Her eyes searched his face with both hopefulness and pleading, as though she had finally found someone she could lean on.
“Charity,” Dawson said, “do you know what a pen drive is?”
“Yes, that small thing to stick into the side of the computer.”
“Did Mr. Tetteh have one?”
“Yes, please.”
Without warning, she smiled, taking Dawson completely by surprise. He realized he had not yet seen her smile. “Do you know where I can find it?”
“He gave it to me to give to you.”
Dawson’s heart stopped. “What?”
“You were the one he said would come.”
“We don’t understand what you’re saying,” Chikata said, coming so far forward in his chair that it almost tipped over.
“He told me that certain people hate him,” she said. “Even, some of them used to threaten that they would kill him. He told me that if he dies, many different detective policemen will come to ask me questions, but only one will really care, and one day-he didn’t know when-that one will come to see me and that I should give the pen drive to that one who cares, but to no one else. When you came this morning, and I heard you say, ‘We have to care about Mr. Tetteh,’ I knew you were the one.”
Dawson was reeling. He felt heat and chills alternately in his face. “You have the pen drive here?” His voice almost shook.
“Yes. Please, I’m coming.”
She went into another room. Dawson looked at Chikata, speechless in disbelief. Charity returned seconds later. Into Dawson’s hand, she dropped a shiny, dark blue 8 GB pen drive inscribed with the word GOILCO.
This has to be it, Dawson thought. This pen drive held the solution to the mystery of who killed the Smith-Aidoos. He tried to curb his enthusiasm. His hunch could easily be wrong-again-he cautioned himself. Still, in spite of his trying to restrain his exuberance, he had a certain feeling, a feeling he had something very hot in his hand.
Chapter 34
THE TIME WAS ALMOST eleven when Dawson and Chikata left Charity. They had spent hours talking and not only about Mr. Tetteh’s murder. Conversing with the two men in rapid Ga, Charity had become relaxed and full of good humor. She had then insisted that they join the family for a meal of kenkey and fried fish.
No good would come from trying to get back to Takoradi at this late hour, and in any case, they were dead tired. They drove around and finally found a cheap place to stay for the night.
“I can sleep in the car,” Baah said.
Dawson and Chikata looked at each other and laughed.
“Oh, why you dey laugh?” Baah asked in surprise.
“Chaley, dis no be Takoradi,” Chikata said, grinning. “Dis be Accra.”
Dawson put his arm around Baah’s skinny shoulders. “Come on, you’re not going to sleep in the car. It’s too dangerous.”
Dawson paid for one room. It was all he could afford right now. The accommodations were the lowest of the low: a bare ceiling bulb, two low-set, lopsided beds with thin foam mattresses, and no toilet, bathroom, or even a sink. The public facilities outside were unpleasant. Baah sat in the one plastic chair and dozed off almost immediately.
Chikata looked for an electrical outlet but didn’t find one.
“Ah, well,” he said, switching on his laptop and sitting on the bed beside Dawson, “we’ll run it as long as the battery lasts.”
He popped in the pen drive. Dawson was trying to tone down his sense of anticipation so that if nothing on the pen drive turned out to be of interest, he wouldn’t feel crushed with disappointment.
The first thing they found on the drive was a set of emails between Charles and Tetteh.
From: Charles Smith-Aidoo
10 April 2012
To: Lawrence Tetteh
Subject: Re: Corporate responsibility
Hello, Lawrence -
I understand your concerns, but Malgam is working very seriously on developing a fund to cover the cost of cleaning up any spills.
Charles
Original Message
From: Lawrence Tetteh
8 April 2012
To: Charles Smith-Aidoo
Subject: Corporate responsibility.
Charles – the lack of serious commitment by Malgam to prevent environmental degradation by oil spills concerns me greatly.
After this exchange, no communication appeared between the two men until 10th May, when Charles sent a brief message:
I’ve been trying to call you regarding what we discussed. It appears your phone is off. My brother, I’m appealing to you as a fellow Ghanaian and colleague, please, don’t do this. This could threaten everything that we’ve achieved so far. All whistleblowers eventually suffer contempt, and they all come to regret their actions.
Turning to Chikata, Dawson explained. “On the fourth of May, Smith-Aidoo had texted Tetteh to say he would be in Accra in a few days and that they should meet up. He sounded very serious. They must have met, and this is the email after the meeting. So, it seems Tetteh wanted to blow the whistle on something, and Charles was trying to stop him from doing it.”
“Maybe it was a corruption scheme,” Chikata suggested. “Is it possible Charles had Tetteh killed in order to stop him from exposing it? But then, who killed Charles and Fiona, and why? This is confusing.”
Dawson’s eyes were closed as he tried to work it out. “It’s more likely that Charles told a third party, who decided to get rid of both him and Tetteh because of what they knew. It could be the BNI director behind it, or Amihere, the MP.”
“What about Superintendent Hammond?”
Dawson opened his eyes again and looked up at Chikata. “What about him?”
Chikata shrugged. “Maybe he hasn’t told you the whole story and he’s more involved than we think. How do we know he’s not caught up in a cover-up and had a hand in the killings? Why else has he been trying so hard to block our progress?”
“Maybe,” Dawson said with a sigh. He was worried that Chikata could be right. “We’ll have to keep it in the back of our minds as a possibility.”
There were no further emails to be found on the drive.
“He has some documents on here too,” Dawson said. “Let’s see what they are.”
They skimmed quickly through minutes and transcriptions of several meetings with sterile-sounding titles like Progress on the East Cape Three Points Exploration Block and Plans for Monetization of Natural Gas. Nothing was remarkable about them, but the next one they found had them carefully reading every line.
THE OIL COAST
Why Ghana is Not the Master of Its Destiny in the Petroleum industry By Lawrence Tetteh
To: TheTimes.co.uk
In 2007, the Malgam Oil Company discovered large reserves of offshore oil at Ghana’s Cape Three Points in the Western Region. With the cooperation of the Ghana government, the development of the East Cape Three Points well oil was fast-tracked in record time to first oil in December 2010. A feeling of elation captured the country. People dreamed of working in the oil and gas industry and of the riches that would result.
Of course, much of it was, and still is, an illusion. Most of oil work is restricted to a highly trained few, and the industry itself will never be a huge employer. There are more opportunities in the supportive, service, and hospitality industries, where less-skilled workers have a chance. This explains the massive influx of people moving from other parts of the country to the city at the center of the new oil industry, Takoradi.