12 Hours

by L I Owugah

  It was a crime her mother would tearfully confess to perpetrating, yet, one she would insist was an accident. A fatal side effect of a narcotic she had hoped would help her manipulate the media mogul into altering his final will. A drug that she admitted was meant to disorientate her father but not kill him. Devastated by this revelation, Sade had made a couple of critical decisions. The first was to never speak to her mother again, and the second was to make a difference of her own by establishing a detective agency that would help uncover the truth behind unsolved crimes in the city.

  Five years after the agency's inception, Sade had been forced to come to terms with the surprising reality that few people were comfortable hiring a private detective for serious breaches of the law. However, several people were keen on hiring one to find incriminating evidence on cheating spouses. Disappointed, but ever the professional, Sade had performed such assignments with notable success, hopeful that a job of real substance would eventually emerge. Now one had. An online request seeking information about a fatal hit and run. The potential client had provided a mobile number and two addresses. One for a local hotel where he was staying, the other for a home located in the United Kingdom. Sade felt sorry for the man who had crossed the Atlantic ocean in search of justice for his parents. In a city hampered by a culture of bribery and police corruption, the cards were heavily stacked against him. Nevertheless, here was a job she could finally sink her teeth into.

  The motorway given as the site of the accident, Okorodu road, was only ten minutes away. A short distance from a traffic police post. She glanced at her watch. It was 6.30pm. Sufficient time to visit the site in advance. Driving a five year old Nissan Explorer, it took twenty minutes for Sade to get to the spot where Mr and Mrs Eko had lost their lives. Dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of worn jeans, she had a Nikon branded camera hanging from a strap around her neck, making the private investigator look like a journalist in a conflict zone. Pulling into a small clearing by the side of the road, the first thing that came to Sade's attention was how quiet the motorway was. Something of an anomaly at a time of day most streets roads were rife with rush hour traffic. This also indicated that on the morning of the accident, there was likely to have been few, if any witnesses to what had occurred.

  Sade spotted a pair of heavily faded tyre marks veering off the motorway. They were about five feet apart and were each about eight seven inches wide. In her opinion, a four by four. She noticed what looked like glass from a broken windscreen scattered across the ground. Then she spotted a curved, black coloured object. She strolled over, crouched down and scooped it up. The object was a 16inch Aero Blade windscreen wiper. One half of what would have been a set of windscreen wipers for a large vehicle.

  A crucial piece of evidence.

  The result, she figured, of the impact of a person's body shattering the windscreen of the car. She returned the wiper to the spot she had found it and took photographs. The single windscreen wiper, the broken pieces of glass, and the skid marks that she believed belonged to the vehicle responsible. She returned to the Explorer. Just as she climbed behind the wheel, her eyes lit up. She remembered the existence of a nightclub called The Roof. It was two miles north of the accident site. A prominent nightspot. Notorious for attracting a vast number of working girls and male customers. Men who thought nothing of jumping behind the wheel after a night of heavy drinking.

  Sade whipped out her smartphone and quickly scrolled through a list of her contacts. She stopped on a number belonging to the name Titi. A university student, who had opted to finance her education by moonlighting as a call girl. Titi was a familiar face at The Roof, and Sade was confident that for a decent fee she would be happy to share any information she might have. After a couple of rings on the other end, Titi answered the phone.

  "How far?" Titi said in broken English.

  "I'm good," Sade returned. "You?"

  "I just dey manage, oh!"

  "Real quick, I need some info."

  "How much are you paying?"

  "Depends on what you got."

  "Shoot?"

  "Two weeks ago, a couple of people were killed in a hit and run incident on Okorodu road," Sade explained. " Probably happened somewhere between five and six in the morning. Any idea who was driving?"

  Titi was silent for a moment.

  "How much?"

  "Do you have an answer?" Sade replied.

  "Two answers," Titi replied, confidently.

  " Two?"

  " A name and an address."

  "Where are you?" Sade said, unable to disguise her excitement.

  "Meet me tonight."

  "Location?"

  "The Roof."

  "Time?"

  "9pm."

  Titi chuckled over the phone.

  "And Sade..."

  "Yeah?"

  "Make sure ya purse full, oh!"

  Sade smiled and punched out. Titi was a reliable source of information. Someone she had used to gather evidence exposing the extramarital affairs of the husbands of several women she had been hired to investigate in the past. Furthermore, when she said she had something, you could bet your bottom dollar she meant it.

  Firing up the ignition, Sade peeled away from the accident site and headed home to get ready. A few hours later, she arrived at the nightclub. She was thirty minutes early. It was a large, single storey building and occupied the centre of a walled-in compound. It was marked by a neon-lit sign: THE ROOF. Seated at one of several outdoor tables, Sade had arrived early to avoid the beehive of people gathered outside a set of large steel gates. Gates that served as the primary entrance to the compound, and were manned by two fierce looking, truck-sized doormen in muscle shirts and denim jeans.

  Bopping her head to the latest in Afropop echoing from inside the building, Sade casually sipped a bottle of Evian water, while surveying her surroundings. Noticing the arrival of a stream of working girls, dressed in skin-tight dresses, platform heels, and sweet smelling perfume, she figured it was going to be a busy night. At about 9.30pm, Titi made her entrance and sauntered over to where Sade was seated. She had the height and frame of a runway model, yet walked with the gait of a child who had just borrowed her mother's high heels. Sade smiled "9pm?" She said, sarcastically.

  "African time," Titi replied as she took a seat across from her. Sade acknowledged this with a smile, fished into her handbag and produced a stuffed envelope, which she pushed across the table. Titi scooped it up and silently slipped it into her handbag.

  "Okay, what do you have?" Sade said.

  Titi paused for a moment, glanced around cautiously. Leaning across the table she whispered.

  "A friend of mine was in the car."

  "Go on."

  "She's my classmate. Comes here all the time."

  "Is she here tonight?"

  "Haven't seen her since that night."

  "Any idea where she is?"

  She shrugged. "Probably travelled to see her mother." Titi flipped open her purse, extracted, a pocket-size address book, and tore out a sheet of paper.

  "You get biro?" she asked Sade with an open palm.

  Sade dug into her handbag, pulled out a pen and handed it to her. Titi scribbled a few lines down on the paper, folded it in two, and slid it across the table.

  "That's the name of the person she left the club with," she said.

  Sade picked up the paper.

  "After the accident, she sent me a text," Titi continued.

  "And the address?"

  "I have written it down."

  "How did you get it?"

  Titi glanced around again. Like a suspect under surveillance. "When she arrived at his house she texted his address."

  Sade stared at her, a puzzled expression on her face.

  "She followed him home?"

  Titi nodded in silence.

  "What for?"

  Titi made a perfunctory gesture with both hands. "It's what we do to stay safe. If people know where you have gone, it's easier to
locate you if something happens."

  "I meant why would she go home with him after the accident?" Sade asked.

  "How else is she going to make her money?" Titi said. She traded a glance with a well-dressed man, seated a few tables away, who had a bottle of Remy Martin on ice and a couple of glasses laid out before him. Turning back to Sade, she patted her softly on the hand in a parting gesture.

  "Be like say I get customer," she said and rose to her feet.

  "Look after yourself, Titi."

  Titi's face split into a confident smile.

  "I always do."

  11

  MICHAEL

  NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK

  As Jonah lay asleep, I picked up his Britishpassport and folded it open. The identity of the carrier was marked as Jonah Badmus. Badmus rather than Eko, which was a conscious decision he had made to retain the name of our biological father, a man we had never met. "There's no reason to change my surname if I don't have to," he had said to Mr and Mrs Eko when he was ten. Ten years old and already displaying the ability to be short and decisive.

  I gazed at the passport photograph and observed Jonah's fixed and expressionless face, staring back at me. Then I dumped the passport back on the bed and felt the vibration of my mobile phone. It was a text message.

  "Good Evening, Mr Eko,

  I hope you are well. Following a brief investigation into your recent request, I have found some crucial information that I am keen on sharing with you. I will be in my office from 9am tomorrow morning and will appreciate it if you could stop by to discuss the matter further.

  Sade Nonso

  Private Investigator

  Moonlight Investigations Lagos

  14 Allen Avenue, Lagos City."

  I stared at the screen. For a moment I was convinced she had made some mistake. Otherwise, the agency's efficiency had to be absurd! Nine o'clock the next morning, I thought. I continued to gaze at the screen of the handset, utterly amazed that in less than 24 hours a Sherlock Holmes type investigator may have just found a link to whoever was driving on the morning my parents were killed. I perused the message again with mixed emotions, unsure if I was looking at a scam or the unlikely scenario of a needle being found in a haystack. I remembered Jonah's words of just a few minutes earlier. A prudent piece of advice. He had spoken of the danger of being taken for every penny I had. However, the response I had given to him, was the decision that I was still determined to maintain: "Who dares wins." Scribbling down the address of the agency on a piece of paper, I had a quick shower and got dressed. A short while later, I grabbed a cab, but as I climbed into the back seat, I discovered I had left the paper behind. Just when I thought I would have to return to my room, I remembered the information was still on my phone, and read the details to the driver.

  A good half hour later, we pulled up outside a four-story office building in the middle of a gated compound. The building, like several others I had spotted along the way, had a good number of external defects and was well overdue for some structural repair and a major paint job. A large wooden board with the chalked message: NO TAXI'S OR OKADA MOTORCYCLES was attached to a manually operated sliding gate.

  After paying the driver, I climbed out of the car and accessed the premises through a side entrance. A uniformed guard was seated in a tiny office outdoors. Displaying a sad pair of eyes, he glanced up from a newspaper as I walked past.

  "Welcome, Sah," he said and carried on reading. Several corporately dressed men and women slipped in and out of the buildings front entrance. Cars were parked at random. Strolling through an open set of double doors, I found myself in a dimly lit lobby. There was no one at the reception desk, only a ladies handbag dumped on a seat behind it. Mounted on the wall was a giant board with the names of companies and their designated floors in magnetic letters. Moonlight Investigations Lagos was on the third floor. With no service elevator in sight, I jogged up a dusty stairwell and arrived on the third floor. Walking down a narrow corridor, I went past the doors of some of the companies advertised out front. Then, I stopped before a windowless office. The investigation agencies name was fixed across the door in brass letters.

  I knocked twice, and a voice on the other side said, "Come in." I opened the door and stepped into a pristine, florescent lit, air-conditioned room. The lady known as Sade Nonso was seated behind a glass office desk, a wooden cabinet parked beneath it. Remembering the photograph I'd seen of her earlier, she was even more attractive in the flesh. Sade had four items laid out before her. A vase of roses, a graduation picture, an A4 sized, official-looking brown envelope and an Apple Mac laptop. She rose to her feet as I closed the door and made my approach.

  "Mr Eko?"

  "Michael will do."

  She stuck out an eager hand.

  "Happy you could make it, Michael."

  She had a glorious smile. I took her hand in mine and shook it. It felt soft and tender, like the hand of a defenceless infant.

  "Please, have a seat."

  She gestured to a leather chair across from her.

  I sat down and scanned the room. It was spacious and had cream-coloured walls matching marble floor tiles of the same colour.At the far end of the room was a leather couch. A few feet from the sofa, a Persian rug, was balanced upright in a quiet corner. The rug looked new, still embalmed in plastic, good and ready to grace the middle of the floor. Right behind me, to the left of the door, was a sign I had noticed on my way in. A giant glass framed sign which read: MOONLIGHT INVESTIGATIONS LAGOS in bold, glossy letters.

  "Can I get you in anything?" Sade said, making for an open door at the back of the room.

  "No, I'm fine."

  "You sure...water, juice?"

  Then with a humorous smile.

  "Cup of tea?"

  I smiled at her last offer.

  "A bottle of water will do," I said. "Way too hot for tea."

  She disappeared into a room I assumed was a kitchen, and returned with a bottle of Evian. Planting the bottle on the desk before me, she reclaimed her seat. I twisted open the lid and took a swig. I placed the bottle back on the desk.

  "You do this alone?" I said.

  "Just me, myself and I."

  "Hard work?"

  "Wouldn't have it any other way."

  I nodded, a little anxious about whatever it was she had to share.

  I glanced over at the rug again.

  "Beautiful rug," I said stalling the conversation for a minute.

  She looked over at the item and smiled.

  "It is, isn't it?" she said, as though noticing it for the first time herself. "Still trying to figure out if it's the right fit for this office, though."

  I shifted my gaze in the direction of the rug once again.

  "Whatever you decide, I think it looks pretty stunning."

  She smiled back in appreciation.

  "Thank you, Michael "

  She snatched up the brown envelope and withdrew an official-looking form from inside. She flashed the form at me. "Now onto the good stuff," she said and slid the document across the table. She gestured to the sheet with an open hand.

  "Something for you to sign before we talk."

  "What's this?" I said, a little baffled.

  "Confidentiality clause," she said and extended me a pen.

  "What for?"

  "Protection. Mine and yours. The agreement states that though you can use the information I about to share with you, in whichever way you choose. You can never reveal how you obtained it."

  "Meaning, I can never..."

  She didn't let me finish.

  "Mention either the name of myself or this company?"

  "How much is this going to cost?"

  "The service or a lawsuit?"

  I smiled in return.

  "The service."

  "Twenty thousand Naira," she replied.

  I stared at her in disbelief.

  "Twenty pounds?"

  "Too much?"

  "Thought it would cost mo
re."

  "Good," she said. " Believe it or not, I was never in it for the money." I acknowledged her honesty with a nod, reached into my pocket and pulled out a wallet.