by Kwei Quartey
Cairo wrinkled his forehead. “Do we have a choice?”
Cairo had been a quadriplegic since the age of twelve and at one point had become overweight from spending so many hours in his wheelchair. But he had managed to trim down and develop tremendous upper body strength from training regularly in the backyard. He chewed on his cheek, reflecting. “We’ve done this all wrong, haven’t we? We should have tried to get him to move in with one of us before now. Then he would have become accustomed to the new surroundings.”
“I doubt he would have moved,” Darko said. “He’s too stubborn.”
Faced with a growing crisis, the Dawson brothers had patched together a plan. Franklin, a nephew who had arrived in Accra from Takoradi looking for employment after the oil boom crashed, agreed to help take care of Jacob. For a decent pay, Franklin would stay with Jacob during the week and take some time off during the weekends, when Cairo and Darko would manage somehow. Meanwhile, Cairo was getting an extension built onto the side of his house to create a bedroom for his father.
Franklin had left about thirty minutes ago to enjoy his Saturday off. Jacob announced he had finished his business, and Darko steeled himself to the task of wiping his father off and taking him to the bath cubicle to help him shower. Darko had a sense of great accomplishment once he had dressed Jacob in fresh clothes, combed his hair and clipped his fingernails. It was time for his walk around the backyard. Jacob held onto his son’s arm and shuffled along, trying to keep up the pace. As they completed the second lap, Darko’s phone rang. It was Christine.
“What’s up, love?” he answered.
She was breathing as if she had run a mile. “Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” she cried.
“Oh! I’m sorry—I didn’t hear it. I was helping Daddy. What’s wrong?”
“Gabriel—Katherine’s watchman—is dead.”
“The old guy who’s worked for her family for ages? What happened?”
“Murdered.” Her voice quivered like a rubber band. “They say his head was nearly chopped off.”
“Jesus,” Darko said before he could check himself. Christine didn’t like him using the Lord’s name in vain. “That’s a terrible shame. Was he at his home?”
“No, at Katherine’s, while he was on watch. The house girl came to work this morning about five and found the body in the courtyard. I’m at the house right now. But I don’t know where Katherine is, Dark.” Her voice shook.
Darko frowned. “Come again?”
“The police are inside the house; they won’t say if Katherine is there, but her car is in the usual spot; she’s not responding to my calls or texts.”
Christine was hyperventilating. “Dark, I’m scared. I don’t know what to do.”
“Okay, listen,” he said, “I need you to calm your breathing, okay? I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
Darko speed-dialed Cairo.
Chapter Thirteen
Darko got on his motorcycle and tore off as soon as he had reached Cairo, who said he would take over Jacob’s care.
Darko rode a motorcycle instead of driving a car to get where he was going fast. Not bothering with the busy Nsawam Road until its terminal portion, Darko took back and side streets, some too narrow to accommodate two cars alongside each other. From the N1 Highway, it was a straight shot to Dzorwulu. Darko made quick work of it.
Twenty or so onlookers stood around outside Katherine’s front gate as if waiting for a store to open. Christine ran up as Darko parked his bike against the wall. Her eyes were puffy.
“Any news?” Darko asked.
“No.” Her face looked like it might crumble, and when he put his arm around her shoulders, it did.
“Okay, okay,” he soothed her. “I’m here now.”
She nodded resolutely and collected herself. “I’m good.”
“Wait for me a moment while I find out what’s going on, okay?”
Skirting the audience, Darko strode up to Katherine’s gate, rapped on it, and waited a few moments until a voice from the other side called out, “Who is there?”
“Chief Inspector Dawson.”
The gate opened, and a uniformed policeman appeared. “Good morning, sir.”
“Morning.”
The policeman, whose ID badge said MENSAH, was a constable. He stepped aside to allow Darko through.
“My wife called me,” Darko said. “She’s the cousin of the woman who lives here.”
“Yes, sir,” Mensah said, appearing nervous. “Please, let me get my boss, Inspector Twum-Barima, to report.”
Mensah hurried into the house as Dawson looked around. The concrete courtyard was spacious. As Christine had mentioned, Kate’s white Kia was under the carport left of the house, which had a front porch with a small table and two chairs. A squat yellow generator sat in the corner of the yard on Darko’s left, and on his right, next to a small sentry kiosk, a soiled gray tarp lay on top of a human shape, dried blood surrounding it like a crimson halo.
Careful where he planted his feet, Darko lifted the cloth and tensed as he saw what was underneath. Gabriel lay crumpled in a lifeless heap. He had deep gashes to his arms and torso, and the cut in his neck was so deep that Gabriel’s head seemed to be hanging onto his body by a mere thread. Who would do that to this poor little man? Darko thought, shaking his head. He turned at footsteps behind him. Detective Inspector Twum-Barima was about forty, slight in physique, and wore a red-and-blue checkered shirt with khaki pants. He was grim and soaked with sweat.
“Glad to see you, sir,” Twum-Barima said, as they shook hands. “I know all about you.”
“Thank you.”
“You have seen the first murder of two,” Twum-Barima said. “The second one is inside.”
“Who is it?” Darko asked, afraid of the answer while knowing what it would be.
“Katherine Vanderpuye.”
Darko winced as if a steel-tipped spear had jabbed his side.
“I apologize, sir,” Twum-Barima said. “I know your wife wanted to go in. But I just couldn’t let her see. It’s terrible, sir.”
Darko swallowed. “As terrible as that?” He gestured toward Gabriel.
“Worse,” Twum-Barima replied. A small muscle in his cheek twitched.
Darko felt cold. His usually reasonable detective mind was tumbling down a chasm of confusion and dread. Katherine, the woman Christine loved like a sister, was dead.
“To me, it looks like the murderer eliminated the watchman to get access to Mrs. Vanderpuye,” Twum-Barima said. “What he did to her is . . . Well, you’ll see for yourself.”
“I understand the house girl was the first witness to come across the body?” Darko said.
“That we know of, yes, sir. Esi was in as usual at five this morning.”
“Did she also go inside the house?”
Twum-Barima shook his head. “Didn’t get that far.”
“Where is Esi now?” Darko asked.
“At the station. We had to get her away from here before she went into a state of total collapse. She and Gabriel were good friends. In fact, everyone in the neighborhood loved Gabriel.”
Darko nodded. “That’s what my wife always said about him.”
“Shall we go inside, sir?” Twum-Barima asked.
Darko steeled himself, which he often did before entering a crime scene, but this occasion was different. He was steadying his emotions as much as his intellect.
Constable Mensah was standing guard at the front door, which was ajar.
“No forced entry that we can see,” Twum-Barima said.
“And none at the front gate, either?” Darko asked.
“Correct,” the inspector said. “It seems likely that Gabriel and Mrs. Vanderpuye knew the killer, and they didn’t see him as a threat.”
Darko reserved comment. He didn’t know enough yet.
Before they stepped into the sitting room, the inspector paused and pointed down. “Careful here, sir. Blood.”
A trail of crimson began at the doorstep with satellite blotches that widened to a large pool of semi-dried blood. Taking care not to step in any of it, Darko paused, hands on his knees, to study the blood streaks. From the large puddle, they traveled in an untidy smear across the floor toward the hallway. He must have dragged her, Darko thought. And she was bleeding all the way.
Darko saw a purple house slipper lying sole-side up next to the blood trail; the other half of the pair was to the right of the doorway at the opposite end of the room.
The hallway was semi-dark. Twum-Barima illuminated the path of dark red streaks and splotches with his phone light.
“We have to come this way,” the inspector said, pressing his back against the wall and walking sideways to avoid stepping in blood.
“The bedroom, sir,” the inspector said, stopping in its doorway.
Darko gasped and took a step back. He was looking at an abattoir. Blood soiled the floor, walls, and the window. The air smelled of blood and raw meat.
The bed hugged the far wall of the room.
Darko was searching for Kate. “Where is . . .” He saw it at the same instant that Twum-Barima pointed: a foot sticking up between the mattress and the wall.
“She is behind the bed,” the inspector said. “You can come this way where there is less blood.”
He took the lead, staying more or less against the wall closest to them and approaching the head of the bed in a half circle. The bedside table and its lamp were overturned, suggestive of a violent struggle. The covers on the bed were tangled, disheveled, and blood-soaked.
Darko was close enough to view all of Kate’s body now. Her back was to the wall, and Darko had a vivid impression of her murderer stuffing her headfirst down the side of the bed. A broad smear of blood, trailing down the wall like a river delta, seemed to confirm that.
Darko stared in disbelief. “Oh, God,” he whispered.
She had long, thick, brutal gouges in her legs, thighs, torso, and neck. Her head was turned upward and nearly detached by a profound wound from ear to ear, like a jagged grin. Darko recognized Kate all right, but at the same time, she didn’t seem real. Her skin had taken on an awful gray hue. Parts of the nightdress she had been wearing adhered to her body with dried blood. Her left arm extended slightly upward. Possibly a defense posture, Darko thought, and disliked the inner detective that had crept out of some cranny of his mind.
“Terrible,” Twum-Barima whispered. “See here, sir.”
Darko bent down to look where the inspector was aiming his phone light underneath the bed. Now he could see the side-down portion of Kate’s body. Her right arm appeared to be broken at the elbow as if it had snapped under the pressure as the murderer shoved her down. Any blood left in her by the time she had been dragged to the bedroom had pooled on the floor, flowing along the wall away from the head of the bed.
The murderer had stabbed or cut Kate once, perhaps twice, at the front door with a knife or machete, Darko speculated. Then he had dragged her in here and begun to chop her up. As Darko looked around the room, he saw spots of blood high up on the wall and even on the ceiling. He could see the murderer bringing up the machete in preparation for another cruel blow and the blood on the blade being cast off to hit horizontal and vertical surfaces.
Why such brutality?
In one corner of the room, a fine blood spray had sprinkled six stacked boxes waiting for the house move Kate had been about to make. Darko’s eyes welled, which had never happened to him at a crime scene. He started as he heard Mensah’s voice from outside shouting, “Madam, stop! Please, madam, you can’t go in!”
Holding his palms up toward the bedroom door, Twum-Barima yelled, “No, no, no!”
Darko snapped his head around and saw Christine.
“I have to see, Dark,” she begged him. “I can’t bear it any longer. I have to see what’s happened to my Kate.”
He reached her in two bounds. “No, love,” he said, putting his arms around her and pulling her away from the door. “Christine, no, you mustn’t—”
Her face changed, a new horror overtaking it and wrenching it to one side. “Is that her?” she asked, her voice cracking. She pointed. “Is that her foot, Dark?”
He lifted her up and carried her away, and for the first time in their life together, she fought against him, trying to break from his grasp while screaming, “Is that her foot? Is that her foot? Dark, tell me, please. Is that her foot?”
Chapter Fourteen
Darko came out of the house with Christine sobbing in his arms. A mortified Mensah followed, apologizing. “Please, sir, I’m sorry. I beg you. She climbed over the wall; I didn’t see her until it was too late. I’m sorry.”
“Go away!” Darko shouted at him. “Go and be useless somewhere else.”
Darko struggled with Christine, trying to get her out of sight, to the shade of a jasmine tree at the side of the house. She was limp with shock and difficult to hold up. He was afraid she was about to faint. Darko gave up trying to keep Christine upright. He collapsed with her in an ungraceful heap.
“Why?” Christine asked, weeping. “Why?” Her voice splintered like wood cracking in the Harmattan. Her tears wet Darko’s chest through his shirt. He knew she was running Kate’s slaughter through her mind like a video, and it was too ghastly to watch. Darko knew Kate had suffered, and he didn’t try to persuade his wife otherwise. Patronizing her never worked.
Darko shifted his weight and pulled her up into a more comfortable position. He rubbed her back and cradled her head, trying to soothe her. After a while, she became silent except for the intermittent whimper or soft moan.
“Kate loved this tree,” Christine murmured, looking up at the jasmine flowers in bloom. “At night, it perfumes the air.”
She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. “I’ll be okay,” she said shakily.
“You want to go back to the car?” Darko asked her.
Christine nodded, biting her upper lip. She stood up straight, pulled back her shoulders, and lifted her chin.
As they emerged from the gate, some of the curiosity seekers had left, but Yaa from next door was still there. Christine introduced her to Darko, who got a brief account from her about how she had come running out as she heard Esi’s screams. Darko took Yaa’s phone number just in case.
A blue crime scene unit van pulled up to the gate, which Mensah opened so the van could drive into the courtyard. Three men and a woman carrying a forensic bag got out. The woman was Dr. Phyllis Kwapong, the nation’s only trained forensic pathologist. In Ghana, academic and hospital pathologists without specialized forensic training handled both hospital and wrongful deaths. Dr. Kwapong had just been tasked by the president of Ghana to develop the first forensic medicine training program at the Korle Bu Medical School.
Darko’s heart leaped, not only because it was the first time he had ever encountered a bona fide forensic pathologist at the scene of a crime, but because this meant the case would be handled correctly almost from the very beginning. Darko and his wife needed that, and justice demanded it.
“Are you okay, love?” Darko asked Christine. “I need to talk to the CSU folks.”
“I’ll be okay.” Darko watched her as she walked away to the car with her head down.
Darko had never seen Dr. Kwapong dressed in weekend casuals: black jeans, a yellow and blue striped top, and black tennis shoes.
“Good morning, Doc,” Darko said, approaching with arm extended. “I’m very glad to see you.”
“How are you, Chief Inspector?” she said with a broad smile as they shook hands. She was tall for a woman, and her overall confidence reminded Darko of his mother. “You were called to the case?”
“Yes, and no,” Darko said, goi
ng on to explain what had happened.
Dr. Kwapong’s expression changed as Darko related Christine’s call, the bloodbath he had come to find, and how Christine had just witnessed the crime scene.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Chief Inspector. And for Christine to see the body at the scene—I can’t even imagine how terrible that was.” Kwapong frowned. “How did she get in? Wasn’t the crime scene being safeguarded?”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen,” Darko said, frustrated that Christine had climbed over the wall. She should have waited outside as he had instructed.
“May I express my condolences to her?” Kwapong asked.
“Of course, Doc.”
He walked with her to the truck where Christine sat in the driver’s seat with her head down. He could tell she was crying. Seeing her like that wounded Darko’s heart.
After he had introduced the two women to each other, he stepped away because when Dr. Kwapong took Christine’s hands in hers and began to talk to her, Darko grew teary-eyed, and he had to stop such a show of emotion in its tracks.
Mensah, who was shutting the gate again, looked away as Darko approached him.
“It’s okay, eh?” Darko told the constable. “These things happen.”
“God bless you, sir,” Mensah said gratefully. “Forgive me. Thank you, sir.”
“From now on, be careful,” Darko admonished. “If anyone wants to come in, check with me first.”
“Yes, sir. No problem, sir.”
Twum-Barima was with Joseph the CSU photographer, who was using a Samsung tablet to take shots of the outside of the door and its jamb, neither of which revealed evidence of forced entry. Amos, the fingerprints man, began work on the door.
Dr. Kwapong didn’t want to see the body and bedroom scene immediately because she felt it would prejudice her judgment to work backward from the murder. On the other hand, she wanted to get to the body as quickly as possible to minimize its decomposition. African weather had no mercy on the dead.
Kwapong looked around the room first. “It’s a beautiful home,” she commented, walking over to the closer purple slipper of the two. It had light bloodstains in addition to faux gems on the straps. Kwapong knelt down and rummaged through her bag for her LED flashlight, which she shone on the blood staining the floor. The first stain was about six inches long and irregularly shaped, with a pattern of radiating streaks that made it look like a bizarre bird with erect feathers.
