Angel Boy (3 page)

The tribal cuts on this daddy's cheek showed that he didn't come from here. The ‘mammy', who was the tallest, sniggered and blew Leonard a disgusting kiss. And the most forward of the ‘uncles' and ‘aunties' growled, ‘An' we's your teachers – we surely are gonna learn you!' And they all laughed.

Leonard let out the loudest wail in the world, and his legs finally gave way: his legs, and his consciousness. In a heap on the ground, he didn't hear the final words. ‘You been sold to us by Big Fat Chance, pretty little smart boy!'

Stephen Boameh was getting cross in his small hotel room up-country in Bonwire. He'd let his mobile phone run down, and the weak call he'd managed to get through received a ‘call failed' message as if the line was busy – and Stephen Boameh's home phone line was never busy, except when he was there, or ringing in.

Who was on the line? Doctor? Hospital? The hotel wanting to tell him about some new job? While his mobile phone charged, he lay on his bed and watched a football match on a blinky television screen; but his mind wouldn't settle. He was finished with work for the day. The car had diesel in the tank, oil in the engine, air in the tyres, and water and screen wash all ready for the morning. But if anyone had asked him the score in the match playing up there on a bracket near the ceiling, he couldn't tell them. He couldn't even have said which teams they were.

That morning at the hotel, a photographer and her husband from Scotland had asked about hiring a car to go north. Euros, pounds or American dollars make visitors seem like millionaires in Ghana. So Mr and Mrs Paterson had hired Stephen and his car to take them north to the Kente weaving villages, where the woman wanted to photograph the patterns and the process. This was why Stephen kept his car bright and shiny. With his holdall in the boot
he was ready for however many days and nights he might be away. Nana and Leonard understood this. It was his job. The one certain thing, though, was that Stephen would phone every night to talk to Leonard. He never missed. He might be early, he might be late, but some time before Leonard went to sleep he always heard his father's voice.

Tonight was going to be one of those late times. Stephen never used expensive hotel phones, so tonight he had to wait until his mobile charged. But Leonard was on holiday, so a late call wouldn't be the problem it would be in term time.

He fretted, though. He fretted.

These street kids were too poor for drugs. Cheap drink was what they went to sleep on, if they could get it – and tonight they couldn't. While two of them held Leonard down on a stuffed-out
mattress, the others scavenged the rubbish tip for food. And when they came back with stale bread, and chicken bones with meagre meat still on them, they shared what there was between them. They were an outlaw band, but disciplined in their own hard way.

Terrified, Leonard took nothing – he would have thrown up. His body was numbed with the loss of all hope. His eyes stared emptily, his mouth dried out. What those boys had said!
No more Dad! No more Nana! No more home!
He shivered and cringed, wept and snivelled, as he tried to imagine what they planned to do with him.

He'd heard about the sort of things people did. It was men with girls, mostly, but it could be with boys. He blanked it from his mind. He just had to watch every move, listen to everything that was said, make himself as small as possible – and run if he could.

Except that the mammy and the uncle were holding him down, with no chance of even
getting up. And they were looking at him with eyes like killer wolves.

Stephen Boameh shot off the bed and cracked his head when his mobile phone rang. The call was from his mother, Leonard's nana. Her voice was high and shrill.

‘Stephen – you didn't take Leonard with you?' she screeched down the phone. ‘Is that boy with you?'

‘No! Why?
What?
' Stephen kicked his feet free from the mosquito net.

‘He's not come in! He went out this morning some time when I was cleaning, and he's not come home…'

‘It's eleven o'clock!'

‘I've been trying to get you! I never know where you are till you phone us!'

Stephen Boameh would probably remember the curtains in this hotel bedroom for ever,
marked all over with the hotel name. He stared at them, unblinking, as he took in this gut-punch news.

‘No friends came round for him, no …
people
… about?'

‘None that I saw. Stephen, son, you've got to come home!'

‘I'm coming! Look for his Day Book, see if there are phone numbers there for school friends – and you ring them, don't mind the time.'

‘And the police?'

‘When I get there. But ring the Korle-Bu hospital, ask about… road accidents…'

‘I've done that. And the Trust hospital, and the Ridge. None with children, they're saying…'

‘I'm getting home, fast as I can.'

‘Yes, son – really fast! And keep that mobile on!'

Quickly, Stephen telephoned the town's posher hotel where his passengers were staying – nice people who fully understood why he was leaving them. He threw some cedies at the night
desk and ran out with his holdall to the car – to drive south as he'd never driven before in his life.

L
eonard would never let himself go to sleep again. When whatever was going to happen happened, he was going to be awake to fight it; on this he was determined. He wasn't a tough boy, he was more like his father. If people said to Leonard Boameh,
Do you want a fight?
he'd say
No!
and he'd back off. But he wasn't a coward: he didn't think of himself as chicken: he just wasn't aggressive. If he
had
to fight for something, he would. And if he had to fight for his life tonight – or for anything else – he'd fight until his last breath and the last drop of his blood.

Unless he could escape first. But he had no
plan. He wasn't tied up, and no one was sitting on him any more, but when the street kids had finished swearing and smoking and making their backside noises, he was pushed away in a corner furthest away from the curtain of old sacks in the doorway. To get out, he would have to fly like a mosquito over their bodies – unless every one of these kids was asleep; and whenever he lifted his head to look around, there were always night eyes glinting back at him, wide open.

And the uncle had changed his message. Now he sort of smiled, ‘C'n jus' kill you!'

‘You get yourself to sleep, boy!' the daddy kid croaked, then gave him a kick when Leonard looked around once too often. ‘You gotta look real angel boy tomorrow.' And Leonard's numbness came back to cover him like an icy shroud. So, why would he have to look the angel boy tomorrow? Were these kids going to sell him off as a nice-looking little house-boy for someone? Were they going to trade him to someone for
cedies or dollars? Were they heading over the border with him to Ivory Coast, to sell him off to another people? He'd never get back from that – no one ever did.

He lay there with his eyes staring up, one small tight body in this huddle of tight bodies, except that these others were free…

On the road south there seemed to be more stretches of pothole and broken surface than good tarmac, but at this time of night there were no lorries and no street vendors standing at the roadsides holding out their fruit or small meat, so Stephen pushed his old Vauxhall to the limits in his race home. Normally, with passengers poking their cameras out of his windows, or asking this or that about people's lives, and the state of the country, and the flash floods, and the road-building programme, this journey would take him over three hours. Tonight he did it in
two; and at just after one o'clock in the morning he yanked on his brake and ran into the house.

And there was Nana's crying face, her head shaking a great big ‘No!'

‘He's not –?'

‘He's not anywhere! Nothing to tell.'

‘Not anywhere?' Stephen was rushing into his son's bedroom, looking for some clue, some hope – perhaps a naughty boy's note saying he was going for a sleepover somewhere. But Nana was right: there was nothing; the bed was made up and the cupboard tops tidy.

Stephen pulled the sheet off the bed. Was there a note under there, perhaps?

‘I've looked there! I've looked every blessed where. I've telephoned people, telephoned the hospitals…' But Nana threw open cupboards again, rather than standing idle.

Stephen ran out of the room and telephoned 191; and, because of the time of the night, it wasn't long before a police motorcycle came revving up to his door. And within three minutes
of hearing about the missing boy, the policeman was on his radio getting a negative response from police headquarters; and within two minutes of that, he was asking the questions every policeman asks: the one that Stephen and Nana had not asked themselves.

‘Any money missing?'

They checked. The household money was where it should be.

‘What about the boy? Any pocket money?' The policeman's face was hard. He was used to situations such as this.