by Kwei Quartey
“Yes, please. I told him maybe it went inside his mouth and nose when he was trying to breathe, because one time when I was working at a mine, the wall of one of the pits slid down and buried two guys. One of them died, and when we pulled him out, his mouth was open, full of mud, like Mr. Bao’s.”
Dawson remembered: when he had asked Yaw if he had strangled Bao, his response was, “Please, for what? He will try to breathe inside the soil and die like that.”
Is this how he knew? Did Kudzo inadvertently supply Yaw useful information that he could later use?
“Tell me the truth, and you will not get into any trouble,” Dawson said to Kudzo. “Did you tell Yaw that Mr. Bao’s excavator was not operating and that he was going to fix it on that Friday morning?”
“No, please. I never told him that.”
“Do you think he killed Mr. Bao?”
“No, please. I don’t think so.”
“Then why did he say he did?”
“Because he loves his father.”
And Dawson had the feeling that Kudzo, who had a kind of wisdom beyond his years, was right.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Dawson felt he needed to talk to Daniel Armah, the best person to explore ideas with while on a case. He was at home when Dawson called.
“Of course,” Armah said. “Come by and let’s discuss it.”
Dawson set out immediately, and for the entire journey from Obuasi to Kumasi, he wrestled with the questions: Do I have the right man? Did Yaw really kill Bao Liu? If not, who did?
Armah welcomed Dawson and invited him to the backyard for refreshments—Star beer for himself, and Guinness Malta for Dawson. They wasted little time getting down to business, and Dawson laid out the present theory about Bao’s murder and Yaw’s key involvement.
One: Bao allegedly killed Amos, Yaw’s beloved older brother.
Two: Yaw, grief stricken, becomes mute from a “conversion reaction.”
Three: His anger growing, he decides to avenge Amos’s death.
Four: By a mechanism yet unknown, Yaw learns on the day before Bao’s murder that the site excavator is not working and that Bao intends to repair it sometime on Friday morning.
Five: Yaw lies in wait until Bao arrives, attacks him, and ties him up in a torturous posture.
Six: Having stolen the keys to one of Chuck Granger’s excavators, Yaw drives the machine over to Bao’s site and dumps loads of moist, heavy soil and gravel on top of the Chinese man, ultimately causing his painful death by asphyxiation.
Seven: As a means of evading the police Yaw continues the charade of muteness.
Eight: Yaw is arrested but still refuses to talk.
Nine: Yaw talks and confesses to the crime after his father attempts to take the blame for the murder in an apparent attempt to protect Yaw.
“But now we have an alternative possibility,” Dawson told Armah. “What if Yaw is protecting his father to atone for the hurt he feels he has caused Mr. Okoh? Yaw has witnessed and observed the crime scene and taken mental note of Kudzo’s astute observation that Bao might have been suffocated while gasping for air and inhaling soil. Yaw also learns from Kudzo what time Bao tried to call Wei, since Wei mentioned it to Kudzo the morning Bao was found. So Yaw can use these facts to ‘confess.’”
“The only missing piece, then,” Armah said, “is that we don’t know how Yaw could have found out that Bao was expected at the site that Friday morning.”
Dawson agreed. “That is bothersome, yes.”
“Let’s go back and look at the other possibilities to be sure we haven’t omitted something.”
“All right,” Dawson said. “First there’s Lian, Bao’s wife. I don’t have any reason to believe she had a motive to have her husband killed. As I said to Chikata, Bao was her rock and her financial support. No, she isn’t a suspect from my point of view.”
“But I sense a gap in what you know about her,” Armah countered. “You’ve met her only once, and we don’t know a lot about her relationship with her husband. Was it a loving one? Did they argue? In your story, you said Bao was flirtatious with Amos’s girlfriend. Could it be that he was a womanizer and that Lian knew about it and had him killed?”
Dawson was doubtful. “Anything is possible, but . . .”
“I can see that isn’t going down very well with you,” Armah said with a chuckle.
Dawson grinned. “But you’re right. I should follow that up. I have an idea whom I could ask.” He was thinking of Mr. Huang.
“Good. Who else? What about the victim’s brother—what’s his name?”
“Wei. He has an alibi—he stayed overnight with his friend Feng.”
“I see. And outside the family circle? The young man—Kudzo?”
“His alibi is solid. But there’s Chuck Granger, the American whose mining site is adjacent to Wei’s. Granger had motive. He hated Bao and saw him as a threat. But he was down in Accra on business with Tommy Thompson, director of PMMC, on Thursday and he came back on Friday.”
“That’s confirmed beyond a doubt?”
“Not exactly,” Dawson confessed. “I tried to contact Thompson once without success, and then the business of Yaw came along and I got sidetracked. I’ll ask Chikata to look for the man and talk to him in person.”
“Good,” Armah said. “I concur.”
“So I have a couple of possible leads, at least,” Dawson said, feeling better.
“Yes. By the way, this journalist, Helmsley, has she told you anything useful?”
“She’s working on conspiracy-type things,” Dawson said. “For example, she claims that a whistle-blower has told her that the PMMC actually buys illegal gold and uses that to inflate figures about the amount of gold produced in Ghana.”
“Actually, I’ve heard that before too,” Armah said, leaning back and unconsciously cracking his knuckles one by one. “Who is her source?”
“She declined to say. Supposedly she went down to PMMC in Accra and was kicked out for asking Tommy Thompson snooping questions. She says her source also tells her that PMMC buys the gold from Chinese or at below market price and they don’t like galamsey who don’t play the game.”
“In other words,” Armah said, “what if Bao was resisting the PMMC? They would not have taken kindly to that. They might either react by teaching him a lesson or killing him—without getting their hands dirty, of course.”
“But would the PMMC worry about one Chinese individual not playing by the rules?”
“Why not?” Armah asked. “One here and one there can add up. It’s reported that a rich Chinese miner can pay off a police task force with as much as ten thousand dollars.”
Dawson’s eyebrows shot up. “You said ten thousand dollars?”
“Dollars. Green.”
Dawson shook his head in astonishment. “I had no idea they deal in those kinds of sums.”
“Yes, indeed. So some of the special police or military forces that conduct these raids on the Chinese mining sites are in reality taking money to ignore the owners and in fact allow some of the workers they arrest to return to the mining site after a photo opportunity is held for the benefit of the press. From time to time, we see these headlines in the papers about illegal miners being rounded up for deportation or imprisonment, along with a picture of a group of sullen Chinese guys. It’s all for show. It’s a cynical move designed to give the public the impression that their government is actually doing something.”
These types of shenanigans bothered Dawson tremendously.
“So now you have all your pieces scattered all over the table like a jigsaw puzzle,” Armah said. “Granger, Thompson and the PMMC, Bao, Wei Liu, Mrs. Liu, Yaw. The question is how they fit together.”
Chikata had been called back to Accra. It had been too much to hope that he could be transferred to Obuasi for the long term. C
ommander Longdon had now assigned Detective Constable Asase to be Dawson’s junior partner.
Still, Dawson needed Chikata, and he called him to explain the mission. “We need to know if Thompson was with Chuck Granger that Thursday to Friday.”
“Yes, boss.”
“One other thing. You have to be careful with this one—it will test your questioning skills. Akua Helmsley is planning to write an article accusing the PMMC of falsifying gold production figures by including illegally mined gold. Ask him if that’s true, but don’t say anything about Helmsley’s article. Watch his reaction, the way his eyes move, his posture, and so on.”
“I see. All right, boss.”
Dawson ended the call and sat thinking for a moment about who was up next for questioning.
Dawson drove to Sofo Line, where Mr. Huang owned a hardware supply store. Sofo Line, an area of Kumasi favored by the Chinese, was once on the “outskirts” of the city. Only two years ago, free and wild vegetation had grown on the tough red soil, but as a traffic interchange that claimed to be the largest in West Africa was constructed, residential and commercial buildings had followed. Sofo Line would inevitably become densely populated.
Up on the hill stood Prempeh College with its lush grounds nourished by the Ashanti Region’s generous rainfall. Prestigious as it was as a boys’ boarding school, it would have been Dawson’s choice for his boys if the family were to live in Kumasi permanently. But although the city was growing on Dawson, he probably would always want to return to Accra.
Several hundred meters along, Dawson spotted the store, logically named Huang’s Hardware, next to a Samsung outlet, and pulled up in front of it. Opening the shop door, Dawson received a welcome blast of air-conditioned coolness. Dawson looked around. It was larger than he had expected and quite busy with both Chinese and Ghanaian customers searching the packed shelves for shovels, pickaxes, machetes, tools, pans, buckets, and all kinds of equipment, much of it mining related. Huang must be doing quite well for himself, Dawson speculated.
He asked one of the store workers where Huang was and was directed out of the store and around to the back, where Dawson found Huang watching as young workers unloaded supplies from a large truck. When he saw Dawson, he walked over. “Good afternoon, Inspector.” He seemed neither overjoyed nor displeased to see him—merely courteous.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Huang.”
“Can I help you?”
“Maybe we can go where it’s a little quieter?”
Huang unlocked one of the back doors, and it opened up into a short corridor, at the end of which was an employee entrance to the store. Huang grabbed a couple of chairs and brought them closer together.
“Please,” he said, gesturing to the chairs.
Dawson chose one and sat. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. I know you’re busy.”
“Oh, no problem,” he said, waving it away. “I saw you arrest the young man from the village for killing Mr. Bao.”
“Allegedly,” Dawson corrected him gently. “I came here to ask you something about Bao and his wife.”
“Yes?”
“Did they get along well with each other?”
Huang looked worried. “Why, something wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong. I just wanted to know.”
“I think everything fine,” Huang said cautiously, “but I didn’t spend so much time with them, even though I knew them. You know, we Chinese in Kumasi, we keep to ourselves. We don’t like to get into each other business.”
“I understand,” Dawson said, thinking, Then he’s going to dislike my next question. “I apologize for asking this, but there was a rumor that Mr. Bao was very fond of young Ghanaian women. Do you know anything about that?”
Huang appeared mortified. “No, oh no, sir,” he stammered, shaking his head.
“No, what? No, it’s not true, or no, you don’t know anything about that?”
“I don’t know anything, Inspector. Please. Sorry. I don’t know, sir.”
“But you heard the rumor before?” Dawson pressed.
Huang shook his head firmly. “No, sir. Inspector, please, I have to go now. Thank you, sir.” He stood up and Dawson followed his lead. Huang hurriedly guided him to the entrance to the store.
“I need a bucket,” Dawson said, breaking the awkward tension. “Can you show me where to find one in your shop?”
Huang was visibly relieved to move to matters of commerce. “Oh, sure,” he said, a smile bursting upon his face. “I can show you.”
He took Dawson to a section of the shop where buckets—plastic, metal, big and small—were stacked, and Dawson chose one.
“Thank you, Mr. Huang. Thank you very much.”
As Dawson completed his purchase and left the store, he considered the way Huang had responded to his questions and concluded that the Chinese man knew something, or had heard something, about Bao’s philandering. He was just too embarrassed to admit it, or he simply did not want to involve himself in that way. The question remained whether Lian had known about it and if it had had anything to do with Bao’s murder. Perhaps Dawson was wrong, perhaps he was stereotyping Lian, but his instincts were that even if she had known, she would have kept quiet about it and never taken any action against him.
But Dawson had been surprised before. This could be one of those occasions.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
In the morning, Commander Longdon held a staff meeting, which Dawson and Asase attended. When Dawson’s case came up, he summarized his misgivings over the foregone conclusion that Yaw Okoh had killed Bao Liu. As he did so, Dawson sensed Longdon’s growing impatience.
“I don’t understand where this sudden change of mind over Yaw’s confession is coming from,” the commander said irritably. “I’ve read your full report, and in fact, it’s watertight. The culprit has now been remanded into prison custody, so the next step is waiting for trial. You know it is almost impossible to get back to a suspect once they are out of police custody and under the prisons’ jurisdiction. Why are you going back on this?”
“I suspect it’s a false confession,” Dawson said. “Yaw may be protecting his father.”
“Protecting his father,” Longdon repeated, as though carefully considering the validity of each word. “All this psychological talk for what? Drop it now, Dawson. Right now, we have open cases that I want you to begin working on.”
“Yes, sir,” Dawson said, obediently.
But he had no plans to obey.
Sergeant Obeng lived in Obuasi Central, the oldest part of town. Constable Asase knew, more or less, where his house was. Dawson walked with him down Nkansa Drive, a busy paved street crammed with customers and shops on either side. If I ever need a backpack, mattress, propane tank, gas cooker, new mobile phone, boxer briefs, Nike running shoes, or a soccer ball, he thought, I’ll be in the right place.
Asase turned off the main street into the marketplace thick with the odor of dried fish, snails, and fresh meat. A cage held squawking chickens for purchase. They passed next to the fruits and vegetables where a pickup truck loaded with green plantains blocked their path and forced them to make a detour. Beyond that, the clothing and textiles part of the market was quieter, with sounds noticeably muffled by the fabrics. Asase made a left on Central Station Road, and then a sharp right into a narrow, nameless alley along which a trash-laden gutter ran. He stopped in front of the battered doors of two small dwellings, their torn mosquito nettings dangling like a man hanged.
“I don’t quite remember which is Obeng’s,” Asase said. “Let’s try this one.”
He knocked on the khaki-brown door on the right. They waited a couple of minutes, and then Asase tried the other door, with the same result. Dawson peered in through the narrow opening in the top. It was dark inside, but he was sure he could see a hand on the floor.
“We have to get in,” he said
, stepping back. He planted his foot on the door and pushed. It opened with a crack. Dawson and Asase entered and saw in the gloom Obeng crumpled on the floor like a sack of cocoyams.
Dawson’s heart plunged. Dead, he thought, but when he stooped down and touched the body, it was warm, and now he saw Obeng was breathing. A tenacious stream of drool trailed from one corner of his mouth, and he reeked of alcohol as if he had bathed in it. Drunk, not dead.
Asase tried the light switch on the wall. It clicked without a response. No power.
Dawson slapped Obeng’s cheek—the one without the drool. “Wake up.”
The sergeant’s eyes fluttered open and then drifted closed again.
“Get me some water,” Dawson said to Asase, who went out and returned minutes later with a cup of water from a neighbor. Dawson took it and splashed Obeng’s face twice. He startled awake and shakily propped himself up on his elbow, looking at the other two men in bewilderment.
“Oh, massa,” he said thickly. “Mepa wo kyew, good morning.”
“It’s afternoon,” Dawson said. “Sit up.”
Obeng sat with his back against the bed, which was a set of boards placed on top of cement blocks. The room was as chaotic as if it had experienced its own self-contained whirlwind, and it smelled of urine, alcohol, and everything unwashed, including Obeng. He was in a bad way. He rubbed his hand over his face, trying to focus.
“What happened to you?” Dawson asked.
“Please, they sacked me yesterday.”
Longdon gave him a chance, but Obeng couldn’t deliver. “And you’ve been drinking all night?” Dawson asked.
Obeng, staring at the floor dazed, didn’t respond. The answer did not need stating. Dawson gave Asase a couple of cedis and the constable went out to buy a bottle of water. When he returned, Dawson removed the seal and unscrewed the cap. “Drink,” he said, holding the bottle to Obeng’s lips. The maneuver was poorly coordinated and water spilled.
“Please, I can do it,” Obeng said. “Thank you.” He drank gingerly first, then more thirstily.