by Kwei Quartey
“Morning,” he said. He knew he probably looked a little bleary-eyed. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. And you, sir? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Why?”
“Oh, no, nothing,” she stammered.
“Thank you for the work looking for the diary,” Darko said. “Good job.”
“You are welcome, sir. So today, will we check Katherine’s house for the diary?”
“Yes,” he said. “We’ll take one last look before releasing the scene.”
Chapter forty
After an hour of searching Kate’s home, neither Darko nor Safo found any sign of a journal or diary.
“What next, sir?” she asked.
Darko was thinking. It took him some time to answer. “A trap,” he murmured finally. “Let’s go visit some people.”
Solomon Vanderpuye appeared surprised to see Darko and Safo at his law firm on Switchback Road.
“Inspector,” he said, a question in his voice. “Good afternoon. Can you give me about fifteen minutes to finish up with a client?”
“Of course,” Darko said.
He and Safo sat in the small waiting area. Through the door to the next room, Darko could see someone filing large folders. After twenty minutes, a burly man with a dense beard emerged from Solomon’s office and departed.
“Yes, Inspector,” Solomon said, after Darko and Safo had entered and taken seats. “How can I help you?”
“Something has surfaced, and we need your assistance,” Darko said. “Your mother-in-law has informed me that Katherine was keeping a diary—like a personal journal of all that was going on. It might be the key to our discovering the events leading up to her death.”
“A journal?” Solomon raised his eyebrows and pulled his head back in surprise. “Really?”
“You weren’t aware of anything of that nature?” Darko asked.
“No, not at all. Is Nana sure of this?”
“She’s positive,” Darko said.
“Kate was writing a diary without my knowledge?” Solomon muttered, as if no one else was in the room. He seemed stunned.
“That might have been the whole point,” Darko said. “A diary is often private. Why should it matter so much to you?”
“Of course it matters!” Solomon said heatedly. “Hiding things? Keeping secrets? That’s what she was doing?”
Darko sat back and stared at him as if burning holes into the lawyer’s head.
“What?” Solomon demanded. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Is it possible,” Darko said, “that you discovered this diary full of these ‘secrets,’ as you call them, and that something in there made you so furious that you killed Kate for it?”
“No,” Solomon said, scowling. “I don’t know anything about this diary. And I did not kill Kate.”
“Maybe she wrote she was seeking the counsel of James Bentsi-Enchill? I think that would have troubled you, no?”
Solomon’s eyes clouded. “Inspector Dawson, have you come here just to torment me? Why are you doing this?” His voice shook.
“I’m sorry if I’m causing you distress. You know what, though? Kate was in a state of torment as well. People telling her she was a witch? How do you think she felt?”
“I never told her she was a witch,” Solomon said. The veins in his neck stood out like tunnels under his skin. He seemed to be holding in fury like a pressurized container. He gasped and leaned against the desk with his elbow, his hand covering his eyes.
“Are you okay?” Darko asked.
Solomon shook his head slowly. “I miss her very much now,” he whispered. “I do.”
“There’s a table at the side of the bed in your room,” Darko said. “The bottom drawer is locked. Do you have the key?”
“A locked bottom drawer?” Solomon said, mystified. “I don’t know anything about it. I mean, I never even noticed it.”
“That’s a shame,” Darko said. “It would save us trouble tomorrow.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?” Solomon asked.
“Final search of the house before we release the crime scene,” Darko said, standing up. “After that, you’ll be able to get all your clothes back.”
Solomon didn’t move. He stared intently at Darko up to the moment the detectives shut the door behind them.
Outside, Darko and Safo got back into the Tata Jeep CID had provided for their rounds, something akin to striking gold. Today was their lucky day.
“Now he misses her,” Darko said with disgust, slamming the passenger door shut. “The hypocrisy of it.”
“Where now, sir?” the driver asked Darko.
“Courthouse.”
“She might have written down details of the lawsuit when she got home,” James Bentsi-Enchill said, “but I certainly never saw her with a diary or notebook or what-have-you.”
They were in the parking lot behind the courthouse. Darko and Safo had intercepted James as he was halfway to his vehicle. The afternoon sun was ferocious.
“Why? What is the significance of this?” the lawyer asked impatiently.
“The diary might hold some clues to her murderer.”
“How so?”
“She might have talked about which man in her life was pursuing or harassing her, or threatening her life.”
“Yes,” Bentsi-Enchill said, sounding doubtful, “I suppose so.”
“Or maybe about how a certain lawyer wanted to rekindle his high school relationship with her.”
The lawyer swung around and looked as if he was about to plant a fist in Darko’s face. Instead, he shook a finger. “Stop this, eh? I tell you, stop this harassment, or I’ll have Chief Superintendent Oppong suspend you, or worse. This is ridiculous!” His shoe crunched on the gravel as he whirled on his heel.
“Is it?” Darko said, following him. “Then why didn’t you tell us about taking Kate to dinner at the Polo Club on seventeenth April?”
Bentsi-Enchill stopped and turned slowly. “What?”
“We ascertained that with the manager of the restaurant,” Darko said.
“I forgot,” the lawyer said. “I simply forgot, that’s all. It doesn’t make any difference anyway. I didn’t kill her.”
“We’ll see if her diary indicates otherwise when we search her home in the morning.”
“Do whatever you want,” Bentsi-Enchill said, turning away again. “You won’t find anything on me.”
Shadows were elongating as Darko and Safo arrived at the Qedesh compound. John’s front office was locked, so they went around to the rear of the church building and knocked on the two doors. Darko tried both, but they were locked. He had the bishop’s number and tried calling him, but the network was down.
Just as Darko was wondering what to do, Howard-Mills appeared around the corner. He was dressed elegantly in a pale green tunic with black embroidery.
“Ah, Chief Inspector Dawson and Lance-Corporal Safo!” he said, with a broad smile. “Nice to see you both. How are you? I hope you haven’t been waiting here long.”
“Not at all,” Darko said. “We checked at the front office, but it was closed.”
“Yes, John is away on an errand, and I was in the main chapel where they are refurbishing the stage.” He unlocked the door. “Please, come in, and welcome.”
Darko and Safo sat down while the bishop turned on the air conditioner.
“Whew!” he said, sitting down and mopping his forehead. “That’s better. Now, what can I do for you?”
“Bishop, you told us that during the break starting about one in the morning you usually stay at the prayer vigil site?”
“Yes, that’s correct,” Howard-Mills said, but he was a little wary.
“I wanted to give you a chance to modify that statement.”
The bis
hop angled his head. “Why is that, Inspector?”
“The vigil of last week Wednesday, you did leave the premises.”
Howard-Mills looked away for a split second, during which time he composed the lie to follow. “Oh yes, you are right,” he said brightly. “My wife called me on a rather delicate matter, and so I rushed home.”
“Bishop,” Darko said, leaning forward, “I know you are a man of God. You do good deeds, and you perform miracles, but somewhere in the Bible it says, ‘for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.’ There are two sins that concern me at the moment—the sins of murder and of bearing false witness. Now you face a choice whether to sin again or not, because I’m about to ask you a question, which I would like you to answer truthfully.”
Howard-Mills made a gesture to Darko as if clearing the way to proceed.
“Did you,” Darko said, “leave the Baden Powell Hall a week ago last Saturday morning to—”
“I did not kill Kate,” the bishop interrupted swiftly. “She was dear to me—to all of us—and I would never have harmed her.”
“Yet you tried to rape her, isn’t that true?”
The bishop exploded, jumping up into Darko’s space and shouting at him. “How dare you accuse me of this? Who told you that, or did you make it up?”
“You wanted to see her outside of her counseling meetings with you,” Darko said. “You even told her you would come to visit her that Saturday morning.”
“I did not go to her,” he growled through clenched teeth.
They eyed each other for a tense moment.
“Perhaps you can help us with something else,” Darko said.
“What?” the bishop snapped.
“When you met with Katherine a number of times, did she mention that her mother had suggested she start a personal diary or journal?”
Howard-Mills leaned back and opened a desk drawer. “Like this?” He removed a book and handed it to Darko. It was a dark blue hardcover with the title, our daily bread in gold letters.
Darko opened it and found it to be a diary with a daily biblical inspiration. “You gave Katherine a copy?” he asked the bishop.
“No, I didn’t have one on me,” Howard-Mills said, “so I asked Kate to get one from John. I don’t know if she did.”
“She did,” Darko said. “Nana confirmed it. We want that diary because Kate might well have written about the man who was to kill her.”
Howard-Mills eyes seemed to light up for a moment, but he appeared weary. “You could be right.”
“May I keep this diary?”
“Yes,” Howard-Mills said. “Of course.”
“Anything to tell us, Bishop?” Darko prodded.
But he shook his head. “No. Nothing at all.”
Chapter Forty-one
Darko waited in darkness in Kate’s bedroom. It was still soiled and splattered with blood, and it was not a comfortable place to be.
This is a risky experiment, Darko thought. If it didn’t work, it would be a long and fruitless night with hell to pay when the Chief Superintendent found out. Darko had not informed his boss he would be carrying out this operation. He was certain Oppong would not have approved it. For that reason, Darko hadn’t involved Safo either. It would have put her in an uncomfortable position of choosing whom to disobey: Chief Inspector Dawson, or Chief Superintendent Oppong.
At five to one, Darko heard the outside gate squeak. After a while, someone tried the front door. Darko had left it locked because he hadn’t wanted the “visitor” to catch on to the lure. It shouldn’t look too easy. Instead, Darko had provided an alternative way to get into the house.
He moved into the hallway and listened. After six or seven minutes, the intruder found the access point: the sitting room window was open about a centimeter. All that was needed was to pry the mosquito screen loose. That took four minutes at most, and then Darko heard the window sliding open.
He backed up to the door of the bedroom. A flashlight beam swept around, catching the hallway for a moment. But it didn’t stay. Darko moved out carefully into the hallway again and saw the silhouette of a man searching with his flashlight. He shone it behind the sofa and pulled out the cushions to run his hand along the back. He turned to one of the armchairs and did the same.
Darko put his hand on one of the light switches in the hallway, and, praying that dumsor wouldn’t strike at that very instant, flicked it on. The sitting room flooded with light. The man jumped and whirled around. It was John Papafio. He stared at Darko in shock. “What are you doing here?”
“I was waiting for you,” Darko said. “What are you doing here?”
John was rigid as he struggled to compose himself. “It’s a private matter, Inspector,” he said. “You need not be concerned.”
Darko held up the diary. “Perhaps you were looking for this?”
“What is it?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Oh,” John said, craning his neck forward. “That must be the diary the bishop told me to come and look for.”
“The bishop sent you here?”
“I confronted him about trying to rape Katherine,” John said. “He broke down and confessed he killed her. When I told him I had given her a copy of Our Daily Bread, he begged me to come to the house and look for it because it might have information that could incriminate him.”
“Why didn’t the bishop come for it himself?”
“He couldn’t,” John said. “He’s away.”
Darko smiled. Even without the tingle in his palm, he knew John was lying. “Why didn’t you report Mr. Howard-Mills’s confession?”
“I wanted to find the evidence and then hand it over to you,” John said. “It would make things easier for you. Where did she hide it?”
“In a good spot,” Darko said.
John stretched out his hand. “Give it to me, Inspector, please,” he said.
“No,” Darko replied. “This is evidence for court. You don’t get to see it.”
“What did she say about the bishop in the diary?”
“It’s what she says about you that matters. It points directly to you as her killer.”
“Nonsense,” John said with disdain. “I can’t have killed Kate because I was at the Baden Powell vigil all night.”
“Even at the point the woman in the congregation wrapped herself around Reverend Atiemo, and it took several men to peel her off?”
John’s eyes moved off center for a second. “Of course,” he said. “In fact, I helped get her away from the reverend.”
“No, you did not,” Darko said. “I asked Blankson, the security guy, and he said you were not present duing the altercation. That’s because you were here in this house butchering Kate to death.”
John shifted weight uncomfortably. He was an animal in a tight corner with nowhere to go.
“How could you have done it, John?” Darko said. “Did Kate deserve it?”
“You don’t even know how she treated me,” he said with contempt. “Who arranged the prayer meetings and Bible studies at her house? I did. Who kept that madman Peter Amalba away from her? I did. Who texted her beautiful poems? I did. And her response to my texts? She told me to stop, and that she was deleting them all from her phone. Why so cruel? And then, do you know what she did? She reported me to the bishop. Reported me! He asked me why I had been troubling her and told me to stop. Katherine no longer came to the front office. Instead, she went to the back to meet him.”
“I put it to you that you made up the rape story to make the bishop look guilty. You wanted to ruin his life after you had taken Kate’s away.”
“The wages of sin is death, Mr. Dawson.”
“So you say,” Darko said. “After you had killed Gabriel, you went to Kate’s door, but instead of announcing yourself as ‘John,’ you said you were the bi
shop. Once you had murdered Kate, you put on one of his outfits in case someone spotted you leaving the house. That’s why Peter mistook you for Mr. Howard-Mills.”
“I didn’t want to kill Gabriel, but I had to do it to get to Kate.”
“You feel no pain at all, John? No remorse whatsoever?”
“After what she did to me?” John said in surprise.
Darko stepped forward and put his hand on John’s arm. “Mr. John Papafio, I’m arresting you for the murder of Katherine Vanderpuye and Gabriel Saleh. Turn to face the wall, please, and bring your hands behind your back.”
John did turn to his left, but instead of stopping at ninety degrees, he continued the motion as nimbly and swiftly as a dancer, his elbow coming up to strike Darko in the face. Darko blocked with his left, which exposed his side. He saw a brief glint of the knife John brought around in an arc propelled by his momentum.
Darko stepped back to evade the weapon, but John now had him in a deadly embrace. Darko felt a strange, intense burning in his chest. He and John crashed to the floor and rolled. Uppermost in Darko’s mind was that he must get the knife away from his assailant, and he struggled to grab John’s right hand.
But the knife wasn’t there. Darko looked down to see its handle protruding from his ribs and blood quickly soaking his shirt.
John stood up, chest heaving, and staggered to the table to retrieve the diary. He opened it up.
“What is this?” he shouted at Darko. “It’s blank! This isn’t Kate’s journal! Where is it?”
Darko was struggling to catch his breath. He had just enough to tell John he had no idea where Kate’s diary was, and perhaps no one would ever know.
John threw the book across the room in fury. He turned and moved in on Darko, a harsh smile transforming his face. Straddling his dying prey, John reached down to the knife handle. “I’m going to kill you, Chief Inspector Dawson.”
Darko screamed in agony as John wrenched the knife out and raised it high over Darko’s chest.
Darko saw Safo appear behind John with a rusty length of rebar she must have found at the construction site across the street. She raised it to her right shoulder and swung it. John’s skull burst open with a dull crack and a bright flash of red. He flipped over to the side and lay dead still.
