Dawson saw no response whatsoever. He leaned back again. “You will go back to your cell now. Constable, escort the prisoner.”
“What should we do next?” Chikata asked Dawson after Yaw had been taken out.
“I’m trying to shift the emphasis away from the murder itself,” Dawson said, lost in thought. “If we can get past whatever is troubling him, I think the confession will come next. He has killed Bao in revenge, and now he’s killing his father too-just in another way. I know something about that.”
For a long time, Dawson had cut his ties with his father, Jacob, until he realized it wasn’t worth hanging on to grudges over what he had suffered as a boy at his father’s hand. What if the man should die without Dawson’s ever speaking to him again? So, Dawson had broken his silence and returned to his side. And now, Jacob increasingly needed his sons’ care, and had moved in with Cairo, Dawson’s older brother.
“And you’re sure Yaw is guilty?” Chikata asked.
Good question. “Ninety-five percent,” Dawson said, and then reflected that the estimate might be a little high. “But we have twelve hours before we release him. I really don’t know what’s going to persuade him to start talking again.”
He and Chikata returned to Obuasi and attacked the office again, separating old material that could be archived somewhere-Dawson didn’t know where yet-and cold cases that needed reviewing. After about twenty minutes, Chikata became absorbed by one of the docket files.
“What’s so interesting?” Dawson asked, looking over his shoulder.
“It’s a police report by Sergeant Obeng,” he said. “I found it at the bottom of a pile of unsolved cases. An American guy called Beko Tanbry came to the Obuasi area about three months ago to buy some gold. After the transaction took place, he was on the way to Kumasi when he was stopped by two armed men who robbed him of the gold.”
“No doubt a setup,” Dawson said. “The robbers might have been in with the guys the American supposedly bought the gold from. Now the man has no money, and no gold either. Any other notes in the docket besides the report?”
Chikata shook his head. “Nothing. Empty. And the report is not even very detailed either. I wonder why the docket was so buried when it’s not that old a case.”
“It’s a good question,” Dawson said.
Chikata lowered his voice. “I really wonder if Commander Longdon has been keeping an eye on what’s going on here.”
Dawson grunted. “It doesn’t seem so. I’m suspicious of the commander.”
Chikata looked sharply at Dawson. “How so?”
“I think he’s corrupt. Both Mr. Okoh and Chuck Granger independently stated that the Chinese miners pay off the police. Granger made reference to the commanders specifically.” He and Chikata exchanged glances. “We don’t have to pretend that our police service is not infiltrated with corruption like a poisoned cocoa tree.”
Chikata nodded. “True. Is there any point in exposing Longdon if he is involved?”
“If it will help us solve this murder, yes,” Dawson said.
Thirty minutes later, it was his turn to read a docket in puzzlement. “Another armed robbery-same situation,” he said to Chikata. “This time, it was a man from the UK here to buy gold.”
They read the report together. Like the first one, it was short in length and sparse in detail.
“This should have gone up to the commander of the division,” Dawson said, “and then to the regional office and so on.”
“If Obeng was drunk a lot of the time, that might explain the lapses,” Chikata pointed out.
“I agree,” Dawson said. “Let’s see if we can find more cases.”
In the next hour, they found nothing significant, so they put aside the two dockets in question, and then turned to another jumble of papers. Dawson stared at it for a moment, arms akimbo.
“Let’s have something to eat before we deal with this,” he said. He was feeling mentally tired from a combination of circumstances-the mess in the office, the lack of progress in the case, the back-and-forth between Obuasi, Dunkwa, and Kumasi, and not having any real quality time with his boys. It was getting under his skin.
At the David & Goliath chop bar, Dawson had red-red-fried plantain and black-eyed peas cooked to dripping succulence with palm oil and spices-while Chikata ate his favorite: banku-steamed, fermented corn with a tangy bite-and goat stew laced with hot pepper.
After all that, Dawson felt like taking a nap. That is, until his phone rang. Then everything changed. It was Constable Kobby at the Dunkwa Police Station.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Yes, Kobby?”
“Please, can you come down to the station?”
Yaw wants to talk, Dawson thought. “What’s going on?”
“Please, Mr. Okoh, Yaw’s father, is here. He says he is here to confess to the murder of the Chinese man.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Dawson and Chikata had considered Mr. Okoh a plausible suspect, but this still came as a shock. Kobby had locked him in one of the back rooms of the station, one that would be no longer empty in another eighteen hours on a busy Monday. When Dawson and Chikata entered, Okoh was sitting at the table with his head in his hands. He looked up as the two detectives took their seats.
“Agya Okoh, maaha,” Dawson greeted him respectfully in Twi. Suspect or not, he was still an elder, so Dawson had used the traditional term “father” to address him.
He replied in the traditional fashion. His shirt was threadbare, and he was sweating heavily.
“Mr. Okoh?” Dawson sat down next to him. “I understand you have something to tell us.”
Mr. Okoh wrung his hands repeatedly and then cracked his knuckles. “Please,” he said finally, “release my son. He has done nothing wrong. I am the one rather who killed the Chinese man to avenge Amos’s death.”
Dawson nodded. “I see. When did you kill the Chinese man?”
“Friday-one week and two days ago.” Now he fixed his eyes on Dawson’s face.
“Tell me what time.”
“Around four o’clock in the morning. The mining site is on the way to my farm, so I know how to get there. I went and hid in the bushes to wait for the man.”
“How did you know he was coming to the site so early in the morning?”
“One of the mining boys told me he would be coming to fix the excavator around that time.”
His story isn’t solid yet. “Which one of the mining boys?” Dawson asked.
“I don’t want to make any trouble for him,” Okoh said, “so I don’t want to say.”
Admirable, maybe-but not satisfactory. “Go on. You hid in the bushes and what after that?”
“He came and started to fix the excavator. After some minutes, I came behind him and killed him.”
Not satisfactory at all. “Owura Okoh, exactly how did you kill him?”
“First, I tied him up. He was fighting me, but I made him stop. I brought his feet and hands together behind his back.”
That was also information that Okoh could have gotten from one of the galamsey boys. “Was the Chinese man shouting for help?” Dawson asked.
“Yes, but I put a rag inside his mouth so he couldn’t shout well.”
A rag? That wasn’t found at the crime scene, but… old pieces of cloth had been present in the shack where Wei had taken his brother to clean him up. Was it possible that one of those was a rag that had been stuffed in Bao’s mouth? Wei could have removed it and tossed it away. Or it could have been dislodged when Bao was being pulled out of the mud. Something else struck Dawson. If the rag was severely soiled with mud, that could also explain the gravel in Bao’s throat and windpipe. In any case, such a specific detail made Dawson begin to wonder. Was it possible that Mr. Okoh was their man?