaking. He jumped out of bed and fetched a bucket from the bathroom, putting it on top of the bed to catch the leak, only to discover another in one corner of the room. Disgusted, he pulled a T-shirt over his head and went outside to the front desk, where the receptionist was chewing gum and doing her nails.
“My roof is leaking,” he said.
She looked up languidly with lashes so long they must have been weighing her lids down. “Mm-hm? Do you need a bucket?”
“No, I think maybe I need the roof to be fixed.”
“Ah, okay. I will inform the manager.”
I have no doubt you will. Returning to the room furious that he hadn’t moved out before the storm, Dawson decided to pack up his things, check out and take his bags to the Obuasi office until he could find a better place to stay. His first phone call of the day was to Christine, who asked how he was doing. He complained about the rain and the leaking roof.
“How’s the case?” she asked.
“Haven’t got very far,” he said gloomily.
“Something will break soon. What are you doing today?”
“Getting out of this rotten hotel first. I have to pack up my things before I have to swim out of here.”
“Bye, sweetie.”
“Oh, wait,” he said hastily before she hung up. “I’m broke—can you mobile me a little cash?”
“Okay—I’ll send what I can by MTN Money.”
“Thanks, love. I appreciate it.”
Dawson divided all his stuff between his small suitcase and backpack, then went to the front desk, where he paid his bill with what seemed a painful amount of money when he considered that his paycheck was more than a week away. Miss Eyelashes wrote out his receipt in agonizingly slow longhand, and then Dawson was finally out of the place. The question was, where was he going to stay?
As he drove slowly along Obuasi High Street, Dawson couldn’t help thinking about Akua Helmsley. By now, she would be fighting the elements in Dunkwa. He remembered her invitation to join her and felt uncomfortable about his quick refusal. True, it might not be police work exactly, but what would be wrong with joining her for the unique experience? And his excuse? Work in the office. Akua was going to brave the storm, and Dawson was going to tidy up the office.
He stopped at an MTN kiosk and picked up the cash Christine had sent him, and then he continued up the street toward divisional headquarters. He spotted a hotel called Coconut Grove on the right-hand side and pulled over. Soaking wet, he went into the dark lobby, which smelled musty and was lit by a couple of LED lanterns. No power, courtesy of the Electricity Corporation of Ghana.
Dawson asked what the room rates were. Not too bad, but he wanted to see the rooms before he took one. Now was a good time to spot leaks.
The receptionist dragged on a pair of slippers and showed him to the cheapest accommodations: a small room, tiny toilet, and shower. At least there’s air conditioning, Dawson thought, looking at the unit on the wall. “Does that work?” he asked the receptionist.
“Yes,” she said. “When the power comes on.”
“You have no generator?”
“We have it,” she said, “but it’s not operating at the moment.”
Wonderful. “Okay,” Dawson said. “I’ll take it. I’ll bring my bags in later on when I return.”
He paid a deposit at the front desk and went back outside into the rain.
Once inside the division office, he changed into the dry shirt he had brought with him, looked around the office, and vowed he was going to make a dent. He began by sorting old folders into two piles: more than two years old, and two years old or less. As he thumbed through them, Dawson frowned, noticing that some of Sergeant Obeng’s reports were incomplete or slapdash. What in heaven’s name had been going on at these headquarters?
He was a little over an hour into his work when he thought again of Akua. He slid his phone out, hesitated, and then called her. “Good Monday morning, Miss Helmsley.”
“Good wet Monday morning, Chief Inspector.”
“It is. You are in Dunkwa, I suppose?”
“I am. It’s a disaster—environmentally and in all sorts of other ways.”
“Are you safe?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you for asking. I have Samuels with me.”
“I want join you,” he said abruptly.
“What?” She almost gasped. “Really? Oh, wonderful!” She sounded happier than Dawson might have expected. “Do you have wellies?”
“Do I have what?”
“Wellingtons—rubber boots.”
“I don’t.”
“You’ll need some. There’s cyanide and mercury and sulfuric acid and other nasty substances in the floodwater, all leached out of the runoff from the mines. Samuels has an extra pair of boots. What’s your size?”
When he told her, she said she thought the Wellingtons should fit, more or less.
“I will leave in a few minutes,” he told her. “Mind you, it might take me at least two hours.”
“Not a problem,” she responded. “We’re going to be here for quite some time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Dawson would never make it to Dunkwa in one piece in this weather. The road was flooded and impassable for a small vehicle. However, a solution did exist. In this part of the world, because of these very conditions, the tro-tros were old-style four-wheel-drive Land Rovers. True, they did not hold as many passengers as the usual tro-tros, but they were powerful and could withstand the punishing terrain, nasty weather, and treacherous mud.
