AUNTIE OSEWA’S MEAL THAT night was rice and grilled tilapia spiced with ginger and hot pepper, with slivers of ripe plantain fried in palm oil until crispy. They ate outside by lantern light and talked. Alifoe was quite the comedian. As Dawson recovered from a stitch in his side from laughing, Uncle Kweku turned to his wife. “Darko sounds so much like his mother when he laughs,” he said to her.
“Really?” Dawson said. “No one has ever told me that.”
“I always thought the same thing,” Osewa said quietly. “But I didn’t want to say so in case it brought sadness to you, Darko.”
“No,” he said. “On the contrary.”
“What happened to Auntie Beatrice?” Alifoe asked.
“Alifoe,” Osewa said sharply.
“It’s okay,” Dawson said. “No one knows what happened, Alifoe. I was twelve years old, and you were a baby, of course. After you were born, she came twice to visit. The second time, she stayed a few days and then she said she was going back to Accra. She never arrived home.”
“What could have happened? Maybe the tro-tro had an accident?”
Dawson shook his head. “That was checked by the detective assigned to the case. There were no accidents between Ketanu and Accra that day.”
Alifoe looked perplexed. “Then she must have got off somewhere on the way.”
“That we don’t know,” Dawson said. “But why would she do that?”
“Are we even sure she got on?” Alifoe persisted.
“Of course we’re sure,” Auntie Osewa said, sounding irritated. “How many times do I have to tell people that it was me who went with her to the tro-tro stop to see her off?”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” Alifoe said. “I didn’t know that.”
“Tell us about it, Auntie Osewa,” Dawson said. Now was as good a time as any.
“It was before noontime,” she began. “She wanted to get home a little early, so she didn’t want to wait until the afternoon to start out for Accra. Do you remember that, Kweku?”
He nodded in agreement.
“So anyway,” Auntie Osewa continued, “we walked to the bus stop talking and laughing. She seemed so happy. Even when she talked about Cairo she was cheerful. Both of us were happy together, and we agreed I should visit Accra and bring Alifoe when he got a little older. When we got to the stop, I wanted to be certain she got a tro-tro that was safe, so I let the first one go on because it was a broken-down old boneshaker, but the second one was all right. I made sure she got a good seat at the front near the driver, and then we kissed good-bye.”
“And that was the last you saw of her?” Alifoe asked.
“Yes,” Auntie Osewa said sadly.
Dawson had stopped eating. He felt sick.
“Darko?” Auntie Osewa said. “Are you okay?”
He looked at her without seeing all her face. Had he heard her right?
“You said Mama sat at the front of the tro-tro?” he asked. His voice sounded distant and small.
Auntie Osewa looked quizzically at him, hesitating. “Yes, that’s right. Why are you asking me that?”
Dawson’s blood turned chilly. What his aunt had just said could not have been. She must have had a false memory of what had happened.
Or she was lying.
Mama had always been scared to death of sitting in the front section of a tro-tro. She wouldn’t do it. What did she always say? If there’s an accident, I don’t want you flying through the windscreen. Nor me.
They went to bed late. Dawson lay on his back in Alifoe’s room with one arm crooked under his head as he stared up in the darkness and his thoughts roamed. Nothing felt right to him. What Auntie had said was twisting in his mind like a fish on a hook. A good seat at the front of the tro-tro… at the front… at the front. That phrase over and over. Memories of his boyhood visit to Ketanu flooded back. Something had been wrong back then too.
Sitting at that table in Auntie Osewa’s house and eating her delicious meal while the grownups chatted about things that bored Darko and his brother stiff… and then suddenly, Mr. Kutu’s fleeting look at Mama. Dawson remembered it clearly. Mama’s eyes had met Kutu’s in a snatched instant so brief that no one would have expected it to bear a message. But it did, and Auntie Osewa had read it and understood. In turn, Darko had seen everything. One, two, three stolen glances whose meaning disturbed him without his quite knowing why.
What about later that evening, as they played oware? Auntie Osewa had disappeared for a while. To set the rabbit traps, she had said, and the quality of her voice had felt so strange to Dawson that he had looked at her in surprise.
“Cousin Darko?”
Dawson lifted his head in surprise. He had thought Alifoe was asleep.
“Yes?”
“You’re not sleepy?”
“I never sleep well.”
“Oh.”
“Something wrong?”
“No, nothing.”
Dawson waited. He knew there was more.
“Cousin Darko, have you ever kept something inside you that you wished you could tell someone but you didn’t know whom to trust?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“And when you find someone you trust, you feel like telling him?”
“Whom do you trust?”
“You.”
“Thank you.”
“What would you do… I mean, how would you feel if you knew your mother and father didn’t love each other?”
“Mine didn’t.”
“Really?” Alifoe sat up in the dark. “It’s the same with Mama and Papa. I want to see them love each other, but it never happens.”
“And you can’t make it happen either. That’s what you mustn’t forget. If they fell out of love at one time, only they can get themselves back in.”
“Do you think I shouldn’t care so much about it?”
“You can care as much as you want, but don’t let it stop your life.”
Alifoe lay down again.
“Do you feel any better?” Dawson said.
“Yes, I do. Thank you, Darko.”
As soon as the first cock crowed in the morning, Dawson’s eyes popped open. He had been dreaming he was forcing his mother into the front seat of a tro-tro and she was screaming at him to let her go.
He looked at his watch. Five forty-five. Alifoe was still fast asleep.
Dawson got dressed and went out to the courtyard to find Auntie Osewa starting a fire for breakfast.
“Morning, Auntie.”
“Morning, Darko. Did you sleep well?”
“I did, thank you,” he lied.
“Good. Would you like to take some breakfast?”
“I would love to. Can I wash first?”
“Yes, I filled two buckets for you, and there is soap there too.”
First he went to the pit latrine-a necessary evil-and then he took a refreshing bucket bath.
As he ate breakfast, Auntie Osewa was chatty and Dawson did his best to respond in kind, but he felt as though a two-way mirror had gone up between them. Auntie was on one side seeing her reflection and talking through it to Dawson, who was on the other side looking at her.
“So,” she said, “what will you be doing today?”
“To start, I have to go and meet with Efia,” he said.
“That’s the one who found the body? One of Adzima’s wives?”
“Yes.”
“It must have been terrible for her when she found it,” she reflected.
“It was. It’s affected her deeply, probably for life.”
He finished breakfast quickly and stood up. “Thank you, Auntie. It was delicious. I’d best be going now.”
Dawson walked the footpath between Ketanu and Bedome, and as he came to the farm plots, he spotted Efia and Ama hoeing the soil along with a few other farmers. Efia waved at him as he came up to them.
“Morning, Efia. Morning, Ama.”
“Morning, morning, Mr. Dawson.” They spoke and smiled simultaneously, just like twins. Both were sweating, Efia a little more.
“How goes it, Efia?” Dawson asked.
“Fine,” she said. “I’m so happy to see you. They told me you were going to leave Ketanu, and I was feeling so sad.”
“Who told you?”
“That man from Accra-Mr. Chikata?”
“Oh, yes. He’s my workmate. They told him to take over the case from me.”
“Why?”
“Because… Well, it doesn’t matter. Can you help me a little bit?”
“But of course.”
“I hope you don’t mind, but could you show me the way you left the forest after you found Gladys dead, and also exactly where you saw Mr. Kutu? Do you have time?”
“Yes, I can come.”
She handed Ama her hoe. “I’ll be back soon,” she told her daughter.
Dawson and Efia walked back toward the footpath.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Togbe Adzima,” Dawson said.
“Yes?”
“Did one of his wives die last year?”
“Yes. Her name was Comfort.”
“She died of AIDS?”
“I don’t know. They said she was cursed.”
“Efia, if it was AIDS, then it was Togbe Adzima who gave it to her.”
She frowned as they turned onto the Bedome-Ketanu path, her head down as she thought about the implications.
Dawson’s heart was in his mouth as he prepared to ask the next question.
“Efia, did Gladys do a blood test on you? For AIDS?”
“Yes, and she said it was okay.”
Dawson breathed again. “I know it would be very difficult for you, but if there’s any way you can avoid Togbe Adzima being with you, any way at all. You and all of the wives-especially the new one.”
Efia was troubled. “I don’t know what to do. The only thing that works sometimes is when he drinks too much.”
“I’ll buy him a gallon of schnapps then,” Dawson said, “and you can feed it to him every day.”
They looked at each other and laughed.
She slowed her pace.
“Mr. Kutu was somewhere here when I saw him,” she said, making a circular motion with her hand.
Dawson nodded. “And how far away were you from here?”
“Down there.” She pointed. “I’ll show you.”
“Was he walking toward you or away from you?”
“Away.”
They went farther down the footpath. Two women talking to each other went by them with cassavas balanced on their heads, and Dawson and Efia wished them good morning.
“I came out from here.” Efia showed Dawson.
There was a break in the bushy vegetation, and Dawson recognized it as the same access he and Inspector Fiti had used. He looked back the way they had come. “I noticed a place up there that might be another path into the forest. Come with me.”
They retraced their steps to the spot. It was true there was a split in the vegetation, but it wasn’t very pronounced.
“Could you go from here to the plantain grove?” Dawson asked.
Efia looked doubtful. “It looks tough. I’ve never done it.”
“Let’s try. You lead.”
The going was not at all easy. They had to weave and duck to get through, and the underbrush was tangled and difficult to negotiate. They arrived at the plantain grove after about eight minutes.
They stood looking around the clearing.
“This is the first time I’ve come back here since Gladys died,” Efia said.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m all right.”
“I want to show you something,” Dawson said.
He led her behind the plantain trees and stopped at the juju pyramid.
“Have you seen this before, Efia?”
“Yes, one time.”
“Are you afraid of it?”
“No, but I stay away from it.”
“What would happen if someone took all these rocks off to see what’s underneath?”
Efia shook her head slowly and disapprovingly. “No one should do that.”
“Do you know who built this?”
“No. And I don’t ask.”
He smiled at her. “Okay. Well, let’s go back the way you went after you found Gladys’s body. You say you ran?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s do that. Try to run as fast as you did. I’ll follow you.”
Dawson had to admit Efia could tackle the forest a lot better than he could. At an all-out run he almost fell twice as he tried to keep up with her.
They came out on the path again, and both were breathing heavily.
“Ei, that was hard,” Dawson said, looking at his watch. Four and a half minutes.
She smiled. “City man, that’s why.”
They laughed.
“I have to go back, Mr. Dawson.”
“I’ll walk with you. Thank you, Efia. You’ve helped me a lot.”
“Not at all, Mr. Dawson.”
On the way back to the farm, Dawson was thinking of a scenario. What if Isaac had killed Gladys that Friday evening?
Saturday morning, he returns to the plantain grove because he thinks he might have left an incriminating clue, or he wants to make sure he hasn’t. While there, he hears Efia approaching. He escapes through the bush to the Ketanu-Bedome footpath by a route that takes him seven or eight minutes. Meanwhile, two or three minutes pass as Efia enters the grove, discovers the body, and screams for help. She runs back to the footpath, which takes another four and a half minutes. Add that up and we get about seven minutes. Isaac Kutu is emerging from the forest at about the same time. That’s when Efia sees him and calls out to him.
“Let me ask you something, Efia,” Dawson said, “and if you know the answer, I want you to tell me the truth.”
“I will try.”
“Gladys was interested in Mr. Kutu’s medicine. Do you think she was trying to steal it from him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Gladys didn’t need Mr. Kutu. She had everything in the world-what does she need him for? No, it was Mr. Kutu who needed Gladys.”
“Do you think he was in love with her?”
“Once when she came to Bedome, I saw him looking at her with desire. I can’t go inside his mind to know whether he was feeling love or not. Mr. Kutu does that with a lot of women. Sometimes he has looked at me the same way.”
“And whom else has he looked at in that way?”
Efia hesitated.
“I have to know,” Dawson pressed.
She was quiet for a moment and he waited.
“If I tell you-”
“No one will find out you told me.”
“He loves one woman from Ketanu.”
“Who? Do you know the woman?”
“Her name is Osewa Gedze.”
Dawson stopped.
Efia turned. “What’s wrong?”
He was stunned. “Osewa Gedze? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure. You know her?”
“How do you know Mr. Kutu loves her?”
Efia visibly squirmed. “I’ve seen them together in the forest.”
“What do you mean by together?”
“I mean they were…”
“Having sex.”
“Yes.” She looked disgusted. “To do that in the forest-it’s terrible, Mr. Dawson.”
“When did it happen?”
“Five or six days ago.”
“Can you show me where they were?”
“Yes, but we have to be quick or Ama will start to get worried.”
The spot Efia took him to was a clearing with a light tree cover.
“How did you find this place?” Dawson asked her, looking around.
“By accident. I got lost while I was looking for a different spot to pick plantains.”
Dawson saw a little shelter-four short poles with a roof.
“Is that where they were, Efia? Under there?”
“Yes.” The look on her face was as if she had just chewed a mouthful of quinine.
Dawson now spotted a bald area on the ground with a pile of ash and partially burned wood. He knelt down beside it.
“Were they cooking?” he asked.
Efia was slightly amused. “No, that’s not the kind of fireplace to cook something. It’s not a good fire.” She picked up a couple of twigs and small leafy branches. “These are green. They don’t burn well, they just make a lot of white smoke.”
“White smoke,” Dawson said with a sudden smile. “Thank you for that, Efia.”
She was bemused. “What did I do?”
“You did a lot-in just one sentence.”
He got up and went poking in the bush. He found a small raffia mat folded in quarters. He opened it out and saw burn marks.
Efia peered at it. “They must have used it to put the fire out.”
“Eventually,” Dawson said. “After they sent the signals.”