Kwei Quartey - Wife of the Gods

“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 melee, 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.”

D AWSON’S TWO PRISONERS COULDnot 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.

“What happened?” Gyamfi asked in surprise as Dawson came in with the two disheveled youths.

“Book them,” Dawson said. “Assault, battery, conspiracy to murder, attempted murder.”

He gave a quick version of the story. Gyamfi listened attentively, but Bubo avoided making any eye contact with Dawson.

“We’ll take care of them, Inspector, sir,” Gyamfi said, shooting a disparaging look at the two boys.

“I’ll write my report in a minute,” Dawson said. “Can I see Samuel?”

“Yes, no problem.”

Dawson went down the two-stair drop to the jail.

“Samuel?”

The young man had fashioned a rope from his shirt and was hanging from the bars of the jail window, his toes about an inch from the ground. His head was slung forward, and the bucket was on its side on the floor along with the excrement it had contained.

“Gyamfi!” Dawson screamed. “ Gyamfi! The keys, bring the keys !”

The constable came quickly. He saw Samuel hanging and gasped. “Oh, no .”

The key rattled against the lock, and it seemed too long before Gyamfi got the door open.

“Hold him up, hold him up,” Dawson said.

Gyamfi lifted Samuel’s legs, and Dawson flicked open the blade of his Swiss Army knife and cut above the knot.

Live, please live .

They got him down. His body was limp, his neck had been stretched, and his face was swollen with engorged blood.

Bubo came down with the two new prisoners just as Dawson tried blowing a breath into Samuel’s mouth. He pumped on Samuel’s chest and gave another breath. He had forgotten the correct number for each action, but he performed the sequence just the same and repeated the cycle for he didn’t know how long and until he was pouring with sweat.

He thought he heard someone say, “Dawson, stop,” and then a hand squeezed his shoulder.

“Dawson, you can’t do anything more.”

It was Gyamfi talking. Dawson looked up at him and then down at Samuel.

He was dead. It was all over.

Dawson jumped up with fists clenched and cried out in the purest anguish. He hurled himself against the wall and then crumpled to the floor with his head in his hands. He didn’t make another sound.

“Inspector,” Gyamfi whispered, touching his arm. “Inspector Dawson, it wasn’t your fault, hear? You couldn’t have done anything wrong.”

D AWSON TOOK THE NEWSto the Boatengs. This was an ordeal he had to go through. He blamed himself for Samuel’s death, and he wanted the family’s pain to be his punishment. He wanted them to whip him with their fury and lash him with words that cut like barbed wire raked across the skin.

But it didn’t happen that way. Mrs. Boateng let out a single shriek of shock and collapsed. Mr. Boateng supported her, and she pressed her face into his chest and began to utter a high-pitched keen like a lost kitten crying for its mother. And all the children in the house stood and watched with big, round eyes.

Mr. Boateng said nothing. He stared unseeing at a point on the wall. He may have seemed without emotion, but Dawson saw where all the pain was. It was deep in those sad, bloodshot eyes.

“I’ll be outside if you need me,” Dawson said quietly.

He stood in front of the crumpled house and watched people going about their daily business. He wished he could start over again. He wished he could have forced Inspector Fiti to free Samuel for lack of evidence.