by Kwei Quartey
“I have no comment on that.”
So, then he is a suspect?
“No comment. Next question.”
Were DNA samples taken at the scene?
“Yes, I supervised that myself due to my extensive knowledge of crime scene management.”
How long before you have the DNA results?
“It will be several weeks, at least. I will apprise you of any developments in that regard as far as I am able. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”
Tawiah’s bodyguard extricated her from the reporters.
Samson had booked a two-night stay at the Tang Hotel for the convenience of being right where AFW was taking place. Susan Hayford, whose show was scheduled for the next day, was also at the hotel when the news hit. Almost at that moment, she received a call from Samson, who asked her to come up to his room.
When he opened the door to her, his expression was bleak. “You’ve heard,” he said.
“Of course.” Susan entered and Samson shut the door behind her. They embraced stiffly and briefly.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” he whispered.
Susan said nothing, turning on the TV broadcast of Metro Midday News. She joined Samson as he sat on the bed to watch. Like all men, he then took the remote and scanned through other channels. Several ran the same Q&A with Madam Tawiah, although they had slightly different commentary on Araba’s life, achievements, and legacy.
Samson leaned against Susan. “I wish it was all a dream.”
She put her arms around him. He wiped tears from his face and sniffled, but she remained silent, running her hands through his soft hair. Samson was the product of an Irish man and a Ghanaian woman. He had naturally lustrous black curls that made people stare. It was what had attracted Susan to him most when they had worked with Araba—before the fallout.
Samson pulled away from her, resting his face in his hands and staring at the floor. “I can’t believe this is true. It just seems so unreal.”
“When did you find out?” Susan asked.
“Araba’s brother, Oko, called me this morning. Well, I called him first from Tang Palace to ask if he’d heard from her. I expected her to be in early for the show preparation and final rehearsal, but she still hadn’t arrived a couple hours before start time, and I couldn’t reach her by phone. Then Oko’s dad, the Reverend, went to the house, and by that time there were already a lot of policemen and other people there. The gardener or something was the one who found her body.”
“So, last night sometime,” she murmured, looking down at her hands.
“Oh, my God,” he said, falling back on the bed. “This is a nightmare.”
“Stop it,” Susan said abruptly.
He frowned and sat up. “What? What?”
“You resented the way she was treating you,” Susan said, her voice like slick motor oil. “Now she’s gone. So, what’s all this drama about?”
“I don’t wish death on anyone,” Samson said sullenly.
She snorted, stood up, and went to the window. “I remember otherwise.”
“What are you talking about?”
She turned around to look at him, leaning her plump body against the windowsill in a pose worthy of a fine sculpture. “We both wanted her dead, so stop being a hypocrite about it. Now everything can move forward. You’ll take over the business and I’ll buy you out. It’s what we wanted, isn’t it? I don’t care how she died or who killed her. I’m just glad she’s gone. Are you sorry about it now? Are you still in love with her?”
“I was never,” he said, shaking his head emphatically. “I don’t know why you’re so jealous of her.”
“I’m not,” she snapped. “Ambitious whore. What do I care about her?”
“You must care, because you hated her,” Samson said, sounding like a psychiatrist confronting his patient. “You wanted to kill her.”
She moved from the window to look at him eye-to-eye. “I wanted to kill her?” she asked, pointing at herself. “Me? You’re the one who hated her because of the way she worked you like a houseboy and wouldn’t make you a partner when she was converting the business to an LLC. Don’t try to pin her death on me, okay?”
“Don’t blame it on me either!” he retorted.
They lapsed into a sulky silence for a while.
“Well, anyway,” Susan resumed, “it’s good you called Oko. If the police ask him any questions about you, he’ll tell them that you asked him where Araba was. It looks better than if you hadn’t.”
Samson cleared his throat. “But last night—” he began.
“Last night, what?”
“We need to know what to say,” Samson stammered. “I mean, the police might ask where we were. They can’t know about us sleeping together.”
Susan rolled her eyes. “Those stupid police won’t be asking us anything, and no one will ever know about us.”
“Where did you go last night after you left me?”
“Home, of course. And where did you go?”
Samson’s eyes shifted. “Nowhere. I was working on preparations for the show. Just like you.”
Susan stared at him for a long moment and then began dramatically fanning her eyes as her eyes moistened.
“What’s wrong?” Samson said.
Susan clapped her hands over her face, whimpered. Samson came to her, peering at her and trying to pull her hands from her face. “Hey, hey. What’s going on?”
“Please, please don’t lie to me,” she said, her voice cracking. “Tell me the truth, did you see her last night?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Samson said, his voice rising. “Are you going crazy? And what if I did? Who cares? Araba is dead now. She’s gone.”
“What about Saturday night? Did you sleep with her?”
Samson sucked his teeth and turned away in disgust to pick up his valise on the bed. “I don’t have time for this. I’m going downstairs. Close the door behind you when you leave.”
SEVENTEEN
Ten months after
After some digging, Sowah located DS Boateng, who was now in the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit at the Ghana Police Regional Command on Kwame Nkrumah Avenue.
“I would like very much to meet with you,” Sowah said after introducing himself.
“What is it about, please?”
“You spent some time working on the Lady Araba murder case, is that correct, sir?”
“Yes please—at the beginning, for a short while. But I’m no longer on it because I was transferred to DVU. Why do you ask?”
“My agency has been contracted to investigate the murder.”
“Which agency is that?”
“Sowah Private Investigators. We’re at Asylum Down.”
“I see. If I may ask, who contracted you?”
“Lady Araba’s Auntie Dele.”
“Hmm,” Boateng said.
“You sound worried,” Sowah commented.
“I thought you detective agencies tackled only small-small cases like marital infidelity and so on?”
“It runs the gamut. Well, to be quite honest with you, the agency’s cash flow has been negative for several months. I couldn’t turn it down.”
Boateng was silent for a moment. “I wish I could have talked with you before you accepted the case. I think you should leave this one alone.”
“I’m interested to know why you say that.”
“The politics around it. Sorry, but I can’t discuss it right now.”
“I understand. You’re in mixed company, is what you are saying. Can we meet somewhere?”
Boateng hesitated. “I’ll call you back.”
“Okay—” Sowah was about to finish his sentence with, “When can I expect your call?” but Boateng had already gone.
If I haven’t heard from hi
m within twenty-four hours, Sowah thought, he will hear from me.
As it happened, Sowah didn’t have to do that. In the afternoon, his phone rang, and he saw it was Boateng. The DS was ready to set up an appointment.
“Thank you, Sergeant Boateng,” Sowah said. “I appreciate it. If you could come to our offices, that would be great, and you can meet my investigators as well.”
Boateng happily accepted a small bottle of Bel-Aqua water. In his ill-fitting shirt, he was sweating heavily from the punishing heat outside and looked like he could be wrung out like a wet rag. He had once been fit but lost all of it in a steady decline.
“Thank you for coming,” Sowah said.
“It’s no problem,” Boateng said, wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand after taking a gulp of water. “I’m willing to help you and your guys, but please, my coming to talk to you must never get back to the Ghana Police Service.”
“I understand,” Sowah reassured him. “You will be off the record. But before anything, are you at liberty to say what happened to you? You were investigating the Lady Araba murder, and then they moved you out to the Domestic Violence Unit?”
Boateng’s jaw hardened. “Okay, I’ll tell you. It was about four weeks after the murder. The investigation was slow, people were being evasive. As you know, in Ghana we don’t like direct questions. Then I turned to the police forensic science lab to ask about the evidence I had submitted. There was always some excuse—the guy who was supposed to run the test was sick or had been traveling.
“Finally, one day, the administrator, Thomas, revealed in confidence that he had been asked to delay testing of the evidence. He wouldn’t elaborate. And the next day, my senior officer told me I was off the case and being transferred to Domestic Violence. I didn’t know what to say.”
“They gave you no reason?”
Boateng snorted. “Do they ever give a reason? Two days later is when they arrested Lady Araba’s driver. My friend Peter, who works at Trasacco as the head security officer, saw the chauffeur, Kweku-Sam, coming out of the house around nine o’clock on the night she died. Kweku says he had brought Lady Araba home from a party at that time. My belief is that the police used that as cause to arrest Kweku-Sam and charge him with murdering his boss.”
Sowah raised his eyebrows. “If that’s the sole criterion, it won’t stand up in court.”
“Well, it may never go to court. Kweku will just languish in prison without trial.”
“Have you spoken with him?”
“Yes, sir. Look, the man didn’t kill Lady Araba. I’m certain of that. The murder probably took place much later that night.”
“To go back a little,” Sowah said, “who called in the murder? How did it get to you?”
“It was Peter who called me. At the time, I was at the scene of another crime—which turned out to be a big disappointment—but went to Trasacco as quickly as possible in the CSU van. By the time I reached Lady Araba’s house, several officers and personnel from surrounding police stations were standing around. The place was full of people who shouldn’t have been there, including ACOP Madam Tawiah of CID.”
“How so?” Sowah asked.
“Because she knows nothing about police work on the ground, even though she pretends she does. Can you believe she examined Lady Araba’s body before we arrived—supposedly to look for the cause of death? She wants to be the center of attention all the time. After the murder, she was on every TV and radio interview program possible. Do you know her background? For years she was with the Motor Traffic and Transport Division, and then someone imported her to CID in return for certain services I don’t need to go into right now, eventually promoting her to director-general. I hear she’s eyeing the inspector general of police position now.”
“How badly contaminated do you believe the crime scene was by the time you reached it?” Sowah asked, staying on topic.
Boateng shrugged. “Bad. People were leaning against the doors and windows, they touched the bed Lady Araba was in, and we know that at least Madam Tawiah, if not more of them, touched the victim’s body. There was a boot print on Lady Araba’s white carpet, but we figured out it belonged to the constable who was standing at the front door of Lady Araba’s house. We dusted for fingerprints and found several different ones. We were able to eliminate some as spurious, but not others. Finally, I found two strands of hair on Lady Araba’s sheets and collected them as well.”
“Well done,” Sowah said. “I’m curious, though. You’re both a detective and part of the forensics unit? How did that come about?”
“Ten years ago, the police service recruited me almost straight from university. It was part of a program to train police personnel in forensics, and they particularly wanted me because I had studied biochemistry. In 2011, the government got a loan from the EU to build a new forensic science lab, and by the end of that year they sent me for a three-month forensics course in South Africa. By the time I returned, the forensics lab was just about ready for use.”
“And it’s been a success since?”
“Yes and no. The problem isn’t the equipment, it’s the training to use it and the quality of the evidence sent to the lab. Not enough police personnel are trained to preserve the scene so that evidence can be obtained intact and suitable for testing. And that’s just the start. Imagine a homicide committed in say, Tamale, Northern Region. The only forensics lab for the entire country is here in Accra. Who’s going to collect the evidence in Tamale? Who knows how to do the proper chain of custody and the correct way to bring the evidence from there to here in a timely fashion?” Boateng looked despondent. “A lot of difficulties.”
“But the potential is there, no?” Sowah suggested. “It seems the FSL did a good job of identifying the remains of the three girls who went missing a couple of years ago in Takoradi, not so?”
“Yes.” Boateng grinned. “But it was me who did it.”
“Oh!” Sowah exclaimed with a short laugh. “My apologies. I had no idea.”
Boateng waved it away with a chuckle. “Of course. Not a problem.”
“So, back to this case,” Sowah said. “You feel Lady Araba’s driver is the easy scapegoat, which is what Dele Tetteyfio also thinks. Who is, or was, your prime suspect?”
“Number one is Augustus Seeza. He’s in a category all by himself because of his close and tumultuous relationship with Lady Araba. But him aside, I see two camps of plausible suspects. On one side, the Seezas—High Court Justice Julius Seeza and his wife, Dr. Caroline. On the other side, members of Lady Araba’s own family—her father, Reverend Fifi Tagoe; her mother, Miriam; and her brother, Oko.”
“They all had reasons for wanting Araba dead?” Sowah asked. “I mean, suggesting that a High Court judge could be involved in such a murder is a big deal.”
“When it comes to human passions, we are all the same, whether a justice of the court or a guy who cleans toilets for a living.”
Sowah conceded that with a nod. “What would be Justice Seeza’s motive?”
“My sources told me that he and his wife felt Lady Araba almost cost Augustus his life. While in a relationship with her, he began to drink even more heavily and ended up being admitted to the hospital with a liver problem that nearly killed him. Just before that, Lady Araba had dumped him at the admonition of her family, but as soon as she found out how ill he was, she came rushing back to him. He was alcohol-free up until Araba was murdered, which apparently put him into relapse and right back to the hospital with some sort of ailment that left him deaf. Of course, Augustus’s worsening alcoholism wasn’t Araba’s fault at all, but Julius and Caroline Seeza told me they felt she was a catalyst. To them, Bertha Longdon was the ideal woman for him.
“Likewise, the Tagoe family demonized Augustus as the problem—said he was a leech sucking Araba’s lifeblood and money. They reprimanded her and told her to get away from
him, but she kept going back.”
“You interviewed the family, I suppose, Sergeant?”
“I did, yes, sir.”
“What were your impressions?”
“Reverend Tagoe is very much the boss—quite a rigid man. He drives everything in the household and his wife and son fall into line.”
Sowah nodded. “I see. Apart from speaking to the Tagoes, how did you get most of your information? For having worked the case for only a few weeks, you seem to know quite a lot.”
“Some of it is from Peter, with whom both Araba and Seeza formed a bond over the years. The rest is bits and pieces I put together from other sources like Bertha Longdon, who was surprisingly cooperative. She was wounded by her separation from Mr. Seeza, but I found her to be quite open and honest.”
“You’ve done well, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sowah. Okay, now, to continue, some other things you should know. You might have heard that the entire house was locked from the inside. The security guard and the groundskeeper had to break in through the bedroom door to the upper terrace. They said it was locked, and so were all the other doors with no forced entry. Meaning what? That whoever left Araba last, presumably the murderer, had a key to at least one of the doors to the house. We know he didn’t use Araba’s, because her keys to the front and back doors were both hanging on a hook on the wall in the entry hallway. Whenever she returned home, she hung the keys on the hook. We know for sure that Augustus had a spare key, because it was Lady Araba who asked Peter to have an extra set made for him.”
“What about Araba’s relatives?” Sowah asked. “Could they also have had copies of the keys?”
Boateng thought about it. “Possibly, but I don’t think so, considering her sour relationship with the family.”
“Does Peter have spare keys to units in the complex?”
Boateng shook his head. “I don’t believe so.”
“But you’ve said that Lady Araba had Peter make copies of the key for Augustus Seeza,” Sowah pointed out. “Peter could have kept one.”
“It’s a fair point. I don’t have an answer except that Peter doesn’t ring any alarm bells for me.”