Obeng cleared his throat. “When you came, it was just a few minutes, sir.”
“Didn’t anyone hear you and ask what you were doing?”
“Inspector Kwarteng has gone out, and only the corporal and constable are here.”
Even if they had heard the commotion, Dawson thought, they would not have challenged their superior, Sergeant Obeng.
“The worst thing about this,” Dawson said, “is that I promised the boy that no one was going to beat him, which is exactly what you have done. Why?”
Obeng was perspiring. Dawson caught an odor from him and moved his face closer to the sergeant, sniffing the air around him. Obeng tensed up and held his breath.
“You’ve been drinking,” Dawson said.
Obeng looked away without answering, rubbing the back of his head like an ashamed schoolboy in the headmaster’s office.
“Until what time were you drinking last night?” Dawson pressed. “Until one or two in the morning? And then you slept and woke up and drank some more because you knew I wouldn’t be in early.”
Obeng stared at the floor morosely.
“How many people like Kudzo have you been mistreating?” Dawson asked. He suspected the sergeant wouldn’t answer, and he was right. Nor did he need to. His silence alone was confirmation that this occasion had not been the first.
Dawson got up. “Okay. I will have to report this to Commander Longdon and you will probably come up before the disciplinary board in Kumasi in the very near future. For now you are dismissed for the weekend, pending Commander Longdon’s decision on the next step. Clear? You may go home now.”
Dawson called the constable and corporal into the office to ask them if they had heard any commotion from the storeroom. The constable looked mystified and denied any knowledge of what had happened. The corporal on the other hand looked too studiously innocent, convincing Dawson that he was really guilty.
“You didn’t hear any kind of noise or struggle?” he asked the corporal for the second time, phrased differently.
“Oh, no, not at all,” he said.
His tone changed, and there was a slight tremor to his voice, which activated Dawson’s synesthesia. He felt as if he had closed his left fist around a cactus stem. “I know you’re lying. You don’t want to get involved with any scandal.”
The lance corporal looked down at his feet. “No, sir. Yes, sir.”
“If you see something you know is wrong,” Dawson said, “you report it. Understood? Bring Mr. Gablah back here and then get back to work.”
Kudzo was subdued as he came in.
“Take a seat,” Dawson told him in Ewe. “Tell me what happened from the very beginning.”
“Please, he told the lance corporal to take me to him for questioning, then when I came to the room-”
“Which room? This one?”
“Yes, please.”
“Go on.”
“Then he asked me why I don’t just confess that I killed Mr. Bao, and I told him, please, I haven’t done anything. And he told me he will beat me if I don’t confess, and I said no. So, then he took me to the store place and started to hit me.”
“How long was he beating you?”
“Please, I don’t know. Maybe ten or twenty minutes.”
Dawson estimated that it was probably less.
“Did you Kill Mr. Bao?”
“Why should I?” Kudzo said more heatedly. “He was paying me, so why should I kill him? I never even had job before. Please, I came from Keta. When I was there, I couldn’t get any work, and my father too, he wasn’t working and my mother is sick and she needs an operation. A certain friend of mine was mining gold at Aniamoa and he asked me why I don’t come and work with him there and then I can make some money to send home.”
“Was that Brave?”
“Yes, please,” Kudzo said, startled. “Please, how do you know?”
“We met him at the mining site. So you left Keta, your hometown, and what happened when you went to Aniamoa?”
“I started to work there, but one man, the foreman, he didn’t like me, and he sacked me from there. That’s why I came to Dunkwa to work.”
“The foreman told me you have a hot temper. Is that true?”
“Me?” Kudzo said, pointing at himself incredulously. “No, please.”
Dawson smiled slightly. “How did you come to work for Mr. Bao in particular?”
“I went to watch how they are mining at his site, and when he saw me standing there, he told one of the guys to go and call me, and then he asked me if I can do the work. I told him yes, I can do it.”
“How is the mining job? Is it tough?”
“Wow!” Kudzo exclaimed, in an enthusiastic burst of limited English. “It is tough! When I started, I didn’t even know. I thought because I did work on the farm in Volta Region that it would be easy for me.” Kudzo shook his head slowly and ruefully. “When I was at Aniamoa with Brave, the first day, my hands started to bleed from using those poles to stir the riverbed. Some of the men started to laugh at me and told me, that’s how it is.”
“How did Mr. Bao treat you?”
“He liked to shout at people all the time. Sometimes he insulted us, saying we were lazy. But me, I didn’t fear him, and that way he somehow respected me. Sometimes he asked me if I can go and catch some bush meat for him, like grass cutter or something like that. You know, these Chinese people, they will eat any focking meat.”
“Any what?”
“Please, any focking meat, they like it.”
“Oh, I see.” Dawson let that odd observation go. “I want to ask you something.”
“Yes, please.”
“If you didn’t kill Mr. Bao, who do you think did it?”
Kudzo’s eyes darted away. “Please I don’t have any idea about that.”
His tone changed, and again triggered Dawson’s synesthesia: a light, quick shock, like hitting one’s funny bone. He leaned forward. “Kudzo, if you want to leave this place right now, you have to tell me the truth. If not, you will stay here another night.”
Kudzo sighed and looked desperate and torn.
“I’m not going to tell anyone what you tell me,” Dawson said, while thinking, Why should he trust me when I’ve already broken my promise that no one would beat him?
Kudzo was struggling, but the truth won. “Okay,” he said finally, “a certain man in Dunkwa, his name is Amos Okoh. He and his father have a small farm near Bao Liu’s galamsey site. Sometimes Amos’s girlfriend goes to the farm to help Amos and his father. Mr. Bao too, he used to like Amos’s girlfriend, so when she was passing to the farm, he used to try and talk to her, telling her he could give her plenty gold.”
This is the kind of information I’m looking for, Dawson thought. “Go on.”
“One day, Amos challenged Mr. Bao and warned him not to be looking at his girlfriend and talking to her. They had an argument. When Amos was leaving by the bridge, Mr. Bao started to shake the ropes and made the bridge swing so much that Amos fell inside the deep water.”
Dawson visualized the catastrophe. “What happened?”
“Amos started to shout that he couldn’t swim. Some workers tried to use a pole to pull him out, but they couldn’t find one long enough. So Amos drowned. He died inside the water.”
“Oh, my God,” Dawson said, shocked.
“Some days passed, and then the body floated to the surface, and someone brought a canoe to go and pick it out of the water.”
“Did the police arrest Mr. Bao?”
“No, please. They questioned him, and then they let him go. Somebody said he paid the police.”
Dawson stiffened. “Did the family try to bring charges against Bao?”
Kudzo flipped up his palms and shrugged. “Please, what can they do? They are poor people. They can’t do anything. But his younger brother-his name is Yaw-said something about it.”