Akua joined Dawson as he walked around a portion of the pit’s perimeter. The environment seemed alien and hostile to him.
He looked up at the sky as the first flitter of lightning showed, followed by a deep rumble of thunder. “We’d best be going.”
By the time Dawson got back to his hotel, night had fallen and the rain had begun. He called Chikata.
“How far, boss?” the sergeant asked, slang for “How goes it?”
Dawson gave Chikata a brief rundown of the case and the grim discovery of an intoxicated Sergeant Obeng beating up a suspect.
“Ewurade. That’s a shame. So, what’s next?”
“I want you to come up from Accra and replace him, but Commander Longdon doesn’t agree. He says he can find someone from either Obuasi or Kumasi, which I’m sure he can, but I don’t care.”
“Ah, massa.” Chikata began to laugh. “You are really something. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m not asking you to do anything,” Dawson said lightly.
“I’ll work on it.”
“Thank you, Chikata.”
Dawson ended the call with the satisfaction that he had just launched a potent chain reaction. Chikata would be on the phone to his powerful Uncle Theo within minutes, and before long the heavy machinery would creak into action.
At five thirty on Monday morning, Dawson jerked awake to a fat plop of water in the middle of his forehead. He sat up quickly and looked at the ceiling. It was pouring outside and the roof was leaking. He jumped out of bed and fetched a bucket from the bathroom, putting it on top of the bed to catch the leak, only to discover another in one corner of the room. Disgusted, he pulled a T-shirt over his head and went outside to the front desk, where the receptionist was chewing gum and doing her nails.
“My roof is leaking,” he said.
She looked up languidly with lashes so long they must have been weighing her lids down. “Mm-hm? Do you need a bucket?”
“No, I think maybe I need the roof to be fixed.”
“Ah, okay. I will inform the manager.”
I have no doubt you will. Returning to the room furious that he hadn’t moved out before the storm, Dawson decided to pack up his things, check out and take his bags to the Obuasi office until he could find a better place to stay. His first phone call of the day was to Christine, who asked how he was doing. He complained about the rain and the leaking roof.
“How’s the case?” she asked.
“Haven’t got very far,” he said gloomily.
“Something will break soon. What are you doing today?”
“Getting out of this rotten hotel first. I have to pack up my things before I have to swim out of here.”
“Bye, sweetie.”
“Oh, wait,” he said hastily before she hung up. “I’m broke-can you mobile me a little cash?”
“Okay-I’ll send what I can by MTN Money.”
“Thanks, love. I appreciate it.”
Dawson divided all his stuff between his small suitcase and backpack, then went to the front desk, where he paid his bill with what seemed a painful amount of money when he considered that his paycheck was more than a week away. Miss Eyelashes wrote out his receipt in agonizingly slow longhand, and then Dawson was finally out of the place. The question was, where was he going to stay?
As he drove slowly along Obuasi High Street, Dawson couldn’t help thinking about Akua Helmsley. By now, she would be fighting the elements in Dunkwa. He remembered her invitation to join her and felt uncomfortable about his quick refusal. True, it might not be police work exactly, but what would be wrong with joining her for the unique experience? And his excuse? Work in the office. Akua was going to brave the storm, and Dawson was going to tidy up the office.
He stopped at an MTN kiosk and picked up the cash Christine had sent him, and then he continued up the street toward divisional headquarters. He spotted a hotel called Coconut Grove on the right-hand side and pulled over. Soaking wet, he went into the dark lobby, which smelled musty and was lit by a couple of LED lanterns. No power, courtesy of the Electricity Corporation of Ghana.
Dawson asked what the room rates were. Not too bad, but he wanted to see the rooms before he took one. Now was a good time to spot leaks.
The receptionist dragged on a pair of slippers and showed him to the cheapest accommodations: a small room, tiny toilet, and shower. At least there’s air conditioning, Dawson thought, looking at the unit on the wall. “Does that work?” he asked the receptionist.
“Yes,” she said. “When the power comes on.”
“You have no generator?”
“We have it,” she said, “but it’s not operating at the moment.”
Wonderful. “Okay,” Dawson said. “I’ll take it. I’ll bring my bags in later on when I return.”
He paid a deposit at the front desk and went back outside into the rain.
Once inside the division office, he changed into the dry shirt he had brought with him, looked around the office, and vowed he was going to make a dent. He began by sorting old folders into two piles: more than two years old, and two years old or less. As he thumbed through them, Dawson frowned, noticing that some of Sergeant Obeng’s reports were incomplete or slapdash. What in heaven’s name had been going on at these headquarters?
He was a little over an hour into his work when he thought again of Akua. He slid his phone out, hesitated, and then called her. “Good Monday morning, Miss Helmsley.”
“Good wet Monday morning, Chief Inspector.”
“It is. You are in Dunkwa, I suppose?”
“I am. It’s a disaster-environmentally and in all sorts of other ways.”
“Are you safe?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you for asking. I have Samuels with me.”
“I want join you,” he said abruptly.
“What?” She almost gasped. “Really? Oh, wonderful!” She sounded happier than Dawson might have expected. “Do you have wellies?”
“Do I have what?”
“Wellingtons-rubber boots.”
“I don’t.”
“You’ll need some. There’s cyanide and mercury and sulfuric acid and other nasty substances in the floodwater, all leached out of the runoff from the mines. Samuels has an extra pair of boots. What’s your size?”
When he told her, she said she thought the Wellingtons should fit, more or less.
“I will leave in a few minutes,” he told her. “Mind you, it might take me at least two hours.”
“Not a problem,” she responded. “We’re going to be here for quite some time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Dawson would never make it to Dunkwa in one piece in this weather. The road was flooded and impassable for a small vehicle. However, a solution did exist. In this part of the world, because of these very conditions, the tro-tros were old-style four-wheel-drive Land Rovers. True, they did not hold as many passengers as the usual tro-tros, but they were powerful and could withstand the punishing terrain, nasty weather, and treacherous mud.
Dawson drove to the Obuasi lorry park, locked the Corolla up, and joined the line for Dunkwa. Because the weather was so bad, it was less crowded than it might have been, but the queue was long enough in this misery that Dawson’s torso was wet in no time, his feet were soaked, and the sodden ground squelched with mud that threatened to suck off his shoes every time he took a step.
The vehicle was packed to maximum capacity, and to get one extra person in, the driver’s mate, who collected the fares and managed passenger entry and exit, rode perilously on the back of the Land Rover standing on the footrest. How he did that in this weather was beyond Dawson, who had ended up the man in the middle squashed between a corpulent woman and a bone-thin man.