Kwei Quartey - Gold of Our Fathers

“Good morning, sir,” he said, after Dawson had introduced himself. “You are welcome. We are expecting you.”

Dawson came in and gaped at the size of the residence. It was two stories and it must have had four bedrooms at least.

“This is where we’re going to stay?” he asked Haruna, barely able to believe it.

“Oh, no,” the watchman said apologetically. “Some tenants are already occupying it.”

Dawson felt like a fool as he saw the small house they were approaching behind the mansion. He should have known it. Of course Gifty wasn’t giving them a mansion.

“Is the foreman here?” he asked Haruna.

“Please, he have gone to church, and he say if you can wait for him small.”

“Small” could mean anything. An hour, a day. It depended just where the man fell on the religious spectrum from casual churchgoer to obsessive worshipper.

The guesthouse was tiny-smaller than Dawson’s house in Accra. The stack of tiles in front of the guesthouse was both good news and bad: materials had arrived, but the work hadn’t started.

The watchman unlocked the front door. The first room was the sitting room, with two battered, dusty chairs, a sinking sofa, some side tables, and an old-style, cathode-ray television. The air conditioner high up on the wall had wires poking ominously out of it. Dawson stepped-not that many steps-to the kitchen on the left. The space where the stove was meant to be was empty. The sink was caked with grime, and when Dawson tried the tap, he got nothing but a blast of air.

“Ewurade,” he muttered.

The watchman politely waited for Dawson as he continued his inspection of the house with growing dismay. In the bathroom, the mildewed shower stall was waiting for tiling-hence the stack outside-the new toilet wasn’t installed, and the washbasin was cracked straight through the middle.

The smaller of the two bedrooms-and both were small-had a lopsided bed supported on one side by a couple of cement blocks. When Dawson put his hand in the middle of the mattress it sagged and released a puff of dust. He sneezed twice as he opened the louvers of the windows. As he had predicted, the mosquito netting was clogged with dirt.

Feeling angrier by the minute with the previous renters, the foreman, Gifty, and everyone in general, Darko stood helplessly in the middle of the floor and looked around. It was a spectacular disaster.

His jaw tense, he speed dialed Christine, and she answered on the second ring. “Hi, sweetie.”

“This house is a mess, Christine,” Dawson said hotly. “I mean, this is not fit for human habitation.”

“Oh, dear. Is it that bad?”

“No, it’s worse.”

“Hold on. Mama is right here. Let me ask her about it.”

Dawson groaned inwardly. Just his luck. He heard the back-and-forth exchange between the two women and then his wife came back on the line.

“Mama is going to call Mr. Nyarko. That’s the name of the foreman. Are you there right now?”

“Yes. This Nyarko is supposed to be back soon, but I can’t afford to stand around waiting for people, Christine. I’m working on the case and I don’t have time for all this nonsense.”

“I know, I know-”

“I mean, has your mother been monitoring the progress in the house or not?”

“She has, ” Christine said, her tone beginning to mirror his frustration. “She’s been calling him all along, and he’s been telling her things were progressing.”

“Well, he’s a liar,” Dawson said sullenly. “No wonder he disappeared. He doesn’t want to see me. He’s probably run away with your mother’s money.”

“She hasn’t paid him yet.”

“How can she not have paid him yet?” Dawson said incredulously. “No wonder he hasn’t finished the work! You know how it is with these guys: they do the jobs that pay the money up front.”

“Dark,” Christine said, sounding exasperated, “just… just go and solve your cases and let us take care of it, okay? Relax. We’ll get it sorted out.”

“We can’t have the boys come to this mess,” he went on, as if she hadn’t just tried to reassure him. “It’s bad enough we’re moving them out of their school and their neighborhood-”

“Dark, I get it, I get it. Go about your business. I’ll call you this evening.”

Dawson ended the call in a high state of annoyance. Why, why was it always the case that whenever and wherever his mother-in-law was involved, things were guaranteed to go badly?

The watchman had tactfully gone outside, no doubt uncomfortable with Dawson’s spirited exchange on the phone.

“This is my number,” Dawson said to him, writing it down on a sheet of paper in his pocket notebook and ripping it out. “Please tell Mr. Nyarko to call me as soon as possible.”

“Yes, please.”

One of Uncle Joe’s drivers came round with a dark blue Toyota Corolla. Dawson thanked him and got in, adjusting the seat to accommodate his long legs. The odometer read 130,000 miles, but except for a few rattles emanating from the rear somewhere, the little car felt quite solid. It was going on eleven now. Dawson wanted to get as much out of this Kumasi trip as possible, and he thought of a way he could do it. He scrolled to Akua Helmsley’s name on his phone and called.

“Good morning, Chief Inspector Dawson,” she answered cheerfully.

“Good morning, Miss Helmsley. I’m in Kumasi at the moment.”

“Oh,” she said with interest. “Anything I can help you with?”

“Do you know of an American man called Mr. Chuck?” he asked. “I was told that he has a mining site adjacent to Bao Liu’s.”

“You mean Chuck Granger, from the beautiful state of Utah. He was on this reality show last year called Tropical Gold on the Explorer Channel, which is out of the UK-all about his adventures in gold mining in Ghana.”

Dawson frowned. “Really?” He’d never heard of this.

“Yes. After we- The Guardian , that is-ran a story on it, the Ghana government got embarrassed because it gave the appearance of sanctioning illegal mining right under their noses-not exactly the sort of thing that would look good on the Mines and Natural Resources Minister’s CV.”

“It isn’t,” Dawson agreed. “What happened next?”

“Well, the ministry made a big show of hunting the crew down, as they put it-which is a joke since it was common knowledge the crew were being put up by the Explorer Channel on the top floor of the Golden Tulip Hotel, where I’m staying myself. Then they made a big fuss of kicking them out of the country-Granger included-‘in order to safeguard the interests of our dear motherland,’ or some such nonsense. And guess what? A few months later Granger comes right back and continues his mining minus the cameras.”

“Only in Ghana , ” Dawson said bitterly. He wanted to be more furious, but sometimes, righteous anger could be exhausting. “I suppose from the minister’s point of view it was, ‘How much is it worth to you to return, Mr. Granger?’”

“Exactly. Listen, Chief Inspector, since you’re in Kumasi, why not swing by my hotel and I’ll show you the Tropical Gold website plus all the information I’ve gathered on Granger. I’m down at the tennis courts. You can meet me there. Do you play, by any chance?”

“Tennis?”

She laughed. “Yes, Chief Inspector. Tennis.”

“No. I don’t go around in tennis circles.”

“Nor do I, actually.” She laughed again. “And I can’t play either.”

“I will see you as soon as possible, given traffic.”

“I’ll be waiting, Chief Inspector.”

The tennis courts were shaded and cool. Akua Helmsley was relaxing on the patio to one side in a reclining chair, wearing shorts that showed off her dangerously slim, smooth legs. Dawson firmly avoided looking, or even stealing a glance. She moved from the recliner to a table so that she could sit beside him with her iPad.