Kwei Quartey - Murder at Cape Three Points

Her eyes softened. “They meant everything to me. My father, Brian Smith-Aidoo, is Uncle Charles’s brother, but Auntie Fio and Uncle Charles really brought me up.”

Not uncommon in Ghana, where the extended family’s role is prominent, Dawson reflected, but in a murder case, it could be a crucial detail.

“How did that come about?” he asked.

“My mother is a schizophrenic,” she said matter-of-factly. “By the time I was eight, she had become so violent that my father could barely manage her. She particularly picked on me. Once she almost strangled me, and on another occasion she fractured my forearm by twisting it.” She winced, as if she were living through the experience again. “My father asked Uncle Charles and Auntie Fio if they would take care of me for a while. He kept my brother, Trevor, with him. Eventually he had my mother institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital in Manchester.”

“Manchester? Why there?”

“It’s her hometown. My mother is English. No way her family, or my father for that matter, would put her in the psychiatric hospital in Accra.” She grimaced. “Have you ever been inside there?”

“Once, while on a case.”

“Then you know how deplorable the conditions are. To say it’s medieval would be too kind. After my mother was sent to England, Daddy wanted me back, but by then I was almost thirteen and so attached to Auntie Fio and Uncle Charles, and vice versa. They didn’t want to give me up.” She shook her head with regret. “I believe that’s when the rivalry between Uncle Charles and my father started. Uncle Charles was protective and possessive of me. In the five years I was with him, Daddy didn’t come around that much, and so my uncle asked him in effect, ‘Where have you been all this time?’ ”

“Did you return to your dad?”

“Physically, but not in spirit. I was miserable with him. He didn’t give me a fraction of the love and warmth that Auntie Fio and Uncle Charles had given me. By fifteen, I was acting out-misbehaving, smoking, and all that mess. I was at Accra Girls’ High, and the headmistress told my father that if I didn’t straighten out, she would expel me. Again, he turned to Auntie and Uncle for help. They took me out of boarding and made me a day student. Uncle Charles took me to school every single day and Auntie brought me home when classes were over, keeping me in check, and yes, I did straighten out.”

“You must have,” he said. “You’re a doctor now.”

She smiled, clearly glad that her fate had been shaped this way. “All due to Uncle Charles and Auntie Fio. And I tell you all this not to bore you with my life story, but to show why they were so important, so precious to me.”

“I understand now. You said your father and his brother became rivals. This is a tough question, and I’m sorry to ask it, but I have to. Could your father have had anything to do with the murder of your aunt and uncle?”

“He doesn’t have passion or courage for anything, let alone murder. Seems odd to put it that way, but there it is.”

Doesn’t think much of her dad , Dawson thought but then neither did he of his.

“How did he react to your uncle’s death?”

“He was devastated. He went into deep mourning, as did I. This has been the most awful year of my life. Only two months before my uncle’s murder, another tragedy took place. You should know about it because it might have some bearing on the case.”

She slumped very slightly, as if a heavy load had been set upon her shoulders.

“Jason Sarbah is a name you will become familiar with,” she continued. “After Uncle’s death, Jason became the new director of corporate affairs at Malgam Oil. Uncle was Jason’s first cousin-same grandmother, Bessie Smith, but different grandfathers. Bessie was first married to a Tiberius Sarbah, whom she divorced for Robert E. Aidoo, which is how the Smith-Aidoo surname came about. Bessie gave the hyphenated name to Simon, her only son by the second marriage.”

“So, to get this clear in my mind,” Dawson said, “Bessie and Robert Smith-Aidoo are your great grandparents.”

“Yes, the Sarbah and Smith-Aidoo lines are connected through Bessie. Up until the time of his death, Uncle Charles worked for Malgam Oil as their director of corporate affairs. I didn’t know Jason Sarbah or much about him until the end of February, this year, when he approached me. I had just finished my national service and joined a private clinic in Takoradi. Jason and his wife, Sylvia, had a sixteen-year-old daughter called Angela who was very ill. In spite of multiple visits to several hospitals in Accra and Takoradi, doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They were watching Angela die. She was severely jaundiced, so her eyes turned yellow. She was losing weight every day and having unbearable abdominal pain. He brought her to see me. By then, he was in a state of despair.”

Dr. Smith-Aidoo’s face mirrored the anguish of the scenario she was describing.

“How terrible it must have been,” Dawson said. “The private clinic you mentioned-I assume it’s expensive?”

“Very,” she said, wincing. “It’s part of a worldwide chain called International Medical Services, or IMS, with branches all over Africa. It’s not a charity-doesn’t even pretend to be anything else but a for-profit company. You pay with credit or hard cash and the patients are expatriates and well-off Ghanaians. I did an initial evaluation of Angela, which was moderately expensive but still didn’t diagnose what she had.

“Jason was having difficulty coming up with the money even for that first medical work-up. I understand that at the time, he’d just started a real estate business that wasn’t doing very well, and I don’t believe his wife worked or made a lot of money. Angela was going to need a battery of tests and scans, but any movement forward depended on his paying for what had been done so far. Jason begged me to set up some kind of arrangement whereby his payment could be deferred. I asked the clinic administrator if that was possible, and her answer was quite firm. She said IMS doesn’t give out free lunches, and anyone who thought it did was not welcome. Someone in the administrative office called Jason and politely told him that if he couldn’t pay, he needn’t bother to return. I was appalled, but only five or six years out of medical school and brand new at the clinic, I didn’t feel at the time that I could argue on Jason’s behalf, although now I wish I had.”

She must be around thirty, thirty-one , Dawson thought, graduating from medical school at a very young twenty-five or so.

“And at around that time,” she continued, “something else happened that I wish had turned out differently. Jason went to Uncle Charles to ask for a loan, but Uncle turned him down.”

“Did he say why he refused Jason’s request?” Dawson asked.

“He didn’t see why Jason had to take Angela to the most expensive clinic in town. Jason tried to explain that he had been to several public hospitals, including Korle Bu at the very beginning of Angela’s illness back in January. Uncle’s advice was to take Angela back to Korle Bu and insist that they reinvestigate what was wrong with her.

“Soon after that, Jason accosted me one morning in the car park as I drove in to work, making an embarrassing scene. It was a combination of attacking me, saying I was letting his daughter die, and begging me for mercy. The security man had to escort him away. It was horrible-still haunts me. By the end of April, I had heard nothing from him, so I called him. He said he was back at Korle Bu Hospital with Angela. They had done an exploratory laparotomy and found that she had hepatocellular carcinoma. It’s very rare in children, and all of us had missed it. Angela was in hepatic coma at the time I spoke to Jason, and she died about ten days later.”