Gold of Our Fathers

by Kwei Quartey

  “But for sure,” George added, “he knew how to mine for gold and he brought me good material.”

  “Do you know anyone who might have wanted to kill him?” Dawson asked.

  “Not specifically. I do know that he wasn’t consistent about paying his galamsey boys at the end of the day. So they might have resented him for that. I’m just speculating.”

  “Explain that—paying the boys at the end of the day.”

  George nodded. “The miners wash the gold ore they dig up all day long, and any gold that falls out is mixed with mercury to form an amalgam. After that, they burn the mercury off and the gold is left behind.”

  “And that’s what they bring to you?”

  “Or we go to the site and pay them on the spot,” George said. “Whichever way, it’s something of a gentleman’s agreement that you as a boss make sure you pay your boys for the day’s yield.”

  “Did you go to his site often?”

  “Often enough.”

  “What about last night?”

  “No. I have not been there in a while, and I’m not sure when he was last here. Wait, let me ask my wife . . . Efua!”

  Said Efua appeared. She was solid and endowed in several areas. Dawson thought of a baobab tree.

  “That Mr. Liu, the Chinaman,” George said to her, speaking in Twi, “did he come in this week?”

  She shook her head. “No. The week before.”

  “Thank you.” George turned back to Dawson. “There you have it, Mr. Dawson. Or what was it—Inspector, anaa?”

  Dawson waved it away. “It doesn’t matter. ‘Mister’ is okay. One other thing: Mr. Liu’s brother, Wei—do you know anything about him?”

  George turned the corners of his lips down. “He was always in the background, very quiet the one or two times I saw him here in the shop—always looking at his phone. So no, I don’t know much about him.”

  “We have him at the police station and we need to ask him some questions. Do you know a Chinese person who can help us with that?”

  George thought for a moment. “There’s this one guy named Mr. Leonard Huang who has a hardware store in the Sofo Line area of Kumasi. I trust him. He’s been here for years and speaks quite good English. The only problem might be that he won’t want to come down here all the way from Kumasi.” He picked up his mobile from the table. “Let me see if I can get him for you.”

  While George was dialing, Dawson looked around the store. A number of plaques and framed documents on the wall made it evident that the store and its business were licensed and certified by the PMMC—Precious Minerals Marketing Company, the government’s trader in gold, diamonds, and precious stones.

  George had apparently gotten through to Leonard and from this side of the conversation, it seemed to Dawson that George was having a tough time persuading him to act as a translator.

  “Oh, no, no, Leonard,” he was saying in reassuring tones. “You won’t get involved at all. You will be a neutral translator for Inspector Dawson to help him obtain some information. Can you do it for me, please?” George looked over at Dawson after a moment’s pause in the negotiations. “He will do it. What time?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “Leonard—how quickly can you be at the police station? One hour? Okay, that will be very good. Thank you very much, my friend.” George ended the call and smiled at Dawson. “Done. We are very lucky that he happens to be in Dunkwa right now.”

  “I appreciate it, Mr. Danquah.”

  “No problem. He was trying to get out of it by saying he speaks a different kind of Chinese from Mr. Liu, but I know that’s not true. He’s forgotten I’ve seen the two of them conversing before.”

  “There’s more than one kind of Chinese?” Dawson asked, feeling ignorant.

  George shrugged. “So I’m told. Mandarin and, em . . . another one I forget.” He called out again. “Efua, what are those different China languages? Mandarin and what again?”

  “Cantonese,” she supplied.

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” George winked at Dawson. “That woman is a walking encyclopedia. That’s why I married her.”

  Busty and brainy, Dawson thought. “One other thing, Mr. Danquah, what is your view of the illegal Chinese miners?”

  “Ah,” he sighed, leaning back again. “This is complicated.” He snatched a piece of scratch paper and drew two circles on it. “The Chinese are here in this circle, and we the Ghanaians are here in the other. Where the circles intersect is where we trade in some fashion, or work together and so on. Other times, it is a clash of cultures. Did you hear about the shooting at Aniamoa several months ago?”

  “No,” Dawson said.

  “A gang of Ghanaian boys waylaid some Chinese guys who were walking to a mining site, and the boys demanded gold from them. The Chinese said they didn’t have any and the boys should go away, which they did. But then, they returned with some macho men to beat up the Chinese people at their mining camp and presumably steal some stuff. One of the macho men was armed, but so were the Chinese. The two groups exchanged gunfire and one Chinese and two Ghanaians were shot dead.”

  “It sounds like it was a critical scene,” Dawson said.

  “But wait,” Danquah said, holding up a finger, “that wasn’t all. When the police arrived to investigate, one stupid Chinese man started firing his weapon and wounded a sergeant. You see, Inspector, some of these Chinese are criminals—no good, worthless, low-life people in their own country. Now, I don’t deny that we have the same good-for-nothings here in Ghana. I’m saying, please, China, keep your offenders and convicts in your own country.” Danquah shook his head grimly. “It’s just too bad. You see all this destruction of land around us and the pollution of the rivers? They have done this to us.”

  “But Ghanaians are engaging in the same illegal mining, aren’t they?” Dawson said.

  “Oh, yes!” Danquah exclaimed spiritedly. “We Ghanaians, the fools that we are, are in bed with these people. Why? Because we see a little money waving in our faces and we want to grab it at once without thinking of the consequences. And me who has been in the gold business for so long, I don’t like what these foreigners are doing to the country, but I have a wife and kids to support. I would be a fool to turn them away at the door. You know, it’s like taking bitter medicine.”

  “So what do you think is going to happen?” Dawson asked, feeling depressed.

  Danquah shrugged. “Well, you see how the government is now chasing them out. Some of them are leaving voluntarily to go back to China because of these raids and so on, and their share of the gold has been diminishing. To be honest, some of them are in poverty. Some have money but are by no means rich. So, in the end most of them will leave, but by then they will have torn the Ashanti and other regions apart.”

  Dawson rose. “Mr. Danquah, I thank you very much for your help.”

  “You are welcome, sir. By the way, are you interested in buying or selling any gold today?”

  “I don’t have any gold,” Dawson said, “and I certainly don’t have any money.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mr. Huang did not show up at Dunkwa Police Station for another two hours. Dawson used that time to call Christine and the boys, who were now in the final third of the long vacation from June to September. Christine asked him how things were going.

  “I have a homicide,” he told her. “Happened only this morning.”

  “Goodness! They haven’t even given you time to settle in.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Bad case?”

  “Yes. A Chinese man who was tied up, bludgeoned with a machete, and then buried at a mining site.”

  “Ewurade,” she said, and he could almost hear her shudder. “Well, apart from all that gruesomeness, how are you doing?”

  “I’m okay, but I want to get out of the hotel as soo
n as possible.”

  “Mama says the house will be ready by next week,” she told him.

  “Oh, good,” he said, thinking, I’ll believe it when I see it. No construction, repair or plumbing project was ever ready by the promised time.

  “When do you think you’ll be able to go to see the house?” she asked.

  “I’ll try this weekend.”

  “Okay. Hold on for Hosiah.”

  He spent a little while chatting to both boys, who missed him. They knew now about the move to Kumasi, and although Sly did not seem in the least worried about it, Hosiah was showing anxiety in his tone, and that worried Dawson.

  Mr. Huang was a bespectacled fortyish man who was deeply sunburned, especially the bald patch at the crown of his flat head.

  “Thank you very much for coming in to help me interpret, Mr. Huang,” Dawson said, shaking hands. “I appreciate it very much.”

  “You welcome,” he said nervously.

  “It’s just one or two things I need to ask Mr. Liu,” Dawson said, sensing that Huang was anxious. “I understand that out of the two types of Chinese, both of you speak the same variety?”

  A mixture of both amusement and annoyance passed over Huang’s face for just an instant, but long enough for Dawson to notice.

  “Did I say something wrong, Mr. Huang?”

  “Oh, no, no problem,” he said, but his eyes didn’t meet Dawson’s.

  “Am I mistaken that there are two types of Chinese?” Dawson persisted, still certain he had blundered somewhere.

  “Same like if I say there two type Ghanaian language!” Huang blurted, suddenly free of politeness. “Not make sense, right? China have many language!”

  Dawson saw his point. “Yes, you are right,” he said, feeling stupid for the second time today. “I apologize, sir.”

  Hastening to smile and now embarrassed himself, Huang waved the apology away. “’Sokay. No problem.”

  “Let’s go to see Mr. Liu now, please.”

  Wei Liu had shrunk into a corner of the overcrowded Dunkwa jail cell, keeping himself and his eyes away from his Ghanaian cellmates. Just like the jail at Obuasi headquarters, this one contained far more prisoners than it was designed to hold. When Wei saw Mr. Huang, his face lit up. In a voice shaking with emotion, he called out to his countryman and threaded his way to the front through the clump of prisoners.

  “Please explain that we are going to take him out for questioning,” Dawson said to Huang.

  From either side of the jail bars, the two Chinese men had what seemed to Dawson a long and complicated exchange, and after a few minutes some of the Ghanaian prisoners began to giggle and do bad Chinese imitations.

  Inspector Sackie, who was standing nearby, bellowed, “Heh! Shut up, all of you!”

  The prisoners obeyed and Kobby opened the cell door to let Wei out, cuffing him as a precaution before taking him to the CID room. They had no guarantee that Wei was any less bad-tempered now than he had demonstrated just a few hours ago.

  Most regional and divisional headquarters had a shared common room for CID detectives to question suspects and write reports. Sackie, Obeng, and Dawson sat opposite Wei and Huang at two tables pushed together to make a single.

  “Again, thank you for coming to help us,” Dawson said to Huang. “Please explain to Mr. Liu that he is here for questioning regarding the death of his brother, Bao, and that he is also under arrest for assault and attempted battery of a police officer. Which is why he is handcuffed. I am going to read a caution statement to him, which you must translate to him the best that you can, and then I will ask him to sign it.”

  “Yes,” Huang said.

  It took several minutes to laboriously get through the caution preamble phrase by phrase. With some hesitation, Wei signed it after Dawson made sure he understood.

  “He say he sorry for what he did,” Huang said.

  “Why did he do it?” Dawson asked.

  “He say . . . he say he just feel so shock and so bad his brother die.”

  In a way, Dawson understood. He had seen all kinds of behavior exhibited by family of the deceased—catatonia, hysteria, fainting, fury.

  Huang cleared his throat. “Mr. Liu, he wanna know if he is going to spend more time in jail.”

  “But of course,” Dawson said. “He will be arraigned tomorrow, and then he will be remanded in prison custody.”

  Huang turned to Wei and another discussion followed. Wei was rubbing his hand repeatedly through his hair as if he was at the end of his rope.

  Finally, lowering his voice, Huang said to Dawson, “Mr. Liu say he can give you a little something, is no problem.”

  “Look here,” Dawson snapped, “Mr. Liu is in enough trouble already, and now he wants to bribe me?”

  Wei stiffened when Huang translated that, and then seemed to droop completely. Dawson moved on. “Mr. Huang, I don’t think I’ve asked you how you know Mr. Liu.”

  “I meet him one year ago. He come from his hometown in Shanglin—Guangxi Province. I meet Bao three year ago. He come buy ’quipment my store.”

  “Was Bao married?”

  “Yes. His wife Stay Kumasi”

  “Did he meet his wife in China or in Ghana?”

  “China.”

  “Did they have children?”

  “Daughter.”

  “I see,” Dawson said. “Were Bao and Wei full brothers?” Dawson asked. “Same father, same mother?” He was thinking that a stepsibling situation might have hinted at conflict, although not necessarily. Huang checked with Wei, confirming that they had been full siblings.

  Dawson sat back and contemplated Wei for a moment. “How was life in your town in China—in Shanglin County?”

  Wei seemed uncertain or wary about the question, but after some hesitation, he said that life could be good for some, but not for others. When Bao left China, life had not been good for the Liu family. Like everyone else who left Shanglin for Ghana, the ultimate goal was to make a lot of money and return to the motherland rich.

  “After Bao stay in Ghana two year, feel so lonely without Lian.” Huang continued. He beg her to come to him, and he tell Wei to come with her to protect her nothing bad happen.”

  So technically, Dawson thought, the Lius were members of the “Shanglin Gang” in the country illegally, as Helmsley had described. Dawson was interested to know more, but perhaps some other time. For now, he needed to get on with the investigation at hand. Obviously Bao Liu had not tied himself up like a contortionist and buried himself under a pile of dirt, and grief-stricken or not, Wei was a potential suspect.

  Dawson took out his pocket notebook. He used a fresh one for each homicide case, and at home he had a carton with enough to last him for years, courtesy of his Takoradi cousin who owned a stationery store.

  “How did Bao and Wei divide the duties once Wei arrived here from China?” Dawson asked.

  “Wei do the day-to-day things,” Huang replied. “Make sure everything work at site. Bao take care of the books—ordering, buying.”

  Bao was firmly in charge, Dawson thought. And why not? He had started the business and his brother came along after that. “Where did Bao live?”

  “Kumasi. Wei too.”

  “In the same residence?”

  “When Wei first come, they live together, but then Wei say he want to stay another place, so he moved.”

  Dawson wondered if there had been arguments between the two brothers. “Has Bao’s wife been informed of the death?”

  Huang asked Wei, who shook his head.

  “He hasn’t had time call her yet,” Huang explained.

  “Okay, we’ll take care of informing her as soon as possible.”

  Huang translated, and Wei nodded.

  “When was the last time he saw Bao?” Dawson asked.

  The Chine
se men conferred, after which Huang turned back to Dawson. “Yesterday morning,” he said, “he go to Bao house in Kumasi, tell Bao for two days now, something wrong with the excavator hydraulic”—Huang stumbled over the word—“arm, not working and need new part. So Wei and Bao went into the town to look for the part.”

  “They find the part to buy, and so by the afternoon, Wei go back to the mining site in Dunkwa to try and fix the arm with one of the galamsey boys, but it take long and start to get dark, and still the arm have trouble. So he call Bao and say he gonna continue very early next morning before the work start, because you know, without excavator, lose time, lose money. And he ask Bao if he can come in the morning too so he can help, and Bao say, yes, okay, he will go to the mining site at four o’clock in the morning.”

  With Dawson’s new and growing comprehension of alluvial mining, he recognized the importance of getting the excavator repaired. He didn’t know how much gold ore those huge machines could dig up in a day, but it was certainly thousands of times more than a human could. The Lius had already lost two days or more of excavation, and they were anxious to reverse the trend, even if it meant fixing the machine by flashlight.

  Dawson jotted down:

  Bao & Wei: plan to meet 4 a.m. Friday.

  “Okay, what happened next?”

  “So, Wei say too late to go back to Kumasi—too far,” Huang went on, “so rather he stay with some friend, one Chinese man who live in Dunkwa, so it won’t take him long to go the mine site in the morning.”

  That stood to reason, Dawson thought. It was at least a two-hour drive back to Kumasi, prolonged mostly by the atrocious Dunkwa–Obuasi segment. If Wei was to get back to the mine by four in the morning, he would have to leave Kumasi at about 2 a.m.

  “So,” Huang said, “he stay with that friend and suppose to wake up three thirty, but he so tired he forget to set phone alarm and not hear Bao trying to call him four twenty this morning. It was his friend who knock on the door of his room at six o’clock to wake him up and ask him if he not going to the mine.”