Kwei Quartey - Murder at Cape Three Points

“Oh,” Dawson said. “I’m sorry.”

She lowered her head and closed her eyes for a moment of pain that clearly still haunted her. “I am too. I failed Jason and his wife, and I failed their daughter. I could have made a stronger appeal to my administrator, or called someone at Korle Bu.”

“Would it have made a difference in the end, Doctor?”

“Perhaps not, but the point is that I didn’t try hard enough to save a girl who was the same age I was when Uncle Charles and Auntie Fiona rescued me from ruin. I wonder what that says about me.”

With the last comment, she was almost talking to herself, and Dawson felt uncomfortable, as though he were eavesdropping. He had never witnessed such self-recrimination in a doctor. Like policemen, physicians rarely accepted blame for anything. He wanted to comfort her, or at least empathize, but he was afraid he might sound patronizing.

“Did Jason ever get back in touch with you?” he asked her.

“He didn’t call me, but I reached him by phone once. I told him how sorry I was. All he said was, ‘I hope it never happens to you,’ and he hung up.”

“Meaning, ‘I hope you never lose a loved one like I have?’ ”

She contemplated. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“Could he have killed your aunt and uncle?”

Dr. Smith-Aidoo took a breath and released a long, contemplative sigh. “It’s difficult to accuse him while he has suffered the same kind of loss as I have, but…”

“The bitterness that comes with grief can be powerful.”

“Yes. You read my mind.” She shook her head. “But no, I can’t in good conscience accuse him.”

“I understand,” Dawson said. “I was curious how you came to work on the Malgam oil rig. It’s not a typical job for a physician, is it?”

“No, it’s not. After Angela’s death, I left IMS immediately with a bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them again. I was looking around for something completely different to do-a new environment to escape to, where I didn’t have to hear all the talk about Angela and what had happened. Tadi is a small place. People gossip. Uncle Charles understood where I was coming from, and when he heard that a position on the Malgam rig as medic had unexpectedly opened up, he recommended it to me. I was overqualified since they usually use EMTs, but I was willing to take the cut in pay. In fact, I was glad to do it, maybe as a penance for the IMS tragedy. I pestered Malgam, and Uncle Charles added pressure. That’s how I got the job.”

“You must have really wanted it,” Dawson commented. “Isn’t that like the Inspector General of Police taking the position of a sergeant?”

She laughed. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it. That didn’t matter to me, though. I’m still an MD, no matter what.”

“How soon after your uncle’s death did Jason Sarbah take over as Malgam’s Director of Corporate Affairs?”

“About two months. In September, the CEO of Malgam, Roger Calmy-Rey, met Jason at the funeral, and they talked. Jason’s work history-first as a bank manager and then as a solo real estate agent-impressed Roger, and the story of the death of Jason’s daughter touched him. He offered Jason a crack at the position, they interviewed him, and he was successful.”

“Is it possible that Calmy-Rey gave him the job as a consolation?”

“Kind of a gesture of sympathy?” she asked. “I doubt it. Malgam Oil comes first in Roger’s life. He’s not going to jeopardize it by hiring someone unqualified. No, Jason is a very bright man. I don’t doubt his abilities.”

“Have you spoken to him since the time he told you on the phone that he hoped the death of a loved one never happened to you?”

“Months after the murder, we met once at an event in Accra. I told him I was sorry, and he gave me his condolences in turn.”

Dawson saw there was a lot to think about here: Jason Sarbah had been anguished and angered by his daughter’s death and probably still was, but he was also an ambitious man looking for a lucrative career. Was the murder of his cousin Charles a kind of two for one-get revenge and get his job? No, that seemed too neat, like an attractively wrapped box containing nothing.

Dawson became aware that Dr. Smith-Aidoo had been watching him ponder. “When do you return to Takoradi?” he asked her.

“Tomorrow. When do you expect to get there?”

“Tuesday afternoon or evening.”

“I will call you Wednesday morning sometime.”

They stood up.

“It warmed my heart to see your boy doing so well, Inspector,” she said. “I think it’s a good omen for the way the investigation will go.”

Dawson hoped she was right. In his experience, omens were overrated.

ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, AFTER Dawson had spent time with Hosiah at the hospital, he rode his aging motorbike to CID Headquarters on Ring Road East. It was a seven-story, ailing building the color of dirty sand. It looked no more significant than an old apartment building. Its appearance didn’t match its impressive name, Criminal Investigations Department.

Except for the ground floor charge office where a certain amount of chaos was standard, CID was quiet on the weekends. Dawson took the narrow stairway to the fourth floor where he let himself into the detective’s room, greeting the only other person there, a detective sergeant preparing for a big court case on Monday.

On most days, the room was stifling, but today a soft breeze came through the louvered windows on either side. Only senior officers, assistant superintendent, and above, got air-conditioned rooms. Junior ones, from constable to chief inspector, did not. If Dawson ever wanted to have the high privilege of an air-conditioned room one day, he was going to have to knuckle down, comply with Lartey’s orders and solve this case.

He sat at his desk to examine the Smith-Aidoos’ case docket, whose front cover was the standard appearance of all such police records.

DOCKET GHANA POLICE FORCE

Date of offense Monday, 9 July/Tuesday, 10 July

Complainant Sapphire, Smith-Aidoo, MD

Principal Witness(es)

Sapphire, Smith-Aidoo, MD

George Findlay (Offshore Oil Installation Manager, Malgam)

Michael Glagah (Safety Officer, Malgam Oil)

Clifford Stewart (Crane Operator, Malgam Oil)

Ghana Navy Service personnel

Accused ____________________

Offense HOMICIDE

Victim(s) Charles Smith-Aidoo, Fiona Smith-Aidoo

He opened the folder and flinched. Front and center was a printed image of Charles Smith-Aidoo’s severed head stuck to the end of a gnarled, wooden pole like a gruesome lollipop. It looked both real and unreal, like a botched waxworks beginning to swell up and melt in the heat. The mouth gaped. The left eye was partially open, and the right eye had been removed. Dawson imagined the murderer holding the head firmly while pressing and screwing it down onto the erected stake. He shuddered and began to feel nauseated. Cutting off a person’s limbs was vile, but decapitation crossed a line into a realm of brutality that he could not understand.

Charles’s headless body had been propped up against one side of the canoe’s interior, dark irregular bloodstains around the neckline of his shirt. The murderer seemed to have mounted a display for maximum, sickening impact. Fiona Smith-Aidoo’s body was stretched along the floor of the canoe behind her husband’s. It appeared crumpled, more carelessly thrown-less staged than his.