Wife of the Gods (25 page)

Something troubled Dawson, though. It was Timothy who had
pressed for a detective from Accra because he doubted the abilities
of the CID man stationed at Ho. If Timothy was the murderer, why
would he have done that? Wouldn’t he have wanted a
less
competent investigator, to increase the chances that the case would
go unsolved and he’d get off scot-free? The question didn’t blow
Dawson’s case apart, but it did make him uneasy.

The mobile signal was strong in Ho, and Dawson called Christine
to let her know how things were going. Hosiah was doing fine and
spoke to Dawson briefly before his bedtime story. Six-year-old boys
are short on phone conversation. After he had hung up, Dawson had a
smoke and felt good, and then he played his kalimba. Marijuana made
his fingers more nimble. He took a shower and then turned in to
bed. He was bone tired.

♦

Reindorf Bannerman, Timothy Sowah’s lawyer, was supposed to
arrive by nine o’clock in the morning but did not show until almost
noon. While he was waiting, Dawson bought the
Daily Graphic
from a newspaper boy. On the second page he came across a small
article that made him curse with disgust.

Madina Traditional Healer Released

ACCRA – Well-known herbalist and traditional healer
Augustus Ayitey has been released from Madina police custody.
Charges of assault on a child being treated for illness have been
dropped. Chief Superintendent Theophilus Lartey of the Criminal
Investigations Department, stated that an investigation would be
carried out as to whether Mr. Ayitey was improperly detained.

One of the Ho police constables came up to Dawson. “Please, sir,
Mr. Bannerman has arrived and we are ready.”

They went into the interrogation room. Timothy was seated at the
table next to Bannerman. He was tense and did not look like he had
had much sleep. Nervousness had replaced his self-assured air, but
Bannerman, despite his resemblance to a squat bulldog, had a warm
voice and a calming effect on his client.

“You’ll be all right,” he said quietly to Timothy, touching his
arm.

He shook hands with Dawson and said, “Are you ready to
proceed?”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Bannerman. Good afternoon, Timothy.”

Dawson wasn’t going to take any chances that the suspect might
get off on a technicality, so he was careful to recite verbatim the
police advisory statement, known to some as the Judge’s Rule, that
cautioned Timothy that he didn’t have to say anything, but that
what he did say could be used in evidence against him.

“I’ve been looking through Gladys Mensah’s diary,” Dawson went
on, “and in several places she talks about how she feels about you.
Here’s one from early this month: ‘I can’t stop thinking about
Timmy. Can’t wait to see him when I go up to Ketanu’. By ‘Timmy’
she means you, is that correct, Mr. Sowah?”

“Yes.”

“Were you having sexual relations with Gladys Mensah?”

“Is that necessary, Detective Inspector?” Bannerman cut in.

“The type of relationship is important in establishing
motive.”

Bannerman conceded and nodded permission to Timothy, who
hesitated before he said, “We did have sex, yes.”

“How often?”

“
Please
, Mr. Dawson,” Bannerman said. “There’s no need
for prurience.”

“That wasn’t my intention. I’ll rephrase. Where and when, Mr.
Sowah, did you rendezvous with Gladys?”

“Sometimes I went to Accra and booked a hotel in town and Gladys
would come to see me there.”

“What about in Ketanu?”

“I had access to the Ministry of Health guesthouse, and she
would join me.”

“The same one I’m staying at now?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Did you ever meet in the forest around Ketanu and
Bedome?”

“Once or twice.”

Dawson flipped through Gladys’s diary entries. One in particular
caught his eye.

I despise Togbe Adzima. I want to get the trokosi
wives away from him, but there has to be a place for them to go,
somewhere they can make a living.

That was an important paragraph, but for the moment, Dawson was
more concerned with what was going on directly between Gladys and
Timothy.

“On the fifteenth of March,” he continued, “Gladys wrote, ‘Timmy
says he doesn’t think he can spend Easter Sunday with me. I can
understand that he may not be able to take the whole day, but I
don’t believe he can’t reserve a couple of hours for me. I feel
he’s pulling away from me’. What would make her say that, Mr.
Sowah?”

“I don’t know why she thought that.”

“Tuesday, the eighteenth of March: ‘He won’t answer my calls’.
Was that true?”

“I never deliberately tried to avoid her calls.”

“But something was wrong, Mr. Sowah,” Dawson pressed, “because
here’s what she said just the following day, the nineteenth: ‘Went
to Ho to Timmy’s office since he won’t answer my phone calls. He
was meeting with some VIP from Accra, and when I came in, Tim
looked as if he would faint. Then he called me “Miss Mensah” as
though he hardly knew me and said he couldn’t talk right now. That
was a hateful and cowardly thing to do. You don’t abandon your
loyalties just because you’re afraid of what people may think’.

“Thursday the twentieth: ‘Love has to grow. It can be secretive
at the beginning, but it can’t stay that way. I should not need to
play hide-and-seek with the man I love. He doesn’t love his wife,
he’s told me that. Then why can’t he leave her?’ So now Gladys was
putting a lot of pressure on you, Mr. Sowah, not so?”

Timothy took a deep breath. “I loved her, I loved being with
her, but little by little it felt as if she had me by the
throat.”

“What did you decide to do about it?”

“I knew I had to sit down and have a serious talk with her
before it got beyond control. When I received her message on
Thursday threatening me that she would go to my wife, I called her
back and agreed we should meet in the forest the next day to
talk.”

“Why the forest and not the guesthouse?”

“Because at the time it was occupied by an official visiting
from Upper Region.”

“How did you feel, Mr. Sowah, when Gladys threatened you with
confronting your wife?”

“I felt sick. I didn’t know whether she would really do it or
not, but the thought that she should go to the length of making a
threat like that made her seem a very different person from the one
I’d known. It was very disturbing.”

“Did you have an impulse, even if slight, to kill her?”

“No.”

“She’s becoming obsessed, maybe even dangerous to you. An affair
can be exciting, but it’s the routine life with your spouse that
gives stability, and stability is comforting even if dull. The
prospect of losing it can be frightening.”

“I know that, but I would never kill her.”

“Did you set a time to meet on Friday, the twenty-first of
March?”

“We said no later than five because no one wants to be in the
forest after dark, but I had a meeting that kept me, and I didn’t
leave Ho till about quarter to five. I was running late.”

“What time did you get to Ketanu?”

“I didn’t.”

Dawson frowned. “What do you mean you didn’t?”

“Just as I was getting to Sokode, which is only about five
kilometers from Ho, I had a flat tire, and I didn’t have a spare,
so I had to limp into the town to see if someone could repair the
puncture. It took me a little while to find someone.”

Dawson felt momentarily derailed. This had come out of the
blue.

“Did you try to ring Gladys to let her know you were delayed?”
he asked.

Timothy nodded. “Yes, but I kept getting that ‘subscriber out of
range’ message. By the time my tire had been repaired, it was dark
and there was no point in going to the forest. Gladys would not
have waited until then because it simply isn’t safe. So I had no
choice but to come back to Ho.”

“Weren’t you worried about her?”

“But
of course
I was. I tried all night to reach her on
her mobile.”

“Why didn’t you go to her house in Ketanu to check if she was
all right?”

Timothy sighed. “Look, in retrospect I know I should have, but
at the time I thought…I’m not sure what I thought. I think I
thought she might be so angry with me, she might have decided she
didn’t want to talk to me. Would I go to her house and risk
creating some scene?” He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.
“I feel like I’ve been such a coward. From the very beginning,
everything I did in relation to Gladys was cowardly.”

“I think we’ve established that my client could not have been
responsible for the murder of Gladys Mensah,” Bannerman said. “She
was found the following morning in the forest, and clearly that’s
where the murder took place. We can’t be sure of the exact hour,
but obviously my client was not present at either the time or the
place. You therefore have no grounds on which to hold him any
longer.”

“I don’t think we’ve established your client’s innocence at
all,” Dawson said firmly. “And as for the murder taking place in
the forest, that isn’t necessarily the case. Her body could have
been brought from elsewhere and dumped.”

Bannerman became exasperated. “You’re clutching at straws,
Detective Inspector Dawson. Come now, this is preposterous. I
demand that you confirm my client’s alibi immediately and release
him forthwith. Is that understood?”

Dawson refused to be rattled. “Timothy, are you able to show us
the location of the repair shop in Sokode?”

“Yes, of course.”

∨
Wife of the Gods
∧

I
nspector Fiti went
to see Samuel and found him lying on the floor of the cell with his
knees pulled up to his chest. His back was bruised where Bubo had
whipped him, and there was one small telltale cut below his left
eye.

“Get him a shirt,” Fiti ordered Bubo, not wanting anyone else to
see evidence of the thrashing.

Bubo brought one from the storeroom where they had a pile of
discarded clothes. He stood Samuel up and helped him put the shirt
on.

“Are you going to sign the confession?” Fiti asked Samuel.

Samuel shook his head and went back to the floor to curl up.

“Do you want us to beat you again?”

Samuel shrugged.

“I’m going to tell your father what you’ve done,” Fiti said.

Samuel looked up as if about to say something, but he lowered
his head again and closed his eyes.

♦

Boateng was sitting outside the house and jumped up eagerly as
he saw Inspector Fiti and Constable Bubo walking up. He pulled over
two stools for them.

“Bring them some water,” Boateng told his wife.

Fiti waited for her to return with two battered tin cups of
water. She disappeared quickly to leave the men to their
meeting.

“How are you today, Inspector Fiti?” Boateng asked
deferentially.

“I’m fine, but your boy is not.”

“Please, what is wrong, Inspector?”

“He killed the girl. Gladys Mensah.”

Boateng squirmed. “He killed her?”

“Yes. Someone saw him go with her into the forest, and that was
the last time she was ever seen.”

“Who saw him?”

“I can’t tell you that, but I believe what the person says. So
your boy did it, but he won’t confess. If he confesses, he will get
a light sentence from the judge. So talk to him. Tell him to
confess and sign the paper. Okay?”

Boateng’s shoulders slumped. He was devastated.

Fiti stood up and patted him on the shoulder. “Go and see him
now, understand?”

♦

One of the Ho police constables drove Dawson and Timothy the
five kilometers to Sokode. They bumped over an unpaved, gravelly
road full of potholes.

“Turn at the next right,” Timothy instructed.

They bounced along a little farther, and Timothy pointed. “There
it is.”

In God We Trust Motors was aptly named, being not much more than
a wobbly shack amid scores of large and small engine parts
scattered about the yard. A wiry man in his forties was tinkering
with a chunk of equipment on a table and looked up as the car
approached and stopped about fifty meters away.

“Is that the man who did your repair?” Dawson asked Timothy.

Timothy was squinting out the window. “I don’t think so. He
doesn’t look familiar.”

“Wait here,” Dawson said, getting out.

He walked over to the man. “Ndo na wo.”

“Ndo. Any problem?”

“I’m Dawson, from Accra police.” He showed his ID.

“I’m Quaye.”

They shook hands. Quaye’s palm was rough as sandpaper.

“Am I in trouble, sir?” he asked.

“Not as far as I know,” Dawson said. “Are you the owner
here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I need your help. Do you see that man sitting in the back of
the car? Do you recognize him?”

Quaye took a look for a few seconds and then shook his head.
“No, sir. Why?”

“He says he was here last week Friday.”

“I wasn’t here at that time. Only my cousin.”

“Is your cousin here now?”

“No, sir. He went back to Cape Coast.”

“You work here alone?”

“My son helps me, and he was working last week. Do you want to
talk to him?”

“Yes, please.”

Quaye turned his head and yelled, “Ato!
Ato!
”

A skinny, bare-chested boy of about ten years old came around
from behind the shack wearing threadbare oversize Nikes.

“Yes, Papa?”

“This is Inspector Dawson from Accra. He’s a detective.”

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“How are you, Ato?” Dawson said.

Ato’s attention was momentarily drawn to the police car, and he
suddenly smiled and waved.

“You know that man?” Dawson asked Ato in surprise.

“Yah, I remember him,” he said. “He came last week with a tire
puncture.”