“I wish you the best. I imagine you’ll be very successful.”
“Thank you.”
His mbira, which was resting in the corner by the window, had caught her attention. “Do you play?”
“A little.”
“May I see it?”
He gave it to her and sat down again while she examined it.
“It’s wonderful,” she said, looking up at him. “I love mbiras. Where did you get this one? From the Northern Region?”
“No, I made it.”
She looked at him half disbelievingly. “Really?”
“I’ve been making them since I was a boy.”
“Oh my. Intelligent and talented.” She laughed playfully, and he recognized she was behaving differently toward him. She was more open, less guarded, and she was being flirtatious. He felt a disturbing twinge of excitement and made himself look away from her lovely face, framed by the soft lighting in the lodge.
She held the mbira out to him. “Play something, maestro.”
He smiled. “Okay.”
He played a lively piece with a recurring rhythmic theme. She sat forward, watching and listening intently, and applauding when he was done.
“Now I’ll play something with a different mood,” he said. “It’s an old tune I learned when I was a kid.”
This piece was more melodious, the notes blending with less of the traditional mbira discordance. For a while, he was lost in the composition. When he looked up again, tears were streaming down Dr. Smith-Aidoo’s face. He stopped playing.
“Are you okay, Doctor?”
She covered her face with her hands and began to weep. Dawson kneeled beside her, touching her arm.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t stop seeing it …”
“Is it the canoe?”
She nodded, trying to say something but choking on the words. Her body leaned toward him, and he supported her as her arms went around his shoulders.
“Something about the melody brought back memories.” She was sobbing. “I miss them. I miss them so much.”
She held on to him tightly, and he waited for her weeping to run its course.
“Better?”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“It’s okay.” He made a slight movement to separate, but she wasn’t letting go. Instead, she allowed her full weight to push against him. He tried to shift his position but lost his balance and sank to the floor with her on top of him.
Then he didn’t know what was happening. He was on his back, and she was frantically kissing his neck and his face, her sweet breath coming fast. Her hand was in his shirt feeling the curve of his pectorals and stroking his abdominal muscles. She opened his shirt, kissed his chest. He thought he heard her whisper, “Please, I need it.”
She straddled him so he felt the heat and softness of her crotch against his rigidity.
She unbuttoned her blouse and unsnapped her bra, exposing her round breasts, succulent yet firm with large, dark areolas that were in shocking contrast with her fair skin. She was unforgivably lovely. Maybe he touched her breasts, maybe he didn’t, but he turned his head away and covered his eyes as she opened undid his belt, and unzipped him. He felt like he was watching himself in a dream from a perch high up on the wall. His head was swirling. She tucked her fingertips in his waistband and gave a gentle tug. He lifted his hips slowly, and she eased his trousers and briefs down. She wrapped her fingers around his stiff shaft and gently stroked up to the tip. It responded, surging up to strike her palm and bouncing back to his belly with a soft thud.
Dawson opened his eyes with a vision of Christine standing across the room.
He gasped. What am I doing?
“No.”
Pushing Fiona off to the side, he scrambled up frantically, hastily stuffing himself back in and zipping his trousers.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Sorry. I can’t.”
She was lying on the floor, staring up at him in bewilderment.
“I can’t,” he stammered. “Sorry. Please go, Doctor. Sorry.”
He left her, went into the bedroom, and shut the door. He sat on the edge of the bed with his head between his hands. He was hyperventilating and his chest was tight. What are you doing? A wave of nausea went through him.
He held his breath, listening for her. Was she still there? For a terrifying instant, he was afraid she would come into the bedroom. Finally, he heard the front door close as she left.
Had he touched her? He might have, but only her breasts. She had made him hard, and he had let her. Was that adultery?
You don’t get involved with anyone in a murder case.
He sprang up with a sudden desire to take a shower, but as he began to remove his clothes, he heard knocking on the door. No, he thought. Was she back? He stood where he was, paralyzed. His phone rang. It was Chikata.
“Dawson, are you there? I’m outside your door.”
What a relief. “Okay, I’m coming.”
He opened up the kitchen door and Chikata came in. “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“I just saw a woman leaving in tears.”
“Oh,” Dawson said, avoiding Chikata’s eye. “That’s Dr. Smith-Aidoo. We were talking about the case, and she got sad thinking about her aunt and uncle.”
“I see,” Chikata said, regarding him with some curiosity. “She’s beautiful.”
Dawson’s face was burning as he turned away abruptly. “Let’s talk about the case.”
“Sure, but first, how was the underwater training?”
Dawson laughed with relief. “I passed.”
He gave a blow-by-blow account to exclamations of amazement from Chikata.
“So you’re now qualified to visit the rig?”
“Yes,” Dawson said. “I’ll be going in a couple of days.”
They occupied their usual spots at the sitting room table.
“First,” Chikata said, “I went to Axim with Baah to meet this Quashie Quarshie. It took us almost two hours to find him. How this guy could have anything physically to do with the Smith-Aidoos’ murder is hard to imagine. He’s a very small man who had polio as a child. One leg is much shorter than the other, and sometimes he has to use a wheelchair because he’s in pain.”
“What about his personality?”
“He’s very passionate about the organization’s mission statement of sustainable living and protecting the coast from oil pollution and all that, and he says he’s also a pacifist.”
“What about his associates?”
“I thought it was a big organization, but it’s only him and his wife and a part-time accountant, and they work out of a very small office. Quarshie says money is hard to come by these days. The wife was there, but not the accountant. I have his phone number, so I can get in touch with him. They meet once a month—sometimes it’s well attended by fishermen and environmentalists, but other times they have only a few people coming in.”
“Could any of the fishermen or the other attendees have a motive to kill the Smith-Aidoos?” Dawson asked.
“I asked Quarshie that question—I phrased it a little differently—and he said he’s witnessed a lot of anger from some fishermen, but he had contact information for only a few. I can try to track them down tomorrow.”
“Okay, good work. Did you get to Kweku Bonsa, the fetish priest?”
“Yes, but I didn’t talk to him. He was having one of his ceremonies—dancing to the beat of drums, spinning around in a trance while his assistants were sprinkling him with chalk powder. It was going on for hours, and I was told that Bonsa would be too weak afterward to talk to me. They told me to come back tomorrow.”
AFTER A LITTLE more discussion, Chikata left and Dawson hurried to the bathroom to finish what he had been about to do before the interruption. He pulled off his clothes and took a shower. He lathered and rinsed three times, trying to wash the sin away.
Chapter 26
HIS PHONE RA
NG AND he jerked awake disoriented, unsure what was dream and what was reality.
“Hello?” he said thickly.
“Hi, Dark. Sorry. I woke you.”
Christine. His heart surged and then plunged as he remembered Dr. Smith-Aidoo.
“Yes, I fell asleep. What time is it?”
“Just past eleven. I shouldn’t have called this late.”
“No, it’s okay,” he said, sitting up at the side of the bed.
“How’s everything?”
“Okay, doing okay. Thanks.”
He sensed a split second pause on her part, and he realized he might be sounding strange.
“The boys are fine?” he asked hastily. “No more nightmares?”
“No, thank goodness. Seeing you in Takoradi did wonders. Still, they can’t wait for you to come home.”
“Tell them I will as soon as I can.”
“You didn’t call me today,” she said, “so I just wanted to check on you.”
“Thanks, love. I should have. I apologize.”
“No, it’s all right. Get your rest and take care, okay?”
“I will. And I do love you.”
“I love you too.”
He put his phone down, wondering if Christine had sensed something was amiss. The way he had said, “I do love you” was a bit odd.
HE WOKE SOME time before dawn and sat up in the dark. His head was aching because he hadn’t had anything to eat in over twelve hours. He felt like smoking some wee, but he didn’t have the energy to get up and find any. He fell back in bed, a dark, encircling wall of depression beginning to close in.
WHEN HE AWOKE again, the weather was bright and hot. He looked at his phone, which said 9:25. He groaned, rolled to the edge of the bed, and sat up. He was weak and needed some food. The episode with Dr. Smith-Aidoo came hurtling back with the force of a speeding truck.
IT HAD BEEN a struggle to get out of bed, but Dawson was glad he had. On foot to Abraham’s store, it felt good to be out, especially after having had a large helping of roast plantain and groundnuts that he had bought at the roadside. Sometimes the simple yet filling meal was called “Kofi Broke Man,” because it was dirt cheap.
Dawson was suppressing any memory of his encounter with the doctor. In the light of day, it had an unreal quality. He knew his sex drive had gotten the best of him, but in Sapphire’s case, he sensed it was more complex than that—a misdirected need for physical intimacy had been set on fire when he had offered her comfort in her grief. It was possible that she had not ever received the solace she had needed after the death of her aunt and uncle.
He had called his cousin to say he was coming, so Abraham had been expecting him when he walked into his shop.
“I’ve missed you.” Abraham gave his cousin a hefty hug. “You’ve been busy, eh?”
“Yes, I have. You won’t believe I went to helicopter underwater escape training yesterday.”
“Serious! How did it go?”
“I did okay. They gave me a commendation for exemplary performance, too.”
“Congrats!” Abraham exclaimed. “Let’s go and celebrate. There’s a nice bar on Appiah Street.”
They walked over and took a seat at a table under a canopy. A young woman came to take their orders—a club beer, a Malta, and some plantain chips.
Dawson sat slightly forward. He was dreading this, but it had to be done. “Abe, something has come up in the investigation that I have to ask you about.”
“Oh? Sounds serious. What’s going on?”
“You know that no matter what, I respect you, right?”
“Yes,” Abraham said warily.
“You told me that you and Fiona Smith-Aidoo were classmates.”
Abraham nodded, looking anxious. “Yes, that’s right.”
“If Fiona was not a murder victim,” Dawson continued, “I wouldn’t care about your relationship with her one way or the other. In fact, it wouldn’t be any of my business. However, yesterday, I was talking to Gamal the Smith-Aidoo’s watchman, asking him who had visited the Smith-Aidoos at Beach Road. He told me how, one night in the garden, he discovered Fiona with a man who fits your description. What’s more, when he saw the man some months later in town, a friend told him that the man owned Abraham’s Stationery.”
He stopped there because Abraham knew what the question was and it needn’t be asked. He had dropped his eyes and was moving his glass around in a slow circle in the condensation pool on the table. From the expression on his face, Dawson knew he was not about to deny anything.
“Okay, yes,” he said quietly. “It’s true, and Gamal is right. I was with Fiona. Darko, I haven’t told you everything. We all have secrets and this was mine. I should have told you, but I was ashamed. Fiona was my girlfriend when we were together at Takoradi Secondary. To be honest, I thought I was going to marry her, and I thought she felt the same way. Until Charles Smith-Aidoo came along. He transferred from another school. I suppose the first time he ever saw her, he decided she was the girl he wanted.
“It sounds silly to say he took her away from me, but he was everything I wasn’t—he had a way with words, he was athletic. When she fell for him, I realized she had never really been in love with me. I had been her friend, a very close companion, but she didn’t have the fever for me that she had for Charles. I was hurt and bitter, but once I had met Akosua, none of that mattered anymore. However, that’s not the same as saying that I didn’t still have feelings for Fiona.”
Abraham glanced around as if someone might have been eavesdropping, but no one appeared the slightest bit interested in their conversation. Nevertheless, he sat forward and spoke confidentially. “About eight months ago, Fiona came into the shop to buy some envelopes and we chatted. As she was leaving, she asked me if I’d accompany her outside to her car. She began to talk about things in a strange way—the old days at school, how we used to help each other with lessons, the fun we had. I kept wondering why she was going on and on about this now. She finally confessed that she and Charles were going through a rough patch. Disagreements, arguments, and so on.
“She started to cry, saying that she needed to talk to someone she could trust as a friend, and the first person she had thought of was me, even after all these years. She asked if we could meet somewhere soon and just talk.
“When she told me this, I felt something inside, something like triumph that she had turned to me. You know that feeling you get when an old rival is defeated? Your ego smiles and says, ‘you see now? In the end, I had victory over you.’ ”
Dawson chuckled. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“Fiona and I exchanged phone numbers, and a few days later, she called me to say that Charles was going to be at a Malgam function the following evening, and she wanted to see me then. When I got to her place, she let me in through the back gate. We sat and talked. She was full of stress, and at times, she got tearful. She talked about her campaign to be chief exec of the STMA and how she wasn’t getting support from Charles. Some of what Charles wanted for Malgam’s success ran counter to Fiona’s vision for a prosperous Takoradi.”
“Did she give you an example of that?”
“Fiona was challenging Malgam Oil over the rule that no fishing canoe can come within five hundred meters of the oil platform. If a navy patrol vessel catches a canoe within that radius, they arrest the fisherman involved and confiscate the canoe.”
“How long did you stay with Fiona that night?”
“Two hours. I will swear on a Bible that I did not have sex with her, Darko. You have to believe me. We went out to the garden from the back of the house, and we were exchanging some last words when she put her arms around me. At that time, Gamal came into the garden with a flashlight and discovered us embracing. I thought I was going to die of embarrassment.”
“Did you ever see Fiona again after this incident?”
“No, I didn’t. After that meeting, I realized what a terrible mistake I’d be making to go any further. I felt
stupid and ashamed. However, Fiona kept calling me to talk. I was avoiding her, not returning her calls, and so she came to the shop. That was a frightening moment, because I thought she was going to make a scene and then the whole story would be out. Fortunately, she didn’t do that, but I got the feeling my shop assistants suspected something might have been going on between Fiona and me.”
Dawson wondered if a leak by one of the assistants had been responsible for the rumor that Fiona was having an affair with a businessman in town.
“It was at that visit to the shop that I went outside with her and told her that we had to end the relationship,” Abraham said. “She never called me again.”
He reached across the table and slipped his meaty palm into Dawson’s lean one.
“I hope you believe me and trust me, Darko. I had nothing to do with Fiona and Charles’s murder. I bore no malice to either one of them. I did something stupid, but it doesn’t make me a murderer.”
Dawson squeezed his cousin’s hand. “Yes, I do believe you, Abe.”
His mind very much eased, Dawson ordered a second bottle of Malta to celebrate. His cousin had now been pulled safely away from the brink of the suspect list. With that, Dawson would be able to concentrate on finding the true murderer without having to worry about family conflicts.
Chapter 27
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Dawson’s phone rang as he was headed to the bathroom. Emmanuel was calling.
“Chaley, time to give up MTN and switch to Vodafone,” he sang.
Dawson’s heart leapt. “You’ve got my info?”
“The number that the Goilco CEO, Lawrence Tetteh, had is the same one you’ve got: zero-two-zero one-five-six four-six-seven-six. It’s now out of service, however. He purchased a new phone and changed his number.”
“My man, you’re the best. Thank you.
“When you get back to Accra, come and see me so we can switch you over to Vodafone. Do you have the latest iPhone?”
Murder at Cape Three Points Page 20