“Austin!” Genevieve exclaimed, beaming.
He gave her a huge smile. “Hey, Sis. How are you?”
They embraced.
“Meet Inspector Dawson. Inspector, my brother Austin.”
Shaking hands, Dawson concentrated on the man’s eyes, avoiding his forehead. A bad accident, maybe? He was older than Genevieve, and there was little, if any, resemblance. A half brother, perhaps.
“Austin is doing his Ph.D. in social systems among migrant groups in Accra,” Genevieve said, pride in her voice. “And that of course includes our street kids.”
“Congratulations,” Dawson said to Austin.
“Originally my idea,” Genevieve boasted, impishly. Austin smiled affectionately at her.
“Does the study include crime within these social systems?” Dawson asked.
“Oh, yes, very much,” Austin said emphatically. His speech was rapid and tumbling, as though something was flogging it to go faster. “Crime is an integral part. I gather from Socrate that you’re investigating the murders of two street teens, one of whom used to frequent this center?”
“Right.”
“I would like to discuss the cases with you when you know a little more, Inspector. Would that be possible?”
“I don’t see why not. How far back in time do you go in your study?”
“About fifty years. Urban crime patterns have changed, and much of it has to do with the increase in migrant and transient populations.”
“I assume you’ve met Dr. Allen Botswe?”
“More than met-he was one of my professors last year. Great man. How do you know him?”
Dawson explained.
“Small world,” Austin commented.
Dawson turned to Socrate. “Did you find Musa in your records?”
“No, sir. I didn’t.”
“Thank you for trying.”
Patience put her head in the door. “Inspector? I’m ready to go out to the streets if you’d like to join me.”
23
As she drove to their first stop, Patience explained to Dawson how, on a day like this, she would visit several of the street children’s gathering places.
“Rule of thumb is,” she said, “where there’s commerce, there are kids, because that’s where they get jobs. Carrying loads, cleaning, sweeping, assisting traders, and washing cars-things like that. Lorry stations, for instance, where boys hang around looking for luggage or farm produce to carry, and the big marketplaces. And that’s where I try to engage them and talk to them about drugs, sex, alcohol, prostitution, AIDS, and such.”
“Those are the problems that must keep you awake at night,” Dawson said.
“Yes.” She smiled at him. “It’s as if you know me already. The sad thing for me is how many people like to say these kids are responsible for filth and disease in the city-not that they’ve come to a place that already has its vices, which the kids pick up. There are so many aspects about the attitude toward these children that I find ironic and troubling. For instance, it’s often working class people who find street children so distasteful. Something else I hear is contempt for the boys and girls from northern Ghana specifically. I’ve heard people make reference to them as animals, which is very shocking to me.”
“Speaking of the north,” Dawson said, “I’m looking for a nine-year-old boy called Sly. Do you know anyone by that name?”
Patience shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”
She knew the Brooklyn Gang had their base near the railway station, so Patience had decided to visit the adjacent market called Kantamanto. She parked in the secure lot next to Merchant Bank across the street, where she charmed the security guard into letting her car stay without paying a fee.
Dawson crossed Kwame Nkrumah Avenue with Patience and went through the gated entrance to the station’s huge, unpaved, dusty courtyard. For a part of town where space was scarce, there was a surprising amount of unused land around the defunct building. It was completely enclosed by a brick wall. Thirty meters to the right along the south wall was a pair of latrines, one for men and one for women-simple wooden stalls with bright blue doors, twenty pesewas for their use.
Walking past the latrines took them across a wide gutter to a slightly higher piece of land adjacent to the east wall, which ran alongside Nkrumah Avenue on its other side. Halfway along the wall, which went as far as one end of the railway building, there was a garbage dump.
The railway tower clock was permanently stopped at 5:32. The station, painted light salmon and gray with a corrugated tin roof, seemed sad and wistful. It could have been a beautiful showpiece of old architecture, even a museum, if only someone would renovate it. Dawson could guarantee that nobody would. The building would sit there and rot over the decades.
Squatters’ laundry and mosquito netting were suspended between the columns along the station’s veranda, and to complete the domestic picture, there were pots and pans scattered around. In an area that must have once been a passenger waiting room, a pastor was holding forth through a distorting microphone to a small congregation sitting on blue plastic chairs. Church wasn’t just for Sundays.
Passing through another room where a young man was sleeping with his feet oddly propped up against the wall, Dawson and Patience emerged on the station platform. A group of kayaye sat talking and giggling with one another, their northern Ghana origins obvious from their heavy eyeliner and facial tribal marks.
Dawson and Patience crossed the tracks to the gray brick wall on the other side, where there was a prominent sign, DO NOT URINATE HERE, USE PUBLIC URINAL, a warning that was lost on a young man peeing a few meters away. Far up the tracks was a railway car with nothing to do but rust away.
Kantamanto Market was on the other side of the wall. Dawson and Patience entered the noisy world of buyers and sellers, porters and truck pushers. They passed by a loudspeaker blaring highlife. Raising her voice above the din, Patience told Dawson they were going to stop at Akuffo Junction, an area popular with the street kids.
When they got there, Dawson saw just why that was the case. It was a video game hangout-a narrow, noisy, and airless room with boys from six to eighteen squeezed together on a long wooden bench in front of a row of eight screens. All eyes were glued to the videos flashing before them, but only about every third boy had the use of a console.
“They pay for ten-minute segments,” Patience explained. “It can be expensive, so some of them split the cost two or three ways and take turns playing within each segment.”
“I don’t see how you can compete with the video games for the kids’ attention,” Dawson commented.
She laughed. “I can’t, and I don’t try. I work on the ones waiting their turns outside.”
Patience spotted a cluster of boys loitering on the steps of a shop next door. She walked over to chat. She knew each one of them by name, lightheartedly teasing them and joking with a kind of affectionate toughness. She introduced Dawson casually to them. They had agreed beforehand that she would avoid telling them he was a policeman, at least at the beginning.
“Who knows Ebenezer Sarpong?” she asked them in Twi.
“Brooklyn Gang?” a boy with a green bandanna said.
“Yes.”
“I know him,” he said, “but it’s a long time since I’ve seen him.”
Before he could say anything more, the boys’ attention was drawn away by the approach of a tall, lanky youth of fourteen or fifteen. They broke into a chant.
“Mosquito-Mosquito-Mosquito…”
“We’re in luck, Inspector,” Patience said. “This is Mosquito-he’s in the Brooklyn Gang.”
A smile broke out on Mosquito’s small, tight face as he joined his friends.
“Ei, Mosquito!” Patience exclaimed. “Won’t you ever stop growing? Look, even your trousers are already too short.”