VICTORIA TYPED UP THE official autopsy report in no time at all and gave Dawson a copy.
“Would you like to meet my wife and have some lunch before you set off to Ho?” Dr. Biney suggested as he saw Dawson out. “We have a place on the water and a floating gazebo on the river, and my wife makes an exquisite grilled tilapia.”
It was certainly tempting, but Dawson declined with thanks. “I should get to Ho without delay,” he explained.
“Very well-perhaps another time. You are always welcome.”
They exchanged calling cards as they continued on to Dawson’s car.
Just as he was about to open the door, Dawson thought of something. “You know a lot of people, Dr. Biney. Would you mind taking a look at this?”
He dug into his pocket and fished out the gold watch he had confiscated from Daramani. “Stolen item, seems it belongs to a doctor. Do you know this name?”
Biney looked at the engraving on the back plate. “Good gracious,” he said in surprise. “I most certainly do know this fellow. He and I were classmates in med school and we’re still in touch.”
“Any idea where he lives or works?”
“In Accra. As a matter of fact, I have to be in Accra in two weeks and I can see to it personally that he gets it back-if that’s okay with you, that is.”
“It’s a million times better than okay. A huge relief, really-one less thing to do.”
“Consider it done, then.”
“Thank you, Doctor. For everything.”
“You’re most welcome, Inspector Dawson. If there’s anything I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to call. Good luck, and drive safely.”
To get to Ketanu from Akosombo, Dawson went south again to Atimpoku and took the Adomi Bridge across the Volta River. He fiddled with the radio dial until he found a station playing hip-life music-something to keep him company for the hour-long journey. Much of that time was taken up by slowing at police checkpoints. Togo, Ghana’s neighboring country, was not far away, and as Dawson knew only too well, the Volta Region was a hub for illicit drugs going back and forth across the border.
No drug-sniffing dogs at the checkpoints, thank goodness. Dawson had a little marijuana on him, and though his CID badge would get him easily past the human police, nosy canines were another matter altogether.
Traffic was light up to Ketanu. Along the road, pedestrians trudged between one town and the next, and not for the first time, Dawson marveled at the stamina of even small children carrying firewood or buckets of water on their heads.
By the time he reached Juapong, he was good and hungry and kept thinking about Dr. Biney’s alluring invitation to dine on grilled tilapia. Dawson would have to settle for something gastronomically simpler, and he pulled over to buy golden-roasted plantain and groundnuts from a roadside trader.
On the way again, Dawson noticed how the vegetation began to change from open bush with isolated skyscraper trees to denser semi-deciduous forest, but that in turn gave way to buildings as Dawson approached Ketanu. He passed a sign announcing YOU ARE ENTERING KETANU and slowed down over the brain-rattling speed strips.
If Ketanu had been an impressionist painting, it would have been dots and daubs of tan and brown. Buildings were a cream color or darker, and the rusted tin roofs exactly matched the color of the ground. Tro-tros and taxis plied the streets, and shops and trading kiosks lined the roadside with entertaining appellations like Nothing but Prayer Electrical Goods and the God Is Great Hair Clinic. Dawson loved these names.
He was looking for something recognizable from long ago, but nothing familiar had struck him so far. Even the road he was on was newly constructed and not the same one he had traveled with Mama and Cairo.
Dawson was to meet an Inspector Fiti at the police station. The directions were in his head. He turned right onto a fitfully paved road, drove slowly up a small incline, and pulled up to a small, stand-alone square building painted the signature dark blue with the words GHANA POLICE SERVICE-KETANU across the top in white.
Before the entrance itself, there was a small covered veranda, where three people were seated on a wooden bench. As he walked in, Dawson saw a counter at the front with space to fit no more than two people behind it. To his left, down a couple of steps, were two small jail cells, and to his right was an office whose door was shut.
Two constables in the standard GPS gray-and-black camouflage-like uniform were behind the counter doing some paperwork. The younger, round-faced one, who looked to be in his mid-twenties, looked up inquiringly.
“Good afternoon, sir. You are welcome.”
“Good afternoon. I’m Detective Inspector Dawson, Accra CID.”
The constable stood up even straighter.
“Yes, sir, Inspector Dawson, sir. I’m Constable Gyamfi.” They shook hands. “That is Constable Bubo over there.”
“Good afternoon, sir,” Bubo said, standing up with an acknowledging nod.
“I will let Inspector Fiti know you are here, sir,” Gyamfi said, coming around from behind the counter. He knocked on the closed office door, opened it, and put his head in.
“Please, sir, Detective Inspector Dawson from Accra is here.”
“Who?” Dawson heard the inspector say.
“D.I. Dawson, sir. From CID, sir.”
“From Accra, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was silence for a moment. The door opened fully, and Inspector Fiti emerged. He was probably in his late forties, pointy-faced with a thick neck and sweat rings at the armpits of his olive shirt, which was coming undone from underneath his paunch. He seemed both puzzled and wary as he approached Dawson.
“Good afternoon, Detective Inspector,” he said. “Can I do anything for you?” His voice was coarse and sticky, like freshly laid asphalt.
Now it was Dawson who was puzzled. “I’m here regarding the murder case? Gladys Mensah?”
Fiti looked blank. “I was expecting someone from Ho.”
“I don’t know much about that part,” Dawson said. “All I was told by my chief super was that the minister of health wanted Accra CID to be in charge.”
“Who is your chief superintendent?”
“Theophilus Lartey.”
“Oh, yes. I know him.”
A trim, clean-shaven, baby-faced man had been hovering behind Fiti in the doorway of the office, but now he approached Dawson.
“Welcome, Detective Inspector,” he said, shaking hands. His voice was gentle but resilient, like the sensation of soft, wet grass on bare feet, and his inflection hinted at some significant stay in England. “I’m Timothy Sowah, program director of the Health Service AIDS program in the Volta Region. Gladys Mensah was doing volunteer work with us. She was the best. These past three days have been horrendous.”
“Excuse me one minute,” Inspector Fiti said brusquely, returning to his office and shutting the door.
“He doesn’t seem very happy I’m here,” Dawson said, lowering his voice.
Timothy made a face. “No, he doesn’t.”
Seconds later they could hear Fiti on the phone asking someone at the Ho station what was going on.
“Can I have a word with you outside?” Timothy said to Dawson.
They stepped out.
“Don’t let this on to Inspector Fiti,” Timothy said, “but I had a lot to do with your being here instead of the chap from Ho.”
Dawson was surprised. “You did?”
“Yes. Look, I was worried. I wanted to be sure we got someone really good on the case. I know the CID chap stationed at Ho, and I’m sorry, I’m not impressed. I couldn’t take the risk. I really want this murder solved. So I called the minister, and he agreed to have Accra handle it. So here you are. Trouble is, I’m sure everyone thought everyone else was going to inform Inspector Fiti, and so it ended up no one did. I apologize if I’ve caused a bit of an incident.”
“It’s all right,” Dawson said. “At least now I’m clear how it happened.”
“Let’s go back inside.”
Inspector Fiti had emerged from his office again. “Accra CID is always doing this,” he said bitterly. “They think we can’t handle our own affairs.”
“I’m sorry to have caught you unawares, Inspector,” Dawson said. “I’m here to help, that’s all.”
Fiti heaved a sigh. “Okay. Anyway, you can come into my office.”
It was small and jumbled, as untidy as Inspector Fiti himself. Tilting stacks of papers on the desk were gathering dust, and there was more chaos on the floor. There were only two chairs, and Fiti asked Constable Gyamfi to bring in a third. It was hot and airless in the room despite the whirring ceiling fan. Squashed close to the other two men with the door shut, Dawson felt suffocated.
His first order of business was to let Sowah and the inspector know the latest, and he told them about the autopsy on Gladys.
“Strangled,” Timothy said, looking stunned. “Strangled, my God.”
“Do you have the autopsy report?” Inspector Fiti asked.
“Yes, I do,” Dawson said, handing it over to Fiti, who read it in silence.
“I see,” he said curtly when he was done. “I would like to make a copy.”
“Of course,” Dawson said.
Fiti got up and removed some papers from the top of a small photocopy machine.
“Can you give me your version of the chronology of the events around Gladys Mensah’s death, Inspector?” Dawson asked as Fiti began to copy the first page.
“Chronology,” Fiti said slowly, as if considering the nuances of the word.
“When the body was found and so on.”
“Yes, I know what the word chronology means,” Fiti said.
“I apologize, Inspector.”
“Today is Tuesday. Gladys went to Bedome on last Friday in the afternoon. She was killed sometime during the evening or night of Friday. On Saturday morning, Gladys’s brother Charles came to report her missing, and on the same morning, Efia, a woman from Bedome, found her body. Crime scene unit came in the afternoon and took their photographs and all those things, and then the body was taken to the VRA morgue on Saturday night to await the postmortem.”
“Did the crime scene guys say when they’d be ready with their report?”
“They said next week,” Fiti replied with a shrug. “They always say next week. It could be next year.”
“You’re right,” Dawson agreed. “Back to Gladys, though. What was she doing in Bedome?”
“She was a volunteer with the GHS AIDS outreach program,” Timothy explained. “We provide voluntary counseling and testing-VCT-in both urban and rural areas, and we have a limited supply of antiretroviral medicines to dispense to HIV-positive people, especially for pregnant women.”
“You use a lot of volunteers?”
“A few. We have an arrangement with the medical schools. Every year they provide us with three or four medical students who do their electives with us. Gladys was one of them. Ketanu and Bedome were on our VCT list this year, and she picked those.”
“Was she the only volunteer for the two towns?”
“Yes.”
“Might there be anyone in Ketanu or Bedome who didn’t like what Gladys was doing?”
Timothy took a breath. “Unfortunately, yes. She clashed badly with Bedome’s head priest-name’s Togbe Adzima-over this trokosi business. Have you heard about it, Inspector Dawson? These women they call trokosi? Supposedly wives of the gods serving at a shrine as penance for a family crime? They’re often brought to the shrine as girls as young as nine, and once they reach puberty, the fetish priests begin to have sex with them.”
“I thought all that had been outlawed.”
“Technically, yes. There’s a law on the books, but not a single person has ever been arrested in connection with trokosi.”
“Why is that, exactly?”
“Good propaganda is one reason, if not the only one. The fetish priests-who, by the way, don’t like being referred to that way-insist trokosi is an age-old tradition that should be respected. And if anyone tries to eradicate it, they say, the gods will be angered and take revenge in some way. That scares away even the police. And then there’s AfriKulture.”
“Afri-who?”
“AfriKulture. It’s an organization dedicated to saving aspects of Ghanaian culture and tradition that it claims are under attack from the Western world, trokosi being one of them. I’m loath to admit it, but their campaign is gaining strength. You can hardly get to a shrine without going through AfriKulture.”
“What does AfriKulture say about the girls taken into the shrine?”
“That they’re privileged young women who will learn the ways of morality. They deny that any of them are cast into perpetual servitude.”
“I take it you think that’s a load of nonsense.”
“Yes, I do. Look, this thing might have worked centuries ago, but it doesn’t fit with modern times. I think these so-called priests are con artists enslaving young women under the guise of a so-called tradition.”
“Togbe Adzima being one of these con artists, in your opinion.”
Timothy nodded vigorously. “Without a doubt. Gladys felt the same way.”
“She confronted Adzima?”
“Not just confronted. She went head-to-head with him. I told her she had to tone it down, but she wouldn’t. She kept telling him she was going to bring down the hand of the law on him, and he kept invoking the power of the gods against her. Told her she would be struck down by them if she continued in that fashion.”
“And now she’s been struck down,” Dawson said.
“Yes,” Timothy said bitterly. “It really gets to me.”
“At any rate, it would seem to make Adzima a suspect. What do you think, Inspector Fiti?”
“I think Togbe Adzima believes in his gods,” Fiti replied. “He really would trust them to destroy Gladys on their own power, and so I think he would leave it for the gods to do and not kill her himself.”
Interesting point, Dawson thought.
“The one I really suspect is Samuel Boateng,” Fiti went on.
“Who is he?” Dawson asked.
“This boy Samuel-he was constantly pestering Gladys to be his girlfriend and, according to Charles Mensah, some farmers saw him talking to her near the forest the last evening she was seen alive.”
“You say ‘boy.’ How old is Samuel Boateng?”
“He’s nineteen, something like that.”
“You’ve questioned him?”
“Yes, and I’m going to arrest him. I believe he became very angry that Gladys was rejecting him and he killed her soon after he was spotted with her that evening.”
Dawson nodded. “I see. What about Gladys’s family members?”
“All of them loved Gladys,” Fiti said, “and they were proud of her because she was going to be a doctor. Only one thing-there is some bad talk about her aunt Elizabeth. Some people say she killed Gladys using witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft,” Dawson echoed in surprise. “Why do they think that?”
“She’s a widow,” Fiti said, “she has no children, she’s an older woman, and she makes money. Those things make people suspect her.”
“The profile of a witch, so to speak. Did she have a motive?”
“Witches don’t need any motive,” Fiti said witheringly “Elizabeth’s husband died in his sleep years ago without any explanation, and people accused her of the same thing.”
“I don’t know if you’ve ever been to this part of the world before, Inspector Dawson,” Timothy said, “but belief in witchcraft is very strong around here.”
“Believe it or not, I was here twenty-five years ago.”
“Oh, is that so?” Timothy said. “What brought you, may I ask?”
“I came with my mother to visit her sister. She still lives here.”
“What’s her name?”
“Osewa Gedze.”
“Oh, yes,” Fiti said. “I know her. Kweku’s wife.”
“Maybe later you can show me to their house,” Dawson said. “I’m not sure if they live in the same place, and Ketanu has grown a lot since I was last here.”
“Constable Gyamfi can take you there,” Fiti said.
“Did you also visit Bedome when you were here as a kid?” Timothy asked.
“No, I didn’t. How far is it from here?”
“About a kilometer away on the other side of the forest. Shrines prefer to be somewhat obscured by bush or forest.”
“Makes sense,” Dawson said. “Especially now with all this scrutiny.”
“Indeed,” Timothy said. “Where will you be staying while you’re here?”
“The MoH guesthouse,” Dawson answered. To Fiti he said, “Are you all right with my being in Ketanu with the investigation?”
“Look, it’s no problem,” Fiti said. “Anyway, when we go and arrest Samuel today maybe it will be all over and you can go back to Accra and live in peace ever after.”
He suddenly grinned at his own verbiage, showing a set of yellowed horse teeth, and Dawson couldn’t help smiling himself.
“Before arresting Samuel,” he said, “can we go to the scene of the crime?”