TIMOTHY SOWAH LIVED IN Ho, and he had to get back. Dawson walked him to his car, a sleek, silver Audi 80. Timothy opened the trunk and pulled out a bag containing two bottles of liquor. Dawson took a peek. One was Beefeater London dry gin and the other was German schnapps.
“Good heavens,” Dawson said. “Look at the size of these things.”
Timothy affected a rueful look. “Standard gifts to take to a fetish priest. Besides, I want to make sure Togbe’s tongue gets loosened.”
“Thank you,” Dawson said. “Very thoughtful.”
They exchanged calling cards.
“I’ll put my personal mobile number on the back,” Timothy said. “Just in case you need me.”
“Left-handed, I see,” Dawson commented as Timothy wrote it down.
“Yes,” Timothy said. “Is that of particular interest?”
“Yes. My mother was left-handed, and my brother is ambidextrous, so I tend to like lefties.”
“Oh, thank you,” Timothy said, looking pleased. “I certainly hope we’ll meet up again soon in less unpleasant circumstances, Detective Inspector. Best of luck.”
“Thanks, Mr. Sowah.”
“Oh, please-do call me Timothy.”
Dawson and Inspector Fiti set out into the forest. The midafternoon sun had fled from a mob of black clouds building up in the northeast corner of the sky.
“We have to be quick,” Fiti said. “The rain is coming.”
They picked up the pace. Dawson caught sight of a compound in a grove of trees in the distance to his right, and immediately his recollection of it swept in. Isaac Kutu’s place. He remembered it clearly, and Isaac as well. Deep, dark, flashing eyes with secrets in them.
“Does Isaac Kutu still live there?” Dawson asked, pointing with his chin.
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“I met him at my auntie’s house the time I visited with my mother.”
“We can go and see him tomorrow if you like,” Fiti said. “He knew Gladys Mensah very well.”
They turned left off the Ketanu-Bedome footpath into the forest. What resembled a trail soon disappeared, and as the sky darkened, the vegetation thickened around them and slowed their progress. Now Dawson remembered the same padded and insulated quality of the forest that he had experienced when here as a boy. Sound was quickly muffled by the trees and undergrowth. Every footfall, every scrunch of dead leaves or crack of a branch had a kind of nearness isolated by the cocoon of the forest’s stillness.
After several minutes of tramping along, Fiti stopped, put his hands on his hips, and looked around. “I think I’m lost.”
He turned one revolution, getting more confused. “Which way did we come?”
“That way,” Dawson said, pointing with his chin. “Southwest headed northeast.”
If he had been blessed with one attribute, it was the ability to tell direction with compass precision, which few Ghanaians concerned themselves about. Fiti frowned at him as if he had spoken Greek.
“Let’s go back,” he said.
This time Dawson took the lead.
“Ah, here!” Fiti suddenly exclaimed. “This way-I remember now.”
He made a direction change-due west, Dawson noted.
After another few minutes, Fiti said, “Yes, it was near here.”
They went a little farther, and then Fiti stopped. “This is the place. She was lying just past this palm tree under that bush.”
Dawson stooped down. “In what direction?” He had studied the photographs but wanted to be sure he had his bearings.
Fiti made a forward and back gesture. “Like that.”
“And the shoe that was missing-where was that?”
“Over there.” Fiti pointed a few feet away. “And then the briefcase she was carrying was farther up. It had a mobile inside, but the crime scene people say the rain completely spoiled it, so they have to see if they can get it to work again.”
Dawson nodded. All Gladys’s items found at the scene were now at the crime lab in Accra.
“You didn’t notice any footprints around?” he asked.
Fiti shook his head. “No.”
Dawson looked around. “A lot of banana trees,” he commented as he stood up.
“These are plantain,” Fiti corrected.
“Ah.” Dawson went closer and saw fat green bunches of the fruit hanging. “Yes, I see.”
Fiti was amused. “City man doesn’t know how plantain tree look.”
Dawson smiled absently. He took a few additional steps, searching some more.
“What are you looking for?” Fiti asked him.
“Nothing in particular.”
Dawson penetrated some way into the plantain cluster and kept going without knowing why. At length, he found something curious: a collection of fifteen or so rounded rocks piled on top of one another to form a pyramid about two feet in height. Dawson knelt down in front of it.
“What is this?” he called out to the inspector.
Fiti came up behind him and stared at the pyramid for a moment. “Maybe some kind of juju to chase away evil spirits or witchcraft.”
“Why here?” Dawson said. “Spirits like to be around plantain trees?”
“They can be anywhere, Inspector Dawson,” Fiti said charitably. “People put juju near their farms so their farming won’t be spoiled, understand?”
Dawson reached for the top rock of the pyramid, but Fiti deflected his hand.
“No! Inspector Dawson, I’m sorry, but you don’t touch something like that, sir. Something could happen.”
“Happen like what?”
Fiti sighed and shook his head. “Please, I’m just telling you for your own good-don’t touch it.”
Dawson shrugged. “All right. Where would someone get those rocks?”
“There is a stream not far away that has some like that.”
The forest had grown dark, and the sky was black. Lightning, flittering from one horizon to the other, lit up the juju pyramid, and a rumble of weighty thunder lumbered through.
“We have to go now,” Fiti said. “The rain won’t wait anymore.”
It began to pour before Fiti and Dawson made it back to the police station, and they were soaked enough to need a change of clothes. Dawson grabbed a shirt and pants from his bag and changed in Inspector Fiti’s office.
They talked about the case, and Fiti told him about the Mensahs. It was obvious how much admiration he had for them. They were relatively successful people who ran several different enterprises, and their talent was clear: Kofi, the patriarch, and his wife traded in cocoa, palm oil, and cassava. Charles, the oldest son, helped with the farm as well, but he was also a carpenter who could put up anything a hundred times faster than any government-sponsored project. Kofi’s sister, Elizabeth, was a seamstress and cloth trader, and of course, Gladys, the star, had been a medical student. Her becoming a doctor would have been the pinnacle of the family’s successes.
In contrast, Fiti had nothing but distaste for the Boatengs, particularly Samuel, whom he accused of petty theft in the recent past. Fiti was determined to arrest him, and he wanted to do it before dark. It was now going on five in the afternoon.
“The rain is stopping,” he said, rising from his chair. “We can go now.”
Dawson took Gyamfi in his car, and they followed Fiti and Constable Bubo in the official police vehicle. It was impossible to drive right up to the Boatengs’ house. A gutter ran directly across their path, and the rain had swelled it with mud. They parked the cars just in front of the gutter, jumped over it, and walked the rest of the way. It was barely drizzling now, but there were huge puddles and broad patches of sticky mud in their path.
“That’s the house,” Gyamfi said, pointing.
It was constructed of mud brick and a rusty corrugated tin roof. The outer walls were eroded away by rain at their junction with the ground, making the house sit on steadily thinning support.
Fiti led the way and went in unannounced. There were six people in the front room, one sleeping, three of them playing a boisterous game of cards, and the two most senior, whom Dawson assumed were Mr. and Mrs. Boateng, were chatting. In the corner was a woodstove, cold at the moment.
“Boateng, where is Samuel?” Fiti asked.
Mr. Boateng-Dawson’s guess had been right-jumped to his feet.
“Good evening, sir.” Thick voice, something like treacle.
“Good evening. Where is Samuel?”
“Please, he’s not here, sir.”
“Where did he go?”
“Please, I don’t know, sir.”
The adjoining room was small, windowless, and dark. Fiti switched on his flashlight and took a quick look inside. No one was there.
“We’ll find him,” Fiti said. “Split up. Gyamfi, stay with Inspector Dawson, Bubo is with me. Come on.”
Outside, the two pairs went in opposite directions.
“Where might he be?” Dawson asked Gyamfi.
“He can be anywhere. Probably with his friends going around looking for girls.”
Gyamfi described Samuel to Dawson so he would recognize him. After about ten minutes of trudging around, they hadn’t spotted the suspect anywhere.
Suddenly they heard running footsteps approaching and then a shout, “Stop him! Stop him!”
A man was coming toward them fast, running for his life, bare feet kicking up mud. Close behind him was Constable Bubo, and Inspector Fiti brought up the rear.
“Catch him!” Fiti yelled.
The man saw Dawson and Gyamfi, and sharply veered away to avoid them. But Gyamfi was nimble. He sprang as if out of a cannon and cut back at an angle to intersect the man’s path. They collided and spun to the ground like wrestlers. Bubo got to them a second later. For a moment there was a lot of thrashing around and shouting, but out of it Constable Bubo extracted the screaming man and yanked him up. As he did that, Inspector Fiti came galumphing, belly wobbling with the exertion.
“Hold him well! ” he shouted.
A crowd was gathering fast. Both constables had a firm grip on their captive, who was putting up a healthy struggle. Dawson now saw that he was only eighteen or nineteen. Samuel Boateng, he realized.
Inspector Fiti came up to him, face twisted with anger.
“Stupid boy!” he screamed. “Stupid! You think you can get away from us? Heh?”
Samuel’s shirt had been ripped off in the struggle. His chest was heaving and his skin ran with sweat.
“Take him away,” Inspector Fiti ordered with a furious backhand swipe through the air.
Some of the crowd began to hoot as the two constables hauled Samuel off to the police car. His feet dragged as he tried to resist. Mr. and Mrs. Boateng trailed after the constables and pleaded with them to let their son go.
Fiti hitched up his pants. “Go home!” he yelled at the crowd. “Foolish people. What are you looking at?”
They laughed as they turned to slink back to their houses. Terrific entertainment this evening.
Gyamfi rejoined Dawson and Inspector Fiti while Constable Bubo kept an eye on Samuel in the backseat of the police car. Fiti ordered everyone out of the Boatengs’ house.
“Only you in here with us,” he said, pointing at Mr. Boateng. “You hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
The dark of early evening was approaching. A kerosene lantern hanging from a hook on the wall provided dim, shadowy illumination in the main room of the house. It was the smaller adjacent sleeping room that was of greater interest to Fiti. On the floor was an assortment of mattresses, sleeping cloths and mats, clothes in several piles, and a tiny radio. There was a large battered portmanteau next to the door.
“Aha,” Fiti said, handing the flashlight to Dawson, who trained the beam on the portmanteau while Fiti lifted the lid and looked inside. He rummaged around, removing items-a few tins of sardines, evaporated milk, and two bags of gari-and dropped them on the floor. Fiti grunted as he got to the bottom of the portmanteau without finding anything significant.
“Boateng,” he called out. “Come here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fiti took the flashlight from Dawson and shone it full in Mr. Boateng’s face. He flinched and blinked in the beam.
“Which one is Samuel’s sleeping cloth?” Fiti asked him.
Boateng pointed to the opposite corner.
It was dark brown and rolled up in a neat bundle. Fiti unfurled it with his free hand, and something fell out. He pounced on it.
“What’s that?” Dawson asked.
Fiti showed him. It was a small plastic pack of three individually wrapped condoms.
“So now we know he was having sex,” Fiti said.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Dawson said, but Fiti didn’t appear to have heard him, or more likely, he was ignoring him.
He beckoned to Mr. Boateng.
“Yes, sir?”
Fiti showed him the condoms. “You see now? You see what your son was doing?”
Boateng looked mortified with embarrassment.
“Did he sleep with some girls here?” Fiti said.
Boateng was appalled. “NO, sir.”
“With whom was he sleeping?”
“Please, I don’t know. No one, sir.”
Fiti smirked and waved the condoms in Boateng’s face. “He’s your boy but you didn’t know he had these prophylactics. So how do you know he wasn’t having sex? Don’t try to be clever with me because you aren’t clever enough, you hear?”
Boateng looked away, and Dawson saw his jaw muscles working with suppressed anger.
“Was your boy trying to sleep with Gladys Mensah?” Fiti snapped. “I’m talking to you, Boateng. I say, was he trying to have sex with Gladys?”
Boateng shook his head. “No, sir.”
“We’ll see about that,” Fiti said. “I don’t think you know what kind of person your son really is, and if you do, then you’re trying to protect him.” He turned to Dawson. “Let’s go. Samuel will spend the night in the jail. In the morning he will be ready to talk.”