They arrived after twenty minutes.
“Ready?” Dawson said. “Let’s go.”
He led the three other men farther along to the riverbank and the bridge. Since the storm, the water level had dropped, exposing most of the large tree trunk.
“Nobody fall in,” Dawson said over his shoulder. “Because I can’t rescue you.”
They laughed, and none of them had any trouble as they crossed.
It was a test of Dawson’s sense of direction and his ability to remember the route Queenie had taken him. He quietly counted out the right and left twists and turns.
“It’s somewhere here,” he said, slowing down after they had trekked for several minutes. “At least it was. I hope he hasn’t moved.”
“Maybe there,” Kobby said, pointing. “I see something white.”
They moved in that direction and discovered that the constable was correct. In the slight clearing, Yaw had hung a shirt from the low bough of a tree. It had been washed and was still damp, a sign of its recentness and that Yaw would be back. The question was, would it be tonight?
Yaw’s shelter spot was unchanged from when Dawson had seen it, except that he noticed an LED lantern that he did not recall from the first time. A hen, tied to one of the poles of the shelter, was pecking at the ground. It didn’t know that it would soon be a meal.
Dawson and the other three discussed how they would position themselves to provide the best coverage if Yaw chose to flee, and then they went to their stations. It was just before six, and they settled into what might turn out to be a long wait.
As it turned out, it was just under forty minutes. Darkness had fallen. Dawson’s phone buzzed with a message from Kobby, which meant that he had spotted the target, and then Dawson saw Yaw’s bobbing flashlight as he approached the clearing. He walked to his shelter and put a sack of something down-some cassava perhaps-and proceeded to turn on the lantern.
Dawson moved quietly so he wouldn’t give himself away prematurely. “Yaw Okoh.”
Yaw whipped around and raised the lantern, which showed his musculature in relief. Dawson approached, his badge raised.
“Yaw, maadwo,” Twi for “good evening.” “I’m Chief Inspector Dawson, CID.”
Yaw seemed frozen at the spot.
“Do not fear, and do not run,” Dawson said. “You won’t come to any harm.”
He got closer and in the poor light he never actually saw Yaw move until it was almost too late. The tip of the machete he wielded swished past Dawson at chest level as he jumped back. He lost his balance, stumbled, and shouted out as he fell. Yaw dropped the lantern and bolted.
“He has a cutlass!” Dawson cried out. He saw a shadow pass across him like a blur, and then a thud in the darkness. Dawson’s chest was heaving and his heart racing as he fumbled for the flashlight on his belt. What was happening? The beam found Yaw on his belly fighting to free himself from the steel grip of Chikata on top of him. It could have been a battle to the death between two men closely matched in physical power, but it was all over because Kobby and Asase were on each of his arms. Yaw had lost grip of the machete during the tackle.
Yaw stopped fighting them, and his hands came easily behind his back now. If only you’d complied from the beginning, Dawson thought furiously. All this struggle, and for what?
Barely able to speak for his gasping, Dawson kneeled and informed the prisoner why he was being arrested, putting in everything he could think of: evasion of a police officer, assault of a police officer, resisting arrest, and suspicion of murder of one Bao Liu.
Dawson stood up, feeling a little faint. He was pouring sweat as he retrieved the still-lit lantern Yaw had dropped. It cast a wider span of light than the more directed flashlights. Dawson returned to the captive as the other three policemen heaved him to his feet. Now he was being tiresomely passive-aggressive by acting like deadweight. Not a cooperative bone in the man.
Dawson realized that Chikata was staring at him with an expression of fright he had never seen in the inspector’s face.
“Boss,” he said. “You’re bleeding.”
“What?” Dawson looked down. His shirt was soaked not with sweat, but with blood. He touched his chest, and his hand came away crimson wet. He swayed, and as the world began to spin, he collapsed.
CHAPTER THIRTY
At the packed Obuasi Hospital, Dawson waited in the treatment area of the casualty department. Besides one or two flimsy curtains hanging at intervals, he had no privacy in the mix of crying infants; pregnant women in labor; people with cuts, breaks, and bruises; and malaria sufferers shaking with rigors on bare cots.
The young female doctor attending to Dawson advanced toward him with a syringe and what seemed to him a very long needle. His eyes went wide.
“What, are you afraid?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, cringing. “Can you wait a moment?”
“A moment for what?” the doctor asked.
“Don’t move, sir,” the assisting nurse said.
“Yes, I know, but…”
“But nothing,” the doctor said. “I have to anesthetize you. The laceration is jagged, and I need to trim the edges in order stitch it up. Do you want me to do it without anesthesia?”
“Yes. I mean no, Doctor.”
The nurse was not amused by Dawson’s trepidation. “Stay still, Inspector,” she said sharply.
“Ouch,” he said, stiffening as the first burning jab of the needle went into the wound in his chest. In the excitement in the forest, he had not realized that the tip of Yaw’s machete had caught him, gone through his shirt, and ripped his skin open over the left pectoral. A lot of blood, but nothing life threatening.
“Why are men such babies?” the doctor asked rhetorically as she made rapid work of infiltrating lidocaine into Dawson’s cut as he winced. “Please stop moving, Chief Inspector. Aren’t you a policeman who deals with dangerous criminals?”
“Yes, madam,” he admitted.
“But you’re scared of this little needle,” she said. “I don’t understand it.”
The nurse handed her the suture needle in the needle holder, and the doctor began to stitch Dawson up with an ease that suggested she could have done it in her sleep.
“Okay,” she said, dropping the needle and holder in the tray and snapping off her gloves. “All done.”
“Oh,” Dawson said, looking down at the masterpiece. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“Oh, but you’re not done,” the nurse said. “You need an anti-tetanus injection.”
He looked up in terror. She had an even larger syringe with an even thicker needle.
By seven the next morning, Dawson and Chikata were at Dunkwa Police Station, where Yaw was being held. Dawson felt the pressure of the day and its tug in more than one direction: he wanted first to interview Yaw and then to get to the guesthouse to welcome Christine and the boys. She had already called to say they would be on the road in another hour.
“How is the thing?” Chikata asked, tapping his chest to indicate Dawson’s wound.
“It feels fine, thanks.”
“Did it hurt when they sewed it?”
“Not at all,” Dawson lied. He caught Chikata’s amused, knowing look. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, sir.”
They had the use of a room to do the interrogation, and after Kobby had escorted Yaw in, Dawson and Chikata entered.
“Maakye, Mr. Yaw Okoh,” Dawson greeted him as he and Chikata each took a seat opposite him.
Yaw’s eyes flashed up at him for a second, and then looked away as if he simply couldn’t be bothered. His mouth was unyielding, his jaw set as hard as a block of onyina wood. They had kept him handcuffed because he was potentially dangerous, and Kobby remained at the door as an extra precaution, even though Yaw was well aware that it was the inspector opposite him who had taken him down in a powerful tackle.