Treachery in the Yard (14 page)

“Yes, Tammy. At ease. Kola Badmus. You were the last person to see him?” He closed the file he had been reading, removed his glasses, laid them carefully on the desk in front of him.

“Yes. Kola is a friend.”

“What were you talking with him about?”

“Stuff. We hadn't had a drink together for some time, so I asked him to join Freda and me at the Grill. We had a few drinks and he left.”

He pressed a button on the intercom. “Have Captain Akpan bring Miss Agboke in.”

The door opened and Freda entered, Captain Akpan behind her.

“Honey?” Freda asked me as soon as she saw me. “What's this all about?”

“Sit down, Miss Agboke,” Chief told her. She sat. “Miss Agboke, you and my detective had drinks with Kola Badmus today. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” She looked from him to me, then back to him.

“What did the three of you talk about?”

“Nothing much. We know Kola Badmus and we've become friends. You know. Chitchat. Why is it important? Why was I brought here?”

“Because the reporter has disappeared. Because a major investigation has already been disrupted and may now have been compromised altogether.”

Freda looked at me. “I don't know anything about that.”

“Was Kola taking notes?”

“He said something about a story idea.”

“About what?”

“He didn't say. I mentioned some things my company has been up to. I suggested a story about marketing. He liked that idea and wrote down something about it.” Freda was on top of it now. She had gone from nervous to calm and very believable, not missing a beat.

Chief looked at her, then smiled his polite official smile. “Very well. My apologies for bringing you down here. But you can appreciate why.”

“No, I can't.”

His smile hardened. “You may now go. Captain, please see to it that she gets back safely to her home.”

“I can see myself back safely, thank you,” she said coolly. “I'd like to have a word with Tammy.”

“Not right now. I have some more questions for him. A journalist is missing, remember. You can speak to him after he's done. Good day.” He simply dismissed her. But Freda was not the type of person you dismissed, simply or otherwise.

“Fine. But I do not appreciate being harassed. Next time you want me to come down here, talk to my lawyer first. And I'll be speaking with my CEO about this.” Chief said nothing—her CEO was Mr. Daniel Chukwu, CEO of Mercury Insurance and a very powerful and respected man. She stood, looked once at me—not very happy with me, either—and walked out briskly, followed by Captain Akpan.

Chief looked at the empty doorway for a while, then at me. “You, too. Go. You're dismissed.”

I said nothing to Stella on my way out, nor did she say anything to me.

I managed to get out of headquarters in time to see Akpan and Freda walking to his car. “Hey. Captain, I'll take her,” I told Akpan.

He looked at me as seriously as he ever had. “Chief is through with you?”

“For now. Want to tell me what's going on?”

“From what he says, you should be telling us.”

Well, that nailed it. At least Akpan was direct with me.

Freda came over to me and we went to my car, leaving Akpan behind, watching. And he obviously was not the only one watching.

I drove her back to her apartment. Neither of us said much. As soon as we got to her place, Freda left me in the living room and went to have a cold bath, to wash the heat away. I admired her style and status. She had pushed back at Chief by mentioning her CEO.

I sat and flipped through a magazine, not reading, while Freda had her bath and changed her clothes. She then prepared us a dinner of
jollof
rice cooked with fried frozen fish.

“Smells good,” I said as we sat down to eat.

“Mom's quite the cook,” Freda said. “I inherited her culinary skills. If you like this, I cook
Odikaikon
soup even better.”

“Sounds good!”

The chatter was not much, and died down as we ate. There was too much for us to think about. We did not talk about Kola. She had never met him before today. In my stolen glances I could see she was worried, worried about me. Finally, she said, “Am I crazy, or is your chief of police acting as if he is investigating you?”

“It is starting to feel like it, but no. No, honey. I don't think that's it.”

“This is getting out of hand. You're going to get hurt.”

I nodded. She was right, but that changed nothing. “I'm sorry I got you involved. I never should have met Kola with you there. I wasn't thinking.”

“No, you weren't.”

“But I'm thinking now. And I think the less I involve you, the better.”

“It's a little late for that.” She was not about to let me push her away.

She was holding up fairly well, but I told her she shouldn't stay here. I could tell she didn't want to go. Freda, although open to the idea of going away to someplace safe, did not want to leave me.

“Coffee?” she asked. I nodded, and she went into the kitchen and poured two cups from an already prepared pot and returned to hand me a cup. It was good.

“I feel safer with you,” she answered, sipping from her cup.

I shook my head, drank more coffee. “Freda, it's dangerous around me. How about if I take you to your aunts' for a few days?”

She nodded her acceptance.

My cell phone began to ring. I pulled it from my pants pocket.

“Ignore it,” she said. It was not a request.

I looked at the caller ID. “It's Captain Akpan,” I said. “He'd never call this late unless it was important.” I turned away from her and flipped open the cell. “Yes, captain?”

“Kola Badmus, the newspaper guy. We've found him. Dead. In his car, in the trunk. On the East-West Road.” He gave me a cross street.

“When was he found?”

“About half an hour ago.”

“Someone will have to call his wife.”

“I'm looking after that.”

“Thank you, captain.” I flipped the phone closed.

“The reporter?” she asked.

“Yes. They found him. Probably I got him killed, just talking to me,” I said to her. “I have to do something. I owe him.”

She knew she could not stop me so she let me go. Outside, I looked up at a dark sky of shimmering stars millions of miles from Earth. “God,” I muttered, “what is the point?” I got no answer—not today, anyway.

I drove toward East-West Road. It was way out of my district. When I got there, the site was crawling with blue uniforms setting up floodlights. It looked like a battlefield, with Captain Akpan as the general issuing orders. Except the fighting was already over.

I saw Ade, my new partner, before he saw me. “Fill me in,” I asked him.

“Officers Ubani and Dan found the car. They were smart enough to check the car's engine—it was still hot. They found Kola in the trunk, shot several times. Looks like handguns. He was tied up. They radioed it in. An alert was put out for any suspicious-looking persons in the area. Maybe we'll get very lucky.”

I shook my head. “I doubt it. They planned this well. They probably left no dangling loose ends.”

“Captain thinks that whoever dropped off the car might still be in the area, so we're searching it. Captain does not think they thought we would find the car so soon.”

“He's certainly right about them maybe being in the area, given the engine was still hot. There are no tire tracks, but I see some footprints. Looks like perhaps two people drove him here, then left him. Okporo Road is walking distance from here. They could lose themselves in the area quickly, and could vanish more easily on foot than in a car. But perhaps they had an escape car waiting for them on that paved road over there, where no tracks would be left. Let's hope Forensics can tell us something.”

Ade tried to keep his eyes from growing wider as I rambled
on about the different possibilities. I let him be. He was inexperienced—by definition all my former partners had also been inexperienced when they first started. So had I, or any other police officer.

I walked over to view the body. The trunk lid was open. Ade was behind me. I hoped he had the stomach for this. Kola's face was bruised, bloodied at his nose and mouth. They had been hard on him before shooting him. It looked as if he had been shot and then dumped in the trunk.

Ade said, quietly, “He was shot three times in the head. The pathologist said the first bullet probably killed him instantly.” I could see that. Ade was talking to ease his tension. He was breathing hard, almost panting. He wanted to look away from the corpse but did not want to lose face with his new partner. Maybe it was better to lose face than to lose dinner.

Nnadozie was trying to lift fingerprints from the car. One of his boys found a pistol in the dirt a few feet away.

Captain Akpan walked over. “You just got here?”

“Just a few minutes ago,” I said.

One of Nnadozie's crew came over. The pistol they'd found, which was likely the murder weapon, was a .22. Four shells were missing from the clip. It had been fired recently. Probably used elsewhere, then dumped here. Tape around the handle—I'd seen this before—to prevent the lifting of fingerprints. Professionals.

Dr. Onwuchekwa cleared Kola's corpse for the trip to the morgue, and there was nothing more to do except wait for lab results. I couldn't see going back to Freda's, to wake her up to hear about more horrors. I decided to go home and get some rest. I told Ade to do the same, and to prepare a report first thing tomorrow. When I told Akpan I was heading home, he just looked at me and nodded. “The autopsy's tomorrow morning at 8:30. Be there.”

I nodded. “Of course, captain. Good night.”

“Good night,” he repeated.

When I returned to my apartment, I removed my clothes and slipped on a pair of boxer shorts and an undershirt. I turned my cell off, then turned off the ringer on the home phone so nothing would wake me up. For the moment, everything could wait. I set the alarm for 7:00
A.M.
, made sure all the doors and windows were locked, slipped a wooden chair under the kitchen doorknob so no one could open it without making a lot of noise. Then I did the same for the front door. I laid my piece down beside me, closed my eyes, and it all went dark.

A buzzing woke me up. I groaned, shut off the alarm, went back to sleep. But after maybe half an hour I woke again, this time for good. Rubbing my face helped wake me up—it hurt. I put the phones back on. When I checked my cell, there were two messages. The first was Freda. She wanted to see how I was doing, and was not happy I had switched off my cell. The second message was also from her, but this time she wanted me to call her. I was not sure I wanted to talk to anyone just yet—but I dialed anyway.

“Why did you switch off your phone?” she asked immediately, anxiety in her voice.

“I needed to have some sleep, that's all.”

“You could have called when you got back to your place.”

I knew she was frightened and needed some reassurance. “It was late by the time I was done. It was a murder scene. If I'd called,
I would have woken you up. I was going to call you this morning. Where are you? In your office?”

“I'm at home,” she said curtly.

“You didn't go to work today?”

“I called in sick. I'm frightened. I can't reach you, you turn off your phones—what did you expect me to do? I barely feel safe hiding in my apartment.”

“I'll come over as soon as I can, okay?”

“That's better.”

I knocked on her door exactly twenty-three minutes later. “Good morning, honey,” I said.

“Thank God you're here!” She had already packed a bag.

She locked the door behind her.

As we drove to her aunts' house, we talked about how hot it was. When we got there, she took her suitcase, kissed me, and went inside. I could see her through the windows saying hello to her aunts. She did not come back out. I drove off and headed toward the city morgue, wondering how this day would go, wondering whether I would live through it, wondering whether I would ever see Freda again.

Port Harcourt was very active at this time of day. Workers on their way to their jobs had jammed the traffic by the time I got to Eastern Bypass.

My route took me straight to the General Hospital—Port Harcourt's morgue. Captain Akpan and Sergeant Okoro were already there, along with the pathologist and his assistant. The autopsy was just beginning. It did not take very long—this pathologist was quick. Captain Akpan informed me that the .22 found at the scene was the weapon used to kill Kola.

“The victim was tortured,” he said, showing me cigarette burns on the corpse's chest. “Whoever did this has watched too
many mafia films. It probably went on two, maybe three, hours before he was shot and killed.”

I told Captain Akpan that Thompson was the likely killer of Kola. I was almost certain ballistics would prove the same gun shot Wike, after all.

Once the autopsy was done, I drove back to my apartment—it checked out okay. For a while, I sat around, just thinking. I did not want to call Freda or anyone else. But I could not stay alone in my apartment.

I left abruptly and, on a whim, drove down to the Protea Hotel. I needed to get away to think. The Protea Hotel was cool and exclusive, a perfect place to think. And I was hungry. At the very least, I'd get an excellent meal.

I took a seat and immediately a waiter came over. I decided on fried rice with salad and chicken, and some choice red wine.

As I sipped the wine, I looked up to see Okpara walk into the lobby with a younger man. I had seen the younger man somewhere but could not immediately place him. Nice suit, nice hands. The hands seemed familiar. Calluses. And then I remembered. The younger man was the fellow I had seen on Tuesday in Chief's office.