Antwi gave Socrate a look laced with pure hatred.
Dawson moved closer to the storeroom and peered inside. True, there wasn’t much in the way of space.
“You were hiding from me?” Dawson asked Antwi.
The boy sniffed again, wiped his nose, but wouldn’t answer.
“Do you need to question him?” Genevieve asked Dawson quietly.
“At CID, not here.”
“Can we take care of his forehead first, Inspector?” Socrate asked. “I think Nurse has come in.”
“Yes, of course.”
“He did it,” Antwi said suddenly.
“Who?” Dawson said. “What?”
The boy’s head was bent. He spoke to the ground. “Mr. Socrate did it. He told me to hide from you. He put me inside there. And he closed the door and locked it. I couldn’t breathe.”
Socrate’s mouth dropped. “Ho, Antwi!” He looked at Dawson and then at Genevieve, stunned. “I can’t even believe he’s telling such a lie.”
“Antwi,” Genevieve said sorrowfully and with heavy rebuke. “What is one of the five rules we teach here? No lying. Not so?” Shaking her head, she stood up. “All right, let’s go and see Nurse. Then you’re going with Inspector Dawson. Oh, Antwi, you’ve made us sad today.”
Sitting at Dawson’s desk, Antwi looked like a little, trapped animal. He was dusty and ragged. The SCOAR nurse had bandaged his forehead.
The room was noisy, detectives taking and making reports and coming and going and sometimes almost colliding in the doorway. Dawson gave Antwi a bag of water from his desk. The boy tore a corner of the plastic off with his teeth and thirstily gulped the water down to the last drop. His hand was shaking.
Dawson sat down opposite him, speaking in Twi. “Are you okay now?”
He nodded. “Yes, please.”
Chikata perched on the edge of the table next to him.
“What happened, Antwi?” Dawson asked.
“Please, I was going to the Refuge Room.” He had a boyman’s voice-on the verge of breaking. “Mr. Socrate came and called me and told me some policeman was looking for me. He said he was going to help me, that I should hide until the policeman goes away.”
“Ei, small boy,” Chikata warned. “Don’t come here and tell lies, you hear?”
“Please, I’m not telling you any lie. I didn’t want to go inside that room because it’s too small, but Mr. Socrate made me go inside by force. Then he lied to you and told you I was the one rather who went to hide there.”
Dawson was studying Antwi. His eyes were direct, his voice rock steady. He was telling the truth.
“Please, maybe you don’t know how he is, that Mr. Socrate,” Antwi continued. “He hates all of us who come to SCOAR. The only person in the world he doesn’t hate is Madam Genevieve. And as for her, she would be a head porter for his shit if he told her to do that. She doesn’t know how mad he really is.”
“Why do you say he’s mad?” Dawson asked.
“Some boys, they used to tell me about a storeroom, that Mr. Socrate always used to lock them in that storeroom. They said it was at the top of the building, but me, I never went to see it. One time too, he took one of the boys and put electric shocks on his body with some kind of machine.”
Dawson and Chikata exchanged surprised glances.
“Why didn’t you report all this to Madam Genevieve?” Dawson asked.
“Please, because we fear,” Antwi said, turning his palms up. “We fear too much. Mr. Socrate tells us if we say anything to her, he will sack us from SCOAR, or he tells us he would report us to the police. When we go to SCOAR, we feel somehow happy and free, so if Mr. Socrate tells us we will never come back if we say anything bad about him, do you think we will say anything bad? Of course not. Look at us. We don’t have anything. We don’t have money, we don’t have house to live. Some of us don’t even have shoes.”
Antwi sighed, deflated and despondent.
“How old are you?” Dawson asked him.
“Please, fifteen and a half.”
“And you’ve been in Accra how long?”
“Three years.”
“Why did you come?”
“To make money.”
“Where are your mother and father?”
“My mother, she died. My father, I don’t know where he is. After my mother died, he went away and left me and my brothers with my grandmother and my grandfather. Then my grandfather too, he left.”
“Where did he go?”
“Please, I don’t know.”
“So your grandmother was taking care of you.”
“Yes, please, but when I was about to go to junior secondary school, she got sick, so she couldn’t work. She told me to work on the farm to get money instead of going to school.” Antwi sucked his teeth three times in a row, shaking his head. “But the farm too, you can’t make any money. So, no money, no school, no nothing.”
“What happened to your grandmother?”
“Please, she died.”
“Sorry.”
“After that, I came to Accra.”
“Do you like living here?”
“I make more money than in my village, so I’m happy like that. But life is hard too. At least in my village I know no one would hit me on my head and steal everything from me.”
“Did Tedamm help you get a job when you first came to Accra?”
“Yes, please.”
“Do you give him part of the money you make?”
“I used to. Not anymore. But if he needs something, I bring it to him.”
“Like what?”
“Akpeteshie, food, anything. He likes to eat rice and shito all the time.” Antwi snorted in momentary amusement but grew quickly serious. “Please, Mr. Dawson, somebody told me you took Tedamm to jail yesterday. Is it true?”
“Yes. He’s still in jail. What about girls? You bring them to Tedamm?”
“Please, no one has to bring girls to him. They just come like water.”
“Did Comfort Mahama come to him?”
Antwi started visibly. His voice dropped in pitch and volume, dry as a tree’s fallen leaves. “Please, who is Comfort?”
“You know who she is. You, Ofosu, and Tedamm were with her on Tuesday night.”
Antwi’s eyes darted back and forth.
“Someone saw you with her,” Dawson pressed. “What were you doing with her? What happened?”
“Please, nothing.”
“Where were you going with her?”
“Please, we were just talking.”
“What did Tedamm do to her?”
Antwi bravely met his gaze. “He didn’t do anything.”
Dawson got up and walked to the door, hands thrust in his pockets, head down. Antwi’s eyes followed him there and back as he returned.
Dawson stopped at his side, resting a hand on his shoulder. “If you don’t help me and tell me what happened, they will send you to jail and I won’t be able to stop them. You want to meet Tedamm in jail?”
Antwi was chewing his bottom lip as if it were food, blinking rapidly to stop tears. He sniffed.
“Tedamm doesn’t care about you,” Dawson said. “He never cared about you. If you died today, he would forget about you by tomorrow.”
Antwi began to cry, trying to wipe the tears away like a dog pawing for a bone.
“What did Tedamm do to Comfort?” Dawson asked gently.
“Please, we were drinking akpeteshie with her at Tudu Road. Then Tedamm was touching her…” Antwi circled his hand over his chest.
“Breasts.”
“Yes. And then he told us to take off her clothes and then… then me and Ofosu held her and Tedamm started to fock her by force.”
“You did it too?”
Antwi shook his head. “Please, no. I ran away. Ofosu too.”
“You left Tedamm with Comfort?”
“Yes.”
“Did you come back?”
“Please, no, I didn’t.”
“Did you see Comfort again that night?”
“No, I never saw her again, please.”
“What about Tedamm?”
“I was hiding from him because I knew he would beat me for leaving him like that.”
“Why did you run away and leave Tedamm?”