Wife of the Gods

by Kwei Quartey

  “This is really nice,” Dawson said, looking around.

  “Thank you,” Elizabeth said sweetly. “Would you like to choose something for your wife?”

  He picked out a kente stole. “I think she’ll like this one. How much is it?”

  “It’s a gift, Mr. Dawson. I would not dream of charging you for it.”

  The station was quiet. Constable Gyamfi was at his desk taking swigs from a bottle of Malta Guinness. Dawson’s eyes lit up. Goodness, energy, vitality, as the label proclaimed. “Good morning, Constable Gyamfi.”

  The young man jumped to his feet with a beaming smile. “Morning, sir.”

  They shook hands cordially.

  “Inspector in?” Dawson asked.

  “He’ll be here soon, sir. Please, you can have a seat. Will you have some Malta?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Gyamfi poked around in a space under the counter and extracted a bottle. He popped open the top and handed the bottle to Dawson.

  “Thank you. Cheers,” Dawson said.

  He clinked bottles with Gyamfi and then took a swig. It was warm, but no matter. Malta was good whichever way. Dawson let out a satisfied sigh.

  Gyamfi smiled at him. “You like it, sir?”

  “Very much. Even though I know it’s too sweet.”

  Gyamfi laughed. “That’s all right. Do you enjoy beer, sir?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Oh, sir,” Gyamfi said in mock regret. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  It was Dawson’s turn to laugh. He clinked bottles with Gyamfi again. “How’s the prisoner doing?”

  “Fine, sir.”

  “No need to call me ‘sir,’ Gyamfi. Just call me Dawson.”

  “All right, very good, sir. I mean, Mr. Dawson.”

  “Did he have something to eat this morning?”

  “Yes. He ate some porridge.”

  “Good.” Dawson took a sip and savored the taste. “You think he killed Gladys Mensah?”

  “Well, you know—whatever Inspector Fiti says …”

  Dawson nodded, wondering why he’d asked the question. Gyamfi wouldn’t contradict his boss.

  “How long have you worked here, Constable Gyamfi?” he asked.

  “Almost two years now. I was in Sekondi before here.”

  “What about the other constable?”

  “Bubo? He’s been here less than a year.” Gyamfi dropped his voice. “He doesn’t like it.”

  Constable Bubo walked in at that very moment.

  “Morning, Bubo,” Gyamfi said, self-consciously clearing his throat.

  “Morning, Gyamfi. Morning, sir.” His voice was slightly hoarse, like a sharp-edged river reed scraped across the palm. Bubo took a sullen look at a couple of folders on the desk, turned around, and walked out again.

  Gyamfi looked at Dawson and shrugged. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He doesn’t like to talk much. He stammers sometimes—maybe that’s why.”

  Minutes later they heard Inspector Fiti addressing Bubo outside. “Where are you going?”

  There was a not quite audible reply from Bubo, but Dawson detected the stammer.

  Fiti loudly objected to the constable’s plans, whatever they were. “No,” he said sharply. “Forget about that. Go and get Samuel Boateng from the jail. We’re going to interrogate him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Constable Bubo returned ahead of Inspector Fiti, who faltered when he saw Dawson. Perhaps he had forgotten the CID inspector was going to be present for the interrogation.

  “Morning, Inspector Dawson,” he said heartily, recovering. “I hope you slept well.”

  “I did, thank you.”

  Bubo unhooked a large bunch of keys from his belt and disappeared around the corner and down to the jail.

  “Elizabeth and Charles Mensah came to see me this morning,” Dawson told Inspector Fiti.

  He looked both surprised and somewhat annoyed. “For what reason?”

  “To talk about Gladys. They told me something interesting. She had owned a diary, but they can’t find it among her belongings. She had also had a silver bracelet, and that’s missing too.”

  “I see.” Fiti’s brow furrowed. “There was no diary in her briefcase and she didn’t have a bracelet at the scene either. But you know, people lose things. Maybe she lost them.”

  “Anything is possible, you’re right, but if she didn’t lose them, their absence could be connected to her murder.”

  Fiti nodded soberly. “We will ask Samuel if he knows something. Gyamfi, you will take notes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They heard the cell door clang shut. Bubo returned, guiding Samuel ahead of him. Samuel’s head was bowed, and he looked wretched. He hadn’t been provided any new clothes, so he was still shirtless, and his pants were filthy and almost coming off his lean frame.

  The interrogation room was small with splotchy walls, a bare table, and four chairs. Fiti and Dawson sat at one side, opposite Samuel on the other. Gyamfi stayed behind Samuel, closer to the door.

  Fiti cleared his throat and began. “Samuel, I’m going to ask you about the killing of Gladys Mensah.”

  “I didn’t do anything, sir,” Samuel said, his gaze down.

  “The evening before she died, she was walking from Bedome to Ketanu and you were following her, is that not so?”

  “I wasn’t following her. I was talking to her. Sir.”

  “About what?”

  “I asked her what she went to do in Bedome.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She told me she has been teaching the people about the AIDS disease. And I asked her if I could walk with her to Ketanu and she said yes. And so we were talking and walking. Like that.”

  “Tell me everything you talked about.”

  “She asked me if I knew something about AIDS, and I said no, so she told me about it and gave me a paper to read.”

  “Where is that paper? What did you do with it?”

  Samuel looked uncomfortable. An undulating wave traveled across his brow.

  “What did you do with it?” Fiti repeated.

  “I looked at it, but later I threw it away in the bush because I felt shame to take it home.”

  Fiti took the pack of condoms from his shirt pocket and held it in Samuel’s face. Samuel jumped as if jabbed with a live electric wire.

  “But you’re not ashamed to take these home?” Fiti said.

  Samuel looked away.

  “How many condoms have you used already?” Fiti demanded.

  “None, sir. There were only three.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  “She gave them to me. Gladys, I mean.”

  Fiti’s eyes narrowed. “Why would she do that?”

  “For protection—”

  “You had sex with her?”

  Samuel was incredulous. “What do you mean? I didn’t want to have any sex with her—”

  “She gave you the condoms and you decided it was your chance and so then you tried to force yourself on her—”

  “No.”

  “When she wouldn’t allow you, you attacked her and dragged her into the forest. Did you rape her? You put a condom on and then you raped her?”

  Samuel’s voice rose. “No!”

  “Did you steal a bracelet from her?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Did you steal her diary? A blue diary?”

  “I didn’t steal anything, and I didn’t go into the forest with her. Ask Mr. Kutu if you don’t believe me.”

  “Ask Mr. Kutu what?” Dawson said quickly.

  “He saw us from his compound while Gladys and I were talking,” Samuel said heatedly, “and he came and told me not to be worrying her or he would report me to Inspector Fiti. He acted as if I’m some kind of bad person and told me to get away. I was annoyed with him.”

  “And what did you do after he told you that?” Dawson asked.

  “I went b
ack to the farms to work.”

  “Did you look back to see if Gladys and Mr. Kutu were still there?”

  “Yes, they were standing there talking,” Samuel said resentfully.

  “Did you see them go into the forest together?”

  Samuel shook his head. “No.”

  “Was that the last time you saw Gladys?”

  “Yes.” His eyes clouded over, and he tried to blink the moisture away.

  “Do you remember what time it was?” Dawson asked.

  “About five thirty, something like that.”

  “But you decided to hide behind a tree and watch Gladys and Mr. Kutu, not so?” Fiti said.

  “No, I didn’t hide anywhere. I went back to the farms like I told you.”

  “And when they had finished talking, you went back to Gladys and took her into the forest to kill her,” Fiti said.

  “No.”

  “You’re lying,” Fiti said. “I know a liar when I see one. I can smell a liar. Do you know what a liar smells like?”

  Samuel didn’t answer.

  “I’m talking to you, Samuel. Do you know what a liar smells like?”

  “No, sir,” he whispered.

  “Then smell yourself and you’ll find out, because you smell just like one.”

  Samuel shrugged brazenly.

  “Okay,” Fiti said with a smirk. “You don’t care now, but wait until you start to rot in the jail and we’ll see if you don’t care anymore. Take him back, Gyamfi.”

  “Why?” Samuel said. “What have I done?”

  “Come on,” Gyamfi said, taking him by the arm. “Let’s go.”

  He marched the protesting Samuel out.

  “He will talk,” Fiti said.

  “Why are you so convinced he did it?” Dawson said. “Just because of the condoms?”

  “‘Just because’?” Fiti snapped. “Nothing is ‘just because,’ D.I. Dawson. I suspect him because so far he is the one with the strongest motive and he also had very good opportunity. Don’t believe what comes out of this boy’s mouth. You don’t know him the way I know him. He is one of the biggest liars I’ve ever seen.”

  “Isaac Kutu also had opportunity,” Dawson pointed out, “and he may in fact have been the very last person with Gladys.”

  Fiti shook his head vigorously. “But, no. Isaac would have no good reason to kill her. Gladys was his passport to getting his herbal medicines licensed, don’t you see? Who knows, maybe he was even going to make a lot of money through her.”

  Unless, Dawson thought, she planned to sideline him. Was that the kind of person Gladys had been?

  NUNANA HAD BEEN MORE shocked by Gladys’s death than she had let on. This “old bag of bones,” as she sometimes called herself, maintained a tough exterior, belying the distress she really felt, and she did it for Efia. The poor thing was shattered enough without seeing her elder fall apart. Yesterday, Nunana had sat Efia down under a shady mango tree and given her a talking-to.

  “Gladys has left us to join our forefathers,” she said. “I know you loved her like a sister, Efia, and I know you are sad, but have you ever heard the saying that the true character of a person is revealed when something terrible happens? You have strength. You just have to let it come out. Gladys is gone and now the beat of the drum is different, and so you must change your steps according to the new rhythm.”

  Nunana had had great respect for Gladys when she was alive and maybe even more now that she was dead. Nunana had had an eerie fear that something terrible like this was going to happen. As clever as Gladys was and as much as she knew about that horrible AIDS sickness, she did not realize how much she was scaring Togbe Adzima, and when that man was scared, he lashed out. That’s what had made Nunana fearful of what might come next. She did not believe Togbe had laid his own hand on Gladys, but she was certain he had cursed her through the forest god and in that way brought on her death.

  Nunana was one of Togbe Adzima’s trokosi, and to that she was resigned. She would be here in Bedome till the day she died. She didn’t say Togbe was good or bad. He was just Togbe, a fact of life like the sun rose and rain fell. He shouted at the wives, he shouted at everything, even goats and chickens. Nunana was yelled at too, but as the senior wife, she did earn a certain level of respect from him.

  For one thing, she was the only one allowed to clean his room. No one else was permitted in his hut except by his express invitation. She made his bed every day. It was a thin foam mattress falling apart and supported on planks of wood lying on plastic crates. She swept the room. He had few clothes, but she knew which ones were clean and which ones were ready to be washed.

  Hidden in the bottom of Togbe Adzima’s box of gin and schnapps was a locked, rusty tin. At least it was supposed to be hidden, but like most women, Nunana could find anything that a man thought he was concealing. When she had first discovered it, more than six months ago, she’d quickly put it back and felt flustered and guilty, but its being locked had made her all the more curious. What was the metal she heard when she gently shook the tin? Jewelry? Coins? Maybe some gold?

  She had forgotten about it for a while until last night. Togbe had got drunk, stumbled over his own feet, and fallen on the floor of his hut. He had lain there for a while, eyes half closed and bloodshot, foul mouth open and saliva trickling from one corner.

  Nunana had picked him up and pulled him onto the bed. He would never know or remember. She had just been set to leave Togbe’s hut when she saw the mystery tin on the floor. Drunk as he was, Togbe must have accidentally left it out.

  Nunana had looked over at him to be sure he was completely unaware, and then she had tried the tin. Open. Hand shaking a little, she had examined the contents. Safety pins, a few cedi coins, a watch, and a silver bracelet. Again, she’d glanced at Togbe and then at the door of the hut to make sure no one was coming in.

  The watch meant little to Nunana, but the bracelet was really beautiful. She had never seen anything like it. Even in the poor light of the hut, it had glinted and sparkled when she turned it this way and that.

  Where did he get this?

  She’d jumped as she heard Togbe stir, and hurriedly she’d put the bracelet back, closed the tin, and returned it to its so-called hiding place.

  It had been only four days since Efia had discovered Gladys dead, and the memory of it was still too vivid to bear. Every so often, it stabbed Efia like a red-hot dagger and she jumped visibly. The first morning after that awful day, she had risen with a leaden heart to begin chores. She could barely move, as though she had suddenly aged to a hundred. The night before, her daughter, Ama, had found her staring vacantly into the distance when she should have been attending to the meal she was cooking for Togbe. Tears were streaming down Efia’s cheeks.

  “Mama?” Ama said. “Mama, don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

  They had embraced, and soon both of them were quietly weeping, until Togbe Adzima spotted them and yelled at them for doing nothing when they should have been working.

  Efia would never think of the forest in the same way. Now it seemed like a place of darkness and wickedness, and she walked through it with a new wariness. She couldn’t bear to go back to the plantain grove where she had found Gladys dead. There was another one just about as plentiful, but it was farther into the forest, and Efia had been to it only once.

  She thought she remembered the way well enough, but within a few minutes, Efia realized she was lost. She wiped her forehead with her palm and flicked the moisture away, sweating from both the pitiless afternoon heat and annoyance at herself. She stopped and looked around, trying to figure out where she was. The forest was particularly thick here—foot-snarling undergrowth, dense clumps of bushes, and tall, exuberant trees.

  Efia heard something. It might have been an animal, but she wasn’t certain. Following the direction of the sound, she thought she saw a bit of a clearing ahead to her left. She made her way there and found she had been right—the area was relatively free from the dense ve
getation she had just tackled. Someone had recently set a fire, and it was still smoldering.

  Efia heard that same sound again, this time closer. It sounded like the moan of a woman. She was just about to step into the clearing when she saw something that made her draw in her breath sharply and jump back.

  There was a little hut—actually it was nothing more than four wooden sticks a couple meters in length with a roof of woven branches. Underneath that were two people lying on the ground. He was on top of her, hips moving rhythmically. They were dressed, but her garments were pushed up to her waist and his trousers were undone to free his loins, and she had opened her thighs to receive him.

  Efia backed away, revolted, her hand clamped over her mouth. In the forest? She almost threw up. It was offensive, horrible. People should never, ever do this in the forest. The gods would be furious, and so they should be.

  A second realization struck Efia before she even had time to recover from the initial revulsion. She knew who the two people were. The man was Isaac Kutu. The woman was … what was her name? She was a cocoa farmer, she and her husband. She groped for the name and found it in a corner of her memory.

  Osewa Gedze.

  CHRISTINE WAS TO HAVE a late day at school because of a staff meeting. She dropped Hosiah off at her mother’s house early in the morning and would pick him back up in the evening. That meant Gifty would have her grandson for the whole day, and she was happy to take him. She started by serving him a breakfast of sugar-frosted flakes and squares of toasted sweet bread spread thick with butter and pineapple preserves. By the time Hosiah was done, his cheeks were gloriously smudged with food.

  After that, Hosiah unpacked his red and yellow plastic suitcase of toys and played on the sitting room floor while Granny watched. He was a sweet, sweet boy. She cared about the child every bit as much as Christine and Darko did. It was tearing at her heart that Hosiah’s “sickness” was gaining its strength as it took his. And what were his parents doing? Saving up for surgery. Saving up. How did that help?