Ннеди Окорафор - Lagos Noir

Okoro dialed the number and spoke softly into the receiver, then turned back to Dorothy Parker. “Thank you, madam. Please excuse me.”

Emmanuel led him out of the room, through the kitchen, and across the garden to the servants’ quarters. As they walked Okoro turned to Emmanuel. Best to confront this head on, that’s how Sherlock would have handled it. A confession can be extracted without a beating, Okoro told himself.

“I think you know how your boss died,” he said. “What’s more, I think you were there when it happened.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emmanuel responded, not breaking his stride.

“How long were you having sex with Gordon Parker?”

Emmanuel stopped, his shoulders slumping, face down.

“I know. And I know that you know that I know,” Okoro said.

“You know nothing,” Emmanuel said in a choked whisper.

Okoro put his hand on Emmanuel’s shoulder. “Trust me, I know. I know because we are the same. Because I can tell. From your manner, from the faint traces of tiro around your eyes, from the way you looked at him, from the way she reacted to you. I know. Tell me what happened here, Emmanuel.”

The houseboy sank to his knees, tears running down his face.

“Confess to me and I will find a way to make it right for you. I know you didn’t kill Gordon. I suspect his wife did it. Now, I know you know homosexuality is against the law, but the bigger thing here is murder. No one will care about that if you just tell me what happened, what I need to convict her.”

Okoro hated himself for lying. The moment Emmanuel told him what had happened, he would become instrumental as a witness and his homosexuality would emerge. There was no easy way to solve this and protect the innocent. There was love in the way Emmanuel reacted when Gordon’s name was mentioned, more than he could say about Dorothy Parker. If anyone was the victim here, it was Emmanuel, and Gordon of course, but he was dead, so that didn’t matter so much.

“I don’t care about me! I care about him! About him! He is a good man, was a good man. If anyone finds out, this will destroy him. I can’t let that happen. I can’t. I love him.”

Emmanuel was crying now, shoulders heaving. The maids and other houseboys had gathered on the veranda of the servants’ quarters to watch with sad eyes.

“Go inside!” Okoro commanded them.

They went back inside and shut the door.

Okoro sat next to Emmanuel, facing the opposite direction. “Do you smoke?” he asked, holding out a cigarette.

Emmanuel shook his head.

“Quite right, good man. Filthy habit, really,” Okoro said, lighting one up. He smoked half of it next to the sobbing Emmanuel. He could see Dorothy Parker watching them from the French doors of the living room. Finally, he spoke. “So here is what I think happened: You both thought she had gone out and you were about to have sex in the living room. Gordon was on his knees with you in his mouth when she walked in on you. She reacted in shock and anger and hit Gordon in the back of the head with something. Many times, judging by the state of his head. You fled, and while you were gone she hid the murder weapon and called the police and tried to pin this on Bobo... Does that sound about right?”

Emmanuel nodded his head. “Except she knew. I think it was an ambush — like she knew,” he said between sobs, gulping for breath to force the words out. “She pretended to go out. Took the car. I was making steak, tenderizing the meat, when Gordon called me in. I use the base of a small axe to beat the meat. The same axe I use to cut through bone when I need to. It is very sharp. Anyway, she must have only gone to the end of the road because she was back so soon and surprised us. It all happened so fast.”

Okoro patted him on the back. “She used the meat

tenderizer?”

“Yes.”

Okoro nodded, thinking to himself that this explained both the wounds on Gordon and the cuts on Dorothy Parker’s hands. She must have hit Gordon repeatedly with the base of the axe until blood got on the handle, causing it to slip and nick her palms a few times.

“I don’t suppose we will ever find the murder weapon?”

“I threw it into the bay,” Emmanuel said.

“Of course you did.” Okoro thought about how hard all this must have been for Emmanuel. To cooperate with his lover’s killer to frame the poor chimpanzee. Could a chimpanzee even be arrested for murder? Charged? What were the laws with regard to animals that attacked and killed their owners? That would be the jurisdiction of Animal Control, not Homicide.

“I love him,” Emmanuel said again. “And he loved me too. Why couldn’t she let us be? She only loves that monkey, it’s unnatural.”

Okoro nodded. They sat in the grass for what seemed like a long time while Emmanuel collected himself. Okoro helped him up.

“Can I say goodbye to my wards before you arrest me?” Emmanuel asked.

“For what? You didn’t murder Gordon. Besides, what would be gained from all that scandal. It’s all quite messy, this whole situation.”

“So what happens now?” Emmanuel asked.

“Well, the coroner will be here soon to remove Gordon’s body. Say nothing to them. I’m going in to talk to your mistress.”

“But...”

“But what? The monkey did it. That’s what my report will say.”

Even Sherlock Holmes would have agreed with him on this decision, of that he was sure. Anyway, he had solved the crime and nobody was beaten to get a confession. In a manner of speaking, he had won. There would be other cases, less complicated in terms of victims and perpetrators, but for now his quiet victory would have to suffice.

Emmanuel remained silent. His eyes said it all.

Okoro headed back inside.

“Well?” Dorothy Parker said. “Are you done here?”

“Yes, I’m done, Mrs. Parker. My verdict is that the monkey did it. May Bobo and Gordon forgive us all.”

The last thing Okoro saw was Mrs. Dorothy Parker petting Bobo and whispering soothing sounds. As he walked down the gravel path, the coroner’s van pulled up.

“An unusual one, I hear,” the coroner said to Okoro.

“Yes, highly irregular,” Okoro replied. “Killer ape. That has to be a first.”

Back at the station, it was quiet as Detective Sergeant Okoro threaded the report sheet into the typewriter. This was one of those moments when he was grateful there was a line to toe.

Chris Abani,a Nigerian-born, award-winning poet and novelist, currently teaches at Northwestern University in Chicago. He is the recipient of a PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, a PEN/ Hemingway Award, and a Guggenheim Award.

Leye Adenleis a Nigerian writer whose debut novel, Easy Motion Tourist , set in Lagos, won the 2016 Prix Marianne. Leye has also appeared onstage in London in plays including Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again . He comes from a family of writers, the most famous of whom was his grandfather, Oba Adeleye Adenle I, a former king of Oshogbo in southwest Nigeria. Leye currently lives in London.

'Pemi Agudawrites short stories, a great number of which have been influenced by the chaotic city of Lagos, where she’s lived most of her life. Her short story “Caterer, Caterer” won the 2015 Writivism Short Story Prize.

A. Igoni Barrettwas born in Port Harcourt in 1979 and has lived in Eko (Lagos) since 2007. Most of the stories in his collection Love Is Power, or Something Like That were set in the fictional city of Poteko. His first ​novel, Blackass , which was published by Graywolf Press in 2016, was the first time he wrote the city of Lagos into fiction.