Wife of the Gods (29 page)

Gyamfi joined him about five minutes later.

“Dawson, how are you?” he said. “What’s happening?”

“I need your help. Here is the situation. I’ve just found out it
may have been Togbe Adzima who stole Gladys’s bracelet.”

Gyamfi raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Is that so?”

“After Gladys’s death, someone in Bedome found it in Adzima’s
room. What we don’t know is whether he killed Gladys and then took
it off her wrist or whether he just took the bracelet after she had
been killed by someone else.”

“Yes, I understand. What do you want me to do?”

“I can’t interrogate Togbe anymore. We hate each other so much
now, and he’s afraid of me. You’re more charming than I, so I want
you to work on him. There are two things: how he got the bracelet,
and where he went on the evening before Gladys’s body was found. I
have a witness who says he went to Ketanu with a friend, but we
need to find out if that’s accurate – who is the friend, was he
with the friend all the time, could he have doubled back and
accosted Gladys, and so on. You get what I mean?”

“Of course, Dawson. I’m on it.”

“Thank you. One other thing – the bracelet looks something like
this.” He showed Nunana’s drawing to the constable. “It’s
silver.”

Gyamfi studied it a moment. “All right. I have a half day off,
and I can go and see Togbe after I leave here in the
afternoon.”

He and Dawson slapped hands. As they parted, Dawson briefly
watched Gyamfi walking away with a long, rolling lope. He liked
Gyamfi.
He
was the kind of partner Dawson would like
alongside himself at CID.

♦

It was past eleven o’clock in the morning, and a dense crowd of
funeral spectators and mourners had collected at the Mensahs’ home.
Dawson parked away from the house, closer to Elizabeth’s dress
shop.

A dancing and drumming troupe was performing in a courtyard at
the side of the house. The collective driving beat of the
sogo,
kidi
, and
atsimevu
drums was irresistible. A young woman
came out and began dancing the Agbadza, her arms rotating
rhythmically from her shoulders while her torso swung back and
forth in opposing motion. Another two women soon joined, and then a
man. They kicked up red dust with their steps.

Dawson saw someone handing out beer to several men at the back
of the crowd.
Freeloaders
. They would be thoroughly drunk by
early afternoon.

For the short funeral service, a seating area under a canopy had
been set up in front of the Mensahs’ house. There was a long line
of people waiting to get inside to view Gladys’s body. Dawson
wormed his way to the front and went in. It was packed with people
in a sea of black and dark brown mourning cloth. It was oppressive,
and Dawson was bothered by the tight space. Gladys lay in state in
the front room. The men stood back, but several women were wailing
loudly over her casket while the procession of viewers slowly wound
its way past her body. In the midst of all this was a videographer
filming everything, and a few people were snapping photos of
Gladys’s body with their mobile phones and digital cameras, which
Dawson found quite bizarre.

A woman in red and black had worked herself into quite a state,
sweat pouring off her as if she had been in a rain shower. She was
weeping and moving frenetically around the casket like a roaming
insect.

“Why have you left us?” she shouted hoarsely, gesticulating at
Gladys’s body. “What will we do now?”

Dawson wondered for a moment if she was a professional mourner.
Families sometimes hired these, but he doubted the Mensahs would do
that.

Gladys had been dressed in iridescent blue and her casket
supplied with items she might need for her journey to the other
side: makeup, perfume, jewelry, and a large roll of yellow and
white fabric embellished with Adinkra symbols. In case she needed a
change of outfit, Dawson supposed.

Everyone who entered the room was obligated to pay their
respects to Kofi and Dorcas Mensah and the extended family. There
was no way for Dawson to avoid it. He had no idea who
99
^%
of these people were, but he had to shake hands with
every single one of them. After a while he stopped counting.

He stood near Gladys’s casket for a moment. She had been heavily
made up, and Dawson felt disturbed by that. A dead body at a crime
scene or in the morgue meant something to him, but a decorated
corpse in a casket left him cold. Gladys’s body was a shell. The
whole person was gone, and no amount of makeup could bring her
back. Feeling suffocated by the atmosphere, Dawson went outside to
watch the dancing.

A new set of dancers was performing to distorted music blaring
from a pair of speakers.

“Did you get some refreshments?”

He turned at the voice. “Hello, Elizabeth. No, I didn’t have
anything to drink.”

She was dressed in a beautiful burgundy wax print with black
velvet trim. She raised her voice above the din and beckoned to a
boy a few meters away.

“Would you like some beer?” she asked Dawson.

“No thanks. How about some Malta?”

“Go and bring a bottle of Malta for him,” Elizabeth commanded
the boy.

He obediently ran off.

She smiled at Dawson. “Are you all right? I saw you in the wake
room, and you seemed uncomfortable.”

“I don’t do well at these kinds of things.”

“Sometimes it gets too much,” she acknowledged. “But traditions
die hard.”

“Do you believe in all of it? Putting things in the casket, for
instance?”

“It’s symbolic, that’s all. It means we care about her even to
the point of her leaving us. Providing her with the things she
liked.”

Something suddenly occurred to Dawson. “The cloth in the casket
with the little Adinkra symbols – is that the yellow version of the
blue one she was wearing?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Elizabeth said. “She loved that pattern,
Inspector Dawson. She had a yellow, a blue, and a red. We didn’t
want to put the blue one with her, so we chose the yellow because
it’s so nice and bright.”

The boy came back with a bottle of half-chilled Malta, and
Dawson thanked him. He took a couple of swigs.

“Elizabeth, I want you to do something for me,” Dawson said,
raising his voice above the noise. “Can we go over there where it’s
quieter?”

They walked a distance until the music was less intense.

“That’s better,” Dawson said. “I’m going to show you a diagram
someone drew of what might be Gladys’s missing bracelet. Tell me if
you think it looks like hers. Take your time. Don’t hurry to any
conclusion.”

He took Nunana’s diagram from his pocket and gave it to
Elizabeth. While she looked at it, he downed some more Malta,
Heaven’s elixir.

“It had two rows of silver loops the way it’s drawn here,”
Elizabeth said, tapping the paper with a manicured index finger.
“It could be it. Who did this? Where did you get it?”

“I can’t say right now,” Dawson answered evenly. “Tell me this,
if I stole a bracelet like this and I wanted to sell it quickly,
where would I go?”

“The best place would be to one of the jewelry traders at the Ho
market.”

“Would they buy one like this?”

Elizabeth nodded vigorously. “By all means, because the traders
know how to shine it up and then sell it at a profit.”

“How many jewelry traders come to the Ho market?”

“Lots of them. I know a few. I can take you there after the
funeral is over.”

“Thank you.”

“I have to go now,” Elizabeth said. “They’re going to close the
casket, and then the service will start. Would you like to
come?”

“I’ll be all right here, thank you.”

After some time the casket was brought out. Dawson watched the
service from a distance. It was performed in both English and Ewe,
using a microphone so people could listen if they weren’t in the
seating area. It was hot even under the canopy, and people were
fanning themselves somewhat uselessly with the funeral program.
Older men wore the traditional style mourning cloth, while the
young could not be bothered and dressed in shirts and slacks, some
quite casually.

The service lasted forty-five minutes and went like clockwork.
Finally, the pallbearers raised the coffin and a chorus of women
began to sing and clap. An elderly woman with bare shoulders led
the procession, pouring libation along the way. They would walk a
short distance through Ketanu to the hearse that would take the
coffin to the cemetery.

Dawson realized they were heading in the direction of his car,
so he hurried to the Corolla and backed it well out of the way
beside Elizabeth’s shop. He leaned against the trunk and watched as
the long line of black-clad marchers moved forward like a giant
millipede.

Just before the pallbearers passed the shop, the coffin seemed
to veer off course. It was as though a magnet was attracting it,
but then Dawson realized that two or more of the pallbearers were
deliberately pulling the coffin to one side. He couldn’t understand
what was going on. Some of the men lost their balance, and the
coffin tilted and pitched. Cries of alarm went up:
Don’t drop
the coffin!

An older man stumbled and screamed, “What are you doing?
Heh!
What are you doing?”

Several funeral attendees ran in to help steady the coffin as a
pushing and pulling match began. Members of the crowd began to
shout and jeer, but then another cry gradually became prominent as
a collective chant.

“Witch, witch, witch!
”

As the coffin got closer to the shop, a fistfight broke out
between two men. Elizabeth appeared, yelling at the pallbearers to
get back on course, and several people jumped in front of her and
began to scream the word in her face. She looked shocked and backed
away.
Witch!
spread through the crowd like a firestorm.

Charles and three other men came to Elizabeth’s side to protect
her. The coffin had swung and swayed back to its route. Dawson
realized what had just happened. When a casket was drawn
“mysteriously” toward a particular house, it was said that the
person most associated with the dwelling had caused the death of
the deceased through witchcraft. In other words, someone was trying
to frame Elizabeth. It was an ugly, nasty turn to a funeral that
had otherwise been proceeding smoothly. Who could have arranged
this stunt?

The disruption died down, and the procession got back to normal.
Elizabeth, not one to be intimidated, returned, head high, to her
position near the front. About a minute later, a boy of about
thirteen ran up to her and whispered in her ear. She was obviously
puzzled as the boy pointed backward at something, and Dawson could
see he was asking her to come with him in that direction.

She followed him and disappeared between her shop and the
building next to it. Dawson circled around and looked down the
length of the space between the rear of the buildings and the
bush.

Elizabeth appeared with the boy, and waiting to meet her were a
half dozen young men with sticks. Elizabeth turned to run. They
pounced on her like a pack of hyenas and clawed her down. She held
out her hand defensively as they began to club her.

Dawson opened the trunk of the car and got the cricket bat out.
As he ran toward the mêlée, Elizabeth was trying to get up, but the
youths struck her down again.

“Witch! Witch!
”

“Beat her, beat her!
”

She screamed as blows rained down. For a moment she got to her
knees, but a strike to her head flipped her over sideways.

As Dawson got there, two of the youths shot away, but the others
turned to fight. The first to come at Dawson got the cricket bat
forehand and went down. The second got it backhand to the side of
his head and a second strike square in the face.

Dawson moved forward to take care of another two, but they
dropped their sticks and escaped.

“Elizabeth.” He knelt down next to her. “Are you all right?”

He lifted her head, and she groaned. A gash in her forehead was
spurting blood. Her right forearm was bent, obviously broken as she
had tried to defend herself.

Dawson ripped the bottom of his shirt and folded the length of
cloth to press it firmly against Elizabeth’s forehead.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Hold on, all right?”

One of the youths was out cold; the other was groaning and
attempting to get up. Dawson wasn’t worried.

Charles and four other men came running. They knelt down beside
Elizabeth.

“I’m okay,” she said, but her face was creased with pain. Her
forearm had rapidly swollen to the size of Dawson’s leg.

“She has to get to the hospital,” he said.

“Take her to Isaac Kutu,” someone suggested.

“No!
” Dawson shouted angrily. He was sick of this. “You
take her to the VRA Hospital
now
.”

Charles looked at him and nodded.

“Run and get the van,” he said to the youngest man there. “Tell
the driver to be quick.”

∨
Wife of the Gods
∧

D
awson’s two
prisoners could not have been much older than eighteen. Both of
them quickly came to, and Dawson was able to question them. Someone
in town by the name of Dzigbodi had paid them off to beat Elizabeth
“because she’s a witch.”

“You are such stupid boys,” Dawson told them. “Get up.”

He cuffed them to each other and got them up, pushing them in
front of him to the car. He opened the trunk. “Get in.”
“What?
”

“You heard me. Get in before I knock your heads off.” They
struggled in, one uncomfortably on top of the other, and Dawson
slammed the trunk shut.

♦

When he got to the police station, Constables Gyamfi and Bubo
were there but not Inspector Fiti.