Several groups sat drinking in the foyer of the hotel, their laughter vying with the boom of the music. The red bulb that hung from the ceiling turned everything in the room a comic-book monochrome. When the policemen appeared in the doorway, everybody froze in midsentence, midaction, like figures in an enchanted scene.
The scrape of furniture broke the spell. Madam Ruby, her enormous hips hemmed in by the arms of her chair, was struggling to rise.
Mfonobong leered at her. “Do small-small o, Madam Ruby, make you no for break the chair.”
Madam Ruby jerked her hips free. She took a moment to rearrange her skirt. “Hope no problem, officers?” she asked.
“Give me Gulder,” Otizara answered. He dropped into a seat, unstrapped his gun, and placed it on the table. The barrel pointed at his chest.
“You nko?” Madam Ruby addressed the question to Eghobamien Adrawus, but it was Mfonobong who replied, “Adrawus no dey drink for duty.” He grinned at her. “But you know wetin I want.” He leaned forward and hooked an arm round her waist. His finger slipped beneath the band of her skirt. “Kai! But Madam Ruby, your waist nah one-in-town.” Madam Ruby, with the grace of a bullfighter, spun away.
“Sit down,” she said. “Make I serve your friend.”
Mfonobong watched as she crossed to the freezer and stooped over it — her hindquarters formed the shape of a heart. He licked his lips, dropped his hand to his crotch. By the time she returned with a bottle of beer in one hand and a frosted mug in the other, he had moved to block her path to the table. She squeezed past, but as she leaned forward to open the bottle, he caught her wrist. “You know wetin I want,” he muttered, his breath fluttering her long, burgundy braids. “Make we go inside.”
Madam Ruby jerked her wrist free. “I no dey fuck police,” she snapped, “not even for money.” The bottle cap flew off with a pop.
Two of the customers, taking advantage of Mfonobong’s moment of speechlessness, rose from their seats and fled the room. The others, not daring to draw attention to themselves, huddled over their tables and read their ill luck in the bottom of their beer mugs. Mfonobong drew away from Madam Ruby. “You prostitute, common ashewo,” he spat. “Who you think sey you be?” His eyes glinted. “I fit arrest you now for. . for running criminal establishment! When I throw you inside cell with those armed robber we go see whether you no go open yansh!”
Otizara gave a snort of laughter and banged his beer mug on the table. Madam Ruby spun round to face Eghobamien Adrawus. “Your oga dey outside?” she asked.
“Sharrap there!” Mfonobong snarled at her. “Who give you right to question officer? Insubordination, you cockroach!” But he made no move to intercept her as, with a hiss of disdain, she brushed past him and slipped from the room. “Imagine that buffoon,” he growled, turning first to Eghobamien Adrawus, then Otizara. “Wetin she know about police? She think sey e easy to wear this uniform?”
Otizara gulped from his mug. Eghobamien Adrawus stared at the wall with a bored expression. His boots were hurting his feet.
“I no dey fuck police,” Mfonobong mimicked, and puckered his face. “Okay now, we go see whether another ashewo no go fuck police!” He turned and dove into the corridor of the hotel, where the chalets were located. Otizara watched the beer in his mug froth and bubble as he refilled it from the bottle, and then he addressed Eghobamien Adrawus: “Abeg follow Mfon,” he said, “make e no put us for trouble.”
Mfonobong stomped down the corridor, rattling the doorknobs. He had drawn his battery torch — whenever he burst open a door he pointed it like a sabre and hacked through the darkness. Eghobamien Adrawus followed some steps behind. As the door of the second-to-last room opened to the force of his kick, Mfonobong stopped. “Ah,” he said, jabbing with his torchlight. Eghobamien Adrawus drew up behind him and looked past his shoulder. The room was furnished with a mattress and a wastepaper basket. Condom wrappers and flaccid streamers of tissue paper littered the cement floor. A naked couple sat side by side on the edge of the mattress. The man’s face was bent to the ground and his hands cupped his groin. The woman stared into the torchlight, her features distorted by a fierce, cornered look. The room stank of petroleum jelly and mildewed plaster.
“Who are you?” the woman asked in a voice quavering between fear and anger.
“Sharrap there!” Mfonobong barked at her. He held the torchlight steady on her face, until she lowered her eyes. Then he swung it on her companion and ordered, “Remove your hand.” The man raised his head, his teeth locked in a grin of pleading. “Remove am, you no dey hear? You want me to arrest you?” The man lifted his hands, then placed them on the bed beside his skinny haunches, and turned to the woman, sweat trickling from the corners of his eyes. Mfonobong gave a short, harsh laugh and moved the light to the woman’s breasts. “Ashewo,” he taunted, and dropped his hand to scratch his groin.
Eghobamien Adrawus leaned against the wall and jammed his hands into his trouser pockets. He looked at Mfonobong’s back. He knew this game. He knew how it would end. He had watched this scene too many times. He no longer thought about interfering, so even the thrill he used to get from his power over fate — to stop it or let it happen, to save or not to save — was gone.
Mfonobong spoke. “You dey fuck police?”
“Ehn?” the woman said. Her hand crept toward the clothes on the bed.
“You hear me. Remove your hand from that cloth o, before I vex.”
The woman folded her arms over her chest and clamped her thighs.
Mfonobong stepped forward. His shoulders filled the doorway. He unhooked his gun and fingered the breech, the sound loud in the small space. “I ask you whether you dey fuck police, ashewo?”
“I can’t answer that—” the woman began, but fell silent when the man beside her grabbed her by the arm.
“Just say yes!” he hissed. When she compressed her lips in refusal, he whirled to the figure in the doorway and said, “Yes, oga, yes!”
Mfonobong glanced over his shoulder at Eghobamien Adrawus and creased his face in a wink. Advancing into the room, he said to the man:
“Get out.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” the man mumbled. He scooped his clothes from the bed, rose, and pushed his feet into his sandals. Keeping as far from Mfonobong as was possible in the tight space, he slid crabwise through the door.
The torchlight spotlit the woman’s uncertainty. “I don’t like this kind of thing,” she said, but her words faded into silence when Eghobamien Adrawus, with a warning cough, stepped forward.
He placed his hand on the door handle. “Do quick o, make we dey go,” he said to Mfonobong, who nodded as he uncinched his belt. With a final glance at the bewildered woman, Eghobamien Adrawus drew the door shut.
The patrol team had been at the checkpoint for more than two hours, yet the men still had not wrung all the fun out of Mfonobong’s description of his encounter with the prostitute. They blocked one lane of the outbound road with a cordon of oil drums and tree trunks, and lit bonfires in the drums to announce their presence to highway robbers. They stood in a circle round one of the drums, firelight playing on their faces, exaggerating their expressions. Inspector Habila had wangled a bottle of schnapps from Madam Ruby. They passed this around.
“You for don see her face when the condom burst.” This was Mfonobong. His colleagues’ laughter died in their throats. Inspector Habila lowered the bottle from his lips and turned to stare at him. “E burst?” he said.