“Yes, I’ve heard that.”
“I hate that name.”
Dawson smiled at Abe’s obvious affection for his town.
“Here we are,” his cousin said, pulling into a parking space.
His shop, Abraham’s Stationery, on the corner of Ako Adjei and Kofi Annan Roads, was located opposite the Barclay’s Bank in a congested commercial area where vendor stalls packed the pavements. Before he took Dawson upstairs to the second floor where he and the family lived, Abraham showed him the shop.
One assistant stood behind the sales counter and a second one was high up on a ladder getting something for a customer. The shop wasn’t large, yet it was packed with every imaginable style, color, and size of copy paper, writing instruments, computer supplies, toner cartridges, and exercise books.
Dawson was impressed. “I like it. You have everything here.”
“Almost,” Abraham said. “I want to start carrying computers too, but I don’t know where I’m going to put them.”
“You’ve already outgrown yourself.”
“Yes, that is it.”
They exited the shop and went around to the rear of the building via a side alley.
They went up two flights of steps at the top of which Abraham’s wife, Akosua, was waiting. She was about her husband’s age, around forty. With an endearing dimpled smile, she greeted Dawson with the same elation that her husband had. Slim and straight, she was the physical opposite of Abraham, whose body was rounded off everywhere.
They had a cozy sitting room with a flat-screen TV, a small adjoining kitchen, and two bedrooms down a short hallway. After about an hour, Akosua announced that dinner was served. When she brought the dishes out to the table that she and their young housemaid had prepared, it was clear that they had put themselves out in the good tradition of Ghanaian hospitality. On a wide plate stood four smooth, perfectly shaped ovals of fufu brushed with a light coating of water to make them glisten. The fufu was made by strenuously pounding boiled cassava in a large mortar while adding water until it turned into a soft, glutinous mass.
Next to the plate of fufu was a deep bowl of steaming palm nut soup, its rich golden-red oil snaking languidly around succulent chunks of fish and turgid white eggplant. The sight and the aroma made Dawson’s salivary glands contract so hard that they hurt.
Akosua brought a towel, soap, and a two bowls of water to the table. She waited for the men to wash up before she followed suit. The three ate traditionally with the fingers of the right hand only. Like many, Dawson would tell you he loved fufu, but in fact it was really all about the soup. It provided the heavenly flavor as well as the lubricant for a generous chunk of fufu to pass from the lips to the back of the throat and down the gullet in one smooth motion. He was famished and had to moderate his impulse to eat at high speed, especially a meal this sumptuous. He burned energy like a racehorse and was hungry punctually every four hours. Yet he had never been prone to putting on weight. Because he was tall and lean, people often underestimated his physical strength.
“So you have a big case here in Tadi?” Abraham asked Dawson after the silence that goes with the initial tasting of a meal.
“A family member petitioned CID Headquarters to look into the murder of Fiona and Charles Smith-Aidoo.”
Abraham swallowed with a loud, glottal sound before exclaiming, “Hallelujah!”
Dawson smile. “You’re glad about that, I see.”
“Come on,” Abraham said indignantly, leaning back in his chair. “Four months of investigation and no arrests, Darko? What is that Superintendent Hammond doing over there in his crime unit at Sekondi? I saw him once on TV making all kinds of excuses about lack of manpower and all that nonsense.”
“It’s not always all that simple to make an arrest,” Dawson said gently, anxious to lower any grand expectations that he was going to wrap up the case in no time.
“That’s true,” Akosua agreed. “It’s easy to judge from the outside. Still, it’s frustrating to have a killer like that on the loose-someone who has done such a hideous thing to poor Charles and Fiona.”
“Did either of you know the couple well?” Dawson asked them.
“Fairly well,” Abraham said. “I went to the same secondary school as they did, but they were one year ahead. They were sweethearts even back then, and they stuck together all the way through university and got married after that.”
It didn’t surprise Dawson that cousin Abraham had had contact with two murder victims. Takoradi was a relatively small city, and personal connections, whether direct or indirect, often went back as far as primary school. Ghanaians made it a point to mix with others in their socioeconomic group and to “know” people and talk about them. Phone numbers were exchanged and shared at the drop of a hat, and arriving at a party with uninvited friends and relatives was quite the norm.
“What were your impressions of Charles and Fiona?” Dawson asked.
“He was a smart guy,” Abraham said, “and he got close to the right people. That was what he did in the oil business, but he was influential and well-to-do even before oil arrived. As the CEO of Smith-Aidoo Timber, he had contacts all over the Western Region. He positioned himself to impress the circle of oil executives with his smooth talk and his charming manner. He was really perfect for corporate relations.”
Without prompting, Akosua served more soup to both the men and Dawson thanked her.
“What about Fiona Smith-Aidoo?” he asked. “Tell me about her.”
“She was an attractive woman about town,” Abraham said. “She liked being seen in public-fundraising and so on. She was also the first female chief executive of the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly-STMA. She displaced longtime chief Kwesi DeSouza, which shocked many people, not least DeSouza himself. He thought he was coasting to another term as chair. A rumor started-and some people think Fiona was responsible-that he had embezzled a few thousand from the STMA trust fund to build a new house on Beach Road, one of the posh areas in Takoradi. De Souza and Fiona had a strong rivalry.”
“Do you think DeSouza could have killed her?”
Abraham grunted. “I’ve never been inside the man’s mind, so I can’t say. He went on Skyy FM, one of our local stations, to deny the embezzlement allegations and blast Fiona and others for trying to destroy his reputation. He was obviously furious, but enough to kill? I don’t know.”
They finished the meal and Dawson thanked Akosua for the wonderful cooking. She cleaned up in the kitchen before rejoining the men in the sitting room.
“Akosua has her theory about what happened, and I have mine,” Abraham said.
“Okay, Akosua,” Dawson said. “Let’s hear yours first.”
“At the outset, only Charles was the target,” she said. “The killer knew Charles was going to be down at Cape Three Points that day, but he didn’t realize that Fiona was going to be with her husband. When this killer ambushed the vehicle, it took him by surprise that Fiona was there, and he had to kill both of them.”
“You think one man handled two people and ultimately two dead bodies?” Dawson said. “He’d have had to get them into his vehicle, transport them, get them into the canoe, take them out to sea, and so on. That’s a lot, even for a strong man.”
“Good point,” Akosua conceded. “Maybe two killers, then.”
“I think they did know that both Charles and Fiona would be in the vehicle,” Abraham said. “Someone had a contract out on both of them.”
“A professional job,” Dawson said.
“Yes.”
“Why both of them?”
“Maybe a family rivalry.”
“Interesting you say that,” Dawson said. “Are you aware there was a vendetta?”