Yellowbone

by Ekow Duker

  ‘It’s not about the violin, Teacher. I was upset.’

  ‘You were upset?’ he repeated and she remembered he was Ghanaian. ‘You were upset? How many times have I told you not to be so headstrong? Just look at where it has got you!’

  He shook her hard, as if that would somehow make everything right again but it only made it worse.

  ‘I was living someone else’s life,’ Karabo whispered in dismay. ‘I just wanted to come home.’ It was a mish-mash of a song by Michael Bublé and she looked up at Teacher, thinking he might respond in kind and establish their special rapport again. But he snapped at her and she flinched from the coldness in his voice.

  ‘Stop that!’ he said sharply. ‘This is no time for childish games.’

  Childish games? Is that what they were? The strength fled from Karabo’s limbs until she couldn’t hold onto the bars anymore. She crumpled to the floor and huddled at Teacher’s feet with her head buried in her arms. Teacher tried to lift her up through the bars but she was much too heavy. He gave up and stood staring up at the ceiling, like a seer looking for insight in the cobwebs draped above his head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last.

  But it was too late for apologies. Now Karabo knew he’d been making fun of her all this while, she was mortified with shame. She felt worse than when the woman in the arrivals area had called her an ashawo. She’d rather be an ashawo than have Teacher mock their old-school game.

  She looked up at Teacher. He’d gone a shade darker since he’d been away and he was much thinner too. His shirt hung loosely over his shoulders and the collar was crumpled and grey. He had dark hollows instead of plump cheeks and his normally clean jaw was sprinkled with stubble. This was a tired, slightly shabbier version of Teacher, a downgrade as it were, from business to economy.

  ‘I know some people,’ he said. ‘One of them is a high court judge. He may be able to help us.’

  They didn’t have anything more to say to each other and Karabo could see he wanted to go.

  He thought for a moment, then clapped his hands as if to signify the start of a burst of activity. Teacher was happiest when he had something to pit himself against. Maybe he’d start an online campaign. Free Karabo Bentil. It had a nice ring to it. As she looked at her father, Karabo wondered how many people would sign such a petition. Her mother for sure, and Mrs Harrison. Teacher and Paa Kofi too. That made four. Ma’ama wouldn’t sign. Not even if she were trapped in a tree with a fire raging at its base. She’d simply toss her wrapper over her shoulder and say Karabo had brought all this misfortune on herself.

  ‘Did you see the violin?’ Karabo asked.

  It took a moment for her words to register. It would have been easier for Teacher to understand if she’d stolen something more conventional, like money or a car. Teacher shook his head.

  ‘Let me go and make some phone calls.’

  ‘But I’ve not told you what happened!’

  It was unlike Teacher not to demand to know every triviality. He must be so ashamed of her that the details no longer mattered.

  ‘There will be time for that, Karabo,’ he said. ‘For now, let’s focus on getting you out of here.’

  ‘I’ll be home soon then,’ Karabo said with a little smile. ‘I feel like I know your house already.’

  Teacher’s eyes darted about nervously. Perhaps he was still upset at what he’d said about the old-school game.

  Karabo touched the back of his hand through the bars. ‘I’ll be all right, Teacher,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  He grimaced and squeezed her forearm. ‘I came here so quickly I didn’t bring anything with me. But I’ve given some money to the captain. He’ll make sure they treat you well.’

  Which one was the captain again? There’d been a steady parade of policemen and -women through the cell block since Karabo had been brought in. They came to gawk and offer words of sympathy and sometimes both at the same time. Karabo thought she knew who the captain was. The heavy-set officer with a twisted yellow cord running under his armpit and over his left shoulder. He’d described all the things he’d do for her if she were nice to him. Give her a hot shower and a clean blanket. A mosquito coil and three hot meals a day. Hell, he’d even ask his wife to cook them. All Karabo had to do was be nice. Each time he said nice he touched the bulge in his trousers. Yes, that was the captain. She didn’t say anything to Teacher.

  CHAPTER 40

  Early the next morning Karabo was awoken by a loud rattling on the bars. She looked up to see the policewoman who’d brought her to the cells on Saturday night standing outside.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Karabo rose groggily to her feet. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘You are going to court.’

  She said goodbye to Maria as she went past her cell. It was the first time Karabo had actually seen Maria and she realised she’d been terribly mistaken about her age. Maria’s hair was very long and fell to her shoulders in thick, dishevelled dreadlocks. She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old.

  ‘Courage, ma chérie,’ Maria said.

  She reached through the bars and touched Karabo’s arm. Karabo smiled at her and replied, ‘Toi aussi.’

  She felt a little guilty because something good was happening to her while Maria was still locked in a mosquito-infested cage. She made a mental note to ask Teacher to call his friend about Maria as well. But where was her father? He should have been here to accompany her. He must be at the court already.

  It was a different driver this time, a squat, taciturn man whose face drooped under the weight of his troubles. He ignored most of Karabo’s questions and the few he did respond to he answered with a gruff, ‘We will see.’

  Karabo put the driver out of her mind and looked out through the hatch at the back of the van. It was surreal to see Accra for the very first time through a tiny barred rectangle. She’d waited for years to come here, only for her first views of the city to be delivered through a peephole. It was like watching an old-fashioned slide show where the vignettes clicked briefly into view then were gone.

  She saw a woman with a vertiginous pile of bread loaves balanced on her head. She swayed past the police van, walking with all the grace of a runway model. Then an old woman in a battered wheelchair trundled by, pushed by a little girl with thin, wiry arms. There seemed to be pedestrians everywhere, from smartly dressed office workers to leisurely clumps of schoolchildren. Car horns blared incessantly, haranguing each other like a flock of flightless, mechanical birds.

  A convoy of white 4x4s came alongside, the olive-wreathed UN crest prominent on their doors. Then the police van made a sharp turn and there was the Atlantic Ocean spread out before Karabo, shimmering, placid and vast. For the briefest of moments she was consumed by an incredible calm. Everything would be all right. Then the van veered again and the ocean disappeared. It was as if it had never been there at all. The driver craned his neck and turned to Karabo.

  ‘We are here,’ he announced, then looked away again. He really wasn’t the most expressive of men. Karabo waited for the policewoman to come around and open the back and when she did, she had to shield her eyes from the glare of the white-tiled building before her. Thankfully, the policewoman didn’t walk behind her or prod her in the back. She led Karabo into the high court complex and through a maze of panelled corridors with men and women in pleated black robes scurrying about or huddled together in learned knots of twos and threes. Karabo began to feel more confident. The lawyer Teacher had found for her would be the very best in town.

  The lawyer met her outside Criminal Court Two on the third floor. He shook her hand and introduced himself as Lawyer Steven Kwame Appiah.

  Karabo greeted him politely. ‘Good morning, Mr Appiah.’ It was bizarre how in less than a week in Ghana, she’d met more lawyers than she had in her entire life.

  He barely acknowledged Karabo’s greeting and took out a notebook and a pen. She should have called him Lawyer Appia
h instead of Mr Appiah. That might have made for a better start. He was dark and pudgy with a shiny nose that jutted out from well-fed cheeks. He was slightly shorter than Karabo and she could see the top of his bald head. She had to admit she was a little disappointed by his appearance. She’d been expecting a gutsy, wisecracking lawyer, the sort you see on American legal dramas. But in his defence she hadn’t given Teacher much time to arrange things with his friend. Lawyer Appiah would have to do.

  ‘Did Teacher ask you to come?’

  He looked at her questioningly with his pen suspended in the air.

  ‘And Teacher is …’

  ‘Teacher Bentil, my father,’ Karabo said but no recognition dawned on his face.

  ‘Is this your first visit to Ghana?’ he asked.

  He sounded like KK the immigration officer. He even had her passport in his hand and was flicking through it with the same exaggerated indifference.

  ‘I understand you were arrested for stealing a violin.’

  ‘It belongs to a friend.’

  ‘I see. Your friend lives in Ghana?’

  ‘No, he lives in London.’

  The ceiling fan above them made laboured tracks through the thick, warm air. How Lawyer Appiah could wear such heavy robes and not be dripping with sweat was a mystery to Karabo. He looked up at her for a moment, then sank his teeth into his lower lip.

  ‘This friend of yours, did he ask you to bring the violin to Ghana?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Miss Bentil. We don’t have much time. Did he ask you to bring the violin to Ghana or not?’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘Are you a violinist? Is that why you took it?’

  Karabo wanted to laugh. ‘I was upset. I was going to return it.’

  At least he didn’t berate her like Teacher had done. He just tapped his pen against his front teeth. It looked like he was checking to see if they were loose.

  ‘Were there any drugs concealed in the violin?’ he asked. ‘Or in any of your belongings?’

  ‘No!’ Karabo pictured a group of blue uniformed policemen prying the Guadagnini apart with a screwdriver and she felt faint all of a sudden. ‘No, I didn’t have any drugs on me.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ He began chewing on his lips again. Then he shut his notebook and patted the leather cover a few times. It had his initials engraved in one corner in gold letters. It looked like a graduation gift.

  ‘How will you plead?’

  Seriously? Was he actually asking her that? ‘Not guilty of course! This is all a huge misunderstanding.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Lawyer Appiah said again. ‘Let’s see what will happen.’ His lips twitched in the beginning of a smile.

  Karabo wanted to scream. Let’s see what will happen? She didn’t want a lawyer who went into court and waited to see what would happen. This wasn’t a cinema hall and she wasn’t his date. He must have seen the anxiety etched on her face because his voice grew more friendly.

  ‘We have a lenient judge this morning. Let’s give everything to God.’

  Ghanaians gave everything to God, it seemed. The sky could fall on their heads and they would tut-tut and say, ‘Give everything to God.’ They said it so often, it felt like the equivalent of a throwaway, ‘Let’s do lunch.’

  Karabo could have hit him. All his years of law school boiled down to this? Give everything to God? Where were the clever arguments? The ace up his sleeve? The devastating witness who turned everything on its head? Karabo’s heart sank as she realised Lawyer Appiah didn’t have any of those things. All he had was a passing interest in her case and a leather-bound notebook with his initials engraved on it.

  ‘The violin is worth at least a million pounds,’ she blurted out in desperation.

  Lawyer Appiah pulled up abruptly and turned to her.

  ‘Really? I was not aware of that.’ His eyes grew cunning as he calculated what this news could mean. Then he took Karabo’s hand and patted it the way he’d patted the cover of his notebook.

  ‘I think it’s best we keep that to ourselves,’ he said. ‘I know a man who was given ten years for stealing a bra off a clothesline.’

  ‘Was he your client?’

  He gave her a wry smile and looked strangely embarrassed. ‘Yes, he was. But that is not the point. By the way, I should have mentioned that I’m representing you pro bono.’

  With that nonchalant admission Karabo’s spirits plummeted and settled somewhere in the region of her feet. For free? Was that really the best Teacher could do? A lawyer who took on cases to assuage his fucking conscience? Glumly, she followed Lawyer Appiah into the courtroom. It was half full already with an assortment of men and women milling between the benches and talking to each other in low voices. Others peered at important-looking papers. Just seeing them made the breath catch in Karabo’s throat.

  The court clerk, a slight man with a permanently harried appearance, was busy arranging items on the judge’s bench. He took his time over this and, for several minutes, coaxed the stack of books into line with the tips of his long fingers. When he was done he took two books and a wooden cross out of a cupboard and placed them on a table next to the witness stand. It felt like they were about to witness a medieval ritual which, in reality, was precisely what it was.

  That was when Karabo saw Teacher. He was standing in the doorway with a nervous look on his face. She waved at him and he came over.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late, Karabo,’ he said. ‘I went to the police station and they told me you were here.’

  Karabo gave him a tight smile to show her disappointment. He could have made more of an effort. She introduced him to Lawyer Appiah and the two were still shaking hands when the judge swept in.

  He was a pompous-looking man with tufts of grey hair visible beneath a long, cream-coloured wig. His robes were even more voluminous than Lawyer Appiah’s and the bib at his neck was a brilliant shade of white. He glared at Karabo over the top of a thick pair of glasses and his lips tightened with distaste. He didn’t look anything as lenient as Lawyer Appiah had said but by now Karabo had lost faith in anything Lawyer Appiah had to say.

  It was very hot in the courtroom and Karabo began to feel faint. Teacher passed her a bottle of cold water and she rubbed it over her neck. The judge didn’t like that at all.

  ‘Do you think you are here to shoot a commercial?’ he asked Karabo. She cringed at his harsh tone and stammered an apology.

  Then Lawyer Appiah hissed at Karabo and told her to call the judge Your Lordship. Wasn’t that what she’d just said? Did that mean she’d had points deducted? Karabo glanced at Lawyer Appiah. He was staring at the judge with an ingratiating smile bolted to his face. If grinning like an idiot was all they’d taught him in law school then she was well and truly fucked.

  Suddenly, a buzz of chatter engulfed the courtroom. The clerk stood up and called the court to order. For such a little man his voice was surprisingly rich and deep.

  ‘Order! Order!’

  The sound of the judge’s gavel rang out like two gunshots and Karabo sat bolt upright in her seat. Her eyes darted wildly around the courtroom. She could tell by the sudden movement of people in and out of the door that her matter had just been concluded. Teacher’s head was buried in his hands.

  ‘What did the judge say?’ she cried.

  Lawyer Appiah stood up and looked Karabo straight in the face. He looked neither pleased nor disappointed with his morning’s work.

  ‘Your father is unable to post bail,’ he said. ‘The judge has ordered you to be remanded pending further investigation.’

  CHAPTER 41

  André Potgieter arrived in Accra on a British Airways flight ten days after Karabo. Not being inclined to venture far into the city, he checked into the Holiday Inn right next to the airport. So far, his investigations had not gone well at all. People he asked about Karabo either looked at him with suspicion or fawned over him like puppies looking for a scrap. It was intimidating at first but quickly became annoying a
s dark, excited faces pressed in on him from all sides.

  It was his first time in Africa, as South Africans termed anything north of the Limpopo River. The night he arrived, he’d asked an immigration officer if he’d seen a young woman carrying a violin.

  ‘A violin?’ the immigration officer repeated. ‘When was this?’

  ‘I think she arrived on Saturday night.’

  ‘You think. Thousands of people come through this airport every day. Which flight was she on?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’

  The officer looked impatiently over André’s shoulder and beckoned to the next person in the queue.

  ‘You can ask my superior,’ he said when André lingered. ‘He is over there.’

  André hurried over to the exit where a tall, uniformed man stood at attention. He heard André’s query in stony silence, then with a flick of his head, directed him to someone else. This officer, a younger woman with a bright, earnest look about her, listened politely to all André had to say. Then she called a colleague of hers over to hear the story as well. After a few minutes, André began to suspect they were more interested in hearing an intriguing narrative than in helping him find the Guadagnini. Impatiently, he showed them Karabo’s photo from the news report on his phone.

  ‘This is what she looks like. Have you seen her?’

  ‘Is she your girlfriend?’ the woman asked. She took the phone from André and held it up to the light to get a better look.

  André sighed. He could feel the rivulets of sweat trickling down his back.

  ‘No, she’s not my girlfriend,’ he said, enunciating his words slowly. ‘Like I said, she stole a very expensive violin.’

  The officer sniffed with authority. ‘Hmm!’

  Then she sniffed again. ‘Hmm! These yellow girls, that is how they are. All they do is to chop men’s money.’

  André gave up. He would try again in the morning. He might have more luck then. But the days went by and he made no progress. The heat was suffocating and the humidity intolerable. Were it not for the lure of the Guadagnini and the ecstasy he felt whenever he saw the angels, he would have returned to London on the very next flight.