Death by His Grace

by Kwei Quartey

  She shook her head. “No, because my husband was still here. He left the following Monday and then Clem was able to see me on Wednesday. Saturday was when poor Katherine Vanderpuye was murdered, right?”

  “Yes,” Darko said. “Did you know her?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Are you aware if Howard-Mills was involved romantically with her?”

  “He might have been.” Simpson pressed her lips together. “I know she and Clem texted each other.”

  “You know? How?”

  She smiled. “I sneaked a look at his phone once while he was in the bathroom and saw a phone notification.”

  “It didn’t bother you?”

  “I have no right to complain,” Simpson said. “I don’t own Clem. He gives me his time when he can. I’m the lonely one; he isn’t.”

  Darko rose from his chair. “Thank you, Mrs. Simpson. I appreciate your time.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Dawson. I’ll see you out.”

  Outside, Darko checked Simpson’s story with the watchman. After some confusion over the dates, he confirmed she had been accurate. The bishop could not have visited her the Saturday of the murder.

  “You have a fine boy,” the watchman said, smiling as he opened the gate for the motorcycle to exit.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  As they rode off, Darko felt no clearer about the bishop. Had he left Baden Powell Hall the night of the murder or not? If so, for how long, and where did he go?

  Around eleven that night, Darko was watching the nightly news with Christine sleeping on his lap when Cairo called.

  “Papa’s gone,” he said.

  Darko sat up. “What?”

  “I thought he was in his room. I went to check on him to make sure he was all right for the night, but when I looked in, he was gone.”

  “I’ll come over now.” Darko shifted Christine off and rose abruptly. Her head flopped back onto the sofa, and she murmured, “Ouch.”

  He shook her awake. “I’m going to Cairo’s place. Papa has disappeared.”

  Cairo and his wife, Audrey, lived in Christian Village. It was no longer a village but a new middle-class enclave and an example of Accra’s sprawl. By the time Darko got there, Cairo had done some searching in the immediate area of their home, and he directed Darko to meet him at a nearby gas station.

  Cairo was distraught and furious with himself for “allowing this to happen.” He had already gone to the local police station to alert them, in case any of their officers on the beat happened to spot Jacob wandering.

  Darko had butterflies in his stomach. Anything might have befallen their father. That he couldn’t walk very fast was small comfort. A car could have struck him, or he could have fallen into an open gutter along the road.

  Audrey was driving Cairo. Darko split up with them, and they went in opposite directions in expanding radii. Darko paid particular attention to abandoned building sites into which his father might have wandered. Darko got out of the car several times with his flashlight and called out. He wished he could scour all the gutters, but at night that would have been an impossible project.

  At minimarts and fuel stations, Darko slowed down and circled them in the hope that Papa had been attracted to the lights and decided to sit down and watch the world coming and going. The irony was that if Christian Village had actually been a village still, Darko could have stopped and asked practically anyone if they had seen his father.

  He called Cairo. “No sign?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “We’ll keep searching,” Darko said. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

  The question was, dead or alive?

  Darko didn’t want to give up, but he didn’t know where else to look, and he was starting to feel desperate. Should he go farther afield, or go back over territory he had already covered? He thought he noticed the car wobbling slightly, and then it became more pronounced. He pulled over, switched on his flashlight, and saw his back right tire was flat.

  “Shit!” he cursed—one of the rare moments he used that word.

  He called Cairo to tell him what had happened. His brother cursed too but used a far milder version as a courtesy to Audrey in the seat beside him.

  Darko went a little farther to a small fuel station that was closed for the night but still had good lighting. He began to change the tire as quickly as he could. A shadow passed over him, and Darko jumped and turned.

  Jacob had somehow lost his shirt. His pants were sagging, and he had only one shoe. There were leaves in his hair.

  “Papa,” Darko said. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

  “Where’s Beatrice?” Jacob asked, confused. “She said she was going to Ketanu, but she never came home.”

  Gooseflesh rose over Darko’s body. Beatrice, his mother, had mysteriously disappeared during his childhood. Ketanu was the village in the Volta Region where she was last seen alive.

  Darko went to his father and put his arm around his shoulders. “Beatrice will be back soon, Papa—don’t worry. Let’s go home and wait for her there.”

  “All right.” He squinted at Darko. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Darko. I know Beatrice well.”

  Jacob nodded. “Good.”

  Darko surveyed his father to check for any injuries, but the old man seemed okay. Where Jacob had gone and how he had got here, Darko would never know. He got his father into the front seat of the car, strapped him in, and called Cairo. “I found him. Or rather, he found me. Yes, he’s about as good as can be expected. Confused as hell, but otherwise okay.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  First thing in the morning, Darko called Dr. Quainoo, the psychiatrist who had evaluated Peter Amalba.

  “Peter is not mad as in schizophrenic,” Quainoo told Darko in a high-pitched voice that sounded like a child’s squeeze toy. “Paranoid personality disorder is probably his diagnosis, but some of the religious grandiosity is a little difficult to pigeonhole. That might just be a cultural addition to his underlying disorder.”

  “So, what should happen to him now, sir?”

  “Putting him on one of our state psychiatric hospitals will turn him outright psychotic. No, if he’s going to prison, then he’s going to a ‘normal’ one with ‘normal’ prisoners, so to speak. He’s been sent to Central Jail, and he’ll be there until remand.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Safo was carrying out her assignment at the Polo Club, so Darko went to Central Jail by himself. This part of town, the Tudu commercial area where a serial killer had lurked a few years ago, was one of the oldest in Accra, and Central Jail had changed little to none, especially on the outside. Inside, some new fixtures and a couple of computers had modernized the place somewhat, but its age still showed.

  Darko flashed his credentials to the sergeant at the desk. In the background, the jail was as dark as a cave.

  “You have Peter Amalba?” Darko asked.

  “We do, sir. Do you need to speak to him?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Okay, we have a small room.”

  The sergeant lifted the hinged partition of the counter so Darko could pass to the other side, and then went to the bars and yelled for Amalba, who came forward to peer out. “Yes, sir?”

  “You have a visitor. Your wrists.”

  Peter stuck them out, and the sergeant slapped cuffs on faster than Darko could blink, before unlocking the door with a giant set of large keys. A constable marched Peter to the interview room at the far end of the counter, and Darko followed. A bare, pockmarked wooden table and two chairs sat in the middle of a room that hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint in years.

  “Please, do you need me to stay here?” the corporal asked.

  “No, I’m okay, thank you,” Darko said. “I’ll call you when
we’ve finished.”

  Peter’s hands were in his lap. His eyes were down as if he were studying the table.

  Darko sat. “How are you, Mr. Amalba?”

  “I’m fine, sir. How are you too?”

  “Are they treating you all right?”

  Peter shrugged. “The food is terrible.”

  Darko nodded. He’d never tasted prison food, but he knew it was pretty awful. “You met with the psychiatrist,” he said. “How was the experience?”

  “He asked me so many questions. After a while, I wanted to get away from him.”

  “Understood,” Darko said.

  Peter looked up tentatively. “What did that doctor tell you?”

  “The bottom line is you’re not crazy,” Darko said.

  Peter seemed unmoved by the news.

  “And because you’re not crazy,” Darko said, “I now view you differently. You may think these stories you’ve told about being in love with Katherine Vanderpuye and seeing Bishop Howard-Mills around her house at three in the morning are funny or entertaining, but the law of the land does not, and neither do I. The consequences of lying are serious. You understand?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “That’s why I’m here today. To have a frank, honest, and, above all, truthful discussion with you about what happened and what did not.”

  Peter looked away. For several minutes, he said nothing at all. Darko saw his jaw tensing in and out.

  “Okay, Mr. Darko,” Peter began, “I want to tell you that I have suffered for years from demons. They control my thoughts and make me do things that, on my own, I would not do. I have been to exorcists, and I have been to deliverance services with pastors and bishops, including Bishop Howard-Mills’s Qedesh. Sometimes the demons seem to flow out of me, but then they return.

  “Michael knew of my troubles. Sometimes he took me to see a psychiatrist, but they couldn’t help me get rid of these evil thoughts. And some of the medicines they gave me made me feel terrible.”

  “What are the evil thoughts like?” Darko asked.

  Peter rested his forehead in his palm. “That people want to hurt me, or destroy me, or curse me. And that makes me want to hurt them too. At times I have been desperate, afraid of myself. Michael told me to seek salvation at the Qedesh.

  “I met Kate end of last year at the Qedesh,” Peter continued. “She was studying her Bible before the service. We talked, and she was very nice, and we had a good time. And the following week we met at the Qedesh again and sat next to each other at the service. I fell in love with her.

  “When I found out Kate was hosting one of the bussells at her home, I accompanied a church member to a prayer meeting there. John Papafio was very abusive to me when I arrived, telling me I wasn’t on the attendance list, instead of welcoming me like a genuine Christian would do. So what if I wasn’t on the list? Is that a crime? After that, I know for a fact he prevented me from ever attending another meeting at her house.

  “Toward the end of last month, after I had met with the bishop, I was about to leave John’s office when Kate walked in. She greeted me, but she was cold, as if she barely knew me. She ignored me and began to converse with John. At first, I thought maybe Kate was in love with him, but when the bishop came out of his office and was standing next to her, he began to touch her back, and then I understood it was the bishop she loved. John had been keeping me away from Kate for the bishop, not himself.

  “I left the office, but I saw Mr. Howard-Mills come out with Kate, and they went to the back of the building, so I followed. There are two doors there. One door on the right was locked, but the one on the left was not, so I went in. There’s another door between the two rooms.” Peter’s voice dropped in volume and pitch and gave Darko the shivers. “I heard what the bishop was saying to Kate. He said he wanted to see her outside of the church, this so-called man of God who always preaches against fornication.

  “Kate told him she regarded him with respect, and now was not the right time because she was going through so much trouble with her husband. Bishop Howard-Mills said he could come to see her late at night during his break from the prayer vigil at Baden Powell Hall the following Friday. He said he would go to her house around two o’clock and call her from outside her gate. I couldn’t hear if she gave him any reply. Maybe she was speaking too softly.”

  Peter rested his head on his cuffed hands, appearing exhausted by his account.

  “Do you want a break?” Darko asked.

  Peter shook his head. “I’m okay. That week from Tuesday all the way to Friday, I was thinking of what the bishop had said about visiting Katherine early on Saturday morning.

  “On Friday, Michael traveled to Takoradi, and that left me alone in the house. I slept a little and woke up after midnight. I took a cab to Kate’s area, but I couldn’t remember the exact location of her house. At that time too, there was dumsor, so it was very dark. I walked around, lost. When it was getting close to three o’clock, I started to think I should go home. Then, just as I found Kate’s place, I saw Bishop Howard-Mills walking away from the house.”

  “I thought you said it was dumsor,” Darko interrupted. “How could you see if the street was dark?”

  “Please, her generator was on and a bright light at the top her house shines into the street, so I could see the bishop—but only from the back.”

  “How was he dressed?”

  “He had that light blue suit with the long top.”

  “You said before he was holding a machete,” Darko reminded him.

  Peter looked down. “That wasn’t true. I never saw that. Maybe he had it under his clothes, rather. He hurried to his car and drove away.”

  “What vehicle?”

  “A saloon car.”

  Why not his SUV? So people at the vigil would think he was still there, Darko speculated. “Did the car have some writing on the side?”

  Peter frowned. “I think so—and also on the back window, but I couldn’t see very well.”

  Casting back to the Independence Square event on Wednesday night, Darko remembered seeing decals on the windows of the Power of God Ministry vehicles.

  “What happened next?” he asked Peter.

  “I wanted to make sure the bishop had not done Katherine any harm. I tried knocking on the gate and ringing the bell, and I called out Gabriel’s name, but he never answered. I decided to wait until morning. I found a place on the ground to rest in the empty building across the street from Kate’s house, and I slept a little. Around five, I woke up when I heard the house girl unlocking the gate. And you know the rest.”

  Darko leaned forward. “Peter, tell me one thing. After you saw the bishop walking away from Kate’s house, were you so jealous, so angry, that you decided to kill her? Did you go away and return with a machete, which you used to kill Gabriel and then Katherine? Peter, did you kill her? Tell me now. Free yourself from the burden of guilt.”

  Peter shook his head stoically, but unexpectedly, his face crumpled, and he began to cry.

  “Tell me what’s in your mind,” Darko pressed. He was hoping, praying, for a confession. He wanted this to be over and done. “Come on, Peter. The truth.”

  Peter was shaking his head as his tears fell on the table. “I wish I could have saved her from the bishop. But, I arrived too late. Kate, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  He clenched his fists as if trying to hold on to his last reserves of fortitude, and then he looked up, eyes reddened but his expression no longer contorted. He heaved a sigh and was silent.

  “Okay,” Darko said, getting to his feet. “Stay here for a moment.”

  He left the room pulling the door shut and calling for the constable, who came up. “Are you done, sir?”

  “Yes, I am. Thank you.”

  Walking out, Darko was ninety-five percent sure he knew who had killed Katherine
Vanderpuye. He got a hold of Dr. Kwapong on the phone. She told him she had concluded Kate’s autopsy earlier in the day. “As you know,” she said, “it was gruesome and brutal. Nothing much changes from our observations at the scene. The killer almost certainly used a machete or an ax. Now, one hopeful finding is that fragments of Kate’s nails had broken off, so she might have scratched the assailant in a struggle. I sent nail swabs and samples to the lab for DNA, but of course, it will be some weeks before we get the results.”

  Darko wished he had them now, but long-delayed DNA findings were the reality of Ghana’s CID. He sighed in resignation and frustration. “Thank you, Doc.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “Please, sir,” Safo said, when Darko had returned to the CID detectives’ office, “the manager at Il Cavaliere checked in the reservation book and confirmed Katherine and Bentsi-Enchill had dinner there together on seventeenth April.”

  Darko blew out his breath harshly. “Bentsi-Enchill,” he said shaking his head in disgust. “What did I tell you about people lying, Safo?”

  Safo smiled. “That they do it as easily as breathing oxygen.”

  “Correct.”

  “Also, sir, the two contacts John Papafio gave us—I called them. They both say they saw John off and on throughout the night at Baden Powell, and if he did leave the premises, they were not aware. I pressed them to give me more exact times during the night, but they couldn’t be any more specific. The same goes for the bishop and the reverend. Sir, I think the problem is there’s so much going on at the same time at these vigils. I’m not surprised these two guys were so vague.”

  Darko grunted. This attempt at nailing down alibis hadn’t yielded much.

  “Please, what happened at your meeting with Peter Amalba?” Safo asked.

  Darko told her about it.

  “Do you believe him, sir?” Safo asked.

  “Let me ask you that,” Darko responded.

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “Commit yourself. What do you feel?”

  “He’s lying.”