Kwei Quartey - Gold of Our Fathers

“Did you notice any excavator tracks coming from Mr. Chuck’s site over to your side?” Dawson asked Kudzo.

“No, please.” He hesitated. “Please, when you are returning the excavator to the parking spot, you can go in reverse and drag the bucket of the excavator on the ground. That will clean the tracks.”

Dawson was intrigued that Kudzo was suggesting how the crime could have been committed while denying he did it

“Where did you sleep Thursday night?” Dawson asked Kudzo.

“In Dunkwa. At the house of my mate’s father.”

“One of the mates who works with you at the mine?”

“No, please. A different one.”

“Can he confirm you were at the house all night?”

“Yes, please. If you like, I can give you his number. His name is Ekaw.”

Dawson appreciated that unexpected display of assertiveness. “Thank you.”

Kudzo flashed the number to him; Dawson dialed it and put the phone on speaker. Ekaw answered promptly. Dawson explained who he was and why he was calling. Kudzo greeted his friend to confirm he was indeed there.

“Hold on one moment,” Dawson said. He took the phone off speaker and left the room with it, shutting the door behind him. “Ekaw, I am now speaking to you in private. Kudzo cannot hear what we are saying. Did you sleep at your usual place Thursday night?”

“Yes, please.” Ekaw’s vocal timber was steady and resonant-a good radio voice, should he ever choose that career.

“Who was with you?”

“My friend Ibrahim and Kudzo and my family.”

“Did Kudzo sleep there the whole night?”

“Yes, please.”

“At any time, did you see or hear him leaving the house?”

“No, please.”

“What time did you wake up, and what time did he wake up?”

“We wake at the same time. Five thirty.”

“Is it possible for Kudzo to leave the house without your knowing?”

“Please, I don’t think so,” he said definitively. “With my mother and father and my brothers and sisters, there are ten of us in the house. Someone will ask him where he is going. On top of that, the door to the house makes a lot of noise when you open and close it.”

“Okay.” Dawson ended the call with thanks, put his head inside the door, and beckoned Obeng outside for a quick confab. He told the sergeant the results of the call. “What do you think?”

“Well, maybe he and this Ekaw are in it together,” Obeng suggested.

“Maybe, but let’s go back first to look at motive. Can we see any reason why Kudzo would kill Bao Liu? We’ve heard that Bao was sometimes tight with money and didn’t always pay promptly, but is that good enough? I don’t think so.”

“In fact,” Obeng said, cracking a smile, “I think that has happened to many of us.”

“Amen to that,” Dawson agreed. “I know you didn’t have the benefit of hearing Ekaw answer my questions, but the way he did so satisfies me. I don’t think he was lying about anything, and so I feel confident that Kudzo has established his alibi-at least for now. If something changes, we have his phone number and Ekaw’s as well, and we’ll track him down as needed.”

“So, we should release him?” Obeng said.

“We have nothing to hold him on. But on his release, warn him to stay accessible to us.”

“Yes, sir.” Obeng appeared both doubtful and hesitant.

“Something wrong?” Dawson asked.

“Please, it’s just that… these galamsey guys, they can’t be trusted. It’s so early in the investigation and as soon as we release him, he will bolt and we will never be able to get in touch with him again.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“Please, if we can hold him at least until tomorrow evening in case of any new developments in the next twenty-four hours.”

Dawson nodded. He didn’t see anything wrong with the sergeant’s reasoning, and it was always good to go along with a junior officer’s suggestion if it was a good one. “Okay, we’ll do that. Thank you for thinking it through.”

As Dawson returned to the room, he felt as if he were missing something. He searched for it in his brain and found it. The American miner .

“This Mr. Chuck you mentioned,” he said to Kudzo, “the one with the mining site next to you, was everything peaceful between him and Bao?”

Kudzo clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Not at all. Terrible. They used to quarrel all the time. Bao always went to Mr. Chuck and tell him that he is trespassing on Bao’s land; then Mr. Chuck say, ‘Fock you, moddafocka, get outa here before I kill you.’”

That could be empty bluster, or it could be serious. At any rate, it was clear that Bao and Mr. Chuck did not get along. The question was whether Chuck had hated the Chinese man enough to kill him.

Early Sunday morning, Dawson finally had a clear enough schedule to pay a visit to the Kumasi guesthouse he and his family would be occupying, God willing. Later on, in the afternoon, he would return to Obuasi to interview Kudzo one more time. He had no directions to Gifty’s house, but he was to contact her Uncle Joe once he got into Kumasi. Uncle Joe owned a car rental business in the city.

Dawson took a packed tro-tro from Obuasi, arriving at the terminal Kumasi stop at Ketejia Market. Normally it was teeming with shoppers, vendors, head porters, and truck pushers, but this was early on a Sunday: everyone was getting ready for church-except Dawson, apparently. Enjoying the relative quiet of the morning, he called Joe. No one responded, but it was only seven o’clock, so Dawson decided to wait a little while and try again. He bought his choice of soft drink, a cold Guinness Malta on Asomfo Road and then, leaning against a storefront pillar, he watched smartly dressed churchgoers hurrying by, Bibles in hand. Dawson could hear hymns being sung from the red brick and white trim Presbyterian church up the street.

He thought about Kudzo Gablah and Wei Liu: two people worlds apart, both seeking gold fortune for themselves and family left behind, and both “misconducting” themselves-the Chinese man taking a swing at a police officer, and the Ghanaian running away from one. In the end, they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble because both were effectively off the suspect list-that is, if you could call it a list.

Dawson needed to find this Mr. Chuck, who, according to Kudzo, had threatened Bao’s life while calling him derogatory names. If Chuck had no alibi, he merited further investigation. Land disputes, an infamous source of friction in Ghana, must be a thousand times more deadly where gold is involved.

His phone rang. It was Uncle Joe, who apologized that he wasn’t going to be at the guesthouse, but the foreman was there. Joe had a squeaky voice that reminded Dawson of a cartoon character. Before ending the call, Dawson had an idea. “Please, Uncle Joe, I don’t have any transportation here in Kumasi, and I have been using a taxi so far. Can I rent a small, cheap vehicle from you?”

“No need to rent,” Joe said. “I have an old Toyota Corolla you can use. It’s ten years old but still going strong.”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate it very much.”

“No problem at all. I will have one of my drivers drop off the car at the guesthouse.”

After tortuous directions that Uncle Joe modified several times during multiple back-and-forth phone calls, the taxi arrived at Gifty’s guesthouse in the quiet, up-and-coming neighborhood of Patase, where new houses surrounded by high walls and electrified fences appeared to be sprouting about as fast as they were in Accra. Dawson paid the fare and rang the bell at the side of a black gate. A tubby man in his thirties opened up. He turned out to be the watchman. His name was Haruna, a Muslim-so no church for him.