Kwei Quartey - Gold of Our Fathers

“It can’t wait for a magistrate’s approval, madam,” Dawson said. That tedious process could take a day or more. “By that time, we may have to release the suspects.”

She sighed. “I’m in a meeting right now. We are about to interview Commander Longdon. I will call you as soon as I’m done.”

“Um, madam, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to do it immediately,” Dawson said in his best suppliant voice, “I would appreciate it, because actually I’m on the way to you now and will be there in about fifteen minutes.”

Manu said something under her breath that Dawson didn’t quite hear. “All right,” she said, defeated. “Hurry up.”

Asase drove the police jeep, Dawson sat in the front next to him, and the Lius sat in the backseat. They arrived at Wei’s house, and David let the vehicle into the front yard of the house, watching with curiosity as the group alighted, including the Lius in handcuffs.

The warrant was for the entire premises, both inside and outside the house, but they would start with inside. Asase and Dawson guided the prisoners to the sofa in the sitting room and they sat down.

“We are examining all pieces of electronic equipment,” Dawson told Asase. “Search the bedroom for any computer, laptop, tablet, phone, and bring them out here if you find any. I will start on these.”

Asase disappeared into the bedroom. The sitting room center table held Wei’s Samsung tablet, an iPad, two Xiaomi phones, and a laptop, which Dawson asked Wei to turn on and access with his password. Dawson looked at the browser history, which showed sites selling mining equipment, from large machines like excavators to smaller items such as sluice boxes.

On the Samsung, Dawson found Chinese news sites and a few for downloading Chinese movies, but the history was otherwise uninteresting. One of the phones was inoperable, and the other had an insignificant browsing history. The iPad was pretty new and had little on it besides the software that came with it.

Asase came out of the bedroom with another mobile phone and put it on the table. It looked newer and sleeker than the other two.

“Which of these phones do you use?” Dawson asked Wei.

He pointed at the newest one, and Dawson asked him to open up to messages. But Wei had the phone set to Chinese, and Dawson had no idea what the messages said.

Dawson hadn’t found what he wanted. He and Asase looked through the kitchen as well, to no avail.

“Let’s go outside,” Dawson said. “We’ll take the suspects with us.”

The small wooden shed behind which Dawson had hidden after following Lian into the yard seemed inconsequential, but it was all that was left to search.

The door was padlocked, but the latch was flimsy, coming apart with Dawson’s firm tug. The shed’s interior was musty and damp. Barely enough to fit one person, the space was filled with electronic waste: two old TVs, circuit boards, a couple of discarded laptops and desktop computers, keyboards, and the skeletons of three vintage flip phones-nothing like what Dawson had imagined when he first saw the shed.

Leaving the others clustered around the door, he stepped in and moved some of the clutter aside, stirring up a puff of dust. He sneezed twice as he sifted through the piles of discarded equipment on the floor. Nothing of any use there. He transferred his gaze upward to a listing shelf containing a ball of tangled copper wires, which he took down. Behind it was a padlocked, grayish-blue lockbox. It stood out because it was much newer than anything else in the shed and nowhere near as dusty.

Dawson took it down and tried the lid without success. “Whose is this?” he asked Wei. “Where is the key?”

Wei shrugged. “I don’ know.”

Dawson didn’t believe him. He examined the box, which had a simple lock on the top. The question was where the key was. A locksmith down the street could probably have this open in seconds, but there might be an even quicker way. Where had Dawson seen a bunch of keys? He remembered now.

“Go back inside the house,” he told Asase. “At the side of the door is a bowl with keys in it. Bring them all.”

While the constable was gone, Dawson stood and stared at Wei, who looked studiously away with his jaw clenching. Asase came back with the bowl, which contained five keys. One of them looked like the right size, and Dawson inserted it into the lock, which turned easily. He opened the box. On the top, he found Chinese and American currency, a large wad of cedi bills, and some receipts for purchases made at a warehouse.

At the very bottom, the box held two objects. The first was another key, this one bearing the CAT logo. Dawson held it up to Wei. “The spare key to one of Chuck Granger’s excavators. Am I right?”

Wei didn’t answer, but Dawson was perfectly sure that it was the one missing from the four hooks in Granger’s office.

The second object in the box was an electronic device of about four by one and a half inches, with a small screen at the top. Dawson picked it up at its edges and rested it on the lid. “Olympus digital voice recorder,” he read out. “Made in China, naturally.”

Dawson used the corner of his voter ID card to turn it on, and then alternated between the fwd and play buttons. No sound came forth, and Dawson could tell from the screen, that the recorder had had three erased recordings. The fourth, however, was still there. He glanced up at Wei and smiled. The Chinese man looked away. Dawson pressed play , turned up the volume, left the recorder where it was, came out of the shed, and shut the door behind him. From within came the sound of someone snoring.

“That’s what you left playing in your room at Mr. Feng’s house when you went to kill your brother,” Dawson said to Wei. “Feng heard it in the middle of the night and thought you were in the room sleeping, but by that time, you had already left the house through the window early enough to give yourself enough time to wait for your brother at the mining site and then to murder him.”

Wei stayed motionless and kept his gaze down.

“Chuck Granger gave you the key to the CAT excavator,” Dawson said. “He tied up your brother and you operated the excavator to bury him alive. Because you and Granger worked together, you had enough time to return to your room in Feng’s house before six o’clock when he came to wake you.”

No one actually saw Lian move. She did so with the swiftness of a cobra strike. Her hands cuffed in front of her, she came at Wei and hit him in the face with a double fist. He fell over with a grunt. She went down with him, screaming in Chinese while striking Wei repeatedly. Dawson and Asase pulled her off. Now, so weak from her emotions and physical exertions, she could only crumple to the ground weeping.

Asase helped Wei sit up. Blood was streaming down his face from a deep cut in his forehead where Lian had hit him. He turned to her, calling her name several times, trying to get her to look at him, and then saying something in Chinese in a tone that Dawson thought sounded anguished and pleading. But what exactly was Wei telling her? He grabbed the voice recorder from the shed, switched it on, and came close to Wei so that he got it all.

As Wei continued to address Lian, he broke down completely and sobbed.

“Bring something to stop the bleeding,” Dawson said to Asase, who ran to the jeep and returned with a not-so-clean rag, but it would have to do. Asase pressed it to his forehead and told him to hold it there.

Dawson knelt down beside Wei. “Why is she so angry with you?” he asked, rubbing his back gently. “What was she saying to you? Eh? Come on now, Wei. It’s time to tell me.”

“She never tell me to kill Bao,” Wei said, looking up at Dawson imploringly, “but I do it for her . I thought make her happy now she only have me, but now she say she like Bao for husband, make her feel safe. She like me too, but for lover only. She want us both. Why she say that, Inspector? She love me, she hate Bao, but now I kill him, she say want him back. Why she say that?”