12 Hours

by L I Owugah

  Tall and gangly he stood about six foot two, the sheer bulk of his outfit, seeming to accentuate rather than conceal, his rail-thin physique. Judging from the glow in his eyes, which were brighter than a set of Christmas lights, it was clear that whatever he lacked on the scales, was compensated for by an infectious energy that was both dynamic and endearing.

  "Michael!" he yelled in excitement as the officers, made their approach, closing in on me, like a hostage rescue team. As they arrived, my face split into a smile, curious to know which social category Uncle Taffi belonged to, those with the cash or those with the smarts. It turned out Uncle Taffi belonged to the latter category, which wasn't to imply he was a pauper, though, as we departed from the Airport in the back of a battered taxi cab, it was evident that he wasn't exactly one who could afford to travel in style. The vehicle was a twenty-year-old Peugeot, its windows wound down to allow for some fresh air, which at the speed the car was travelling, felt like being hit in the face by the hot draft of an electric heater. Five minutes into the trip, I said, "Any chance of some air conditioning?"

  Uncle Taffi switched his attention to the driver up front, whose reflection in the cars rear view mirror, revealed the face of a cheerful looking man in his mid-forties. He wore an oversized t-shirt and had a forehead dripping with sweat.

  "Driver!" Uncle Taffi bellowed like a military sergeant.

  "Sah?" the driver replied, in broken English.

  "Your air con no dey work?"

  "Oga, na only this morning the ting spoil oh!"

  I looked at Uncle Taffi. Curious to get the low down on what had just been communicated.

  "Any luck?"

  Uncle Taffi turned up both his palms in a gesture of apology.

  "Unfortunately the man has said his AC only went bad this morning. But in the meantime, we will manage, okay. My house is not too far." I nodded and secretly hoped that wherever we were headed would at the least have an electric fan, or an air cooler. Undoing the top buttons of my shirt, I yanked an old newspaper from the back pocket of the front passenger's seat, folded it into two, and bating it back and forth, began using it as a makeshift fan.

  Uncle Taffi looked at me and laughed aloud.

  "This is Lagos!" he roared with a comical tone of national pride. We were bumping along a dusty, potholed infested stretch of road, street traders gathered on either side. Men, women, and even young children, selling everything from loaves of bread to counterfeit designer watches and bootleg DVDs. Uncle Taffi gazed at me with a broad smile on his face.

  "Hope you brought something for me?"

  "Of course," I replied. "Long-sleeve buttoned down shirts..."

  "Marks and Spencers?" he cut in enthusiastically. I grinned as I remembered Uncle Taffi's endless stories about the Nigerian obsession in the 1980s with everything Marks and Spencers.

  "Marks and Spencer's," I reassured him with a chuckle.

  "Very good," he said nodding his head. I scrutinized his face for a moment and spotted the agony in his eyes for the first time.

  "How have you been Uncle?" Gathering himself, he forced a smile and produced a creased looking handkerchief from his pocket. Then he dabbed at his eyes, which were already beginning to well up.

  "It's okay," he said, his voice breaking slightly. "It hasn't been easy, but...but now you are here, it's okay". I gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze, and he gave me a gentle pat on the knee as an acknowledgement of gratitude. A quiet moment followed and then he stared directly at me with a puzzled expression on his face.

  "What happened to your brother?"

  "He couldn't get any time off," I lied.

  Uncle Taffi stared at me in disbelief.

  "New job." I said. "Apparently they have some inflexible rule that for the first month you're not entitled to any time away."

  "Not even to bury your own father?"

  Jonah hadn't shared the details of how, or why, he was behind bars, so I wasn't about to throw him under the bus. That said, if history was anything to go by, his incarceration probably had something to do with the use of his fists. Those two reliable, albeit, lethal weapons of destruction, which he had used to save me from an ass kicking on numerous occasions as a kid. But I was a grown man now, and the tragedy of my parents passing was the perfect opportunity to prove I could manage a uniquely challenging situation independently.

  "Just let me know what needs to be done, uncle?"

  His face lit up with a glow of pride.

  "The family has agreed that the burial will take place in seven days," he said. "But for now, you must get some rest."

  I nodded in agreement, I was pleased that the ceremony was only days away. But there was something else that was just as important. As soon as the funeral was over and done with I was going to be contacting Inspector Phoenix Balogun for an investigation into the tragedy.

  6

  MICHAEL

  THE SEARCH FOR BALOGUN

  Dressed in a traditionally sown West African outfit, I watched as both my parents were finally put to rest on the seventh day of my arrival in Lagos.

  The funeral was performed in my father's hometown on the outskirts of the city and featured several hundred friends and relatives who were also dressed in culturally appropriate attire. The next morning, Uncle Taffi and I returned to a modest bungalow in the middle of town where I had taken up residence with both himself, his wife and their two teenage children. The location, like much of the surrounding city, was loud, vibrant, and congested with local pedestrians and busy traffic.

  Arriving at Uncle Taffi's home, it was impossible to ignore how dated the interior decor was. The lounge was trapped in an eighties time warp. It featured heavily patterned lounge chairs, brightly patterned wall to wall carpeting and a Sony television set from the year 1984. A Sony Trinitron. Once deemed a technological marvel for its crisp colours and visual clarity, but by today's standards weighed a ton and possessed a screen smaller than your average desktop computer.

  Over in a quiet corner, there was a multi-layered hi-fi stand. It had a stereo on the top shelf and a record player on the next. Behind a set of glass cupboard doors, at the bottom of the stand, was a stack of West African Afrobeat records. Legendary Nigerian performers, I had heard my father listening to when I was still a youngster, prominent names such as Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, and Shina Peters.

  Less than an hour after arriving at his home, Uncle Taffi and I hopped into a taxi cab and headed for the police station Inspector Balogun had mentioned during our conversation. Folding back the last page of the Michael Crichton novel, where I had scribbled down the address, I gave the destination to the cab driver. The man was as thin as a rake yet seemed to be bursting at the seams with energy.

  "No problem, Sah!" he said. "I know the place! We go reach now! now!"

  As the cab driver weaved through traffic with the speed and expertise of a Grand Prix Raleigh driver, I noticed Uncle Taffi seemed less than enthused about the journey. He had a puzzled expression on his face and appeared to be totally baffled about the rationale for my decision.

  "There is no reason to see this man," he said.

  "I don't understand."

  "We don't carry out these type of investigations in this place."

  "Exactly," I answered with a tinge of sarcasm. "Isn't that why you have the police?"

  He shook his head, like a man disappointed in the failings of a wayward son. "A major crime has been committed," I went on. "Someone has to answer for it."

  "White man's law, abi?" Uncle Taffi responded harshly, using the broken English term "Abi," as one would use the tag "isn't it?" at the end of a sentence, seeking confirmation. "This is Lagos, okay." He gestured out the window with an open hand, inviting me to view the glaring landscape of pain, poverty, and suffering. The obvious risk of death and severe injury by street traders who were chasing after moving vehicles with loaded basins on their heads. Next to the pitiful sight of amputee panhandlers, armed with begging bowls. Sitting on makeshift skateboa
rds they used their hands to wheel themselves over to the vehicles that were stuck in traffic.

  "You see these people?" Uncle Taffi said. "Motor vehicles jam and kill them every day. Not to mention ordinary hard-working people who are slaughtered for their personal property by armed robbers."

  "I don't understand your point," I said.

  He looked at me.

  "Listen well and use ya head," he said jabbing his temple with a pointed finger." You think a police force not even equipped to identify the number plate of a stolen vehicle has the time, or resources to be galavanting all over a country with a population of over fifty million people, trying to locate a hit and run driver?" He paused a beat. Then answered his own question.

  "Of course not!"

  I said nothing in return. He gazed at me with what seemed to be an expression of sympathy.

  "Look, my son," he said. "This is Lagos, not the UK. In this country, if you meet a criminal at the time a crime is being committed, maybe something can be done. But once the person responsible has left the scene, forget about it."

  "That's not going to happen," I said.

  "The man that raised you was my only brother he said in a tone of quiet sincerity. "You think the pain you feel is greater than mine?"

  I said nothing. Maybe Uncle Taffi was right. Perhaps the grief I felt from the loss of the couple who had raised I and Jonah paled in comparison to his experience of losing his only sibling. But that didn't negate the fact that on the subject of justice and its relevance in the matter at hand, we differed vastly in opinion.

  Ten minutes later, we pulled up nose first before a beaten looking security gate fashioned of iron. The gate served as the main entrance to a walled-in compound, surrounding a shabby looking single story building, which was marked by a large signboard that read: THE NIGERIA POLICE.

  The entrance was manned by a dishevelled looking guard in uniform. He seemed indifferent to our arrival, but swung the gate open and waved us through. Five minutes later, we stepped into the police station's reception area which was also in a sad state of disrepair. There were holes in a floor made of concrete, paint peeling from the walls and a creaky looking ceiling fan on full blast. The fan was rocking wildly from side to side, like a loose screw on a perilous piece of scaffolding. There was also the added eyesore of a beaten looking wood-panelled reception counter, chipped and discoloured from age and water damage.

  Seated on a wooden bench in a corner behind the counter was a man in his mid forties. He was stripped to the waist and had significant bruising to the face from what appeared to have been a Rodney King type beating. Shackled by the wrists and ankles, he looked as though he had just been in a car crash, giving me cause to believe that it wasn't just the police stations overall decor that was in need of urgent reform.

  Three officers were on duty and all three denied any knowledge of the accident or the existence of an Inspector Balogun. They offered to take up the case and were willing to accompany us to the scene of the crash, but pointed out that due to petrol shortages, a cab would have to be hired at our own expense.

  It was, in my view, an odd request from men the Government had employed to serve and protect, but I arranged for another cab. As far as I was concerned the priority was to get an investigation underway with minimal delay.

  The taxi was a Toyota saloon, built to accommodate three passengers in the back and one in front. Given we were one too many, two of the officers crammed themselves in the front passenger seat. A strategy which appeared to conflict with every traffic law in the book, until I spotted several passengers in other vehicles, doing the same.

  We arrived at the scene of the accident, which turned out to be a remote clearing by the side of a relatively quiet motorway. "This is where they were found," Uncle Taffi said. There were tiny pieces of shattered glass on the ground, a couple of faded skid marks where the vehicle had left the road. But two weeks after the accident, little else.

  According to Uncle Taffi, my father's car was now in his possession but didn't have a scratch on it, other than a flat tyre. He also figured my father was just about to change the tyre with a spare. It was still balanced against the side of the vehicle when he and other family members had arrived at the scene. The officers idled across the clearing and stopped to take a sweeping view of the area. Crouching down to look at the ground, in an attempt to appear busy, they examined tiny pieces of broken glass. Uncle Taffi slipped a single arm over my shoulder and skilfully ushered me a couple of yards in the opposite direction. With our backs safely facing all three officers, he whispered. "You see these policemen?".

  "What about them?"

  "They are rogues."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Thieves, big ones!"

  "How so?"

  He looked at me incredulously.

  "How so? Okay, let me ask you. Have you ever seen a police officer in London join a person in their own vehicle or even a taxi to visit a crime scene?"

  "Can't say I have."

  "Exactly! You see, now that we have brought these people here. The next thing they are going to demand is money."

  I glanced over my shoulder at the officers who were now standing in a circle, whispering to each other, their heads lowered. I gazed in the direction of the police post Balogun had mentioned during our conversation. It stood in the middle of an intersection. A square, concrete, box-like structure, with an opening on one side for entry and exit. It was unmarked and at present unoccupied. Each side measured about four feet in height, allowing whoever was on duty, to have a three hundred and sixty degree perspective of moving traffic. Speared into each corner of the structure, where the walls connected at a 90-degree angle, was a long steel pole. They were four in total and held up a bamboo thatched roof to protect its occupants from the blazing sun.

  I turned back to Uncle Taffi. He was probably right about the corrupt and incompetent nature of the police officers we had brought along, which left me with only one alternative. And that was to track down Balogun myself.

  "I'm going to need some wifi access," I said.

  "Wifi?"

  "Intenet might be able to locate Balogun on social media."

  "Ahh, that is going to be difficult."

  "People have their profiles online all the time."

  "I meant my internet box at home is not working well."

  "Do you know a decent hotel?"

  "Hotel...Why? Can you not just use your phone?"

  "Would rather use a laptop."

  "You have one with you?"

  "All ready to go."

  He shook his head in disbelief.

  "Hotel...Just for the internet," he mumbled to himself.

  "And some airconditioning," I said with a smile.

  He smiled back at me.

  "Okay, London boy, I will pick a good place for you to stay. But you keep me informed, okay?"

  An hour after paying the police officers, the equivalent of forty pounds in Nigerian naira, which they oddly described as an initial investigation fee, I checked into a pleasant looking three-star hotel. The building was made up of two stories and sat within a quiet looking gated compound. Outside a large signboard carried the establishment's somewhat unimaginative name: COMFORT HOTEL.

  Located only three miles from the Airport, the hotel was recommended by Uncle Taffi as the ideal option for avoiding what he referred to as "go slow" traffic, when it was time to depart the country. I booked a double room. It had a clean, minimalist look, and featured a mounted flat screen television, free wi-fi access, and a wall installed air-conditioning unit. The unit was loud and somewhat dated in appearance, but highly effective.

  Sitting upright on a firm bed with a pillow cushioned between my back and the headrest, I spent the next couple of hours on the Apple Mac laptop I had brought in from London. Using Inspector Balogun's full name and profession to perform a comprehensive search online, the immediate expectation was that the unique combination of "Phoenix" and "Balogun," would significantly narrow down
the options available. However, there were a thousand Balogun's on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but not a single Phoenix in the pack. On a whim, I tried something else and typed a direct question into the search engine Google: "How do I find a missing person in Lagos City?" There was a list of search results. One, in particular, caught my attention: Moonlight Investigations Lagos. I clicked on the title and a professional looking website bearing the same name appeared. The company's title appeared in bold red typeface against a clean white background. It was accompanied by a light-hearted, animated illustration of the fictional Pink Panther character Inspector Cluzo, who, armed with an oversized microscope, was examining a piece of evidence in his hand. I gazed at the image for a moment, then clicked on the link ENTER. I arrived on another page that explained the process by which the company administered its services. I then made a decision, that would subsequently change everything. Maybe it was the company's intriguing name or even the aesthetically appealing photograph of a young woman who was said to be the CEO and primary investigator. But, I decided to cut to the proverbial chase.