Children of the Street (4 page)

5

Dawson ducked into Papaye for a quick lunch—piping hot rice and chicken washed down with ice-cold Malta, the soft drink he loved. If he were on death row, he would choose Malta as his last meal—oversweet, fizzy, rich with malt and hops. While he was waiting for his meal to be brought to the table, he phoned Chikata to tell him about the autopsy.

“It will be tough finding out who this guy is,” the detective sergeant said.

“I know, but we have to keep trying,” Dawson replied. “Get two detective constables, go down to Agbogbloshie, and ask around for a missing boy of about seventeen, about five-six in height with a missing upper right tooth.”

“
Ewurade
. You’re sending me back to that stinking place.”

“Wear a mask.”

“These people are just not going to talk, Dawson.”

“You never know. Miracles happen.”

“But not in Accra,” Chikata said with a derisive snort.

“Get to work and stop complaining,” Dawson said, ending the call.

Chikata was a spoiled brat. He could be lazy as well. His uncle, Theophilus Lartey, was chief superintendent of police, or
chief supol
. That made him a senior officer and Dawson’s superior. Chikata thought that gave him the right to take liberties. In truth, it was nepotism that had got him into CID’s Homicide Division with Dawson, and it might well be nepotism that got him promoted.

Dawson was on his last gulp of Malta and considering having some more when his phone rang.

“Dawson,” he answered.

“Inspector! How are you?”

“I’m fine, Wisdom.”

Dawson knew the voice well. It was thin and brittle, like snapping plantain chips in one’s fingers. Wisdom Asamoah was one of the
Daily Graphic
’s leading reporters. He and Dawson had a long history together, sometimes at each other’s throats.

“I want to know about the man in the lagoon,” Wisdom said.

“How did you hear about it?”

“I have eyes and ears everywhere, Dawson.”

“We have a Public Relations Office for press inquiries, remember? Call them.”

“Come on, Dawson. PRO is too slow for me. By the time they get me the information I need, I’ll be in the afterlife.”

“I can give you something, but you can’t use my name.”

“You know you can trust me, Dawson.”

“We don’t know who the victim is yet, but it’s a homicide—”

“How was he killed? Drowned?”

“Not drowned.”

“How, then?”

“Not drowned.”

“Okay. You’re not saying. How old a person?”

“Estimated sixteen or seventeen.”

“Oh, so a teenager, eh? Dr. Asum Biney did the autopsy?”

“Yes.”

“No witness accounts of any kind?”

“No, nothing.”

“When are you going to release photos?”

“We can’t. Too much decomposition.”

“Ah. You need a forensic artist.”

Dawson was surprised. “How do you know about that?”

“I watch
Forensic Files
,” Wisdom said with a laugh.

“Well, this is Ghana. We don’t have most of that fancy American stuff you see on TV.”

“Can I make you an offer, Inspector Dawson?”

“What kind of offer?”

“What if I get hold of a forensic artist, you release the victim’s autopsy photos to me, I forward them to him and have him draw a likeness of the victim? You would get that back so you can use it for police purposes, and I would get it to publish it in the
Graphic.
”

“How would you find a forensic artist?” Dawson asked suspiciously.

“I know one—Yves Kirezi. I met him years ago when I covered the Rwanda genocide. He’s helped identify thousands of genocide victims by re-creating their appearance after they had been beaten beyond recognition, so you know he has to be good at what he does.”

“Are you sure he would be willing to do this?”

“We are good friends, Inspector Dawson. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“All right, then. Let me know if and when you reach him. Thank you, Wisdom.”

D
awson needed to visit the pump station belonging to KLERP, the Korle Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project. It stood on the west bank of the upper lagoon, directly opposite Agbogbloshie on the east. You couldn’t talk about Agbogbloshie and its cursed waterways without bringing in KLERP. It had been around for ten years or more, and was part and parcel of the saga of a troubled slum that just would not go away.

By twisting the arm of one of the other investigators, Dawson managed to snag Baidoo and the only Tata jeep immediately available out of the two assigned to the Homicide Division. Otherwise, Dawson would have had to wait hours before the other vehicle returned from whatever mission it was on.

Traffic was heavy along High Street. As Baidoo inched forward with unflappable patience, Dawson’s phone rang. He felt a surge of both dread and anticipation as he saw it was Edith Kingson calling. This might be it.

“Edith, how are you?” he said sweetly.

“I’m very well, thank you, Darko.” Her voice was as clear and sparkling as crystal, but now she hesitated slightly and his heart sank.

“It’s not good news, is it?” he said.

“No,” she replied sadly. “I’m so sorry. They turned it down. They said your financial situation was not dire enough to justify clemency. I tried to argue on the basis of Hosiah’s bad medical situation and the kind of future he was facing. I argued until Director Hanson even got annoyed with me.”

Dawson felt as though a ten-story building had just collapsed and crushed him. His breath left him, and for a moment his vision darkened and he couldn’t speak.

“Darko?”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “I’m here.”

“Again, I’m terribly sorry. If you like, you can always re-submit the petition and I will try once more for you.”

“Thank you, Edith,” he said softly. “For all your help. I appreciate it.”

He pocketed his phone and stared despondently out the window. Traffic had begun to clear as they passed James Fort toward Cleland Road. Agbogbloshie was in the distance to their right; the beach was visible on their left. Ahead, new road construction was raising a cloud of dust. Underneath the section of Cleland that became the Winneba Bridge, the sea met the Korle Lagoon with spectacular and sometimes violent churning, like two opposing cultures forced to mix. Dawson kept his head firmly turned away so that Baidoo wouldn’t see his tears welling up.

T
hey turned right on Ring Road West. About half a mile up, Baidoo pulled into KLERP’s yard, where two small, one-story office buildings stood, one of them a trailer. A black 4 × 4 with darkened windows was leaving about the same time.

“Wait for me,” Dawson told Baidoo, hopping out.

The merciless noon sun was almost directly overhead, and the asphalt underfoot felt like it was on fire. Dawson walked up the steps to the trailer and knocked on the first door. He heard a faint “Come in.” He pushed the door open. It was a small office chilled to Arctic temperatures by a gale-force air conditioner. A doe-eyed woman with vermilion lipstick and an expensive hair weave was sitting at the only desk in the room.

“Good morning,” Dawson said.

“Good morning. You are welcome.”

Dawson explained who he was and the reason for the visit.

“Please have a seat,” Doe Eyes said. “I will see if the director is available.”

She left the room. Dawson sat down on a chair to the side, looking around while tapping his foot on the hollow-sounding floor. Pasted on the wall were pictures of the top KLERP executives, two of whom were Europeans.

Doe Eyes came back. “Please, the director has just left.”

Dawson guessed it had been the said director in the 4 × 4.

“Can I speak to someone else?” he asked her.

She hesitated. “Please, one moment.”

She disappeared again, returning two minutes later. “Please, come with me.”

Dawson accompanied her outside to the trailer’s third door. He waited again as she went inside, certain that at least one step in this process could have been eliminated. The door opened, and Doe Eyes said Dawson could come in. She held the door for him and then she left.

This room was even more frigid than the first. At one of the two desks was a young man in a tie working at his laptop. He stood up.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Afternoon. Darko Dawson, CID.”

“Cuthbert Plange,” the man said, shaking hands. “I’m in charge of client relations here. Please, have a seat.”

“Thank you,” Dawson said, choosing the closest chair. “I’m investigating the death of a boy found in one of the Agbogbloshie channels yesterday.”

“Ewurade,” Cuthbert said, shaking his head and sitting back down. He had full lips and thick speech, like a cotton-stuffed pillow. “This Agbogbloshie. You never know what can happen next. How did the boy get there?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. You have a good view of the lagoon from here. Was anyone here early Sunday morning?”

Cuthbert shook his head. “Not at all, sir. We close the station down Saturday evening around six, lock the gates, and open up again Monday morning. Sundays are sacred.”

“Church wins every time,” Dawson commented.

“Oh, yes.” Cuthbert smiled. “Have you ever visited our plant before, Mr. Dawson?”

“No, I haven’t.”

Cuthbert stood up. “Then come along. I’m happy to show you around. We’ll go to the pump station first.”

After they had been in the air-conditioned office, the heat outside hit them like a cricket bat. They walked across the parking area down east of the second building and around the corner. The whir of the pump and the powerful swish of water got louder, and the sewage smell became stronger. Cuthbert led the way to the base of the pump. Towering above them in a brick housing was a huge, spinning piece of machinery that looked like a giant corkscrew.

“It’s called an Archimedes’ screw,” Cuthbert told Dawson, raising his voice above the din. “It may not seem that its turning action could pump water up, but it does—at a good two cubic meters per second from the base to the top of the tower.”

They climbed a platform beyond the pump for a panoramic view of the surroundings.

“Where was the boy found?” Cuthbert asked.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Dawson said, frowning. “I was on the Agbogbloshie side of the canal yesterday. Everything looks different from this angle.”

“Let me help you get your bearings, then, sir.” Cuthbert looked south. “The outlet of the lagoon to the sea underneath the Winneba Bridge is over there—where you just came from. That’s a mangrove island you see in the middle of the lagoon.”

He turned the opposite direction now.

“The Odaw River comes from several miles north. Once it crosses Abossey Okai Road, it becomes Korle Canal, which is the only portion we can see from here because of the way it curves out of sight. Agbogbloshie, where you were yesterday, is on the opposite bank from us.”

Dawson gazed across at the landscape of trash and wooden shacks seen through the haze of smoke from the burning copper wire.

“Some people don’t even realize we have a river in Accra,” Cuthbert continued. “At any rate, the poor Odaw has become part of Accra’s open sewer. Garbage, human waste, domestic waste, factory waste—you name it, they dump it, and after it’s accumulated all that nastiness, it arrives here.”

“Not pretty,” Dawson said. “There must be, what, millions of plastic water bottles and water bags in there.”

“Not to mention toxic waste and chemicals. We have two excavators to take out as much of the solid waste as possible as it arrives, but it’s tough to keep up.”

“What’s that dam that goes from this side to the other bank?” Dawson asked, indicating the broad, partitioned concrete wall spanning the canal.

“That’s the interceptor. It stops solids from getting into the lagoon. It also has twenty flap gates to regulate water levels during flood season.”

In front of the interceptor, a boom lay across the breadth of the lagoon to help trap floating material. At the boom, the garbage was so dense it looked like a solid mass. Egrets, light enough to stand on it, pecked around for morsels.
What food could they possibly find in there?

“Now, look carefully, Inspector, sir,” Cuthbert said. “Slightly upstream from the interceptor, you can make out the Agbogbloshie Canal as it joins the Korle Canal. It’s difficult to spot because it’s so much smaller than the Korle Canal.”

“I see it now,” Dawson said. “And that’s where the body was found.”

“Aha. Now you’ve got your bearings.”

Because the Agbogbloshie Canal was upstream from the interceptor, Dawson now saw that the dead body could not have got there if it had been dumped in the sea or even the lagoon. Even if an extremely high tide had washed the corpse in, the interceptor would have done exactly that: intercepted the body before it got to the Agbogbloshie Canal. Which brought up the next logical question.

“Could the body have floated down the Odaw River into the Korle Canal and then the Agbogbloshie Canal?” Dawson asked.

“I doubt it, sir,” Cuthbert said, shaking his head. “More likely it would have ended up at the boom with all the rest of the floating debris. Maybe, just maybe, that could happen if there was an extreme flood situation, but that hasn’t occurred recently.”