Unlike Ruth, the woman was strong enough to chew iron, chew it and spit it out. She had steel in her veins. That reminded me of mom too.
Freda never really knew her father as a father. He was the guy she visited sometimes as a child. He was the older guy with a ready gift. Gifts were never enough. She wanted a father, not someone who handed out presents. When Freda set her sights on me, it felt like she knew what she wanted and it was not me. In my sometimes silly way, I imagined I would never have even caught her eye if I’d been a clerk in a store. She did not want me, she wanted me and the detective and the bit of glamour and the money. I was wrong about the money. She had more than me. And I was using her, for companionship, although it seemed increasingly we liked different things, for sex.
Where was I?
Oh yes, stuck in traffic, stuck in life. Driving to work, stuck in traffic at Mile 3, stuck in relationship traffic, Freda, Ruth.
12
At thirty-one, most men already had a wife and family. Some, at forty, were enjoying their grandchildren. A large family is important, in so many ways. The larger the family the more support we all have, especially through the hard times. Support for hard times is important when the hard times never seem to end.
It would have been easier if mom had other children to harass, but my four brothers were married and propagating. In her eyes, they were blameless, fine, perfect (except for their jobs and their wives and how they raised their children). So she would go on about that “girl friend of yours”, that “You know you’ll never marry her,” and then always throwing in “Hee, if your father was alive...”
Dad had a cardiac arrest a year before he would have retired. I remember him talking about how he looked forward to finally relaxing after years at the Federal Ministry of Tourism and Culture. By then he was Director General of the Department. But it was stressful work, getting tourists to Nigeria often seemed hopeless, and his relaxing never happened.
One day nine years ago his secretary had found him on his office floor unconscious. He died three days later in Intensive Care.
He never regained consciousness.
We never said good-bye.
Mom’s heart was broken. Maybe that was some of the reason for the marriage pressure. After his death mom stayed at home, my younger siblings alternating being with her, helping her. And I would have thought more about it all, bringing the case to the same dead halt I was in traffic, along with the plot, when my cell phone rang.
Thank goodness! It was probably Ade, and I could think about work for a change. Thinking about my love life was only taking me in endless circles.
I flipped open the cell. The screen had Freda’s picture.
Right.
“Hello dear,” I said. “I’m driving to work. Sorry I haven’t had time to call.”
“Uh huh. Weren’t you up to mischief the minute I left?”
“Not with this case.”
“It must be very hard for you,” she said, her voice warming. “All that pressure.”
“Couldn’t be more important right now, honey. The Chief wants results, everyone’s watching.”
“I wish I could be there. Have you been interviewed? Should I look for you on TV?”
I smiled to myself. “No, honey. I’ve stayed away from them.”
“Mom is doing a little better. I miss you.”
Taking a little breath, I responded appropriately and said I missed her too.
I heard the shadow in her voice. “Fine, darling. Well. I’ll see you tomorrow evening. Will you still pick me up at the airport?”
“If I can.”
Pause. “I understand. Give it your best try, right? Kisses. Bye.”
“Bye.”
“Love you.”
“Bye.”
Click.
Finally the traffic began to move again. I’d turned off my engine when it was obvious the wait would be long, as part of the campaign to avoid more pollution. The other reason to turn the engine off was to conserve gas. One of the biggest problems in Port Harcourt was getting fuel to drive at all. As I started the engine I noticed my tank was a little below half full. That meant I should fill it up right away. In this fuel scarcity, it was best to be cautious, and not end up stranded with an empty tank.
The fuel shortage started gradually, at first isolated to individual parts of Port Harcourt. Over the months it spread until it covered the whole city. Fuel shortages were common during the long period of military rule in the eighties, and the elected government also never solved the problem. By now every day there were long queues at fuel stations.
Bottom line why we had nothing at the bottom of our tanks? Maintenance. We had oil refineries that produced gasoline we could use, but they were not maintained. In the past five or six years, one refinery or another was always down, making gasoline harder and harder to get. Reserves were used up quickly, and on bad weeks, when most or all of the refineries were off line, there would be little or no gasoline at all.
Why the maintenance problem? Government officials blamed the lack of genuine spare parts for even routine maintenance. One refinery was shut down until it could be rebuilt, which probably meant it was permanently closed. Good for the environment, lousy for the economy and driving.
There were three functioning refineries. They alone could not produce enough fuel for the country. Port Harcourt, the economic hub, was the first to feel it, but by now the shortages had spread throughout the country. Nigeria was slowly grinding to a halt. Just as it had a decade ago.
It’s great when we learn from history. Or it would be if we ever did.
The government tried the obvious bizarre solution, to important gasoline into a country that exported crude oil. Unfortunately, much of the imported gasoline was toxic, badly refined with dangerous chemicals. The exhaust smelled unusually bad, and the air became heavily polluted.
The gasoline was contaminated with heavy concentrations of lead. Good for engines, bad for people. Gasoline illegal to sell in the developed countries that developed the gas.
People with low resistance suffered dizzy spells, some times collapsed in the streets. Our worst fear was for our children, and what could have happened if we kept using that gasoline. Lead is particularly damaging on children, Nigeria’s future.
People listened to the warning but did not hear it. They tried to avoid the leaded fuel. Less was imported, but it kept coming in, because people needed something to put in their cars. While the government “worked to stop this tragic situation”, a couple of years ago motorists were told to turn off their engines at traffic halts or while waiting in the long queues in service stations. Fuel attendants had to wear surgical masks to protect themselves from the fumes, and were not allowed to work more than four hours at the pumps. It seems reasonable to give them the standard bribe on top of the price of the fuel itself.
Yet they keep pumping the gas, and people keep lining up for it. There was no way to avoid it because we did not know which station had clean fuel and which did not, and that was because most stations had dirty fuel.
Nigerians suffered an ongoing fuel crisis, were forced to use toxic fuel—but ‘healthy’ fuel was plentiful everywhere else in the world. There was a fuel shortage, but only for Nigerians. We produce more than two million barrels of crude oil each day. There are at least three refineries at Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna. Together they have a capacity, when they are all running properly, to refine more than half a million liters of fuel every day. But much of what fuel they do produce is exported, shipped out of the country on freighters, because exports make far more money for the government and oil companies.
After trying two empty filling stations, I finally found an open station at the end of the Old Aba Road. I did not want to cut through the line, but I had murders to solve. Ignoring the angry glares of the other drivers, I pulled up to the first open pump and flashed my badge.
While the man filled my Peugeot I apologized to the other drivers as best as I felt like. The
y did not have all of Port Harcourt waiting for my case to be solved. Soon I was back on the ground with a full tank, a full set of personal problems, and a bunch of dead ends.
With gas in my car, it was time to drive over to the Puene’s driver and talk to him in person, in the hope he had come up with something after getting a peaceful night’s sleep.
I should apologize that this whole chapter has had me slobbering about my love life, stuck in traffic and gassing up my car. It was boring for me too.
We both hope it will get more alive next chapter. And we both will not be disappointed.
13
As I turned right into the street, about four blocks down the Elegbam Road, I saw people gathered in front of an old three story building. The paint of the building had mostly peeled off the apartment block long ago. It was typical of a lot of Port Harcourt. The apartment blocks are purchased, as they aged, by owners less and less willing to maintain them. Eventually the end of the line was reached, especially when the original owner died and passed on the building to his sons. Sometimes the sons could care less. Usually if the father had built and maintained the building it was a matter of personal pride to keep it up. The children usually had other interests, and then their children and grandchildren had their own interests. The glorious inheritance declined into just this side of a slum. You can have all the sons and daughters possible, but it does not mean they will do what you plan for them.
Always, the children sold it to new owners, who saw the property as a revenue stream, not a home for people. The less revenue put back into the property, the more profit. Thus, disrepair and decay.
The building the crowd was in front of was the driver’s house. Now I saw couple of police cars, and some constables. I did not need a newspaper to know bad news.
The driver.
I had waited to give him some time. I slowed the car, looking for a place to park, trying not to think of what I knew was coming.
It was not a good neighborhood. Most of the other buildings were the same, aged apartment blocks, two or three stories tall. Some were abandoned. When the buildings fell so deeply into disrepair even the poorest would not live in them, the family owners abandoned the buildings as well. Abandoned dreams.
There were a few new three storey buildings on the block, boasting penthouses and fresh coats of paint. But they were too new and nice, spoiling the very modest nature of the neighborhood. Of course, no one lived in them because no one who could afford to pay their rents would live in this neighborhood. So the new buildings were, in effect, also abandoned.
I saw it every day, here and there, throughout Port Harcourt. Gradually, neighborhood by neighborhood, small apartment blocks went from income producing properties to abandoned death traps.
As I got out of my car I looked up at the third floor of the block, where his apartment was. It was probably one room. It was not the worst building on the block. At this point, it was not old, it had “character”. This block probably had more character than I wanted right now.
I did not see any press. That was good. The press knew who the Puenes’ driver and bodyguard was, they knew he had survived. I’d had constables keeping an eye on his apartment, with orders to keep them away from Paul, to let him rest. The press would actually understand that.
Of course, while we had not released the identity of the driver, the press knew who he was, given he was the Puenes’ long time driver. But my constables had kept them away, or they hadn’t shown up—I’d have gotten a call if there had been a problem.
They could have shown up this morning, looking for an interview. The story was certainly hot. But there were no cars or vans from the media on the street. The crowd was there for another reason than watching the TV interviewers do their jobs.
No, there was only one reason for the crowd. I stood by my car looking at the scene, then sighed and reached back into my car, opened the glove compartment, and got out some latex gloves and some evidence bags.
I walked up to two uniformed policemen keeping an eye on the crowd. They talked to each other in low tones as I came up. I flashed my badge, and restrained my amusement at their crisp salutes. I did not like receiving salutes any more than I liked giving them.
I smiled pleasantly in the face of the upcoming unpleasantness. “Well, constables. Lovely morning. Or is it?”
The younger and more eager of the two, a kid in his twenties, spoke up. They get younger every year. “We’re getting statements from the occupants of the yard.” This one was practically still a child.
The older constable coughed, smiling. He turned out to be the one I’d spoken with yesterday.
“He was okay, last we knew. The media came but we kept them away. His neighbors were first to see him yesterday we were told. He showed up about an hour after he was discharged. They heard of the accident on TV and watched for him to come home. It was considered a miracle he’d survived. He was already the neighborhood celebrity.”
I imagined he was. I also realized Puene apparently had been far from generous in paying his employees, and made a little mental note to add “staff” to my list.
“The neighbors and some of his family helped set him up with some food and drinks. He had a steady stream of well wishers all day. I saw a lot of it, before I went off shift. He had a small one room apartment on the top floor. Paul told them he felt lucky to be alive. He only talked about it being an accident. A lot of the time he slept, and they kept watch over him. By seven he could not stay awake, so they left him alone.
“This morning the neighbor next door on his floor checked but Paul did not answer his door. The neighbor heard a cell phone ringing inside, unanswered. No one had seen him leave, they didn’t think he was in shape to go anywhere. They checked the three toilets on the floor he shared with the other tenants. He was not there. So the neighbor broke open the door.
“He was dead.”
The constable looked at me.
“Right,” I finally said, “Any idea how he died? You’ve seen him?”
He nodded, removing his cap and wiping his brow. “Nothing obvious as the cause of death. He looked calm, lying in bed. I saw nothing disturbed.”
“Thanks, you’ve done great. Body still there?”
He shook his head. “They took him downtown an hour ago.”
I went into the building. It was a little better inside than outside. The paint was old but still on the walls. I took the steps two at a time to the third floor. It was a long corridor with doors on either side, windows at either end. Very basic. I knew which door was Paul’s because of the yellow tape across the door.
I said hello to a couple of tenants standing by the door. As far as they knew, after 7 last night, the driver had no visitors. We heard the toilet flush. A guy came out and it turned out he was the one who’d broken open the door.
I got their stories, which was they knew nothing, then thanked them for nothing and told them to go back to their rooms, I had work to do. They still went into their rooms but did not close their doors. I pulled aside the tape, pushed open the door and went into the room. I heard them come back out of their rooms and gather outside the door, watching. Life was tough enough, I gave them a show by leaving the door open.
I stood there a moment, taking it in, putting on a pair of gloves. One room. One window. Little furniture. Bed. No blood or other stains. No ripped sheets.
Two clothes chests, a closet. The usual clothes inside, nothing I could use. The desk and its drawers were also useless.
I looked out the one window and saw the empty building next door. The windows were mostly broken. Someone stood deep inside, in the shadows, I saw his eyes. Then he stepped back and I could not see even that.
This was a neighborhood where everything was seen.
I left the room as I’d found it, put the crime scene tape back and closed the door. The tenant who’d discovered Paul asked if I’d found anything. I told him no. He asked where I was going next. I told him, the morgue.
Half an hour later I sat with Dr. Laz in his tiny office. It looked little better than mine. He had some air-conditioning, because the stiffs had to be kept stiff. And he had a large, standing fan, creaking constantly as it laboriously moved back and forth in its arc, but at least it helped move the air around, providing a little welcome breeze.
When I’d come in he had just finished one autopsy, and was about to start on the driver. At least he thought so, his clip board was thick with papers.
At first look, Dr. Laz called it as death due to natural causes, injuries from the accident most likely. He knew who the corpse had been, so he looked quickly for signs of violence other than the accident, found nothing. He already had sent some blood work out, but it would take a while to come back.
Died of injuries from the accident? Surely you jest but even Shirley doesn’t make that kind of bad joke. It would simplify at least this sudden dead end but I still asked, “Natural causes. The accident?”
Dr. Laz nodded, but then shrugged. “This is important, so I’ll take a close look. Right now there is no way to tell for certain. He was banged up badly in the accident, that was just thirty or forty hours ago. There is a lot of bruising. There could be internal bleeding.”
I thanked him for a dead end on the dead end, and drove back to headquarters and went straight to Chief Akpan’s office.
14
The door was open, Stella was somewhere else, so I just walked in. Akpan was talking with Sergeant Eze. He looked up at me, alert. They looked about done. We all nodded at each other. I waited until they finished about some administrative manner, then Akpan dismissed Eze and told me to sit, indicating the chair facing him, looking impatient for whatever I could tell him.
I sat.
He pulled back a little in his chair, tense but hiding it pretty good for someone whose job was at stake. The former Chief had been imposing. Akpan could not pull that off.
“Probable Natural causes. Dr. Laz phoned me. We’re in a hole, aren’t we?”
PATRON OF TERROR Page 5
