‘You are certain of this?’ Major Akaba felt an excitement well within him.
‘Yes, I am certain,’ Boesak stated confidently. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that there has been an amateurish attempt to cover up the true cause of this man’s death.’
‘You have his personal effects?’
‘The police left them at the hospital reception desk.’
Minutes later Major Akaba was on the phone, talking to the police inspector who had interviewed Bert the night before. With growing excitement, he heard the inspector confirm his suspicions that the dead man was a boxing fan who had arrived in the company of another man on the special charter flight from London.
‘You know the identity of this other man?’ Akaba demanded.
‘I cannot recall it offhand,’ the deep voice told him. ‘But he filled in the identification forms with his full name and address at the hospital last night.’
Two minutes later Akaba was at the reception desk scanning the DOA file headed ‘Joseph Docherty’. Quickly, he turned to the identification entry. ‘Albert Frederick Maddren, 26 Eustace Road, Fulham, London.’ The name leapt out at him and he felt the comfortable glow of success suffuse his body as he reached for a telephone. ‘Special flight BA 142 to London is grounded,’ he barked into the mouthpiece once he was connected to the airport manager’s extension. ‘Have passenger Albert Frederick Maddren arrested immediately and hold him in secure custody until I return.’
‘But that is impossible,’ the plaintive voice of the airport manager sounded in his ear.
‘Impossible!’ roared Akaba. ‘I am ordering you, with the power invested in me as a representative of our government, to arrest that man!’
‘I am sorry, Major Akaba,’ came the apologetic voice again. ‘Special flight BA 142 took off more than half an hour ago.’
Akaba sagged against the wall, the sense of loss threatening to overwhelm him as victory seemed to be snatched from his grasp. One man dead, another gone, the gold God only knew where. A feeling of failure rose in him like a black tide of despair. Then a ray of hope appeared as he cogitated over his problem. The ray grew brighter and finally burst into full-blooded light. Three men! There had been three men on board the DC-3! And there must have been yet another man on the ground – the one who prepared the fire-pit and painted the end of the building. He must have been the one who set up the job. He must live in Ghana. Akaba straightened up and replaced the whining phone on its hook. There had to be a connection between the corpse in the mortuary, Albert Frederick Maddren, the third man on the plane and whoever had been on the ground. It was axiomatic. And he had a positive lead now; much more than he had had a scant hour before. He was confident that Albert Frederick Maddren’s name would be known to the police in the United Kingdom; Joseph Docherty’s too – honest men did not suddenly involve themselves in serious crime – and through them the names of the others would come to light. Marshalling his thoughts, he dialled police headquarters and asked to be connected with the local Interpol liaison officer.
32
Colin couldn’t help feeling he shared a secret as he entered the passenger cabin of the DC-3 at Takoradi airport.
‘Going home?’
He dragged his eyes and his thoughts away from the centre section and turned to the man who had spoken. It was two days after the robbery before he had managed to book this flight to Accra. At this time of the year flights were heavily booked as most Europeans, particularly the British, took their annual leave to avoid the torrential, West African rainy season.
‘Wish I was,’ he replied with an ironic smile. ‘But I’m only going to Accra to pick up my car.’
‘Not another one!’ The stranger grinned and held out his hand. ‘Bill … Bill Keen.’
‘Colin Grant.’ They shook hands in the loose, easy manner of strangers who knew they would get along together.
‘What did you mean then, Not another one?’ Colin wrestled with his seat belt and looked at him again.
‘Left your car in Accra,’ Bill grinned knowingly. ‘Too much to drink after the fight the other night and had to cadge a lift home. That right?’
The explanation suited Colin and he nodded agreement. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘after that result the booze went over easy.’
‘Cooper! Cooper!’ Bill held up two fists and gave a victory chant. ‘Terrific result!’
‘Same thing happen to you?’
‘What?’ Bill looked puzzled.
‘Did you leave your car in Accra?’
‘Oh, that! No,’ Bill shook his head. ‘I’m going home on a bit of leave. But I was at the fight and got lumbered with some guy afterwards. Blind drunk he was too. All I could get out of him was that he lived in Takoradi – at least that’s what it sounded like to me. Anyway, I drove him to Tak’ and dumped him outside the Post Office. S’pect he got home from there all right.’
‘Probably couldn’t have cared less anyway after that result,’ Colin said with a smile. ‘But I bet his wife won the other fight!’
‘What other fight?’ Bill looked quizzically at him.
‘The fight he had with her when he arrived home without his car!’
They laughed together at the image.
‘Have any trouble on the road home from the fight?’ Colin asked when they had settled down again.
‘Trouble!’ Bill gave a wry shake of his head. ‘Thank Christ I don’t drink, that’s all I can say. There were uniforms everywhere. I must have been pulled over every ten or twenty bloody miles and searched at roadblocks by police and army units looking for the guys that stole the gold.’
‘Bit of a do, that,’ Colin agreed with him. ‘Give you a good spin, did they?’
‘Had us out on the road while they searched the car,’ Bill complained. ‘Personally, I think they were getting at us because Cooper beat their boy in the ring. At least that’s what the drunk kept telling them at Cape Coast, stupid bastard! Nearly got us locked up, he did. Still, it was worth it,’ he said with a happy smile.
‘Aye,’ Colin agreed. ‘Cooper really did their boy over, didn’t he?’
‘Cooper! Cooper!’ Bill chanted happily. ‘Next one’s the world title!’
‘How long you going on leave for?’ Colin asked as the plane lifted off.
‘Month.’ Bill replied. ‘A whole month in the sunny UK while everyone out here gets washed away in the rain. Yahoo!’
‘Aye,’ Colin smiled at him. ‘I wish I was going with you.’
*
The keys were on top of the front offside tyre and in a moment Colin was inside the car. It wouldn’t start. The starter spun sturdily enough, but the engine refused to be whirled into life. He twisted the key again and again, sending the coughing sound echoing over the parking area. Even if he had noticed, he would have thought nothing of the hotel doorman hurrying inside to make a telephone call.
‘Fuck it!’ he swore aloud. Cars were for driving as far as he was concerned, and their engines were mysteries for motor mechanics to ponder over. He let the engine rest for five minutes before trying again. In less than a minute the starter motor ground to a chugging halt as the last of the battery power drained off.
‘Fuck it!’ He swore again in exasperation and pulled on the bonnet release, although he knew that simply looking at it would do him no good. He was right. The engine looked perfectly normal to him, even fairly clean – which was about all he could tell about it.
‘Perhaps if you fitted this …’
He spun round and found himself looking into the deadpan face of Major Judas Akaba. Panic flooded his chest, but he held it down, forcing back the pressure of air that threatened to escape as a gasp.
Akaba extended an arm, an oddly shaped piece of plastic resting in the open palm of his hand. His face was neutral, but impassive eyes could not hide the excitement that coursed through his cold-blooded body. He recognised Colin immediately; from the mine and from two or more sightings on the plane at Kumasi. Adrenaline surged through him like a
drug addict’s ‘rush’. Colin Grant! The hotel doorman had reported that a man had been helped from his car not long before Joseph Docherty had fallen to his ‘death’. The doorman had been unable to identify anyone, but the timing had worried Akaba and he had immobilised the car, instructing the man to report anyone attempting to drive it away. Later, a report came in that a similar car had been seen in the university car park at Cape Coast. He had nurtured a hope that the car would provide him with a clue to the robbery, but this was almost too good to be true. Colin Grant! He fitted the mental identikit profile of the man he was trying so desperately to trace.
‘What’s that?’ Colin’s voice was hoarse. All of a sudden, speaking had become an effort.
‘The rotor arm, Mr Grant.’ Akaba was being impeccably polite. ‘I had it removed to prevent the car being driven away.’
‘Why did you have to do that?’ Colin was regaining his composure. ‘It was safe enough parked here.’
Akaba’s predatory eyes flickered. He was confident that he had found his prey, but yet, with no hard evidence, and with Grant a British subject, he would have to tread warily. To arrest Grant now on the basis of guesswork and flimsy circumstantial evidence – evidence not even a Ghanaian court would accept – would only serve to alert his accomplices and destroy any chance of recovering the gold. He knew who he was after now and decided to pay out enough rope to let his suspect hang himself.
‘Your car appeared to have been abandoned, Mr Grant, and became the object of suspicion. Unfortunately our car registration department is not as efficient as we would like it to be and they are still trying to trace the owner of this particular vehicle. Had it been traced to you this would not have been necessary.’ He held the rotor arm out again. ‘However, this car does answer the description of a vehicle seen in the car park of Cape Coast University two days ago – the day of the robbery – and I would like you to accompany me to headquarters so that we may eliminate you from our enquiries. A formality, of course.’ His face altered a little to accommodate a slight movement of his lips that passed for a smile from him.
‘Enquiries?’ Colin looked suitably surprised. ‘How could I possibly be of any help with your enquiry?’
Akaba smiled again. He had been correct. Grant would not be easy meat. Unconsciously, he let his tongue flick round his lips, like a snake preparing to swallow a tasty snack.
*
‘I do apologise for the inconvenience.’ Akaba’s voice sounded sincere as he ushered Colin into his office at military headquarters. ‘But your car was listed as a suspicious vehicle and I must eliminate it from my enquiries.’ He moved a chair into position for Colin. ‘I’m sure you understand.’
Nerves keyed to fever pitch, Colin wondered what made him so sure he would ‘understand’ as he watched Akaba step round the desk to take his seat.
‘I’m sure a short statement will satisfy my superiors.’ Akaba’s unblinking eyes seemed to be looking right inside his mind.
‘Anything to help.’ Colin shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
‘Yes. I’m sure.’
Colin heard the man’s intonation and wondered just exactly what was going through Akaba’s mind. There was nothing he could possibly know.
The ritual of name and address was gone through. Easy questions. Easy answers. Ease the tension.
‘If you will just tell me how your car came to be left for two days in the hotel car park?’ His eyes bored into Colin.
Colin could hear his brain giving him advice: Appear to be as helpful as you can. If there’s something they don’t know, but you know they will find out anyway, and it won’t do you any harm – offer it up. It looks good to appear to be helpful.
‘It isn’t my car,’ he said. ‘I only hired it to come through from Takoradi for the fight.’
‘You don’t have a car of your own?’ Akaba’s eyebrow became more offset in exaggerated surprise.
‘Clapped out old Peugeot,’ Colin told him. ‘Couldn’t chance it on a trip to Accra.’
‘So you hired the Ford and left it sitting in Accra for two days?’ There was very definitely scepticism in his voice.
‘Not intentionally,’ Colin told him. ‘But after the fight, well … you know the result. We drank more than one bar dry that night. I could hardly stand, let alone drive a car.’
‘So how did you get home?’ The question was casually conversational rather than interrogative.
‘Some guy at the fight. Bill … Bill …’ He didn’t have to pretend to struggle for the man’s name; for the moment it really did elude him. He screwed up his face in concentration. ‘Bill Keen! That’s it. He ran me back to Takoradi and dropped me off at the Post Office.’
‘At about what time did you leave Accra?’ This time Akaba stared hard at him.
‘Jesus! I don’t know for sure. But it must have been well on in the morning. I wasn’t paying an awful lot of attention,’ he grinned knowingly at Akaba.
Akaba said nothing, but rose and pulled open a filing cabinet. For a few minutes he studied several sheets of paper containing long lists of car numbers that had passed through the roadblocks that night. His eyelid twitched when he found it. ‘02.23hrs – BMW. TK 1025. Metallic Blue. William Keen c/o Fred Hill sawmills, Takoradi. One passenger – intoxicated.’
He looked up, eyes warily slitted. ‘Mr Keen will bear witness to this?’
‘We didn’t talk much,’ Colin grinned. ‘But he’ll remember me all right. Apparently I offended some of your soldier boys at a roadblock in Cape Coast over the fight result and nearly got the two of us arrested.’ Silently he blessed his meeting on the plane and the fact that Bill Keen was at this very moment flying north at about 500 or 600 miles an hour.
Akaba raised his head and looked over at him. ‘So you left your car at the hotel because you were too drunk to drive.’ It was a statement that saved Colin explaining himself.
‘That’s it,’ Colin moved his hands. ‘I would have come back for the car the following day, but all the flights were booked. That’s the reason it sat here so long.’
‘I wish every mystery was so easily explained.’ Akaba pushed the paper aside as his office door opened and an aide handed him a piece of paper.
‘A telex from London, sir, regarding the Joseph Docherty accident.’
It was a reply to Akaba’s request to Scotland Yard for any information on one Joseph Docherty, date of birth 15–01–47. Place of birth London. Listed among his ‘known associates’, the name Colin Grant stood out like a beacon. And alongside Grant’s name blazed Albert Frederick Maddren. It was all Akaba could do to restrain a scream of triumph.
‘Thank you.’ He read through the message again, savouring the information, then placed it face down on his desk and asked the man to bring two coffees. ‘How do you like your coffee, Mr Grant?’ His eyebrows quirked again.
‘Don’t go to any bother for me,’ Colin said, wishing he was elsewhere, the sooner the better too.
‘It’s the least I can do after inconveniencing you.’
‘Well … white, no sugar, please.’
Akaba tapped a newspaper that was lying on his desk. ‘An unfortunate business this; the boxing fan who fell to his death from the hotel balcony.’ He shook his head. ‘A long way to come to die in a car park.’
‘I never read the report,’ Colin told him, feeling a stab of pain at being reminded of Doc in this way.
‘I don’t suppose you would have known him?’ Akaba enquired conversationally, making a space on his desk for the coffee tray and handing Colin a cup. ‘Ground beans,’ he said, nodding approval. ‘Did you?’
The question disconcerted Colin for a moment. ‘Did I what?’ he asked, looking puzzled.
‘I just wondered if, by any chance, you happened to know the man who died … a Joseph Docherty of London?’
‘No.’ Colin shook his head. ‘London’s a big place, Major. I never knew the man.’ He bent his face into his coffee cup, hiding the pain in his eyes.
*
Akaba sat at his office desk after Colin had gone. Grant had made two mistakes: the roadblock at Cape Coast had been fully manned by uniformed police, not by ‘soldier boys’. But better than this, and infinitely more damning, was his denial of Joseph Docherty. He turned the telex message on his desk and read through it again.
‘Why did you allow him to leave?’ his puzzled aide asked, when told of the development. ‘We could have made him tell us where he has hidden the gold.’
‘No.’ Akaba rubbed a finger on the smooth skin of his scar. ‘If I arrest Grant now his associates will be alerted and the gold might disappear forever. Besides, three hijackers on the plane and one man on the ground makes four. So we let Grant run, but on a very short leash. As of now I want him under full twenty-four-hour surveillance. He will lead me to the gold – and the fourth man will be a welcome bonus.’
33
There was something about Major Akaba that worried Colin. Those dark, unblinking eyes had never once reflected the apparently casual tenor of their meeting. And he had been just that little bit too ready to accept his explanation. Then there had been his questions about Doc; too close for comfort. An eerie premonition disturbed Colin, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel. The telex. Why would the authorities in London be in contact with Akaba over a visitor’s accidental death? Such accidents were very definitely a matter for the civilian police force, and a nuisance to them at that, wasting valuable time and generating unwelcome paperwork. It didn’t make sense. Unless … his grip tightened further, unless Akaba had somehow or other connected Doc’s balcony ‘death’ with the hijackers. And if he had made that connection, it would only be a matter of time before he discovered Doc’s association with himself, an association he had already denied. He recalled the old con’s advice about fear and went over everything in his mind. There was nothing in Ghana to connect him in any way with the hijacking – the white-hot furnace and the cold waters of the harbour had seen to that. The gold was safely away; he had personally seen it loaded and stowed for Tilbury on the Lagos Palm the day after the robbery. There was nothing he could think of that would point to him. Yet, just two days after the robbery, he had found himself facing Akaba over a desk, being asked if he had known Joseph Docherty. Coincidence? Or did the man suspect, or even worse, did he know something? He looked long and hard into his rear-view mirror and realised the same red Peugeot had been behind him for the last half-hour. Coincidence or what? he asked himself. After all, there was only the one road along the coastline. Yet when he slowed down the other car fell back, only to reappear a few miles along the road when Colin put his foot down again.
Ashanti Gold Page 24