We came up to the front door of the new building. “Thanks for the welcome back. I’ll see Akpan, then let you know what’s up. It’ll probably be by phone, sounds like I have some running around to do. Tell everyone I’m back.”
“Tell them yourself.”
“See you later today, probably tomorrow. But,” and I stopped for a moment at the front steps of the new building, “it’s good to be working with you again, man.”
Ade nodded and turned back to our office in the old building. He had proven to be one of my best assistants. He was good on a scene, and even better on a computer preparing the paperwork the files demanded.
I nodded.
7
I went inside and took the stairs up to the floor with the office of the Chief. I stopped at the door and debated with myself whether I could pull off a salute. I decided Akpan was trying to be nice, and I was trying to be nice, and a salute would just be awkward. He knew me, knew it would be out of character.
I never really came around to learn the salute thing at the Police College. Wasn’t that for the more formal regular police, the ones who went to a lot of meetings?
So I nodded to Stella and just walked in, smiled at him and sat down.
The office still bore the aura of his predecessor, my mentor. Nothing had changed. Probably Akpan did not want his desire for the job too obvious, and moving in new furniture would not be a demure touch.
He was sitting behind his desk. He waited until I sat, then handed over a file. It was not very thick.
“Everything you need to know is in there. I talked with Amadi. So you’re cleared to get back to work.”
I smiled.
That was it, I had reading to do. I stood. “How did you do it?” I asked. “I did break some rules. There were complaints.”
He relaxed in the big swivel chair. He held my eye for a minute. “Don’t let it go to your head, but it wasn’t hard. They need you more than they need the rules. Let’s say there’s been enough time for them to cool off.
Get going on that case, lieutenant.”
I returned his look, and said, “Thanks.”
And that was it. And it was easy enough.
I went back down and walked across the yard to my car in the parking lot and got into my car, dropping the file on the back seat. I took my cell from my pocket and speed dialed Ade. “It’s me. I have the file. I’ll look at it soon but first I’m going over to the hospital to see the driver.”
“Do you want me on anything yet?”
“Yes.” And I got from my shirt pocket the list I had made earlier and read it to him. I added a few things. Ade knew the grid.
I headed to the Federal Medical Center.
I doubted if I could get anything else out of the driver, but I can just give it a try. And then there was Lewis Filatei, the other Governorship aspirant of the National Conservative Party to consider in the investigation, given that he and Puene had been at each other’s throat. Won’t that make the men desperate and enraged at each other but nearly enough to off each other? Maybe not. That’s what I’d told myself, but deep down I couldn’t shake the feeling that Lewis Filatei was so desperate to be Governor to get rid of his only opposition.
I first met the man a year ago, when he paid a condolence visit to the families of the victims of the ill fated December 10, 2005, Sosoliso aircraft. It had crashed enroute to Port Harcourt from Abuja. He also visited the survivors of the crash at the Teaching hospital, and pledged a handsome amount for their upkeep at the hospital. It felt like a good publicity stunt.
I had tagged along with his entourage, including his media aide, Peter Chinda because I had been assigned to provide security for the politician. It was hard not to be cynical, but Lewis Filatei used the plane crash to push his election campaign--and that day, he proved extremely good at it.
Lewis Filatei had been short and fat, with a pear shaped body, rounded head, square shoulders. He was wider front to back than side to side. I guess when you have so much money and power you did not have to be tall and thin.
He was a model of Nigerian upper class fashion. Nice dressing covered up the real man.
He was not Yoruba, and usually wore expensive white Nigerian Agbada apparel of rich lace worn on important festive occasions. That day he had on an abeti-aja hat on flowing agbada, and pants with embroidery that day. An Abeti-aja hat has long triangular sides, folded up like the ears of a dog. He also wore a buba, a loose neck shirt usually long enough to go halfway down the thighs. A buba is worn over a Sokoto –the lower part of a man's clothing. To complete the typical Yoruba clothing, an Agbada is worn over the buba and sokoto. It usually has a V-shaped neck, long enough to reach the floor.
I remembered his Media Aide, Chinda, looking almost as wealthy, wearing a long sleeved buba, pants and a fila hat, a round cap with beautiful embroidery.
These are the traditional clothes. Mostly, especially in the cities, we wear western clothes: pants, dresses, shirts, blouses, baseball caps. He and his aide’s clothes alone defined them as belonging to the wealthy class.
Filatei was a solid politician. Not only did he dress well, traditional but expensive, he also made a show
of being concerned for other people. He appeared generous and warm. Yet as I watched him go through his paces, something did not feel right, I tried to remember. Aren’t all politicians supposed to love the people, responding warmly to anyone, especially in an election year? Why was I suspicious of him? There was nothing more than maybe a cynical politician. But that does that make the man a murderer?
Well, he hid the cynicism unless you wanted to look close. And he had managed that very well, because for the Filateis of this world, the entire world is a stage. Not in the Shakespearean sense: it isn’t that he is a performer but that we were all there to watch him perform. His kind love to be the center of attention. And they never have enough. He was running for the state house, tipped as the man likely to win in the Party Primaries to emerge his Party’s flag bearer for the Governorship election, and possibly now behind the murder of the Puenes. Not that I did not want to believe it but I have to provide proof first before making such outrageous claims but I never ruled it out.
Everyone in Port Harcourt knew that the two factions of the National Conservative Party, and they were at war in the fierce internal politics that had ensured that each could go to any length to emerge his Party’s candidate. Puene led, or tried to, one of them. And on the other hand, was the Filatei faction. And both sides had fought each other directly at that terrific “peace” meeting. Perhaps this was the handiwork of Filatei and his faction of the NCP in the State, but I can’t go around making such claims. There’s still the investigations, facts and evidences to back such claims.
8
I breathed out heavily in exhaustion.
My brain racking had started to give me a daunting headache.
At the moment, all I had to back up my claims was that at first Puene was the likely candidate to fly the National Conservative Party’s flag come general election as the Governorship candidate, after his first rival was disqualified from the race after he was implicated with a known criminal in Port Harcourt and drug lord Barigha Duncan, a series of murders and plot to kill Puene before the party now brought another candidate.
It was like the NCP leadership in the State was playing politics with these two politicians. And with their supporters. And with the people of the state. But it had been playing out increasingly desperate these last weeks leading up to the Council election that anything was possible.
It was all about who would get power. None of it was about cubing corruption, poverty or pollution—well, it was about those things, in a way. The warring sides tried a peace meeting to select a consensus candidate to run for the State house job after Governor Fangbe. It had not worked out so good. My definition of ‘not so good’ was that people were killed at the peace meeting.
Behind it all was the party’s State chairman. He was one of the loudest v
oices calling for Puene to step down for Filatei at the peace meeting to settle the matter between the two men. Puene was furious that the State Party Chairman was siding Filatei, telling him to step down. He called the peace meeting was a sham, and that the Party delegates should decide at the Primaries. He stormed out of the conciliation meeting.
When Puene left the hall, after finishing his angry speech and storming out, he was suddenly drenched. Filatei’s boys threw water at him as he left. That was when Puene’s supporters attacked Filatei’s.
One of the Filatei supporters was killed from machete wounds. Then the bus that carried the Puene supporters to the meeting was torched. After that everyone joined in.
In the end, there was one dead and thirteen seriously wounded in the fighting that concluded the peace meeting.
The Party Chairman’s argument was that Filatei was a better qualified candidate to represent the Party at the April polls giving that Lewis Filatei was once a Governor in the defunct second republic. He was a seasoned politician of the old breed. Better experienced. And he was Fangbe’s likely choice over Puene because it was even rumored that Lewis Filatei stepped down for Joseph Fangbe four years ago and was instrumental in the campaign of Joseph Fangbe, the man who became governor who was said to have a gentle man’s agreement with Filatei that he would succeed him after his tenure.
At the general elections of four years ago, Lewis Filatei was said to have joined forces with Fangbe and the national leadership of the NCP to ensure Port Harcourt, the oil capital and the richest State in the nation, was under NCP control. But some say it was because Mr. Filatei came from the same area as the incumbent Governor. They say they were even related. While Dr. Vincent Puene was from Ogoni.
Puene had repeatedly made it clear that he would not step down for Filatei. He said to Filatei’s face he’d challenge him in the primaries or if it came to that, the general election, if had to pursue his political ambition from the platform of another party, and win. For Filatei, Puene declaration was a public humiliation. He was insulted, and that made him an even more desperate opponent. But he should not have underestimated Filatei.
Filatei responded by calling Puene a Neolithic political nobody. It was not nice. Puene retorted that if he lost in the primaries he would run for another party.
Tension was created throughout the state leading up to the Party primaries. And reviewing that history, it was hard not to start with the “motive” that his political enemies or should I say, enemy decided enough was enough. But being what it was, and there were a few other enemies who could use an ‘accident’.
Someone had wanted him dead. And I did not have long to find out who.
The Primaries was only weeks away, and if Filatei had anything to do with the Puenes deaths, he should be stopped from running for State house.
Puene and his wife were dead but the politics were very much alive. I did not have much time to try to track down the biker and whoever might be behind him. I was used to murders of passion. Those were the most of my work. Sometimes, greed was involved.
Once my case involved police corruption and organized crime.
But never before death on this level in Port Harcourt while the rest of Nigeria is normal enough as it can be. That is if you believe that. Because high level murders still occurred in other States.
I had worried political murder would curse our politics, but had hoped it would remain a worry.
It was Darwinian. The murders were probably a part of the unavoidable natural evolution of Nigerian history after the military dictatorship was replaced by an elected government in 1999.
The hopeful politicians armed gangs of young thugs to intimidate opponents. When an opponent was considered to be a threat to the ruling party control, he was either bought off or intimidated. After the elections the thugs kept the uzis. Over ten years, the thugs had grown into independent organized gangs, involved in both crime and politics. Sometimes the politicians used them during election periods. Sometimes they became terrorist gangs in the Niger Delta, fighting the oil companies and government. Today they were both controlled and uncontrolled, and friends became enemies quickly. Especially for a price.
Up until now, that was as far as it had gone.
The politicians made money or kept quiet. It was the poor youth who had been bumping each other off, competing for favor or killing for pay.
It was a class thing, I suppose.
Regular folks murdering each other. But you had to be on the street to know it, to see it, to be told about it. The street loves its secrets.
Only the occasional martial law slowed it down, but a few months later it all picked up again, with a vengeance, angry about waiting.
I did not need more overtime. Which murder victim deserved justice? Live and let live or let them kill each other. Maybe they would tire of killing each other, or at least run out of each other, or eventually the worst would be gone, and the rest would be too inept to do much damage.
I had not been indifferent to the killings. Many took place outside my jurisdiction. Those which did, I had a corpse, a name and some bullets in the body. No one wanted to talk. I ended up putting the files into a small cabinet nicknamed ‘the dead box’. Three years ago, I bought a bigger box. Earlier this year I had to send the old files to archives, to make room for the new ones.
Only goes to say that politics in Nigeria was not for the likes of Puene on the other hand, who had joined politics in 1999 when the ban on elections by the military government was lifted. That marked Nigeria’s return to democratic rule after almost two decades of the khaki boys seizing power. Freshly returned from yankee to serve his people and contribute his quota to the development of his State of origin, Rivers State, according to the American trained gynecologist, he had soon learnt that politics is played a little differently from the American democracy he’s used to.
He narrowly escapes an assassination attempt, not due to his luck, but was not intimidated by the threat to his life and never withdrew from the race to be Governor of Rivers State if for nothing else but to reaffirm his political ambition in Nigeria.
It was easy enough to suspect Puene’s opponent, Lewis Filatei. But it could have been a lot of other people. And I had no leads. Leads are good. Both Puene and Filatei had their loyal supporters. Any of Filatei’s supporters could have arranged or killed Puene and his wife without Filatei knowing or agreeing, and it would be difficult associating him with the murders in that instant. It could also have been any of Puene’s other enemies like I said.
I needed to find out as much fact as possible, and maybe evidences of Filatei’s involvement. So, first stop, where I was driving to, was the driver. Now that he was presumably more coherent, maybe I could pick up some details from him.
9
I reached the Federal Medical Centre quickly. The front desk was manned by smart nurses in spotless whites. The Centre was the biggest hospital in Port Harcourt.
I picked out the prettiest nurse and told her I came to see Paul Miẹdide. Her smile was pleasant as she consulted her computer. I looked her up and down, it was one of those automatic detective police things. I saw clues.
And then she pleasantly looked up and told me Paul Miedide had been discharged.
“Discharged?” I straightened. “He was involved in an accident where two people were killed. I thought he was under observation. Or something.”
“Sorry, all I know is what the computer says.” She clicked on the keyboard. “He had significant bruising but no other injuries or physical trauma. There was no security code on him. No guard. He was a regular patient. Sorry, it says he was discharged, to his own care, this morning.”
“Nurse, that is indeed disappointing.”
She smiled. Her lips were nice.
“Did he have any visitors?”
“No. Dear. I am afraid I am disappointing you, over and over.”
Her eyes were lovely too. “Only, I’d think, when you were at work.”
I don
’t know what came over me. Okay, all right. I know what came over me, so to speak. And I tried to get a date. Her name was Ebiere. That’s a Riverrine name. I went for lunch. She was not easy, and I felt the thrill of a hunt coming. She asked for my phone number instead. I wrote it on the back of my Homicide card and she pocketed it with a promise in that smile.
I didn’t get a date from the nice nurse but I did get Paul’s home address from her. He’d had several hours on me. Not he was going anywhere or fleeing. Not if he was not involved in this in any way. So, my detective instinct was that after being in a brutal car accident and in the hospital overnight, he had gone straight home. I called in for a patrol car to check his home address to make sure he was home, and to keep him there while I drove over to the Police station in the area where the accident happened.
I wanted to take a look in day light at the Puene’s vehicle, and talk with the constables who had been on the scene again, and the police post where the wrecked SUV had been towed was closer than his home address. To me, it was like the next logical step. Who else did I have to interview?
I called in again on my cell to see where those constables from last night were on duty or be located and called in if they weren’t on duty, then got back in my car and drove to the RumuOkoro police post. By a Homicide detective with State headquarters sure has its perks.
By the time I got there, I received call that both constables were on duty, and at that post as luck would finally have it.
At that moment, the post did not appear terribly busy. The desk sergeant looked up looking bored. I told him who I was and why I was there. He told me to wait. I asked him why. He told me the IPO had the report and all of their officers were occupied and unable to make the report available. I told him, pretty politely I think, that I didn’t think so.
I waited while he picked up the phone. He and I waited while the phone on the other end rang. This was strange. How busy could they be? Were they all out to lunch? Literally and figuratively?
PATRON OF TERROR Page 3
