Kwei Quartey - Murder at Cape Three Points

“You do?”

“As usual, you don’t give yourself enough credit,” she chided. “You’ve done several things at once. You’ve found Tetteh’s true murderer and now an innocent man-that poor Silas-will go free. You’ve uncovered a corruption scheme, and hopefully we can now clean out these thieves at the top.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“You’re going to be all right, Dark. You know you get like this during a case. Come home soon, okay? We miss you.”

“I will.”

HE GAVE UP the idea of sleep and went to the sitting room where he pored over his notes page by page from the very beginning-that Tuesday the canoe containing two corpses drifted into the restricted area around the Thor Sterke , and not far away, two men in another canoe watched. They were not fishing-not on a Tuesday. They must have been the murderers, brazenly watching the scene of the crime. Who had the kind of rage needed to behead Charles Smith-Aidoo? Dawson thought about all the people he had met. Beautiful Sapphire Smith-Aidoo, the Sarbahs, DeSouza, Cardiman, Calmy-Rey, Clay, Forjoe, Gamal… perhaps even cousin Abe. Yes, he found himself reconsidering that painful possibility. A sign of just how desperate I am , he thought. What or whom had Dawson missed? A motive somewhere, an alibi, an opportunity?

He wandered outside wearing only his briefs. The cool night air bathed his skin. He looked up at the sky. The streetlamp on the corner had gone out, but Takoradi’s city lights meant it was still not dark enough to see the Milky Way. His favorite secondary school science teacher had once told him, “It’s there, but you can’t always see it.”

Just like this case , he thought. The murderer is there. I just can’t see him.

How long would it take to travel to one of those Milky Way stars? He didn’t know, but it would be a terrific alibi.

“I couldn’t have murdered the Smith-Aidoos,” he said aloud. “I was traveling to the Milky Way at the time.”

And that’s when he realized what he had missed.

ON THE WAY, Dawson called Superintendent Hammond to tell him where he was going. The superintendent told him to be careful. Dawson had the taxi drop him off well before Richard Sarbah’s house and he walked the rest of the way. When he was close, he ducked behind a neem bush. A single light sat on top of Sarbah’s gate. Forjoe was on duty as watchman, sitting not far from the spot the plumbers had been working on the pipe.

A stack of wooden boards stood to one side of the hole that dipped underneath the wall, presumably to cover the pit if it rained. Dawson intended to use it to get into the yard on the other side of the wall, but he would never be able to do that with Forjoe guarding the place. He was hoping Forjoe would get up and take a patrol around the sides and the back of the house.

For almost an hour, nothing happened. Then Forjoe stood up and stretched.

Come on , Dawson thought. Move.

Forjoe went off to the end of the wall to Dawson’s left, unzipped his fly, and stepped around the corner to urinate. Dawson moved quickly, sprinting on his toes. He went head first inside the hole. Feet first, he might well end up stuck. Either way, he found little space for both him and the water pipe. He stopped moving as he heard Forjoe’s footfall. He was returning. This could be a problem. The next piss break might not be for hours.

In the distance, he heard the rumble of a diesel truck coming closer. It might be a noisy bola truck carrying its trash to a dump somewhere. He hoped it was, and that it was coming this way. The ground trembled as the truck transmitted its impact over potholes. The ear-jarring sound of the diesel engine drew closer. Dawson began to move forward. As the truck reached its crescendo, he pulled his way through, coming out on the other side of the wall with dirt in his face and grit in his mouth. His head popped up over the top of the hole and he looked around. No one was in the yard. He pulled himself the rest of the way out and stayed still for a moment, listening for any sign that Forjoe had heard anything. Dawson heard him yawn languidly and mutter something to himself. The coast was clear.

The sitting room was in darkness. Dawson quickly shone his flashlight beam through the window to confirm no one was inside. The glass portion of the window was open, leaving the screen to let in a breeze while keeping out the mosquitoes. One whined in his ear, and he swiped it away. He took out his pocketknife, cut a small slit in the netting, put his hand in and found the latch, which he pulled back. The window opened with a small squeak that seemed loud enough for the whole world to hear.

Dawson vaulted through the window and stayed motionless for a while. He heard a rhythmic, machine-like buzzing, which after a moment he realized was Richard snoring from a room around the corner. Please be a heavy sleeper. Dawson slowly shut the window behind him, wincing at the squeak.

Pointing his flashlight beam downward, he moved to the dining area next to the kitchen, where he opened the sideboard door and took out the four hefty photo albums that Richard had shown him on the first visit.

Dawson turned the thick pages of the first book, scanning the photographs as quickly as possible with the flashlight. He shook his head. This could take him half the night.

Each photo in the album was highly posed, some with Richard as a boy-similar to the framed photo on the sideboard-and some without. Also featured was the beautiful Bessie with her radiant skin and dark eyes-all before she married Robert, of course.

Dawson got through the first album and paused listen to the snoring, making sure there was no telltale change in the pattern that might indicate Richard was stirring. For a moment it stopped, and Dawson began to plan an escape if it became necessary. But the drone started up again, so he began on the second album. Interesting black-and-white and sepia photographs of various people… but still no sign of what he was looking for.

It was on the second-to-last page, as he was just about to give up, that Dawson found it. The photograph was remarkable for the period in that the two people involved, Richard and his father, Tiberius, were interacting with each other in a way quite unlike the stiff, unsmiling poses of all the other images. Here, Richard, at the age of about seven, was looking up toward Tiberius, who was smartly dressed in a vest and white shirt with long, broad lapels, and a dark tie. Probably around forty at the time, he was in turn looking down and regarding his son with a hint of an affectionate smile. It was far more of a candid shot than anything else Dawson had seen so far-perhaps a moment deliberately captured by a visionary photographer, or quite by accident.

The delight that was so evident on Richard’s face was over an item his father was dangling from his fingers. The glinting object was round, made of silver with a dark center.

“There it is,” Dawson whispered. “The pocket watch.”

DAWSON HEARD RICHARD GRUNT and then mutter something. Was he having a dream? The mattress creaked as if he were sitting up. Dawson started to move toward the window, but stopped as he heard Richard’s footfall because he realized he would never get there without being discovered.

The refrigerator was somewhat pulled out from the wall. Dawson thought he could fit in the space, but for one panicked moment as he squeezed in, he thought he had made a mistake. He pushed out all the air in his chest to flatten himself further and moved all the way into the corner. The loud background hum of the refrigerator drowned out any rustle of his clothing against the wall.

The kitchen lights came on and Richard opened the refrigerator door and pulled something out. Dawson heard his rhythmic glottal sound as he took a drink-Dawson assumed water. He hardly dared to breathe. The heat from the back of the refrigerator was beginning to make him sweat.