AT OSEWA’S FIREWOOD SPOT, Dawson instructed Chikata to turn his back and not to look until called. Dawson walked the approximately three hundred meters to the area at the side of the forest not far from the beginning of the path to Ketanu. It was here that Isaac had rebuked Samuel for talking to Gladys and had chased the boy away That was well established. The unanswered question was whether Samuel had really rejoined Gladys on her way back to Ketanu after she and Isaac had parted. That was Auntie Osewa’s version of the story, and if it was true, Samuel must have hidden behind a tree or bush and waited until the coast was clear. But how could he have done that if he had stayed with the farmers until nightfall?
Dawson had bought a skirt and blouse at Elizabeth’s-extra large to fit him. He had lied and said it was to be a gift for a full-figured sister-in-law. The outfit was identical to the one Gladys had been wearing: blue and white with small Adinkra symbols. He had not shown it to Chikata.
With considerable ineptness, for which he forgave himself, he put on the outfit over his own clothes. Then he called out to Chikata to turn around. He stood in place for about three minutes and then walked toward the Bedome-Ketanu footpath. He went up as far as the mango tree laden with tempting fruit. He didn’t know for sure, but he surmised Gladys would have got to at least this point before being accosted by Samuel.
A woman was walking along the footpath with yams on her head, and she looked at Dawson as if he was insane. After she had passed him, he heard her laughing convulsively. Just jealous, he thought.
He stepped into the bush, took the skirt and blouse off, and put it back in the bag. He trotted back to Chikata.
“You saw me clearly?”
“Twenty-twenty.”
“Describe the dress fully.”
“White, and some blue splashes all over.”
“And what else?”
“There’s something else?”
“I’m asking you. Think hard.”
Chikata shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This is your last chance. Think carefully what else there was besides blue and white.”
“Nothing. How many times do you want me to tell you?”
Dawson took the dress out of its bag.
“Oh,” Chikata said, surprised. “Adinkra symbols. I couldn’t see them from this dis-” He stopped as the light dawned. “Aah, this time you hit it right. Your auntie could not have seen it either. But why did she tell you that? Why would she lie?”
When Chikata said that, Dawson felt tears pricking. His stomach had knotted up. The pieces were falling together one terrible step at a time.
“For the same reason anyone lies,” Dawson said softly. “To hide what they really are.”
“What is this place?” Chikata asked, looking about the forest clearing that Efia had introduced Dawson to.
“It’s where Auntie Osewa comes for love and attention,” Dawson said.
Chikata shook his head. “Sometimes I don’t understand you at all.”
“We need to build a fire,” Dawson said.
“How are we going to do that?” Chikata demanded. “Everything is wet from last night’s rain.”
“We’ll get it done,” Dawson replied, undeterred.
But it did indeed prove difficult to engineer a pile of firewood dry enough to be set alight.
“Blow on it,” Chikata suggested.
“What do you know about lighting a fire?”
“About as much as you. Nothing.”
“Then shut up, D.S. Chikata.”
A few minutes later a decent flame began.
Chikata collected more dry wood, and Dawson added it slowly to avoid killing the fire. Soon it was blazing and popping.
“Good,” he said, pleased. “Now get me a lot of plants and branches with green leaves.”
As Dawson put those on top, the flame dropped and white smoke appeared. He unfolded the raffia mat and covered the fire for a few seconds, smoke escaping laterally from underneath the mat.
“One puff.” He covered for a few seconds and released again. “Now two… two again…”
“Smoke signals?” Chikata asked in disbelief. “Ah, but Dawson, who makes smoke signals anymore?”
“Nobody,” Dawson said. “That’s why it hasn’t been noticed.”
Dawson repeated the cycle several times. One puff, two puffs, two puffs, one. After a while, the fire burned itself out.
“Now what?” Chikata asked.
“We wait.”
And wait they did. The more time passed, the worse Dawson felt. Even in the heat of the forest, he began to shiver.
I could leave now, he thought. Just go back to Accra, call it a day.
But he thought of Gladys and he thought of Samuel, and he knew he couldn’t leave.
A light breeze whispered through the trees. Dawson caught the smell of the moist earth and the lingering odor of the smoke from the fire. He looked up as he heard the soft crunch of feet upon moist leaves. Judging by the interval between footsteps, it was a man approaching. A final rustle past an obstructing bush and Isaac Kutu broke into the clearing. He recoiled when he saw Dawson and Chikata.
“What are you doing here?” he said in surprise.
“Waiting for you and Auntie Osewa,” Dawson said.
Isaac suddenly seemed to shrink. “Why?”
“Is this where you always meet, or do you choose a different place each time?”
Isaac’s shoulders slumped, and he passed his hand over his face like a cloth across a windowpane. “How did you know?”
“Just when you think no one is watching, someone sees.”
“You did?”
“Not me.”
A soft footfall, lighter and quicker than Isaac’s, came from beyond the clearing, and seconds later Auntie Osewa appeared. She went rigid and looked quizzically from Dawson and Chikata to Isaac.
“What’s happening?”
“I saw the signal and I thought it was you,” Isaac said.
“And I thought it was you.” Osewa turned to Dawson, mystified. “Darko?”
“Isaac loves you, Auntie, and you love him. When you signal for him to come to you, he comes. Not so?”
“This is none of your concern, Darko.”
“I’m sorry, Auntie. This isn’t easy for me either, because I’ve loved you from the first day I met you. The way you treated Mama and Cairo and me, your cooking, how you’ve cared for us… I want to thank you. I’ll never forget it.”
She softened. “It’s my duty as an aunt. I love you and Cairo, so I treat you with love.”
“Did you love my mother too?”
“Of course, Darko. Why do you ask such a thing? Of course I loved her.”
“But jealousy defeats love every time, doesn’t it? They’re opposite sides of the same coin, but jealousy always comes out heads.”
“My dear Darko, what you are talking about?”
“Jealousy,” Darko said softly, almost musing to himself. “And its twin, possessiveness.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How did it feel the day Isaac came to the house with Gladys? Did it seem to you like they were close, Auntie? Like there was romance between the two of them?”
“They were working together on the medicines, that’s all,” she said. “I don’t know why you or I should think anything else.”
“I don’t either, but that’s our heads talking. What our hearts say is different. The heart makes an impression on the head, but it’s never the reverse, and it’s the heart that drives our passions and motives.”
“All you’re saying may be true, Darko, my love, but-”
“It was very threatening, Auntie. I know that, and I understand it. Gladys was so lovely, and although she was no lovelier than you, she was young, she was educated, and she was going to be a doctor. To see her with your Isaac, the Isaac who has done so much for you and whom you love more than any other man in the world-maybe the only one you love.” Dawson shook his head. “Too frightening for Gladys to get so close. Who knows what they were doing together in Isaac’s compound? Hours spent side by side. I would have gone mad myself thinking about it.”
Osewa looked away.
“And that evening you were collecting firewood and you saw Isaac and Gladys standing together talking,” Dawson continued, “they stood closer together than was comfortable for you. You couldn’t bear it. Too much pain, too much.”
The other two men were watching, transfixed.
“Once Isaac had left,” Dawson continued, “you caught up with Gladys on her way back to Ketanu and lured her to the plantain grove in the forest.”
“Darko,” Osewa said softly “You are wrong. I already told you. I last saw Gladys with Samuel. She went into the forest with him, not me.”
“You saw them from the firewood spot, not so?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. I don’t know what’s going on, Darko. Is something the matter?”
“Auntie, what I’m getting at is how you knew Gladys’s skirt and blouse had Adinkra symbols on it?”
Osewa shrugged. “Because I saw it. What do you mean, How did I know?”
“You could see the pattern on her outfit from where you were at the firewood spot. That’s what you’re saying?”
“Yes.” But he could see she was suddenly wary.
“Auntie, it’s not possible. From that distance, you couldn’t see the Adinkra symbols.”
A wave of puzzlement and uncertainty passed across her face like a shadow. “What do you mean?”
“The symbols are too small to be seen from where you were. We’ve tried it ourselves, Chikata and I.”
“What?” she said.
“It’s true,” Chikata said quietly. “It’s impossible even for me, and my vision is better than normal.”
“Then how did I know Gladys’s dress had Adinkra on it?” Osewa challenged.
“You saw it only after you got close enough to see the pattern, but your mind played a trick on you and made you think you had also seen it from far off. You wanted to be sure we believed your story, so you gave us that detail and it was one too many.”
Osewa swallowed. She stared at Dawson without blinking, and he stared back. “And you led Gladys to the plantain grove. Maybe you told her you had some special herbs to show her. How long did you wait before you killed her, Auntie?”
Osewa recoiled.
“She didn’t do it,” Isaac said suddenly.
Dawson’s head turned. “What did you say?”
“Osewa didn’t kill Gladys,” he said. “I did.”
“Isaac Kutu, are you confessing to the murder of Gladys Mensah?”
“You’re right that Osewa lied about Samuel and Gladys going into the forest, but it wasn’t herself she was trying to protect, it was me.”
“How did she know you were the murderer?”
“She didn’t know it for sure. She suspected it because she knew I was angry with Gladys for trying to steal from me, and then she got worried when she learned how you were after my skin. And as for the Adinkra symbols, that was easy. She simply asked me what Gladys had been wearing.”
Osewa put her face in her hands and shook her head in disbelief.
Chikata stepped forward, cuffs in hand. “Isaac Kutu,” he said, “I am Detective Sergeant Chikata. I am arresting you for the murder of Gladys Mensah. Please turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
Osewa stood dumbfounded as the handcuffs clicked shut with staccato precision. Isaac bowed his head.
“Auntie Osewa,” Dawson said, “are you really going to let Isaac be taken away to prison like that? Do you really love him if you can stand there and do nothing? After all he’s done for you? Alifoe is your son with Isaac. He’s the father of your child. You’re going to let him go like this?”
Osewa’s eyes had gone wide. “Who told you Isaac is Alifoe’s father?”
“No one. Come on now. Kweku the father of a boy as beautiful as Alifoe? I don’t think so. Kweku is, and always has been, as infertile as the Sahara desert. You know that, and so do I.”
Osewa was looking from Isaac to Dawson and back again. She was torn.
“He loves you, Auntie,” Dawson pressed. “But do you really love him if you can let him take the blame for what you did?”
“Don’t judge me,” she said coldly. “You have no right to judge me.”
Dawson said nothing and waited. Chikata turned Isaac to face Osewa, and their eyes locked.
“Let him go,” she said resolutely. For the first time, she shed tears. “He didn’t kill Gladys. I did.”
Chikata, confused, looked to Dawson for guidance. Dawson nodded his permission to unlock the cuffs.
“You’ve done the right thing, Auntie,” he said. “Now tell me everything. I’m ready to listen to you.”
Osewa turned to one side, arms folded across her chest. Dawson watched her in profile as she stared at an unidentified point somewhere in the distance. She was silent for a long time, and the calls of forest birds filled the void until she began to speak.
“I was collecting firewood when I saw Gladys and Samuel talking to each other at the edge of the forest,” she began. “Then I heard Isaac calling out and saw him walk up to them and begin to argue with Samuel. I heard their voices, but from where I was standing, I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying. Still, I guessed he was telling Samuel to go away and leave Gladys alone.”
Osewa turned back to face Isaac, and now she addressed him directly.
“I didn’t know why you told Samuel to go away, Isaac. Maybe you thought he was dangerous or troubling Gladys. But I was worried, because Samuel was not really a bad person, and so I was thinking to myself, Why has Isaac told the boy to go away? Is it because he likes Gladys and doesn’t want another man near her?
“So I just watched you and Gladys talking and talking, and I was wondering what you could be conversing about for so long. And sometimes you were smiling, Isaac, as though you were enjoying her company so very much. I saw how close to you she was standing. One time she touched your arm, and another time I saw her laugh and I knew it was a laugh of desire for you, because I too am a woman.
“Then you left her and went back to your compound, and she went on her way back toward Ketanu and I was still wondering, wondering, because you always told me you were only working with Gladys on your medicines, so why did it seem that the two of you were so attracted to each other? When you had returned to your compound, I went after Gladys. I had to run because by now she was far ahead on the footpath to Ketanu.
“When I caught up with her, I greeted her and she was nice to me. And while we were talking, I kept thinking how beautiful she was. And I asked her how everything was going in her study of natural medicines. She told me everything was fine. And then she told me something I didn’t like at all. She said she was trying to convince you, Isaac, to go to Accra with her to work with those doctors there. But really, I knew what she was trying to do. She was trying to take you away for herself and keep you in Accra.”
“Osewa, no,” Isaac said sadly. “She wasn’t trying to do that.”
“Maybe you didn’t know that, my love. But that was what she was trying to do and I had to stop her. While I was talking with her, I was thinking to poison her. Maybe just to make her sick enough to want to leave Ketanu and never come back. I told her I could show her a place in the forest with some medicinal herbs, and I’m sorry, Isaac, I lied and said I knew which one you used to cure the AIDS. She was very eager to see it, and I took her to the plantain grove.
“When I got there, I was trying to think of a way to poison her, but time was going, the sun was about to sleep, Gladys wanted to leave, and she kept asking me which was the medicine to cure AIDS. I showed her a plant I didn’t even know, and she began to laugh at me, saying that she didn’t think that was it. And the more she talked, the angrier I became that she was telling me all these things she was planning to do for you. She even said she was going to make the Ministry of Health get you a nice guesthouse, and that’s when I knew for sure that she wanted to live with you in that house. I wanted to tell her that you belonged to me, not to anyone else, that she couldn’t have you.”
Osewa turned to Dawson. “Isaac is everything to me in this world. He gave me everything. His very touch the first day I met him was like nothing I had known. He gave me the love I never had from Kweku or anyone else, and most of all he blessed me with a beautiful son. Do you know how much I wanted a son, Darko? Do you know how I felt when I saw women with two, three, four beautiful children while I had none?”
“I know it was painful for you, Auntie,” Dawson said. “What did you do to Gladys?”
“I attacked her. I wanted to hurt her. We fell on the ground and she started to scream. I squeezed her neck to make her quiet, and she was looking up at me while I was doing it. She was struggling and I wanted her to stop, so I kept squeezing. Her neck was very soft. And when she stopped breathing, I felt sorry for her, and I didn’t know what to do, so I just tried to make her more comfortable by moving her underneath a palm tree. And I rearranged her skirt and blouse so they were nice and neat again.”
Osewa turned her palms up and looked at them as if she was seeing them for the first time. “I couldn’t let her take away my treasure, that’s what you have to understand. Not Gladys, nor any other woman.”
“Even your own sister,” Dawson said.
Osewa drew in her breath so sharply it made a sound of asphyxiation. Her right hand, fingers spread, went to her chest. She stood frozen. Dawson moved in close.
“Where did you bury my mother?”
He grasped her arm, but she threw it off and sprang away like a bush rabbit.
“Don’t touch me!” she snapped. Her eyes blazed like red-hot embers. “You’re just like her. Even your laugh is like hers. She was always better than me, that woman. Ever since we were children. And then she would rub it in my face. She had everything. She lived in Accra, she was more beautiful, she had you and Cairo while I was barren, and then she wanted Isaac for herself as well.”
Her chest was heaving and her hands were trembling.
“Isaac looked at Mama that day we came to see you,” Dawson said, “and she looked back at him. I saw it, and so did you, and you knew what it meant.”
“Yes. That she wanted him. She was going to get him.”
“When you said you had been outside setting the traps for the rabbits,” Dawson said, “you really went to see Isaac, because you were afraid that something was going on between him and Mama, and you desperately wanted Isaac to reassure you that it wasn’t so.”
“Yes.” She looked admiringly at Dawson for a moment. “How do you know everything? Then, when your mother came to see us just after Alifoe was born, a farmer mentioned to me that he had seen Beatrice go into Isaac’s compound and that she had spent a long time there. And then I knew Beatrice was in love with Isaac, because if that wasn’t the case, she would have told me she had gone to see him, maybe for some healing, but she didn’t. She did not say one word about it.
“She came back to Ketanu again, and this time I challenged her. I asked her, ‘Beatrice, I know you have been secretly going to see Isaac Kutu. Why are you doing that?’ She told me she feared that she might have offended the gods in some way and that’s why they had taken Cairo’s legs away, that perhaps she needed to be purified, and so that was why she had visited Isaac’s compound. And I asked her, Why not just find a healer in Accra to purify her? Do you know what she answered? She said that no one made her feel the way Isaac did. She said she just felt so happy when she was with him.
“And then your mother confessed something to me and begged me never to tell anyone. And I said, All right, I won’t tell anyone. She told me she often dreamed that she was standing with seven or eight women who were Isaac’s wives, and one by one they died around her. They just fell down on the ground one after the other and left only Beatrice standing. Once they were all dead, she became Isaac’s new wife.” Auntie Osewa shuddered. “That’s when I realized.”
“Realized what, Auntie Osewa?”
“Boniface Kutu had been right that one of my sisters was a witch, only he chose the wrong sister. It wasn’t Akua who needed to be tried. It was Beatrice. She was the witch. It was Beatrice who had stolen my womb from me.”
“Oh, no, Osewa,” Isaac said, dismayed. “That’s not the way it was.”
“She had stolen my womb. Isaac got it back, and now Beatrice wanted to steal him. How dare she? What gave her the right to take so much away from me?”
Dawson’s bottom lip was quivering. “Auntie, how did you kill Mama?”
“You already know,” she said, suddenly weary. “You held the weapon in your own hands.”
Dawson felt sick.
“Yes, Darko. It was the rope we make from elephant grass, the same kind I made for you when you were a boy.” Tears streamed down her face. “I planned it. I knew I couldn’t do it with my bare hands. Your mother was too strong.”
“And when it came time for Mama to return to Accra,” Dawson said softly, “you walked with her toward the tro-tro stop, but you never got there, did you? You led her to the grove-just like you were to do with Gladys twenty-three years later-and you killed her there. You told everyone the lie that you had seen Mama board the tro-tro, but this last time, when I was having dinner with you and you were telling us about it, you made another mistake. It’s always in the lying that a mistake is made.”
“What mistake?”
“Mama would never have sat near the front seat, even if it was the last tro-tro on earth.”
“Oh,” Osewa said dispiritedly. “I didn’t even know that.”
Dawson took her gently and held her close.
“Detective Sergeant Chikata is going to arrest you now, Auntie, and then he will be taking you away. Okay?”
“I love you, little Darko. I will always love you.”