by Kwei Quartey
He smiled. “Yes, please. Methodist.”
“Ah,” Darko said. “Not one of the charismatics?”
“No, please. Peter was fond of them, but I like a quieter, more traditional service.”
“Thank you, Mr. Amalba.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What do you think?” Darko asked Safo as they left the bank.
“It must be that Peter is lying about what he saw,” Safo said. “He wants to frame the bishop and justify assaulting him.”
“Probably,” Darko said, watching a tro-tro belching black exhaust as it sped by on Ring Road. “But how can we double-check Michael’s story that he was home on Friday night?”
“Do you doubt him, sir?”
“I’m undecided,” Darko admitted. “What we can do is go back to Peter tomorrow morning to challenge him with what his brother told us. If he breaks down and admits to the lie, that will settle it.”
It was only about two in the afternoon, but Safo looked drained. Darko sent her home and told her to mentally and physically prepare for a full schedule the next day. He wasn’t about to pass judgment on her yet, but he was concerned about her apparent fragility.
Darko was about to return to the office when a thought came to him. He hopped back on his motorcycle and headed in the opposite direction from CID, going through the overpass onto Ring Road West and right on Awudome Road, where the cemetery flanked him on either side.
From the Awudome roundabout, he got on Bubuashie Road. Sly’s school, St. Theresa’s, was on Darko’s right, not that far from the Dawsons’ favorite kelewele spot. Darko made a left and pulled up on the dusty shoulder of the road, where he parked. He had a clear view of the school and the kids as they streamed out at the end of the school day in their sharp red and yellow uniforms. Darko kept a look out for Sly but didn’t see him anywhere.
Darko walked up Bubuashie several meters and turned right on Palace Road. Sly was standing near a food kiosk talking to two other boys Darko had never seen before. They were older than Sly, probably mid-teens, and they weren’t in school uniform. One of them, a lanky boy astride a late-model motorcycle, had spiky hair, a T-shirt with the image of soccer superstar Ronaldo, burgundy jeans, and loafers without socks. The other sported his cap backward and wore a diamond earring and a thick gold necklace with a jewel-encrusted cross dangling over his partly exposed chest.
Darko ducked behind another kiosk close to him and walked along the bumpy terrain at the rear of several other retailers—a clothing store, an MTN phone card store, and a woman selling roasted plantain and groundnuts.
He appeared on the other side close to Sly, who jumped and froze when he saw his father. The other two boys stared at Darko.
“Who are these boys?” he demanded.
“My friends,” Sly stammered, shocked at Darko’s magical appearance.
The boys looked suspiciously from Sly to his father and took a couple of wary steps back. Darko asked them their names. “Where do you go to school?” he demanded.
They muttered something about Kaneshie High.
“Then why are you not there?” Darko asked them.
“Please, we are closed today,” the lanky one called Nii Kwei said, his eyes looking away.
Darko pulled him close to him. “You’re lying,” he said. “I just passed by there, and the school is open.” Darko sniffed Nii Kwei’s shirt. “You’ve been smoking wee.”
The boy bowed his head, squirming in physical and mental discomfort under Darko’s glare. Darko grabbed the other boy by the top of his shirt and yanked him alongside Nii Kwei.
“Listen to me,” Darko said, switching to Ga, the boys’ mother tongue. “If you want to be bad boys and spoil your lives instead of going to school and growing up to be real men, then it’s your choice, and I don’t care. But what I care about is that you stay away from Sly. I won’t allow you to spoil him. Do you understand?”
“Yes, please,” they whispered.
“Look at me when you speak. Don’t you know how to respect your elders?”
They met Darko’s glare only barely.
“If I catch you with Sly one more time,” Darko said, sharpening his tone, “you’ll regret the day you were born.”
He took his ID out of his pocket and showed them his badge. “What is this? Read it. Nii Kwei, can you read?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then read it.”
The boy managed to get through it.
“Do you know what that means?” Darko said. “It means I can arrest you and put you in jail. In fact, I can take you to jail right now. You think I don’t know what you do? You’re Sakawa boys. Isn’t that true?”
Nii Kwei was scared, but tried not to show it. “No, please,” he murmured. “I beg you, sir.”
“Go,” Darko said. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”
He shoved them away and watched them leave. Darko would remember them, and he had a feeling he hadn’t seen the last of Nii Kwei and his pal.
Sly had turned away, his head bowed. Darko put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and Sly flinched.
“Come with me,” Darko said, escorting him around the back of a stall, where they would be unobserved. “What’s wrong, Sly, eh?”
Sly didn’t answer. His bottom lip was quivering.
“Your mother and I are caring for you and Hosiah in the best way possible. We are not perfect, but we are trying, and we want something in return: good behavior. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Only the day before yesterday, I warned you that hanging around these kinds of guys is bad behavior, and you promised me you would not. But here you are again. If you continue like this, your schoolwork is going to suffer, and you’ll start to fail. You know you have to maintain a certain level to stay in St. Theresa, and once you fail, neither your mother nor I can save you. You realize that?”
“Yes, Daddy. I’m sorry.”
“You said that the last time. What is it you like about these boys? Their clothes?”
Sly shrugged.
That meant, yes in Darko’s estimation. “How and when did you meet them?”
“One day when I came here to buy Kofi Broke Man, they were also buying some, and they started to talk to me. They asked me if I was good at computers, and I said yes. They told me I could learn more, and they could teach me how to make money from them.”
Darko had feared as much. The boys’ clothes and possessions were an easy giveaway. They were Internet scammers popularly known as Sakawa boys, in reference to their use of so-called magical powers to render their bilking schemes successful.
“Do you know how they make money from computers, Sly?”
“No, Daddy.”
“They get online and send emails to people in Europe, the US, and Canada pretending to be someone they’re not. Sometimes they’ll pretend to be an American who can’t get out of Ghana because they’ve lost their money or passport, and need help. Other times they say they have some land or gold to invest in. All kinds of schemes. And people send money to them. That’s how they can buy all those clothes and jewelry. You see what I mean?”
Sly nodded.
“But what they’re doing is illegal,” Darko continued. “We have a Cybercrime Unit at my office now, and CID has started to go after these people. When we catch them, they can go to prison for a long time.”
Sly’s expression took on some panic.
“Now, do you want to use computers for the right things, or do you want to join those guys in prison? Because if I or anyone else catches you engaged in cybercrime, you’re going straight to jail. And if the judge sentences you to twenty years, I’ll ask for fifty. Mama and Hosiah and I will visit you in prison once a month and bring you a little food if they allow it. Okay?”
“Yes,” Sly stammered, his eyes wide
. “I mean, no!”
“Now, we are going to talk to Sister Aboagye about this.”
Sly looked as if he might die. The strict, upstanding headmistress of his school was the last person on earth he wanted to see right now.
An hour later, Darko left the office of Sister Aboagye with a chastened Sly. The arrangement for the next three months was he would stay after school for about an hour doing his homework outside the staff office until either Darko or Christine arrived to take him home. Teachers and administrators went in and out of the office all the time and would be able to watch over him. Darko felt he had nipped his son’s potential pitfall in the bud, but he knew he would face many more challenges in the course of bringing up his two boys in a world gone mad.
Chapter Twenty-Four
That evening, Darko made Sly recount to his mother what had happened earlier in the day with the Sakawa boys. Darko interjected here and there to fill in details Sly left out. Christine listened neutrally, but when her son had finished the narrative, she asked him what five lessons he had learned from the events of the day. Sly did extraordinarily well and came up with three. Frankly, Darko wasn’t sure he could have come up with all five, but then his wife was a primary school teacher.
In Darko’s estimation, the mental rite of passage Sly was enduring was far more effective than a beating. When Darko was a boy, the pain of his father’s whippings obfuscated the original rebuke.
“Now, go take your shower and get to bed,” Christine told her son curtly. He left looking dejected. Darko and Christine looked at each other.
“You think we’ve cured him?” he said.
“I’m ninety-five percent sure,” Christine responded. “The remaining five will come over the next three months as we watch him carefully, and he stops hanging out with the delinquents. What made you go to check up on him?”
“I just had a feeling something might be up.”
“Your intuition still works, I see.”
“Thanks.” He grinned. “Sometimes.”
The lights went off as they had been expecting, more or less, since they had just enjoyed about twelve uninterrupted hours of power. Darko and Christine continued with the conversation as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened—which, in fact, was the case.
“I need to ask you something,” Darko said. “Is it possible Katherine was having an affair with Peter Amalba?”
He couldn’t see her surprise, but he could sense it.
“No,” she said emphatically. “That’s ridiculous. Where is this coming from?”
“Peter Amalba claims he and Kate were in love and planned to get married.”
“What!” She sucked her teeth dismissively. “That is a bald-faced lie. It’s not even conceivable. Kate went to work every day, getting out at what, five or six? And then she went home to make dinner. She was home by the time Solomon arrived. Where is the time to have an affair with this madman Amalba? I’m surprised you’re even suggesting that.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay, good,” she said huffily.
An awkward silence hung briefly.
Darko cleared his throat. “Amalba said he had gone to ‘watch over’ Kate the morning she died, and he saw Bishop Howard-Mills in the area around her home.”
Darko told Christine about his meeting with Michael. “He thinks Peter is mentally unbalanced.”
“All the more reason why he might have killed Kate,” Christine said. “He had delusions about her being in love with him, and when she rejected him, Amalba butchered her to death. That’s all. It’s not complicated.”
“But Michael said Peter was in bed all night Friday until at least five-thirty.”
“He could be covering for his brother,” Christine said.
“Yes, he could,” Darko agreed. “By the way, do you still have a savings account at the Ring Road Central StanChart?”
“Yes, why?”
“The name ‘Michael Amalba’ doesn’t ring a bell? Maybe you’ve dealt with him as one of the branch managers?”
“I’m pretty sure I haven’t. I only go to that bank occasionally to deposit a little bit of money, so I don’t deal with upper management there. I know one of the female account managers, though. A Mary something. I can check if I still have her number in my contacts. Anything special I should ask her?”
“Find out if Michael has a close friend at work,” Darko said. “Someone who might be able to confirm Michael was at home Friday night and Saturday morning. Not very likely, but worth a try.”
“Sure,” Christine said. “I’ll look into it.” She sounded happy to take on a little bit of investigation of her own.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Darko said. “I started training a new detective today.”
“Is he from HQ or one of the districts?”
“It’s a she, not a he.”
“Really!” she said, surprised.
“Yes. Lance Corporal Mabel Safo. She transferred from Kumasi.”
“It’s good to hear there’s a female detective for a change. Is she promising?”
“Too early to say. She’s very young and will need to toughen up a bit.”
Darko related to Christine how fragile Safo had appeared. “And she called me ‘Daddy’ once,” he added. “Instead of ‘boss’ or ‘sir.’ I found that strange.”
“But Ghanaians do that all the time.” Christine pointed out.
“Not in a formal police setting,” Darko disagreed. “I’ve never heard a junior officer address a senior one that way. She picked the wrong authority figure—it seemed like a slip of the tongue.”
“Maybe.” Christine giggled. “Or you could just be getting old.”
“Oh, I see how it is. Getting old? Is that what you said?”
In the gloom, she saw him get up and come toward her. She squealed as she tried to get away, but it was too late. He piled on top of her and began to nuzzle her neck, one of her ticklish spots. She shrieked with uncontrollable laughter as she begged him to stop.
“Not until you apologize for calling me old.”
Unable to speak and practically wheezing for breath, she shook her head in refusal.
“Okay, then,” he said, beginning to tickle her in the ribs as well. “More torture for you.”
“Stop, stop!” she gasped. “I apologize.”
“That’s better.” He had become aroused, and she could feel it.
“Not now, Darko,” she said. “I’m dirty and sweaty from today. I’m going for my shower, and then you go for yours.”
“And after that?”
“Maybe.”
In the morning before he left for work, Darko got a call from Sergeant Mustapha in the charge office.
“What’s going on?” Darko asked.
“Please, sir,” Mustapha said, “suspect Peter Amalba has attacked a fellow prisoner.”
Safo was already at CID by the time Darko arrived, which impressed him. She and a group of other officers crowded into the charge office to gawk at the spectacle. Darko weaved his way to the front counter, where Oppong was questioning a frazzled Sergeant Mustapha.
“How could you allow this to happen?” Oppong demanded.
“Mepa wo kyew,” Mustapha pleaded, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t see anything, sir. He must have gotten the ballpoint pen while we were booking him.”
“What happened?” Darko asked, lifting the barrier to cross to the inside of the counter.
Oppong gestured to a cluster of people kneeling on the floor around a man who was lying on his back. “Amalba attacked an inmate and stabbed him in the neck with a ballpoint pen.”
Darko’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously, sir?”
“Seriously.”
The victim, whose name was Chinery, was a small man of about twenty-two. Lying motionless in his underpants, he stared up at
the ceiling with an expression Darko had seen before: the fear of impending death. Projecting from Chinery’s neck was a quarter of the deeply embedded ballpoint pen, which flicked rhythmically with his heartbeat like a stuck lever. Blood was seeping from the wound into a towel someone was holding to the inmate’s neck.
A female officer with nursing experience had arrived just in time to stop someone from pulling out the pen. She crouched beside Chinery, speaking Ga in a soothing tone to assure him that help was on its way. Darko thought it should have been there already. The brand new police hospital was only two minutes away. For now, the ballpoint was acting as a temporary plug in whatever artery it had penetrated, but the inmate could die at any instant if a vessel in him blew open.
The jail area was in the rear of the charge office. Two cells existed, Number One being the larger. Like practically all jails in Ghana, this one was overcrowded and rusted with age. The time it took to transfer suspects over to the custody of the prisons, which were also filled beyond capacity, was excessive. Inmates languished for ages before they ever saw the inside of a courtroom.
From where Darko stood, he could see the faces of prisoners pressed against the bars as they watched the spectacle and provided a running commentary for the benefit of their fellow jailbirds in the rear. When the incident had occurred, Mustapha and an armed guard had removed Amalba and handcuffed him prone to the leg of a substantial table at the far end of the room.
“Let’s talk to Amalba now,” Oppong said to Darko.
From the depth of one of the cells, an inmate shouted out in Twi what roughly meant, “When you pack us like sardines, we turn rotten.”
The other prisoners cheered and hooted in accord.
“Heh!” Mustapha yelled, already stressed. “Shut up! Kwaseasem.”
The prisoners guffawed but quieted down.
Darko beckoned to Safo to join him and Oppong. Darko wanted her to experience the episode in full. They looked down at Amalba.
“Why did you stab Chinery?” Oppong asked him.
“He is evil,” Amalba said craning his neck upward. “He molested a child.”
