“I don’t quite remember which is Obeng’s,” Asase said. “Let’s try this one.”
He knocked on the khaki-brown door on the right. They waited a couple of minutes, and then Asase tried the other door, with the same result. Dawson peered in through the narrow opening in the top. It was dark inside, but he was sure he could see a hand on the floor.
“We have to get in,” he said, stepping back. He planted his foot on the door and pushed. It opened with a crack. Dawson and Asase entered and saw in the gloom Obeng crumpled on the floor like a sack of cocoyams.
Dawson’s heart plunged. Dead, he thought, but when he stooped down and touched the body, it was warm, and now he saw Obeng was breathing. A tenacious stream of drool trailed from one corner of his mouth, and he reeked of alcohol as if he had bathed in it. Drunk, not dead.
Asase tried the light switch on the wall. It clicked without a response. No power.
Dawson slapped Obeng’s cheek-the one without the drool. “Wake up.”
The sergeant’s eyes fluttered open and then drifted closed again.
“Get me some water,” Dawson said to Asase, who went out and returned minutes later with a cup of water from a neighbor. Dawson took it and splashed Obeng’s face twice. He startled awake and shakily propped himself up on his elbow, looking at the other two men in bewilderment.
“Oh, massa,” he said thickly. “Mepa wo kyew, good morning.”
“It’s afternoon,” Dawson said. “Sit up.”
Obeng sat with his back against the bed, which was a set of boards placed on top of cement blocks. The room was as chaotic as if it had experienced its own self-contained whirlwind, and it smelled of urine, alcohol, and everything unwashed, including Obeng. He was in a bad way. He rubbed his hand over his face, trying to focus.
“What happened to you?” Dawson asked.
“Please, they sacked me yesterday.”
Longdon gave him a chance, but Obeng couldn’t deliver. “And you’ve been drinking all night?” Dawson asked.
Obeng, staring at the floor dazed, didn’t respond. The answer did not need stating. Dawson gave Asase a couple of cedis and the constable went out to buy a bottle of water. When he returned, Dawson removed the seal and unscrewed the cap. “Drink,” he said, holding the bottle to Obeng’s lips. The maneuver was poorly coordinated and water spilled.
“Please, I can do it,” Obeng said. “Thank you.” He drank gingerly first, then more thirstily.
“Give us a moment, please,” Dawson said to Asase, who seemed grateful to leave. “How long since your last drink?” Dawson asked Obeng.
“Please, it was last night,” he said weakly, “but I don’t remember the time.”
His speech was not slurring, and the cadence of his speech was normal. Dawson judged that Obeng had slept off the intoxication. He helped him up so that he could sit on the bed. Dawson sat opposite him on an old wooden crate.
“How did this happen to you?” he asked the sergeant. “The drinking.”
“Please, when my wife left me. Three years ago now.”
When Dawson had first met Obeng, he had had the feeling that something about the man’s life was disturbed. Now he knew the origin of that turmoil.
“Where are your children?” he asked.
“In Kumasi,” Obeng said. “With the mother.”
“If you don’t stop drinking,” Dawson said quietly, “they might lose their father.”
Obeng nodded sadly, as if he knew it, but could do little or nothing about it.
“I am still on the Chinese man’s case,” Dawson said.
Obeng nodded. “Yes, please.”
“I need to know something. How far did you get in the investigation of the death of Amos Okoh?”
“Please, the death was an accident, so the case was closed.”
“How did the accident happen?” Dawson asked.
“Amos was walking on the bridge, and he slipped and fell inside the pit.”
Too easy. “Did something happen between him and Bao Liu before he fell in the pit?” Dawson asked.
Obeng hesitated, his bloodshot eyes shifting. “No, sir.”
“People say Bao Liu said something bad to Amos and his girlfriend, and so Amos became very angry and tried to attack Bao from the bridge. Bao shook the bridge and tipped Amos into the water in the pit below.”
“Please, it’s not true,” Obeng said dully. “It was just an accident.”
Dawson stared at him, and the sergeant began to wither. “Obeng, why are you protecting the Chinese man?” Dawson asked softly. “What is going on? He’s not even alive anymore.”
Obeng covered his face. “Please, I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“My family…”
Dawson understood now. It’s not Bao Liu he’s shielding; it’s someone else. “Has someone threatened to hurt you or your family if you tell the truth about what Bao Liu did?”
“Mepa wo kyew, I beg you, please,” Obeng said, appealing to Dawson not to press him any further. Obeng was terrified of something and or someone, and Dawson decided he would withdraw-but only for now. He would be back for another try sometime very soon.
Dawson stood up. “Come to me if you want to tell me something,” he said. He fished in his pocket and gave the sergeant five cedis. “You have to get something to eat now, but don’t drink any more beer.”
“Yessah,” Obeng said getting up himself, unsteadily.
Dawson got back home at a little past five in the afternoon and found Christine behind the house preparing fufuo with a young girl who was related in some distant way to Christine, although Dawson couldn’t remember how. The long pestle in both hands, the girl was doing the rhythmic pounding of the cassava and plantain in the mortar while Christine turned the glutinous mass in alternation with each strike. Dawson might have pounded fufuo no more than twice in his life. Traditionally, girls and women did it.
“Hi, love,” Christine said, looking up. She didn’t have to watch the pestle to keep the rhythm. “How was the day?”
“So-so,” Dawson said, eager to forget it for a while. “Where are the boys?”
“Sly went to play football with his friends,” she replied. She looked distressed. “But I’ve given Hosiah extra homework and told him he can’t go out to play until he learns to behave himself. You need to talk to him.”
Dawson frowned. “What’s happened?”
“He got into another fight at school. They were at midmorning break. The headmistress punished him by making him fetch five buckets of water for the toilets. Talk to him. I don’t know what else to tell the child.”
“All right,” Dawson said.
He found Hosiah sitting at the kitchen table staring with furrowed brow at the arithmetic problems on the sheet of paper in front of him as he sucked on his pencil in calculation confusion. He looked up at his dad apprehensively, expecting a scolding.
“Two-thirds plus three-quarters,” Dawson read from off the paper Hosiah had been studying. “Is that what is puzzling you?”
Hosiah dropped the pencil in frustration. “I don’t understand how to do it, Daddy.”
Dawson sat next to his son, picked up the pencil, and connected the two denominators with a curved line. “Remember how I told you that the two numbers on the bottom have to agree on one number? How do we get that?”