Kwei Quartey - Murder at Cape Three Points

Hammond rubbed his forehead slowly as he tapped the bottom of his pen repeatedly on his desk.

“I wanted to steer you away from the Tetteh affair,” he said at last, lowering his voice. “So yes, when I told you that the Lawrence Tetteh in Smith-Aidoo’s phone wasn’t the same one as the Goilco CEO, it wasn’t true. Now I regret handling it that way, but I don’t regret the intention behind it. I was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me? From whom, or what, sir?”

“The Tetteh murder is a no-go area.” His voice dropped even lower. “Someone high up in government is involved.”

“Silas is just a scapegoat, then,” Dawson said. “He didn’t commit the murder.”

Locking eyes with Dawson, the superintendent said nothing, but his expression gave the answer.

“Who in the government wanted Tetteh dead?” Dawson asked softly.

“Tetteh was honest to the very last pesewa , and he was ready to expose anything he considered immoral or fraudulent. That’s why so many people hated him. They say he was intending to blow the whistle on some corrupt dealings between an MP and the oil companies.”

“Who is ‘they,’ and how do you know this, sir?”

“I have a contact. I can’t give you a name.”

“Who is the corrupt MP?”

Hammond pressed his lips together and shook his head very firmly. “Look, Dawson, I don’t need to give you every detail. It’s better for you that I don’t. All I’m trying to do is make you understand that you should leave the Tetteh business alone. It’s too dangerous.”

“There’s a cover-up, and you want us to go along with it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Hammond said impatiently, turning his palm up. “I’m saying we don’t need to get involved at all. The Bureau of National Intelligence officially has the case, so let’s just confine ourselves to the Smith-Aidoo murders. Leave Tetteh’s alone. Don’t get mixed up in things that can get you in trouble. This is no time to jeopardize your career.

“Now about the other matter. I realize I have been treating you badly. I’ve never had a case for which a petition was made. My cases solved rate is high, and I suppose I was too prideful. I apologize to you.”

He wants to be on my good side now , Dawson thought. What a difference a good threat makes. “It’s okay, sir. Thank you.”

“Is there anything I or ASP Seidu can help you with?”

“No, sir. Thank you. I’m waiting for Chikata to return from Axim.”

“Very good.” As Dawson stood up to leave, Hammond said. “Please keep this conversation strictly between us.”

Dawson couldn’t promise that far. “I’ll do my best to, sir.”

He left the room quickly to avoid making more of a commitment. He hadn’t yet decided what to do. The fundamental question he had been facing about whether the Tetteh and Smith-Aidoo cases were connected was even more pressing because now, there was the smell of a cover-up. If it wasn’t possible to solve one murder without solving the other, then Dawson could not avoid “getting mixed up” with Tetteh’s case, as Hammond had put it.

Under a flame tree, he stood pondering which MP could be involved in a corruption scheme with the oil companies. Technically, any of them. However, the most likely were those with direct dealings. He began checking off as many ministerial posts as he could remember: Finance, Environment Science and Technology, Lands and Natural Resources, Interior… For a moment, he drew a blank until a thought hit him like a brick to the head. Back at the Raybow Hotel when Dawson had met with Sapphire to talk, she had told him that Terence Amihere, the Minister of Energy, was the BNI director’s half brother. Dawson now saw a possible scenario. An oil company was paying Amihere a kickback to allow them to bypass regulations and cut environmental corners. When Tetteh took over the leadership of Goilco, he got wind of this corrupt scheme and confronted Amihere, who got scared of being exposed and turned to his brother at BNI. They come up with a plan to quickly and cleanly kill Tetteh. Either Amihere’s people or the BNI could carry out the assassination. The BNI director, through some wrangling at the top echelons, takes over the case from CID and pins the murder on poor Silas.

Then where did Charles come in? Suppose Tetteh talked to him as well, telling him what was going on. Would Charles be a danger to Amihere as well? Possibly. If the oil company involved in the kickback is a Malgam Oil competitor, it could be in Malgam’s interest to expose the corruption. Or, perhaps Charles tried to blackmail Amihere after having learned about the corruption scheme.

Dawson nodded to himself, so deep in thought that he had become unaware of his surroundings. Questions remained, however. Why was the signature in Tetteh’s murder so different from that of the Smith-Aidoos? Did the BNI stage it to look like some kind of bizarre ritual sacrifice?

Second, why didn’t the BNI wrestle the Smith-Aidoo case away from the CID the way they had done the Tetteh murder? Probably because they simply couldn’t, despite their efforts. Dawson saw Chief Superintendent Lartey’s possible hand in this. Lartey detested the BNI director and over his dead body would he have allowed yet another case to go to the Bureau.

Third, who had put pressure on Hammond to stay clear of anything to do with the Tetteh investigation? Most likely a BNI person, but it was possible that someone high up in the police service could be involved in the scenario Dawson was proposing. That worried him, because if he was going to expose the BNI and the web extended into the police force, then he was going up against two very large and powerful organizations that could crush him to pieces.

If someone had been watching Dawson from a distance, they would have seen a worried man with his hands in his pockets and his head bent in concentration. Every once in a while, he nodded or shook his head, muttering to himself. He looked like a madman.

AS HE RETURNED TO Takoradi in a taxi, Dawson received a call from Chikata. He was back from Axim again and still with no interesting news. He had interviewed three members of FOAX to no avail. It appeared that this was a dead end. Dawson was sorry that Chikata hadn’t hit any leads, but it had been a good exercise for him. Dawson told him he would stop by the hotel in about twenty minutes, but as he ended the call, he received a text from Sapphire that she had left a pen drive with Gamal for Dawson to pick up. Instead of going to the hotel, Dawson asked the taxi driver to go straight through Shippers Circle to Beach Road. The gate to the Smith-Aidoos’ house was open, and Gamal had the pen drive ready and waiting.

DAWSON WALKED INTO Chikata’s room and held the pen drive out to him.

“Massa, what’s on it?”

“I got it from the doctor,” Dawson said. “I’m hoping it has some information about her uncle that will help us.”

They sat on the love seat and perched the laptop on the coffee table in front of them. Chikata opened up the drive and went through the files. One PowerPoint detailed recent oil discoveries in African countries. The rest was a collection of photographs taken at different events focusing on oil production in Ghana.

“ ‘First oil,’ ” Chikata said, reading the caption below the image of the President of Ghana symbolically turning the wheel that had opened up the valve for the maiden flow of oil. The caption below another photograph described Roger Calmy-Rey and Charles meeting with the local press and the Parliamentary Committee on Energy Policy.

Dawson clicked through, coming to a set of images taken at a black tie event that Calmy-Rey had attended with his senior management team.