by Kwei Quartey
Kweku-Sam had loved life as Lady Araba’s chauffeur and all-purpose errand boy. He had been in her service for almost five years, and when he said “service,” he meant it. He took her anywhere and everywhere, from the temperate hills of Aburi to the scorching desert of the northern regions. He kept her secrets, too. He had never revealed her late-night trysts with Augustus Seeza to anyone.
Of the men Lady Araba had been involved with, Mr. Seeza was Kweku-Sam’s least favorite. In his opinion, the broadcaster was loud, boastful, and overrated. And of course, in the days before the death of Lady Araba, he was an even worse drunk. That had worried Kweku-Sam, because Seeza had a violent streak.
Lady Araba spoiled Seeza. He had a taste for fancy cigars from a shop called Habana Vieja. Araba often sent Kweku-Sam there to buy cigars for Seeza, who never paid a single pesewa for them. Kweku-Sam didn’t understand Seeza’s power over her, and why she didn’t see that the person who genuinely cared about her was the one who was with her the most: her chauffeur.
Araba and Seeza alternated homes when they spent time with each other. Kweku-Sam imagined that Seeza preferred Araba’s house because it was bigger than his apartment in the affluent Airport Residential Estates.
When she fired her bodyguard, Kweku-Sam took over the role. Once, when Araba launched her second store at the West Hills Mall, a crazed fan ran up to her and tried to embrace her. Kweku-Sam wrestled him off and pushed him to the side. He then swept Araba away to safety as pandemonium erupted. Araba was shaken, but Kweku-Sam was there to reassure her.
From what Kweku-Sam picked up from Lady Araba’s conversations, and he learned a lot that way, she’d had a partner in her company, Susan Hayford, whom Kweku called “Susan one hundred percent” because she always boasted she was “one hundred percent Fante.” (Fante people always said that.) She and Araba had worked well together for about five years, but then Susan defected to form a competing fashion brand called Lady Pizzazz, which never rose to the level of the iconic Lady Araba.
On Lady Araba’s last Sunday alive, Kweku-Sam took her to an early evening reception at the Villa Monticello Hotel for an American guy who was in town for Accra Fashion Week. Kweku-Sam parked the Range Rover alongside the BMWs, Escalades, Benzes, Jaguars, and a Lamborghini. He put the seat back and lay back to doze off, jerking awake as his phone rang. Lady Araba said, “I’m coming down. I don’t feel well and I want to go home now.”
It was only 8:16. Kweku-Sam knew something was wrong. On the trip back home, he heard Lady Araba speak with three different sets of people on the phone: first, her assistant, Samson, who was tying up loose ends before the fashion show the next day. With Samson it was all business, but then Mr. Seeza called and it was an emotional and wrenching conversation—two, in fact. On Seeza’s first call, Lady Araba said, “Don’t come, Gus. This is not the right time and I can’t deal with all this wahala. I have a full day tomorrow and I need rest. I can’t see you right now.”
His second call came only minutes later. Kweku-Sam saw it as harassment. Lady Araba became agitated, raising her voice. “No, Gus. I said no. Please stop calling.”
As they arrived at Trasacco just before nine, Lady Araba chatted briefly with her parents, who called to wish her luck at the show the next day.
Kweku-Sam parked in front of Lady Araba’s house and hopped out to open her door.
“You can leave the car out,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, be here by seven to take me to the Tang Palace Hotel.”
“Yes please.”
Lady Araba had a chic gift bag from the reception. It was automatic that Kweku-Sam should carry it into the house for her. A good driver didn’t allow the boss to bear any burden, no matter how small. Following her through the front door, he brought the package into the living room.
“Leave it there,” she said, pointing to the marble-topped coffee table.
“Yes please.” He put the bag down and hesitated before speaking. “Please, is everything okay, I mean with Mr. Seeza? If you like, I can stay a little while.”
Lady Araba looked both surprised and irritated. “That’s none of your business,” she said crisply.
“Yes, madam. Sorry, madam.” He knew he had stepped over the line.
“See you tomorrow,” she said.
It was the last time Lady Araba ever said that, and the last time Kweku-Sam saw her alive.
FOURTEEN
Ten months after
Some aspects of the investigations at the Sowah Agency were best handled by the boss himself. With decades as a CID and then private investigator, he had formed and maintained a network of contacts he could depend on. That was the case with his old friend Cleophus Laryea, Deputy Commissioner of Police. They had been contemporaries at CID and would probably have been the same rank by now, had Yemo Sowah not chosen to leave the force. The Ghana Police Service’s corrupt and lackadaisical approach to police work had left him unable to function in the way he wanted. Sowah felt bothered when cases simply languished on someone’s desk for months to years with little to no effort put into solving them. Sometimes he felt as if he was alone in this disquiet and he realized he had only two options: he could get in line and become oblivious to the work that needed to be done, or he could get out.
For his part, Cleophus Laryea had survived the GPS with a combination of honesty and savvy. He was no angel, Sowah knew, but he was a cut above many. Laryea, unlike his friend, thrived on the strict hierarchical structure of the GPS, but he had a deep respect for Sowah and his eponymous agency. What police information Laryea could share with Sowah, he did. Otherwise he would either tell him that he was bound to secrecy or had nothing to disclose. Apart from Laryea, most police officers felt that communications between them and private detectives were a one-way street: the privates were expected to give information to the police, but not the other way around.
To get some background on the case Dele had brought to the agency, Sowah called Laryea. For a short while, they joked cordially with each other in Ga, their beloved indigenous language, which they regarded as the king of all Ghanaian tongues.
“How are you?” Laryea asked. “How is business on your end?”
“A little slow, my friend. We haven’t had a new case in quite some time, although we have one now, and I wonder if you could help us.”
“Let’s hear.”
“The fashion woman, Lady Araba, murdered about ten months ago. Do you know where the investigation has gone, if anywhere?”
“I know a little bit about it,” Laryea said, “but not the most intimate details. I’ve heard two different stories: The first is that no useful evidence was taken from the scene. The second was that the crime scene was contaminated but one detective—his name slips my memory right now, but give me a few minutes—managed to salvage some evidence and send it to the forensic science lab.”
“It should be possible to find out, right?”
“I can make some inquiries for you.”
“I would be grateful. That forensic lab—it opened, what, about seven years ago? Is it fully operational?”
“Supposed to be,” Laryea said. “It has an administrator, et cetera, so I assume it’s functioning. Don’t quote me, though. Ah, I’ve got it now. The name of the detective who perhaps collected evidence—Sergeant Isaac Boateng. But I believe he’s no longer in homicide. He’s been moved to another department, but I forget which. I’ll follow up on all of this and get back to you in a few days.”
“Thanks, Cleo. I appreciate it.”
“Em, Yemo?”
“Yes?”
“Just my opinion,” Cleo said quietly, “but this case steps into some sensitive areas because of Lady Araba’s association with Augustus Seeza, the TV host. His father is a High Court judge who holds a lot of sway in the upper ranks of the police. Just a warning to tread lightly.”
“Maate. I won’t go any further than I need to. That�
�s a promise.”
FIFTEEN
The day of the murder
Almost immediately after the discovery of Lady Araba’s dead body, Peter called his friend Detective Sergeant Isaac Boateng, who was the Crime Scene Unit leader at the Homicide Unit of the CID Headquarters in Accra. When his phone rang, he was standing at what he had hoped would be a crime scene. A woman in the town of Adenta had been stabbed to death just behind her house. About thirty minutes before that, the woman and her male neighbor, with whom she had had a running dispute over a small plot of land between their respective houses, were heard having a furious argument in which the man had made a threat on her life.
Shortly after the stabbing occurred, the victim’s friends and relatives descended upon the neighbor’s home accusing him of the murder, dragged him out of the house, beat him nearly into a state of unconsciousness, and then took him to the police station by taxi. The spectacle at the station was chaotic with all the shouting and crying. The inspector on duty returned with the family to where the victim’s dead body had lain covered in blood from countless stab wounds. By that time, because a gawking crowd had formed, other relatives and friends had moved the corpse from its original location to a more private area within the house compound. They’d also covered the woman’s body with a cloth to lessen the awful sight of her multiple jagged lacerations.
A person, so far unidentified, had thought of calling the CSU, a number that went straight to Boateng’s phone. Meanwhile, however, after the investigating inspector had taken a few mobile phone photos of the victim, he summoned a police pickup truck to take the body to the closest mortuary. So, by the time Boateng arrived in the blue CSU van along with his photographer, Corporal Tackie, who also acted as the fingerprints man and the evidence technician, the body was gone and someone had washed away the victim’s unsightly blood.
After Boateng had spoken to a relative and Tackie had snapped some photos of the scene, they returned to the van with resignation. Few Ghana police officers knew how to secure a crime scene. Worse, the public neither trusted the police nor knew anything about the science of forensics, a situation that for almost ten years now Boateng had hoped in vain to rectify.
Constable Gabriel, the CSU van driver, was leaning against the hood shelling and munching on groundnuts. “So, what’s next, boss?”
Boateng shrugged. “Unsecured crime scene, body removed. Nothing we can do.” He wanted to be annoyed, but he was too weary. The situation was all too familiar. “Let’s go back to CID.”
That’s when his phone rang and he saw it was his old friend calling.
“Peter!” he said. “Chaley, wassup?”
“Asem, oo, asem!”
“What’s going on?”
“Have you heard of Lady Araba?”
“Yeah,” Boateng said. “The one they call queen of fashion? What about her?”
“Hm, this is serious. Somebody killed her last night.”
Boateng raised his eyebrows. “Come again?”
“When Ismael, the groundskeeper at our Trasacco complex, went to put in some new plants on the terrace outside Lady Araba’s bedroom, he saw her lying in the bed with blood all over the place. I think she had been dead for some hours by that time.”
“Is the body still there? What’s happening?”
“Still in the house—the bedroom. I sent one of my guys to the local police station and he came back here with two officers.”
Boateng felt a rising sense of excitement. Maybe this would be one of the few cases where he could make a mark. “We’re on our way,” he said to Peter. “But we’re at Adenta right now, so from here to Trasacco will take some time. Please, I beg you, ask the officers to secure the crime scene, okay?”
It took the team over an hour to get to Lady Araba’s house. Several Tata police trucks and one shiny black BMW were parked in all directions in the driveway.
A constable stood at the front door while a couple of unidentified people hung around with no obvious role to play as far as Boateng could tell. The constable gave Boateng a brief salute and waved him and Tackie in. “They’re upstairs to the right,” the constable told them.
No one was at the bottom of the staircase, but multiple voices came from upstairs. Boateng peered up and began ascending, but Peter came running down before Boateng was halfway.
“So, what’s going on?” Boateng asked.
Peter took Boateng’s arm and brought him back to the base of the stairs. He lowered his voice. “The chief inspector from the Trasacco police station called his commander, who then called the Director-General of CID, Assistant Chief of Police, Madam Tawiah. The commander came first and she arrived after that. She came in saying she knew a lot about crime scene evaluation.”
Boateng frowned. “Shit.”
“She began touching Lady Araba’s body, examining her for possible cause of death.”
Boateng felt the blood leave his head. “Touching the body!” he exclaimed too loud.
Peter shushed him hastily, looking around to see if anyone might have heard. “And then when I said I’d already called you,” he continued, “the DG stepped back and said okay, then let’s wait for the CSU to arrive.”
“After she’s contaminated the body,” Boateng said bitterly. First rule of crime scene preservation: never let a senior officer near it. “Is she still there?”
“Yeah. Her and some other people—I’m not sure who they all are.”
“But what are they doing?”
Peter shrugged. “Mostly just staring.”
“What about next-of-kin?”
“No one has appeared yet. I had an emergency number to call, a Dele Tetteyfio, Lady Araba’s aunt, but she hasn’t responded so far.”
Boateng nodded, turned, and with Tackie behind him, heaved himself up the stairs. He could feel he was putting on too much weight. Between work and early fatherhood, he didn’t get to play soccer on the weekends anymore. Or he might just be making excuses for himself.
As he entered the room, he was partially aware of the handful of people standing around, but it was only Lady Araba’s body on the bed that seized his attention. She lay on her back, covered by a bloody duvet, eyes open and staring at the ceiling. The color of her face, which was badly swollen, was an odd purplish-gray.
“Good morning, madam,” Boateng said to the only woman in the room—the CID boss, Madam Tawiah. Tall and lean, she was sharply dressed in full uniform regalia. Her look was clean and prim.
“Morning,” she replied, regarding him with skepticism. “Who are you?”
“I’m Detective Sergeant Isaac Boateng, please. I’m the CSU leader.”
“Are you alone?”
“No, the photographer is here as well, madam.” Boateng gestured to the doorway.
“That’s all?” Tawiah asked, appearing puzzled.
Maybe if you top brass would stop chopping all the money, we could hire some more people, Boateng thought. “That’s all we have right now, please,” he said.
Tawiah nodded. “Well, anyway, I’ve already checked the body,” she said with self-importance. “From what I can tell, she has suffered blunt head trauma to the skull. She has a wound on the left side of her head.”
“Thank you for that information, madam,” Boateng said. “Please, we can take over from here? If possible, I would like everyone to leave the room so that we may do our work.”
“Yes, of course,” Tawiah said. “This is a tragedy. Such a young and talented woman.”
Boateng heaved a mental sigh of relief as everyone filed out. At least Tawiah wasn’t going to be difficult. He had just begun to open his forensic kit when a commotion erupted downstairs, followed by pounding footsteps and a man’s voice shouting, “Araba! Araba!” A man in great distress ran down the hallway, stopped just outside the door, caught one look at the body on the bed, and collapsed.
&nbs
p; SIXTEEN
The day of the murder
News of Lady Araba’s death spread like wildfire through the fashion gathering at Tang Palace that morning. Samson first heard about it from Oko Tagoe just as the show was about to begin. Samson considered canceling, but no, Araba would have wanted her show to go on. He didn’t tell any of the models before they walked out onto the runway because he knew they wouldn’t be able to hold it together. As it was, the show came off without any major hitches.
It was afterward that Samson gathered everyone to break the awful news. The women gasped and cried out. Several broke down weeping, while others stood shattered and numb. There were questions no one could answer, and to fill in for that lack of information, rumors began to fly. For the rest of the day, it seemed like everyone involved in Accra Fashion Week was phoning or texting about Lady Araba. It was on the news by midday, and wherever there was a TV, people crowded in front of it. Head of CID, ACOP Madam Tawiah, had taken the lead in providing what information she could to news outlets. With Lady Araba’s mansion as a made-for-TV backdrop, a gaggle of eager reporters crowded around Tawiah, jostling for space as they shoved their phone mics in her face. She maintained absolute composure, even when the questions fired at her were somewhat asinine.
Have the police arrested a suspect yet?
“Not as such,” Tawiah said. “It is very early in the process, so we will need some time.”
Was someone else present at home with Lady Araba when she was murdered?
“If by that you mean someone besides the murderer, the answer is no.”
Since the murder occurred just before Accra Fashion Week, do you suspect that a rival designer didn’t want Lady Araba’s show to come on?
“Possibly, but I don’t know.”
When do you expect to make an arrest?
“As soon as possible.”
Is Augustus Seeza, the TV personality with whom Lady Araba had an affair, a suspect?